Measuring Implicit Motives with the Picture Story Exercise (PSE): Databases of Expert-Coded German Stories, Pictures, and Updated Picture Norms.

We present two openly accessible databases related to the assessment of implicit motives using Picture Story Exercises (PSEs): (a) A database of 183,415 German sentences, nested in 26,389 stories provided by 4,570 participants, which have been coded by experts using Winter's coding system for the implicit affiliation/intimacy, achievement, and power motives, and (b) a database of 54 classic and new pictures which have been used as PSE stimuli. Updated picture norms are provided which can be used to select appropriate pictures for PSE applications. Based on an analysis of the relations between raw motive scores, word count, and sentence count, we give recommendations on how to control motive scores for story length, and validate the recommendation with a meta-analysis on gender differences in the implicit affiliation motive that replicates existing findings. We discuss to what extent the guiding principles of the story length correction can be generalized to other content coding systems for narrative material. Several potential applications of the databases are discussed, including (un)supervised machine learning of text content, psychometrics, and better reproducibility of PSE research.

Adult attachment and testosterone reactivity: Fathers' avoidance predicts changes in testosterone during the strange situation procedure.

We assessed parents' testosterone reactivity to the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), a moderately stressful parent-infant interaction task that pulls for parental nurturance and caregiving behavior. Parents (146 mothers, 154 fathers) interacted with their 1-year-old infants, and saliva samples were obtained pre- and post-task to assess changes in testosterone. We examined whether testosterone reactivity differed between mothers and fathers, the extent to which parents' characteristic approaches to closeness (i.e., adult attachment orientation) contributed to testosterone changes, and whether any influences of adult attachment orientation were independent of more general personality characteristics (i.e., the Big Five personality dimensions). Results revealed that mothers and fathers showed comparable declines in testosterone during the SSP, and that these declines were attenuated among fathers with a more avoidant attachment orientation (i.e., those less comfortable with closeness). Associations between fathers' avoidance and testosterone reactivity were statistically independent of broader personality traits. Our findings provide some of the first evidence for short-term changes in both mothers' and fathers' testosterone in contexts that pull for nurturance. Moreover, these findings demonstrate that individual differences in adult attachment may play an important role in understanding such changes. We discuss possible explanations for gender differences in associations between adult attachment and parents' testosterone reactivity, and the extent to which testosterone reactivity might be sensitive to changes in context for mothers versus fathers.

The Motivating Power of Visionary Images: Effects on Motivation, Affect, and Behavior.

OBJECTIVE: Visionary images are identity-relevant, picture-like mental representations of a desirable and attainable future appearing regularly in a person's stream of thought. Prior research indicates that both mental and real images provide access to implicit motives. We therefore proposed that visionary images motivate people by arousing their implicit motives and tested this hypothesis in two experimental studies. METHOD: We used guided visualizations to administer motive-domain-specific visionary images (Study 1: achievement and neutral, Mage = 24.4, 51 participants, 34 women; Study 2: affiliation and power, Mage = 24.01, 51 participants, 28 women) to arouse the respective implicit motive. Motivation was measured via residual changes in affective (i.e., changes in affective arousal), behavioral (i.e., performance on a concentration task, behavioral choices in a prisoner's dilemma), and mental (i.e., motive imagery in the Picture Story Exercise) indicators of motivation. RESULTS: The results largely confirmed our hypothesis. Visionary images increased motivation in the targeted domain. Some effects were moderated by participants' implicit motives. CONCLUSIONS: The findings underscore the role of implicit motives in understanding the motivational effectiveness of visionary images.

Individual variation in fathers' testosterone reactivity to infant distress predicts parenting behaviors with their 1-year-old infants.

Positive father involvement is associated with positive child outcomes. There is great variation in fathers' involvement and fathering behaviors, and men's testosterone (T) has been proposed as a potential biological contributor to paternal involvement. Previous studies investigating testosterone changes in response to father-infant interactions or exposure to infant cues were unclear as to whether individual variation in T is predictive of fathering behavior. We show that individual variation in fathers' T reactivity to their infants during a challenging laboratory paradigm (Strange Situation) uniquely predicted fathers' positive parenting behaviors during a subsequent father-infant interaction, in addition to other psychosocial determinants of paternal involvement, such as dispositional empathy and marital quality. The findings have implications for understanding fathering behaviors and how fathers can contribute to their children's socioemotional development.

