Motivational inclination in artists and business workers measured by a novel implicit tool

Cognitive and non-cognitive factors affect decision-making processes and result in various life outcomes such as professional success, health and happiness. These factors divide into short-term and malleable states, and stable, predictable traits. Motivation is an important factor which combines both characteristics. The main current literature distinguishes between intrinsic motivation (IM), which derives from joy, interest and personal growth, and extrinsic motivation (EM) which derives from external rewards such as financial incentives and acclamation. The motivational inclination may affect performance and commitment, and is valuable for managers, professors and other employers. Currently, the two main methods to assess the type of motivational inclination are behavioral free-choice measurements and self-report questionnaires. These methods are either cumbersome and over-specific or subjective and unreliable. Therefore, an applicable and objective measurement to distinguish the dominant motivational pattern is needed through the means of implicit assessment. In the current dissertation I created an implicit task in which participants are introduced to scenarios depicting a character that faces a decision between two alternatives. In the first condition one option favors intrinsic motivation and the other extrinsic motivation. On the second and third conditions, the choice is between a favored and an inferior option from the same type of motivation (IM or EM, accordingly). Participants were asked to indicate their agreement with the choice made. A battery of various additional tests was administered, including an existing explicit measurement for motivational pattern. To examine this paradigm on two opposing populations a group of Artists and a group of Finance and Business workers were surveyed. Results indicate that the implicit measure introduced in the study is in line with the standard explicit tests currently used in two out of three of the metrics used. Additionally, as hypothesized, differences between the two groups were confirmed and showed that artists showed greater tendency towards IM than EM. Age was found to be a predictor of preference towards IM over EM. Results also suggest that the current implicit tool may be viable in the future as an indicator for trait motivational inclination. This study has some limitations. First, the participants’ deliberate response on a Likert scale is not ideal and it should be substituted by a response collected via a dynamometer, as this methos would increase the implicit and objective nature of the test. Second, these data cannot be generalized, and further research should be conducted with various populations across different countries.