@article{ChierchiaPrzyrembelLesemannetal., author = {Chierchia, Gabriele and Przyrembel, Marisa and Lesemann, Franca Parianen and Bosworth, Steven and Snower, Dennis and Singer, Tania}, title = {Navigating Motivation: A Semantic and Subjective Atlas of 7 Motives}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {11}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Media S.A.}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568064}, abstract = {Research from psychology, neurobiology and behavioral economics indicates that a binary view of motivation, based on approach and avoidance, may be too reductive. Instead, a literature review suggests that at least seven distinct motives are likely to affect human decisions: "consumption/resource seeking," "care," "affiliation," "achievement," "status-power," "threat approach" (or anger), and "threat avoidance" (or fear). To explore the conceptual distinctness and relatedness of these motives, we conducted a semantic categorization task. Here, participants were to assign provided words to one of the motives. By applying principal component analysis to the categorization assignments we represent the semantic inter-relations of these motives on a two-dimensional space, a "semantic atlas." This atlas suggests that, while care and affiliation are conceptually close, affiliation is closer to threat avoidance (or fear); opposite to these motives we find achievement, consumption and power, with the latter lying closer to threat approach (or anger). In a second study, we asked participants to rate how well the motive-specific words obtained in the first study described their currently experienced feelings. We find that semantically close motives are also more likely to be experienced together, that is, we replicate most of the semantic relations in the "subjective atlas." We discuss our findings in comparison to other multi-dimensional models of motivation, which show clear similarities. In addition to these motivational atlases, we provide a database of motive-specific words, together with the valence and arousal scores. These can be used for future research on the influence of motives on decision making.}, subject = {-}, language = {en} } @article{SnowerBosworth, author = {Snower, Dennis and Bosworth, Steven}, title = {Economic, Social and Political Fragmentation: Linking Knowledge-Biased Growth, Identity, Populism and Protectionism}, series = {European Journal of Political Economy}, volume = {67}, journal = {European Journal of Political Economy}, number = {101965}, doi = {10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101965}, abstract = {This paper examines how economic fragmentation (widening inequality of skills, income and education) gives rise to social fragmentation (via incompatible social identities), generating political fragmentation (via incompatible economic policies). We consider three value-driven identities: individualism, focused on status concerns, communitarianism, focused on social affiliations, and multi-affiliatedness, encompassing both objectives. Under endogenous identity formation high-skill people are drawn to individualism, the lower-skilled to communitarianism, and those of intermediate skill to multi-affiliatedness. Skill- and education-biased growth leads to increasing social polarisation, expanding the individualistic and communitarian groups at the expense of multi-affiliates. This expands the political constituency for closed policies (such as protectionism, immigration controls and nationalism), even when these policies reduce everyone's living standards. Our analysis thereby helps explain the economic and social underpinnings of populism.}, language = {en} } @article{SnowerBosworthSinger, author = {Snower, Dennis and Bosworth, Steven J. and Singer, Tania}, title = {Cooperation, Motivation and Social Balance}, series = {Journal of Economic Behavior \& Organization}, volume = {126}, journal = {Journal of Economic Behavior \& Organization}, number = {June 2016}, doi = {10.1016/j.jebo.2015.12.005}, pages = {72 -- 94}, abstract = {This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness," whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives. Different motives may be activated by different social settings. Inter-individual differences in dispositional types affect the responsiveness of people's motives to their social settings. The evolution of these dispositional types is driven by changes in the frequencies of social settings. In this context, economic policies can influence economic decisions not merely by modifying incentives operating through given preferences, but also by influencing people's motives (thereby changing their preferences) and by changing the distribution of dispositional types in the population (thereby changing their motivational responsiveness to social settings).}, language = {en} } @techreport{BartkeBosworthSnoweretal., type = {Working Paper}, author = {Bartke, Simon and Bosworth, Steven J. and Snower, Dennis and Chierchia, Gabriele}, title = {The Influence of Induced Care and Anger Motives on Behavior, Beliefs and Perceptions in a Public Goods Game}, pages = {35}, abstract = {This study analyzes the stability of preferences through the lens of psychological motives. We report the results of a public goods experiment in which subjects were induced with the motives of Care and Anger through autobiographical recall. Subjects' preferences, beliefs, and perceptions under each motive are compared with those of subjects experiencing a neutral autobiographical recall condition. We find that Care elicits significantly higher contributions than Anger, with Control treatment contributions in between. This is primarily driven by changes in conditional contribution schedules (measuring preferences) across treatments, though higher beliefs explain part of the effect that Care has on giving. These results are robust to checking for comprehension of the game's incentives. We also observe concomitant differences in attention to own and other's payoffs (using mouse tracking) as well as perceptions of the game's incentive structure (harmony) - particularly for subjects motivated by Anger. We interpret our findings as suggesting that people have access to multiple preferences that depend on how they perceive the decision context.}, language = {en} } @techreport{SnowerBosworth, type = {Working Paper}, author = {Snower, Dennis and Bosworth, Steven J.}, title = {Identity-Driven Cooperation versus Competition}, pages = {8}, abstract = {This paper seeks to extend the domain of identity economics by exploring motivational foundations of in-group cooperation and out-group competition. On this basis, we explore the reflexive interaction between individual economic decisions and social identities in response to technological change in market economies. Our analysis explores how technological change falling on marketable goods and services, rather than non-market caring relationships, leads to a restructuring of identities, which increases the scope of individualism and promotes positional competition at the expense of caring activities. Since positional competition generates negative externalities while caring activities create positive ones, these developments have important welfare implications}, language = {en} }