Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment

Abstract

Pioneering studies reported that individuals who worked on a highly difficult task and experienced competence frustration beforehand would activate a restorative process and show enhanced autonomous motivation in a subsequent irrelevant activity. In this follow-up study, we explored the effect of prior competition outcome on one’s autonomous motivation in a subsequent non-competitive environment. According to our experimental manipulation, participants were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (a winning group and a losing group) and a control group. The experiment lasted for three sessions. Participants in the control group completed a single-player stop-watch (SW) task all along, while those in both treatment groups worked on a competitive SW task and competed for monetary rewards during Session 2 only. Electrophysiological data in Session 1 serve as the baseline and measure one’s trait-level autonomous motivation towards the SW game. For participants in the losing group, more pronounced difference wave of feedback-related negativity was observed in Session 3 compared with Session 1, suggesting enhanced autonomous motivation in Session 3. Such a pattern was observed in neither the winning group nor the control group. These results suggested that failure in a prior competition would activate one’s competence restoration in a subsequent non-competitive environment. Task difficulty and social competition are varied sources of competence frustration. Thus, our findings advanced understanding of the competence restorative process and helped clarify the dynamics between competition and human motivation.

When the Counterpart Chooses the Opposite: The First Mover’s Anticipation and Evaluation of the Final Feedback in Gambles

“…This result is in line with previous studies which reported that individuals perceive the consistent choice with others as a recognition and reward ( Klucharev et al, 2009 ; Nook and Zaki, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ). Previous studies indicated that the FRN may originate from the anterior cingulate cortex ( Kiehl et al, 2000 ; Holroyd et al, 2004 ; San Martín, 2012 ), and distinguishes between positive and negative feedback ( Holroyd and Coles, 2002 ; Cohen et al, 2007 ; Meng et al, 2021 ). Besides the valence of the feedback, positive and negative feedback can be defined in terms of the discrepancy between the feedback and one’s expectation.…”

P300 as a neural indicator for setting levels of goal scores in educational gamification applications from the perspective of intrinsic motivation: An ERP study

“…Thus, the finding that FRN was not affected by the levels of goal score suggests, at least, that the settings of the levels of goal scores did not affect participants' boredom and positive emotions during the current task. However, previous studies have reported FRN's role as indicating intrinsic motivation (Ma et al, 2014a;Fang et al, 2018;Meng et al, 2021) and have yielded inconsistent…”

“…Consistent with reinforcement learning, FRN reflects extraction of motivationally significant outcomes (Pfabigan et al, 2010 ). Recent research has demonstrated that FRN amplitudes calculated from the difference wave between the ERP to incorrect feedback and one to correct feedback are related to intrinsic motivation (Ma et al, 2014a ; Fang et al, 2018 ; Meng et al, 2021 ). The FRN response is also modulated by affective mood states, such as positive emotion (Zhao et al, 2016 ; Paul and Pourtois, 2017 ) or boredom (Milyavskaya et al, 2019 ), which are presumably induced by the degree of intrinsic motivation.…”

“…However, it remains unclear whether variation in intrinsic motivation—as a function of the challenge level of the goal scores to be achieved by the user in a gamified educational application—is reflected in neural indicators. Previous ERP research on intrinsic motivation focused on the effects of autonomy frustration (Fang et al, 2020 ), competence frustration (Fang et al, 2018 , 2021 ; Meng et al, 2021 ), or monetary reward (Ma et al, 2014a ) on intrinsic motivation. Meng et al ( 2016 ) defined challenge level as the differences in task competence compared with an opponent in a stopwatch game.…”

Work meaningfulness disclosure and persistent behavior: Level of action identification as a moderator

“…People's well-being in the workplace is a major concern of contemporary organizations, as there emerges a large number of "walking dead" who are skilled at work, but tired at heart. To the managers of contemporary organizations, maintaining their employees' affective well-being and motivating them in a proper manner requires lots of managerial wisdom (Meng et al, 2021). A burgeoning line of literatures suggests that meaningfulness is a fundamental human need (Yeoman, 2014), as individuals are found to actively pursue meaning in their lives, especially in the work setting.…”