Motives and Needs
The Motive Disposition Approach, as for example represented in McClelland and colleagues’ research tradition (McClelland, 1985), conceptualizes implicit motives as early acquired and relatively stable preferences for certain kinds of incentives. Differences in motive strength explain why people differ in their motivation, in their behavior, and in their emotional responses in one and the same situation. The motive disposition approach mainly focuses on three motives, namely, the achievement motive (recurrent concern to improve one´s performance and to outperform others), the affiliation motive (desire to have friendly interpersonal relations), and the power motive (desire to have impact on others and to feel strong). Since a few years, the autonomy disposition (stable preference for self-determination) is discussed as a further implicit motive.
According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT, Deci & Ryan, 1985), which is a theoretically- and empirically- very well based theory about human motivation, all individuals need to experience autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and they reap well-being benefits from the satisfaction of these basic psychological needs.
Together with our collaborators, we take an integrative perspective and investigate implicit motives as moderators of the need satisfaction–well-being relationship. We found empirical support in experimental and correlational studies, mostly in the domain of sports. As an example, we found that autonomy-support provided by a teacher leads to lower perceived and physiological stress responses in a physical education setting for people with a strong than for people with a weak autonomy disposition. Autonomy-restriction, in turn, considerably enhanced stress for students with a strong, but not for those with a weak autonomy motive (Sieber, Schüler, & Wegner, 2016).
In future projects we will specify our preditors, for example adress more complex motive constellations (rather than single motives) and improve the measurement of basic need satisfaction. Furthermore, we aim to extend the range of dependent variables, especially with a focus on cognitive and motor performance.
Contact
This line of research is primarily pursued by Julia Schüler. If you are interested in this topic please feel free to contact her. This research consists of experiments and correlational field studies and is suitable for a Bachelor- or Master thesis. Students are encouraged to write to us if they are interested in doing a thesis on this topic (contact).