Effects of Implicit Power Motivation on Men's and Women's Implicit Learning and Testosterone Changes After Social Victory or Defeat.

Abstract

Two studies examined interactions of implicit power motivation and experimentally varied victory or defeat in a contest on implicit learning of a visuomotor sequence associated with the contest outcome and changes in testosterone and self-reported affect. In men and women, power motivation predicted enhanced learning (sequence-execution accuracy) after a victory and impaired learning after a defeat. In men, power motivation predicted testosterone increases among winners and decreases among losers, and testosterone decreases mediated the negative effect of power motivation on learning in losers. In women, power motivation predicted postcontest testosterone increases, particularly among losers. In both men and women, self-reported affective states were influenced only by contest outcome and were unrelated to participants' testosterone changes or implicit learning.

Activity inhibition: A predictor of lateralized brain function during stress?

“…Details on this task, which was designed to be strongly rewarding (victory) or frustrating (defeat), are given in Schultheiss et al (2005). Participants in the winning condition "won" all rounds except for the second and the fifth, and participants in the losing condition correspondingly "lost" all rounds except for the second and the fifth.…”

The Early Development of Gender Differences

“…However, as noted by O'Carroll (O'Carroll 1998), the interpretation of these results is complicated by the interesting, and better established, observation that men's testosterone levels also fall in response to failures in dominance contests of various kinds (Archer 2006, Dabbs & Dabbs 2000, Elias 1981, Mazur & Booth 1998, especially for men who strive more for dominance (Schultheiss et al 2005). Archer (2006) proposed that this response is part of a primitive, evolved system by which men's willingness to enter dominance contests is informed by their previous record of success.…”

Testing the convergent and discriminant validity of three implicit motive measures: PSE, OMT, and MMG

“…More up to date studies showed that the PSE-measured affiliation, power and achievement motives predict affective responses to incentives (e.g., Fodor et al 2006), direct attention (e.g. Schultheiss and Hale 2007), support motive-related goal striving (e.g., Brunstein and Maier 2005), are associated with health outcomes (e.g., Jemmott 1987;McClelland 1979;McClelland et al 1980McClelland et al , 1987 and were shown to have physiological correlates (power: testosterone level, e.g., Schultheiss et al 2005; affiliation: progesterone level, e.g., Schultheiss et al 2003; achievement: release of peptide hormone arginine-vasopression, McClelland 1995). With regard to convergent validity, Spangler's (1992) metaanalysis showed that the TAT and questionnaires were only moderately correlated and predict different kinds of outcome variables.…”