Public speaking in front of an unreceptive audience increases implicit power motivation and its endocrine arousal signature.

The present study explored the motivational characteristics of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993). Seventy-two participants either completed the public-speaking component of the TSST or, as a control condition, the friendly TSST (Wiemers, Schoofs, & Wolf, 2013) and wrote picture stories both before and after treatment. Stories were coded for motivational imagery related to power, achievement, and affiliation as well as for activity inhibition, a marker of functional brain lateralization during stress. The TSST had a specific arousing effect on power motivation, but not on other motivational needs, on activity inhibition, or on story length. TSST-elicited increases in power imagery, but not in achievement or affiliation imagery, were associated with a relatively greater salivary alpha-amylase response and with a relatively lesser salivary cortisol response. These findings suggest that the TSST specifically induces power-related stress.

Vulnerabilities in social anxiety: Integrating intra- and interpersonal perspectives.

What are the major vulnerabilities in people with social anxiety? What are the most promising directions for translational research pertaining to this condition? The present paper provides an integrative summary of basic and applied translational research on social anxiety, emphasizing vulnerability factors. It is divided into two subsections: intrapersonal and interpersonal. The intrapersonal section synthesizes research relating to (a) self-representations and self-referential processes; (b) emotions and their regulation; and (c) cognitive biases: attention, interpretation and judgment, and memory. The interpersonal section summarizes findings regarding the systems of (a) approach and avoidance, (b) affiliation and social rank, and their implications for interpersonal impairments. Our review suggests that the science of social anxiety and, more generally, psychopathology may be advanced by examining processes and their underlying content within broad psychological systems. Increased interaction between basic and applied researchers to diversify and elaborate different perspectives on social anxiety is necessary for progress.

Salivary progesterone is associated with reduced coherence of attentional, cognitive, and motivational systems.

The present study tested whether the hypothesis that high levels of progesterone (P) have a decoupling effect on the function of the brain hemispheres (Hausmann & Gunturkun, 2000) also extends to attentional functions, referential connections between verbal and nonverbal representations and the degree to which implicit motivational needs match a person's explicit goal commitments. Participants (28 women on oral contraceptives, 14 naturally cycling women, 50 men) completed the Lateralized Attention Network Task (Greene et al., 2008), a measure of the alerting, orienting, and conflict-resolution functions of attention for each hemisphere; a measure of referential competence (i.e., the ability to quickly name nonverbal information); a measure of the implicit motives power, achievement, and affiliation; and a content-matched personal goal inventory. In addition, they provided a saliva sample that was assayed for P and cortisol (C). Higher levels of P were associated with lower interhemispheric correlations for alerting and orienting, but with a higher correlation of conflict-resolution performance. Higher P was also associated with longer interhemispheric transfer time, lower congruence between implicit motives and explicit goal commitments and, after controlling for C, with lower referential competence. These results suggest that (a) P is associated with the degree to which attentional functions are correlated between hemispheres, although in a different direction for more posterior (alerting and orienting: decoupling) than for more anterior functions (conflict resolution: coupling), (b) that high P is associated with other indicators of reduced functional coherence between cognitive systems (longer interhemispheric transfer time, lower referential competence), and (c) that high P is also associated with low coherence between implicit and explicit motivational systems.

Testosterone is positively associated with risk taking in the Iowa Gambling Task.

The association between testosterone and economic risk is not well-understood and is understudied. The present study aimed to further characterize what if any relationship testosterone has with risky economic decisions. To do so, 154 participants (78 men) completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (Bechara et al., 1994) and also provided saliva samples, which were assayed for endogenous testosterone levels using radioimmunoassay. High-levels of endogenous testosterone were associated with choosing less frequently from advantageous IGT decks of cards, indicating greater risk taking. The data showed that the effects of testosterone on IGT performance were similar for men and women. High-testosterone women and high-testosterone men made riskier choices than their low-testosterone counterparts of the same sex, and this effect was pronounced in women. Thus, high levels of testosterone are associated with willingness to incur greater risk in both sexes.

Suitability of saliva stimulants for valid assessment of steroid hormones via radioimmunoassay.

