Motivation

Unhealthy food choices are implicated in two worldwide issues, the burden of global disease and climate change. Important factors involved in unhealthy food choices are the preference for high- over low-calorie food contents and difficulties in inhibiting the desire for high-calorie food. Here we explored posthypnotic suggestions (PHS) as a possible new tool to increase the preference for low-calorie food and inhibit the desire for high-calorie items. In a counterbalanced design, a food-face classification task, measuring implicit food preferences, and a Go-NoGo task, measuring inhibition, were administrated with PHS being activated or deactivated, while ERPs were recorded. In the food-face classification task without PHS the early visual P1 amplitude, was larger in response to high than low-calorie food pictures, possibly reflecting differential reward-associations; these differences were eliminated by PHS. The obtained positive bias toward low-calorie food enhanced the effective processing of these stimuli and increased motivated attention toward them, as was inferable from faster reaction times and increased late positivity amplitudes in response to low- versus high-calorie items in PHS-active condition, respectively. In the NoGo condition of the Go-NoGo task, PHS diminished the N2 component to low-calorie items, and in the Go condition, PHS strongly increased the P3 amplitude in high-calorie items, indicating the facilitation of both response inhibition and calorie-based classification. Together, PHS effectively altered both food preferences and inhibition; therefore, PHS may serve as a promising tool to counteract unhealthy food choices.

In humans, voluntary task switching is susceptible to bottom-up influences like a switch of the relevant stimulus identity (Mayr & Bell, 2006). A recent study with ants (Czaczkes, Koch, Fröber & Dreisbach, 2018) has shown that even irrelevant cue changes increase switching behavior, but only if they were presented within a high-reward context. To investigate whether a reward context would also increase switching behavior in response to meaningless cue changes in humans, we conducted two voluntary task switching studies. On each trial, participants chose between two tasks preceded by one of two different color cues. Reward was manipulated between blocks (Experiment 1: no vs. high reward; Experiment 2: low vs. high reward). In both experiments, the cue change did not modulate the voluntary switch rate. However, the voluntary switch rate was significantly lower in high-reward blocks as compared to no-reward or low-reward blocks. This suggests that bottom-up influences on deliberate task switching in humans are indeed limited to task-relevant information. Moreover, the finding of a decreased voluntary switch rate within a high reward context further supports the claim that unchanged high reward promotes cognitive stability.

In dual-task (DT) situations of the psychological refractory period (PRP) type participants perform two temporally overlapping tasks with varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Dual-task-costs arise which can be explained by the bottleneck assumption. The reaction times for Task 2 (RT2) are usually prolonged at short SOA compared to long SOA. The so-called PRP Effect is explained by the assumption of a bottleneck requiring serial processing of response selection stages. In recent years, motivation has been shown to enhance cognitive processing. Hence, our aim was to investigate the effect of motivation, operationalized as monetary reward (MR), on bottleneck processing. We rewarded Task 2 in two experiments and asked which processing stage in DT will be affected by MR and whether the bottleneck can be changed by MR application. In Experiment 1, MR led to a decreased PRP-Effect. Indicated by greater differences between reward-condition and no-reward-condition at short SOA compared to long SOA. This pattern suggests, that MR effected pre-bottleneck stages of Task 1 and this effect is propagated onto Task 2. In Experiment 2, we added a response compatibility manipulation in Task 2. To test whether MR can change serial processing of response selection stages. The results showed an additive effect of compatibility and of MR on RT2, indicating that response selection processes were scheduled serially independently of MR. The results provide evidence for modulatory influence of MR on pre-bottleneck stages in DT processing.

Cosmopolitan cities are cities that provide opportunities for personal success and value diversity, creativity, and equality (e.g., Berlin, Boston). These cities attract people who are motivated toward personal goal pursuit (those with an independent self-concept), people open to experience, and extraverted people (Sevincer, Varnum, & Kitayama, 2017). Because cosmopolitan cities offer favorable conditions for high-risk/high-return enterprises, they may also attract people who are willing to take risks. Indeed, high risk-takers were more inclined to choose cosmopolitan cities as the destination of a potential residential move (Sevincer, Kwon, Varnum, & Kitayama, 2019). I present an experiment that investigated whether risk-taking is causally linked to a preference for cosmopolitan cities. To manipulate risk aversion (vs. seeking), participants were induced with a prevention-focus, known to be associated with lower risk-taking (vs. promotion-focus and control). To measure preference for cosmopolitan cities, they were asked to name the three cities they would most prefer to move to if they had out of their current city. Two independent raters coded the cosmopolitanism of participants’ preferred cities. Participants who were induced with a prevention-focus named cities that were less cosmopolitan on average than those with a promotion-focus and those in the control condition, indicating that situationally induced risk aversion led participant to prefer less cosmopolitan cities. Because economic development relies on a willingness to take risks, the ability of cosmopolitan cities to attract people willing to take risks may be one factor that fuels their economic development.

Research in the implicit motive tradition is built on the notion that motivation depends on the interaction of individuals’ motives with specific incentives. Corresponding research in the domain of motor performance has mostly focused on the achievement motive because a standard of excellence is characteristic of many performance contexts. However, these contexts also offer opportunity for cooperation and competition, i.e. incentives for the affiliation and power motive. We tested whether congruence between a) individuals’ affiliation or power motive and b) competition and cooperation incentives benefits motor performance. After assessing participants' baseline performance in darts they took part in either a group performance scenario (affiliation incentive) or a one-on-one competition scenario (power incentive). In contrast to previous findings, affiliation did not predict performance in the team condition. In contrast - and in line with previous findings - the power motive was positively associated with performance in the one-on-one competition scenario. Results extend findings on the power motive and highlight the need for research on affiliation.