Completed Research Projects 2003-2008
Achievement Motivation and the Automatic Inhibition of Alcohol-Related Temptations Investigator
Investigator: James Shah
Overview
Pilot study examined how participants’ achievement motivation may impact their approach and avoidance related behavior towards alcohol. Extending a paradigm detailed in Fishbach & Shah (2006) in which approach and avoidance tendencies are assessed by the speed with which participants either push or pull a joystick in response to a target word in a lexical decision task. Based on previous work, this paradigm assumed that pushing a joystick forward simulates the “pushing away” action of an avoidance response whereas pulling a joystick back simulates the “grabbing” or “pulling in” of an approach response.
The study examined how achievement primes may impact participants’ approach and avoidance responses to alcohol-related targets and how this impact may further depend on participants’ chronic commitment to achievement. More specifically, although college-aged participants may generally view alcohol favorably, we examined whether priming achievement would nevertheless strengthen participants avoidance response to alcohol-related targets (brand labels of common beers) in participants with a relatively strong a chronic commitment to achieve as these individuals would most likely perceive alcohol as a temptation that could potentially hinder academic success.
Consistent with our prediction, the achievement goal priming manipulation was found to significantly interact with participants’ chronic achievement motivation to distinctly predict their avoidance response to alcohol-related targets in a lexical decision task. Participants high in achievement motivation were significantly quicker to “push away” alcohol-related targets via their joystick when primed with the goal to achieve than when primed with control stimuli. priming manipulation had no effect in how quickly these same participants “pulled in” the same alcohol-related targets via their joysticks. This pattern of results is consistent with the prediction that those highly committed to achievement may more efficiently avoid the temptation of alcohol in achievement settings and subsequent research is planned to examine the boundary conditions of this effect.