Salivary steroid measurement is a popular way to assess endocrine hormone levels, but efficient sample collection can be challenging because the use of stimulants can interfere with valid measurement. The aim of this study was therefore to identify a stimulant that can be used in assessment of the steroid hormones cortisol (C), testosterone (T), progesterone (P) and estradiol (E2) without impairing their quantification by radioimmunoassay. Study 1 and 2 explored the suitability of potential stimulants in comparison to unstimulated saliva collection. Study 3 tested stimulants under standardized conditions in water. Across all three studies, Parafilm® wax foil performed best and was therefore tested once more and validated as a saliva stimulant in Study 4. No significant differences between unstimulated saliva and Parafilm®-stimulated saliva could be found for any of the four hormones assayed. Therefore, Parafilm® appears to be a suitable saliva flow stimulant for assaying the salivary steroid hormones C, T, P and E2 by radioimmunoassay.

"Evidence for a robust, estradiol-associated sex difference in narrative-writing fluency": Correction.

Reports an error in "Evidence for a robust, estradiol-associated sex difference in narrative-writing fluency" by Oliver C. Schultheiss, Martin G. Köllner, Holger Busch and Jan Hofer (Neuropsychology, 2021[Mar], Vol 35[3], 323-333). In the original article, there was an error in Table 1. The df for "18-50 years (adult men and premenopausal women)," originally read "1, 17," but should have read "1, 71." The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2020-71595-001). Objective: Despite evidence for an estradiol-linked sex difference in verbal fluency favoring women, recent reviews question this difference. We therefore examined the issue based on a narrative task that we have administered to different populations for over 20 years. Method: We meta-analyzed 98 studies (N = 11,528) conducted by our laboratories and that featured measures of biological sex and storytelling. We ran primary-data analyses (N = 797) on an overlapping subset of these studies that also included salivary hormone and digit ratio measures. Results: Women told longer stories than men, d = 0.31, 95% CI [0.24, 0.38], an effect that did not vary by geographic region but was moderated by cue type (verbal: d = 0.57, [0.44, 0.71]; pictures: d = 0.29, [0.22, 0.36]), response modality (oral: d = -0.04, [-0.18, 0.09]; handwriting: d = 0.39, [0.31, 0.47]; typing: d = 0.31, [0.21, 0.42]), and age (prepubertal children: d = 0.13, [-0.04, 0.30]; pubescents: d = 0.48, [0.23, 0.74]; premenopausal adults: d = 0.36, [0.29, 0.42]; postmenopausal adults: d = -0.09, [-0.35, 0.16]). Consistent with the age effect, estradiol, a sex-dimorphic hormone during the reproductive life stage, was a specific mediator of the sex difference in narrative-writing fluency. This mediation effect was moderated by prenatal hormone exposure, estimated via digit ratio. Conclusions: When verbal fluency is assessed through narrative writing, a robust female advantage becomes evident. It is associated with the reproductive life stage and variations in current estradiol concentrations, particularly in individuals prenatally exposed to relatively more estradiol than testosterone. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence for a robust, estradiol-associated sex difference in narrative-writing fluency.

Objective: Despite evidence for an estradiol-linked sex difference in verbal fluency favoring women, recent reviews question this difference. We therefore examined the issue based on a narrative task that we have administered to different populations for over 20 years. Method: We meta-analyzed 98 studies (N = 11,528) conducted by our laboratories and that featured measures of biological sex and storytelling. We ran primary-data analyses (N = 797) on an overlapping subset of these studies that also included salivary hormone and digit ratio measures. Results: Women told longer stories than men, d = 0.31, 95% CI [0.24, 0.38], an effect that did not vary by geographic region but was moderated by cue type (verbal: d = 0.57, [0.44, 0.71]; pictures: d = 0.29, [0.22, 0.36]), response modality (oral: d = -0.04, [-0.18, 0.09]; handwriting: d = 0.39, [0.31, 0.47]; typing: d = 0.31, [0.21, 0.42]), and age (prepubertal children: d = 0.13, [-0.04, 0.30]; pubescents: d = 0.48, [0.23, 0.74]; premenopausal adults: d = 0.36, [0.29, 0.42]; postmenopausal adults: d = -0.09, [-0.35, 0.16]). Consistent with the age effect, estradiol, a sex-dimorphic hormone during the reproductive life stage, was a specific mediator of the sex difference in narrative-writing fluency. This mediation effect was moderated by prenatal hormone exposure, estimated via digit ratio. Conclusions: When verbal fluency is assessed through narrative writing, a robust female advantage becomes evident. It is associated with the reproductive life stage and variations in current estradiol concentrations, particularly in individuals prenatally exposed to relatively more estradiol than testosterone. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Implicit Motives, Laterality, Sports Participation and Competition in Gymnasts.

