Implicit Motives, Laterality, Sports Participation and Competition in Gymnasts

Abstract

The implicit motivational needs for power, achievement, and affiliation are relevant for sports performance. Due to their hypothesized association with functions of the right hemisphere (McClelland, 1986), they may influence lateralized perceptual and motor processes. And due to their interactions with motive-specific incentives, they may influence performance conditional on the presence of suitable incentives. This preregistered study, conducted mostly online, examines motivational needs using a standard picture-story exercise (PSE) and their associations with indicators of perceptual and motor laterality and sports performance in gymnasts (N = 67). Further it explores how implicit motives interact with suitable motivational incentives in the prediction of sports performance. Results partly confirm a link between indicators of cerebral rightward laterality and implicit motives: the implicit affiliation and achievement motives are positively associated with an indicator of emotional-perceptional laterality (chimericfaces task), but not with an indicator of motor laterality (turning bias). Moreover, the implicit achievement motive was positively correlated with training hours. The implicit affiliation motive was negatively associated with the highest attained competition level. The presence of achievement incentives (perceived control, failure) and affiliation incentives (training together or alone) did not interact with corresponding motives to predict sports performance.

Motives and Laterality: Exploring the Links

“…Motives were not systematically associated with laterality measures in a way that suggested RH primacy. Although nPower tended to be associated with the CFT in a manner suggesting more RH involvement in men, this was not the case for women, and the pattern was not observed in Schütz and Schultheiss's (2020) earlier study. Perhaps by chance, higher average motives were even associated with an overall more rightward preference and thus LH involvement in terms of hand, foot, ear, and eye use.…”

“…McClelland's claim also fits the observation that the RH is particularly involved in autonomic arousal processes characteristic of emotion and motivation and encompassing cardiovascular, endocrine, and other physiological outputs (Dimond & Farrington, 1977;Wittling, 1995). The only test of his RH hypothesis that we are aware of is a recent study by Schütz and Schultheiss (2020) involving 67 gymnasts. The authors observed correlation patterns of nAchievement and nAffiliation, but not nPower, with a measure of perceptual laterality -the chimeric faces task -that were consistent with the RH hypothesis.…”

“…Participants provided written informed consent before testing started and received €15 remuneration after completion of the testing session. A sample size > 100 participants was targeted to obtain 80% power for reliably detecting bivariate correlations of 0.27 or better; that is, effect sizes that are typical of associations between motives (or AI) and cognitive measures (e.g., Schultheiss et al, 2009;2011;Schütz & Schultheiss, 2020). For two-way interactions (e.g., Sex x Motive or Motive x AI), power is < 70% (based on the differences of motive/laterality slopes reported in Köllner & Bleck, 2020, p. 107), and power is still lower for three-way interactions (e.g., Sex x Motive x AI).…”

Measuring Achievement, Affiliation, and Power Motives in Mobility Situations: Development of the Multi-Motive Grid Mobility

“…In the last century, the investigation of human motivation was of central focus in personality research (e.g., McClelland, 1951;Spence, 1958;Schüler et al, 2008;Müller and Cañal-Bruland, 2020;Schütz and Schultheiss, 2020). The motive disposition theory (MDT; e.g., McClelland, 1987) can be described as interactionist: It assumes that motives are dispositions "to respond to specific classes of target states with typical affect patterns" (Langens et al, 2005, p. 73).…”