Failure cue priming and impaired cognitive performance—analyses of avoidance motivation as a mediator and fear of failure as a moderator.

The present research investigates whether and how learned symbols for failure reduce task performance. We tested the effect of number priming in two countries with different learning histories for numbers. Priming numbers associated with failure (6 in Germany and 1 in Switzerland) were hypothesized to reduce performance. As expected, in Switzerland, priming with the failure number 1 reduced performance (Study 1), whereas in Germany, priming with the failure number 6 impaired performance in analogy tasks (Study 2). Study 2 additionally analyzed the mechanism and showed that the relationship between failure number priming and performance was mediated by evoked avoidance motivation and that dispositional fear of failure moderated this mediation.

Do implicit motives and basic psychological needs interact to predict well-being and flow? Testing a universal hypothesis and a matching hypothesis

Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan in Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press, New York, 1985) suggests that certain experiences, such as competence, are equally beneficial to everyone’s well-being (universal hypothesis), whereas Motive Disposition Theory (McClelland in Human motivation. Scott, Foresman, Glenview, IL, 1985) predicts that some people, such as those with a high achievement motive, should benefit particularly from such experiences (matching hypothesis). Existing research on motives as moderators of the relationship between basic need satisfaction and positive outcomes supports both these seemingly inconsistent views. Focusing on the achievement motive, we sought to resolve this inconsistency by considering the specificity of the outcome variables. When predicting domain-specific well-being and flow, the achievement motive should interact with felt competence. However, when it comes to predicting general well-being and flow, felt competence should unfold its effects without being moderated by the achievement motive. Two studies confirmed these assumptions indicating that the universal and matching hypotheses are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.

Motivation und Emotion. Allgemeine Psychologie für Bachelor

Ziellos und gefühllos – so wäre unser Leben ohne Motivation und Emotion! Ziele geben unserem Leben Sinn und Struktur, sie treiben uns zu großen Anstrengungen und erstaunlichen Leistungen an. Sie richten unser Verhalten auf die Dinge aus, die uns wichtig sind. – Und was uns wichtig ist, wofür sich die ganze Anstrengung lohnt, das sagen uns unsere Emotionen. Die „Module“ Motivation und Emotion gehören somit zu den spannendsten Fächern der Psychologie und stellen wichtige Grundlageninformationen für die psychologischen Anwendungsfächer zur Verfügung. Dieses Lehrbuch beantwortet die wichtigsten Fragen der Motivations- und Emotionspsychologie kompakt und verständlich.

Person-sensitive TAME marking in Galo: Historical origins and functional motivation

Scott DeLancey’s analysis of person-sensitive TAME marking in Lhasa Tibetan – “a.k.a. conjunct-disjunct marking” or “egophoricity” – has stimulated considerable discussion and debate, particularly as previously little-known languages of the Tibeto-Burman area, as well as outside it, have come to be described, and a wider range of functional factors have been taken into account. This chapter is intended as a contribution to this discussion, by presenting the first detailed analysis of person-sensitive TAME marking in a language of the Tani subgroup of Tibeto-Burman, namely Galo. Like Tournadre (2008), I find that person-sensitive TAME marking in Galo is not a grammaticalized index of person (“agreement”) nor of cross-clause subject continuity, but is instead a semantic index of an assertor’s knowledge state. Unlike in more westerly Tibeto-Burman languages, however, different construals of agency and/or volition do not seem to be factors in the Galo system. Thus, there are both similarities and differences underlying systems of person-sensitive TAME marking in different Tibeto-Burman languages; this suggests that further research - particularly, employing a diachronic perspective when possible - will be required before we can confidently characterize person-sensitive TAME marking from a pan-Tibeto-Burman (or broader) cross-linguistic perspective.

Does culture affect public service motivation? Evidence of sub-national differences in Switzerland

This article explores societal culture as an antecedent of public service motivation. Culture can be a major factor in developing an institution-based theory of public service motivation. In the field of organization theory, culture is considered a fundamental factor for explaining organization behavior. But our review of the literature reveals that culture has not been fully integrated into public service motivation theory or carefully investigated in this research stream. This study starts to fill this gap in the literature by using institutionalism and social-identity theory to predict how the sub-national Germanic and Latin cultures of Switzerland, which are measured through the mother tongues of public employees and the regional locations of public offices, affect their levels of public service motivation. Our analysis centers on two large data sets of federal and municipal employees, and produces evidence that culture has a consistent impact on public service motivation. The results show that Swiss German public employees have a significantly higher level of public service motivation on the whole, while Swiss French public employees have a significantly lower level overall. Implications for theory development and future research are discussed.