The Influence of the Achievement Motive on Spontaneous Thoughts in Pre- and Postdecisional Action Phases

Abstract

Drawing on current goal theories of motivation, the authors investigated participants’ spontaneous thoughts in pre- and postdecisional action phases. In contrast with the research originally initiated by Heckhausen and his coworkers, the authors used a repeated-measures design and considered individual differences in achievement motivation. Participants were given a choice between two tasks. They had to report their thoughts twice, before and after they had made the decision. Thought contents were analyzed according to the theory of action phases. The data clearly indicate that spontaneous thoughts reflect different states of mind in pre- and postdecisional action phases. Furthermore, an optimistic bias in thought contents was found, which was, however, moderated by the achievement motive. Success-motivated participants were optimistic after and pessimistic before decision making. The reverse was true for failure-motivated participants. The results were interpreted as an important extension of the achievement-motive nomological network.

Implicit need for achievement moderates the relationship between competence need satisfaction and subsequent motivation

“…For example, the need for achievement as sessed by the MMG predicted optimism (Puca & Schmalt, 2001) and performance in achievement contexts (Puca & Schmalt, 1999). The power motive is associated with leadership success (Sokolowski & Kehr, 1999) and the affiliation motive predicted affiliation relevant behavior (Sokolowski et al, 2000).…”

A high implicit affiliation motive does not always make you happy: A corresponding explicit motive and corresponding behavior are further needed

“…Excellent retest-reliability, internal consistency and validity of the MMG have been demonstrated repeatedly (e.g., Gable et al 2003;Kehr 2004;Langens and Schmalt 2002;Sokolowski et al 2000). In order to get an overall measure for the affiliation motive, we subtracted fear of rejection from hope of affiliation to get an implicit affiliation motive index (for this procedure see also Puca 2005;Puca and Schmalt 2001).…”

Arousal of Flow Experience in a Learning Setting and Its Effects on Exam Performance and Affect

“…Also the validity of the MMG has been repeatedly demonstrated (e.g., Gable, Reis, & Elliot, 2003;Langens & Schmalt, 2002;see Sokolowski et al, 2000). Like in studies conducted by the test authors, the hope and fear scores in the present study were combined into a single netto-index by subtracting the z-transformed fear-scores from the z-transformed hope-scores (e.g., netto-achievement index = hope-of-success -fear-of-failure; Puca, 2004;Puca & Schmalt, 2001). Thus, high scores represent the tendency to be hope-of-success motivated, whereas low scores represent fear-of-failure.…”