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 (chimeric-faces 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.

Social closeness increases salivary progesterone in humans.

We examined whether interpersonal closeness increases salivary progesterone. One hundred and sixty female college students (80 dyads) were randomly assigned to participate in either a closeness task with a partner versus a neutral task with a partner. Those exposed to the closeness induction had higher levels of progesterone relative to those exposed to the neutral task. Across conditions, progesterone increase one week later predicted the willingness to sacrifice for the partner. These results are discussed in terms of the links between social contact, stress, and health.

Activity inhibition: a predictor of lateralized brain function during stress?

The authors tested the hypothesis that activity inhibition (AI), a measure of the frequency of the word "not" in written material, marks a propensity to engage functions of the right hemisphere (RH) and disengage functions of the left hemisphere (LH), particularly during stress. Study 1 and Study 2 showed that high AI predicts faster detection of stimuli presented to the RH, relative to the LH. Study 2 provided evidence that the AI-laterality effect is specific to perceptual, but not motor, laterality and that it is particularly strong in individuals with low mood, but absent in individuals in a positive mood state. Study 3 showed that negative affective stimuli prime the AI-laterality effect more strongly than positive affective stimuli. Findings from Study 4 suggest that situationally induced frustration (losing a contest), in conjunction with high AI, leads to increased attentional laterality. The present findings substantially bolster the construct validity of AI and contribute to a better understanding of earlier findings linking AI to physiological stress responses, immune system functioning, alcohol abuse, and nonverbal behavior.

Are implicit and explicit motive measures statistically independent? A fair and balanced test using the picture story exercise and a cue- and response-matched questionnaire measure.

Previous studies that have examined the relationship between implicit and explicit motive measures have consistently found little variance overlap between both types of measures regardless of thematic content domain (i.e., power, achievement, affiliation). However, this independence may be artifactual because the primary means of measuring implicit motives--content-coding stories people write about picture cues--are incommensurable with the primary means of measuring explicit motives: having individuals fill out self-report scales. To provide a better test of the presumed independence between both types of measures, we measured implicit motives with a Picture Story Exercise (PSE; McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989) and explicit motives with a cue- and response-matched questionnaire version of the PSE (PSE-Q) and a traditional measure of explicit motives, the Personality Research Form (PRF; Jackson, 1984) in 190 research participants. Correlations between the PSE and the PSE-Q were small and mostly nonsignificant, whereas the PSE-Q showed significant variance overlap with the PRF within and across thematic domains. We conclude that the independence postulate holds even when more commensurable measures of implicit and explicit motives are used.

Assessing the convergent validity between the automated emotion recognition software Noldus FaceReader 7 and Facial Action Coding System Scoring.

This study validates automated emotion and action unit (AU) coding applying FaceReader 7 to a dataset of standardized facial expressions of six basic emotions (Standardized and Motivated Facial Expressions of Emotion). Percentages of correctly and falsely classified expressions are reported. The validity of coding AUs is provided by correlations between the automated analysis and manual Facial Action Coding System (FACS) scoring for 20 AUs. On average 80% of the emotional facial expressions are correctly classified. The overall validity of coding AUs is moderate with the highest validity indicators for AUs 1, 5, 9, 17 and 27. These results are compared to the performance of FaceReader 6 in previous research, with our results yielding comparable validity coefficients. Practical implications and limitations of the automated method are discussed.

Adult Attachment, Implicit Motives, and Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Behaviors.

The current study investigated connections between implicit motives of power and affiliation, adult attachment styles, and parenting behaviors using self-report and observational data from 191 mothers, fathers, and their 12-month-old infants. An interaction between avoidant attachment and nAffiliation indicated that implicit affiliation motives predicted positive maternal behaviors, but only for highly avoidant mothers. For fathers, lower attachment anxiety and nPower were associated with positive parenting behaviors, whereas high levels of attachment anxiety and nPower were associated with negative parenting behaviors. Attachment styles of avoidance and anxiety, as well as implicit motives of power and affiliation, were unique predictors of parenting behaviors. Overall, the findings suggest that parenting behaviors in the first year of infancy are predicted by parents' working models of attachment and implicit motives of affiliation and power.

