Human Motivation & Affective Neuroscience Lab
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Latest News: 14 October 2009
New edited book on implicit motives available

Implicit Motives Cover

How do unconscious motivational needs (i.e., implicit motives) influence physiological, cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to incentives? How can implicit motives be measured? How are they shaped by culture, how do they influence political and societal processes? Why are they often mismatched with the explicit beliefs people have about their motivational needs and what are the consequences of such mismatches? How can we use knowledge about implicit motives in clinical, business, and school contexts to help people achieve their goals? These are some of the topics that “Implicit motives”, edited by Oliver C. Schultheiss and Joachim C. Brunstein and published by Oxford University Press, presents in 18 clearly written chapters, contributed by leading authorities in the field. It represents a state-of-the-art reference for all researchers and practitioners interested in human motivation.

The first section portrays the three most commonly studied motives, power, affiliation, and achievement, and how they shape experience and behavior. The second section presents classic and new approaches to motive assessment, including chronometric methods and the use of computerized test administration and analysis. In the third section, several contributors provide answers to the question why implicit motives frequently do not overlap with self-report measures of motivation -- a re-emerging fundamental issue in motivation science -- and what this reveals about motivation is measures and how motivational information is processed by the mind. The section also includes chapters about the influence of implicit motives on learning and memory, hormonal and brain activation responses to incentives, and the emotional and behavioral consequences of (in-)congruence between implicit motives and the explicit needs and goals. The last section is dedicated to interdisciplinary and applied aspects of implicit motive research, ranging from the role of motives in politics and history, to clinical implications, to the assessment and training of motivational competencies in business and school settings.

Bringing together exciting new research on a central topic in human motivation, this volume is an important addition to the libraries of personality, social, and cognitive psychologists, affective and social neuroscientists, clinical psychologists, as well as graduate students in these fields and practitioners.

To download the book or specific chapters, please click here.

To order a print copy of the book, please click here.


Previous releases:

What the word "not" may reveal about ability to handle stress (October 2008)

Estrogen fuels female power (February 2008)

High-testosterone people reinforced by others’ anger, new study finds (February 2007)

Study finds US students more motivated to achieve, less power-hungry than German students (August 2006)

Are all people stressed out by a defeat or does it hurt some more than others? (April 2006)

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