Nurturing your self: measuring and changing how people strive for what they need

ABSTRACT

What people strive for (motive contents) and how people strive (self-regulatory processes) are studied in separate fields of psychology and assessed with different measures. The Operant Motive Test (OMT) integrates the assessment of self-regulatory processes and implicit motives. The present research validated the distinction between self-regulated and not self-regulated (incentive-driven, fearful) motive enactment. Consistent with expectations, self-regulated motive enactment correlated positively with dispositional self-regulation (i.e., action orientation, N_{1_total} = 730, re-analyzed in five published samples) and integrative self-organization (N₂ = 47) and showed pre-post increases after a multi-faceted three-hour resilience training (N₃ = 45). A specific self-motivation exercise yielded more self-regulated motive enactment among poor self-regulators compared to humoristic talk (N₄ = 164) and no exercise conditions, controlling for baseline (N₅ = 97). Findings validate the OMT as sensitive to dispositional and experimental variations in self-regulation and show that short interventions can change how people strive for what they need.

KEYWORDS:

• Implicit motives
• motive enactment
• self-regulation
• action versus state orientation
• personality change through intervention
• sensitivity to experimental arousal
• Operant Motive Test (OMT)

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.