Basal and dynamic relationships between implicit power motivation and estradiol in women.

This study investigated basal and reciprocal relationships between implicit power motivation (n Power), a preference for having impact and dominance over others, and both salivary estradiol and testosterone in women. 49 participants completed the Picture Story Exercise, a measure of n Power. During a laboratory contest, participants competed in pairs on a cognitive task and contest outcome (win vs. loss) was experimentally varied. Estradiol and testosterone levels were determined in saliva samples collected at baseline and several times post-contest, including 1 day post-contest. n Power was positively associated with basal estradiol concentrations. The positive correlation between n Power and basal estradiol was stronger in single women, women not taking oral contraceptives, or in women with low-CV estradiol samples than in the overall sample of women. Women's estradiol responses to a dominance contest were influenced by the interaction of n Power and contest outcome: estradiol increased in power-motivated winners but decreased in power-motivated losers. For power-motivated winners, elevated levels of estradiol were still present the day after the contest. Lastly, n Power and estradiol did not correlate with self-reported dominance and correlated negatively with self-reported aggression. Self-reported dominance and aggression did not predict estradiol changes as a function of contest outcome. Overall, n Power did not predict basal testosterone levels or testosterone changes as a function of dominance contest outcome.

Basal testosterone moderates responses to anger faces in humans.

Prior research [van Honk J, Tuiten A, Verbaten R, van den Hout M, Koppeschaar H, Thijssen J, de Haan E. Correlations among salivary testosterone, mood, and selective attention to threat in humans. Horm Behav 1999;36(1):17-24; van Honk J, Tuiten A, Hermans E, Putman P, Koppeschaar H, Thijssen J, Verbaten R, van Doornen L. A single administration of testosterone induces cardiac accelerative responses to angry faces in healthy young women. Behav Neurosci 2001;115(1):238-42.] showed relationships in humans between testosterone (T) and vigilance to facial expressions of anger, which are considered signals of an impending dominance challenge. In Study 1, we used a differential implicit learning task (DILT) (see [Schultheiss OC, Pang JS, Torges CM, Wirth MM, Treynor W. Perceived facial expressions of emotion as motivational incentives: evidence from a differential implicit learning paradigm. Emotion 2005;5(1):41-54.]) to investigate the degree to which subjects find anger faces reinforcing. In the DILT, separate sequences of actions were paired with presentations of anger faces, neutral faces or a blank screen. After training, performance on the three sequences was measured in the absence of face stimuli. Saliva was collected for T measurement. Higher T predicted better learning on sequences paired with sub-threshold (i.e., presented too fast for conscious awareness) anger faces, suggesting that T is related to reinforcing qualities of these faces. In Study 2, we examined whether morning or afternoon T better predicted attention and vigilance to anger faces. Participants were tested at 9:00 and 15:00. At each session, saliva was collected for T measurement, and participants completed a Stroop task and a dot-probe task [Mogg K, Bradley BP, Hallowell N. Attentional bias to threat: roles of trait anxiety, stressful events, and awareness. Q J Exp Psychol A 1994;47(4):841-64.] with facial expression stimuli. Morning (peak) T was a better predictor of responses to anger faces than afternoon T. Morning T predicted greater Stroop-like interference to sub-threshold anger faces, as well as attentional orienting away from sub-threshold anger faces. These effects were not present for joy faces or for supraliminal anger faces. T may generally decrease aversion to threatening stimuli, and/or may specifically facilitate approach towards signals of dominance challenge.

Relationship between salivary cortisol and progesterone levels in humans.

In four studies, each with multiple hormone assessments before and after positive emotion-arousing laboratory manipulations, salivary progesterone positively correlated with salivary cortisol in men and women taking hormonal contraceptives but not in freely cycling women. This is consistent with the idea that progesterone in men is largely adrenal in origin, whereas in women its sources are both ovarian and adrenal. In addition, bi-partial correlations revealed that change in cortisol was positively related to change in progesterone levels; this effect was stronger in men than in women. These findings suggest that progesterone is released from the adrenal along with cortisol in humans, due to general adrenal activation and/or possibly as an additional negative feedback mechanism to down-regulate the stress response.