This chapter provides an overview of the history of research on implicit motives. Six common principles of implicit motive research are laid out: (1) Implicit motives are nonconscious, (2) motive arousal is associated with characteristic changes in thought content and behavior, (3) motives act as affect amplifiers, (4) motives interact with situational incentives to shape behavior, (5) motives affect multiple levels of psychological functioning, and (6) the number of implicit motives is biologically constrained. The chapter also provides an overview of the structure and topics of the book.

Two studies examined the importance of motive dispositions in determining the extent to which the pursuit of personal goals accounts for interindividual differences in emotional well-being. Within the domains of agency and communion, motives were assessed with a picture-story test, whereas self-report measures were used to assess goal attributes. Study 1 found that progress toward motive-congruent goals, in contrast to progress toward motive-incongruent goals, accounted for students' daily experiences of emotional well-being. Study 2 found that the combination of high commitment to and high attainability of motive-congruent goals predicted an increase in students' emotional well-being over 1 semester. In contrast, high commitment to motive-incongruent goals predicted a decline in emotional well-being. Results are discussed with reference to a 2-system approach to human motivation.

Two studies examined interactions of implicit power motivation and experimentally varied victory or defeat in a contest on implicit learning of a visuomotor sequence associated with the contest outcome and changes in testosterone and self-reported affect. In men and women, power motivation predicted enhanced learning (sequence-execution accuracy) after a victory and impaired learning after a defeat. In men, power motivation predicted testosterone increases among winners and decreases among losers, and testosterone decreases mediated the negative effect of power motivation on learning in losers. In women, power motivation predicted postcontest testosterone increases, particularly among losers. In both men and women, self-reported affective states were influenced only by contest outcome and were unrelated to participants' testosterone changes or implicit learning.

Four hundred twenty-eight participants wrote imaginative stories in response to 6 picture cues of a research version of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Morgan & Murray, 1935). Story protocols were coded for n (need) Power, n Achievement, and n Affiliation using Winter's (1991) integrated scoring system that provided detailed information about the motive profiles of individual picture cues. In general, picture cues differed strongly from each other with regard to how many scorable instances of power, achievement, or affiliation imagery they elicited. The n Affiliation, but not n Power, n Achievement, or activity inhibition--a measure of impulse control--was found to be higher in (a) women than in men and (b) individuals tested in a group than in individuals tested individually. TAT motive measures showed no significant overlap with questionnaire measures of motivational orientation (German Personality Research Form; Stumpf, Angleitner, Wieck, Jackson, & Beloch-Till, 1985) or traits (German NEO-Five-Factor Inventory; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993).

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