The Motivation Activation Measure (MAM): How Well Does MAM Predict Individual Differences in Physiological Indicators of Appetitive and Aversive Activation?

Abstract

This paper is part of a program of research designed to develop a self-report measure of individual differences in motivational reactivity. Theoretically, individual differences in appetitive and aversive activation have been linked to personality types (e.g., sensation seeking) and to various types of behavior (e.g., risky behavior, substance use, and abuse). The difficulty in measuring individual differences in motivational activation (usually assessed by measuring neurochemical levels) has made it difficult to test hypotheses that posit variations in Correspondence should be addressed to Annie Lang, some process (such as media use or media viewing) as a function of differences in motivational activation. This study reports an investigation into the construct validity of MAM the Motivational Activation Measure. MAM is measured by using participants' self-reported ratings of emotional experience in response to 90 emotional pictures to calculate two measures: positivity offset, an estimate of activation in the appetitive system, and negativity bias, an estimate of the speed of activation of the aversive system. Results show that the negativity bias measure correctly predicts greater activation in physiological measures associated with aversive activation (e.g., startle potentiation, corrugator activity, heart rate acceleration) while the positivity offset measure correctly predicts physiological and behavioral indicators of appetitive activation (e.g., inhibition of startle, zygomatic activation, greater heart rate decelerations, and faster STRTs). Recent theories of motivated cognition argue that individual differences in the activation and reactivity of the appetitive and aversive motivational systems modulate how individuals perceive, attend to, encode, store, and respond emotionally to mediated messages (Lang, 2005a & b;Lang, Simons, & Balaban, 1997). It's old news that negative media messages can elicit avoidance behavior in people while positive messages elicit approach behavior and that there is a great deal of individual variation in the strength of these responses. This variation is evident at the behavioral level where we have all seen people who go to great lengths to avoid negative stimuli while others seem to seek them out. What's new is the claim that this individual-level variation in motivational activation affects cognitive and emotional processing long before any behavioral outcome is observed.We already have good evidence that individual differences in motivational activation and reactivity are related to risky behavior, substance abuse, and emotional experience, but little is known about how or even if individual differences in motivational activation affect the processing of mediated messages. Given the ubiquity of emotion in media messages of all kinds (from the news, to advertising, to health communication, to edutainment, and, of course, entertainment) it behooves us to learn more about individual differences in how mediated emotional content alters cognitive processing and emotional respo...

Modulating executive functioning: Trait motivational reactivity and resting HRV

“…Unlike other measures of motivational activation, it is not based on self-reports of behaviour and preferences, rather participants simply rate their emotional responses to selected emotional images. Experiments assessing the reliability and validity of MAM predicted and found expected relationships between ASA and DSA, and measures of sensation-seeking, substance use and time spent looking at emotional pictures (Lang, 2006;Lang et al, 2007). Further, ASA and DSA predict behavioural and physiological indicators of appetitive and aversive activation during media message processing (Lang et al, 2007).…”

“…Along with this, lower rHRV has also been shown to be associated with anxiety disorders indicative of high aversion (Åhs, Sollers, Furmark, Fredrikson, & Thayer, 2009;Thayer, Friedman, & Borkovec, 1996). MAM has also been shown to predict a similar pattern of inappropriate variation in emotionally modulated startle (Lang et al, 2007) with high trait appetitive reactivity inhibiting appropriate startles and high trait defensive reactivity facilitating startles. Adaptive and appropriate responses appear to require optimal reactivity in both systems with each system modulating the other creating more context-appropriate responses.…”

“…This activation, in turn, is assumed to play an important role in media selection and processing (Lang et al, 2007;Potter, Lee, & Rubenking, 2011). This paper suggests that these variables should also play a predictable role in Thayer and Lane's (2000) neurovisceral integration network, which includes the motivational systems.…”

“…Individual differences in trait motivational reactivity moderate attentional and affective responses to environmental stimuli (Lang, Bradley, Sparks, & Lee, 2007). These effects likely happen because the thought processes captured by psychological effects research are affected by (and affect) the complex, embodied network of neural projections to and from the viscera.…”

“…One goal of the current study was to investigate whether resting heart rate variability (rHRV) might prove to be such a measure and to explore whether individual differences in trait motivational reactivity are related to rHRV. The Motivational Activation Measure (MAM) has been proposed as an indicator of trait level differences in motivational reactivity (Lang, Bradley, Sparks, & Lee, 2007), while rHRV has been identified as an index of regulatory activity in the neurovsiceral neural network (Ruiz-Padial, Sollers, Vila, & Thayer, 2003;Thayer & Lane, 2000). We predicted that trait motivational reactivity would be an indicator of the strength of activation of early visceral responses, while rHRV would indicate the inhibition of these activations due to higher-order regulatory control processing.…”