Nurturing your self: measuring and changing how people strive for what they need

Abstract

What people strive for (motive contents) and how people strive (self-regulatory processes) are studied in separate fields of psychology and assessed with different measures. The Operant Motive Test (OMT) integrates the assessment of self-regulatory processes and implicit motives. The present research validated the distinction between self-regulated and not self-regulated (incentive-driven, fearful) motive enactment. Consistent with expectations, self-regulated motive enactment correlated positively with dispositional self-regulation (i.e., action orientation,N-1_total = 730, re-analyzed in five published samples) and integrative self-organization (N-2 = 47) and showed pre-post increases after a multi-faceted three-hour resilience training (N-3 = 45). A specific self-motivation exercise yielded more self-regulated motive enactment among poor self-regulators compared to humoristic talk (N-4 = 164) and no exercise conditions, controlling for baseline (N-5 = 97). Findings validate the OMT as sensitive to dispositional and experimental variations in self-regulation and show that short interventions can change how people strive for what they need.