In the Mindset of Opportunity: Proactive Mindset, Perceived Opportunities, and Role Attitudes

Perceiving roles as fulfilling goals offers motivational benefits to students, and yet the features of individuals or contexts that align with seeing such role opportunities have not been studied systematically. The current research investigated how these goal affordances are related to proactive mindset, or a person’s belief that they can shape their contexts. Three studies examined how variation in proactivity aligns with perceiving more communal and agentic goal opportunities in roles. Study 1 found that highly proactive college students (vs. less proactive students) tended to perceive their future careers as fulfilling communal and agentic goals, which predicted positive career attitudes. Study 2 replicated this association, while ruling out behavioral flexibility as accounting for the proactivity-positivity relationship. Study 3 experimentally tested whether growth-oriented contexts foster proactivity. Proactive mindset aligns with more expansive views of roles as fulfilling fundamental motives. These views, in turn, carry positive implications for one’s future career attitudes.

In the Mindset of Opportunity: Proactive Mindset, Perceived Opportunities, and Role Attitudes

Perceiving roles as fulfilling goals offers motivational benefits to students, and yet the features of individuals or contexts that align with seeing such role opportunities have not been studied systematically. The current research investigated how these goal affordances are related to proactive mindset or a person’s belief that they can shape their contexts. Three studies examined how variation in proactivity aligns with perceiving more communal and agentic goal opportunities in roles. Study 1 found that highly proactive college students (vs. less proactive students) tended to perceive their future careers as fulfilling communal and agentic goals, which predicted positive career attitudes. Study 2 replicated this association, while ruling out behavioral flexibility as accounting for the proactivity–positivity relationship. Study 3 experimentally tested whether growth-oriented contexts foster proactivity. Proactive mindset aligns with more expansive views of roles as fulfilling fundamental motives. These views, in turn, carry positive implications for one’s future career attitudes.

Psychological barriers to effective altruism: An evolutionary perspective

People usually engage in (or at least profess to engage in) altruistic acts to benefit others. Yet, they routinely fail to maximize how much good is achieved with their donated money and time. An accumulating body of research has uncovered various psychological factors that can explain why people’s altruism tends to be ineffective. These prior studies have mostly focused on proximate explanations (e.g., emotions, preferences, lay beliefs). Here, we adopt an evolutionary perspective and highlight how three fundamental motives—parochialism, status, and conformity—can explain many seemingly disparate failures to do good effectively. Our approach outlines ultimate explanations for ineffective altruism and we illustrate how fundamental motives can be leveraged to promote more effective giving.

A Systematic Review of Evolutionary-Based Conceptualisations of Family Violence and the Development of an Alternative Motivational-Emotional Systems Approach

<p>Evolutionary psychology is a field that provides distal explanations of behaviour. Although it has potential to enhance current understandings of family violence, the present state of the literature is conceptually messy. The aim of the current thesis was to bring coherence to this domain by conducting a systematic review of evolutionary conceptualisations of family violence over the past four decades. Four databases (PsycINFO, PsycArticles, ProQuest Central, and Web of Science) were searched using relevant search terms to identify any work that examined family violence from an evolutionary perspective. A total of 54 publications were included in the review, ranging from theoretical pieces and empirical studies through to several commentaries. Findings indicated family violence was conceptualised as an adaptation, by-product, or pathology. However, numerous authors had contradictory perspectives as to how certain offences should be conceptualised, others failed to make a conceptual claim at all, and there was a tendency among authors to describe the behaviour as an adaptation rather than the underlying psychological mechanisms. To make sense of the findings, six recurrent themes were developed: lack of resources, genetic relatedness as a protective factor, fast life history strategy, reproductive value, lethal violence as pathology, and male sexual and familial proprietariness. The second aim of the thesis was to develop a novel theoretical framework that conceptualised family violence in a more clear and coherent manner. This new model was labelled the Fundamental Motives Framework and mapped findings from the systematic review onto a range of motivational-emotional systems. The Fundamental Motives Framework was discussed as a promising way of providing a multi- faceted, coherent perspective of family violence that accommodates for the heterogeneity in offending. Limitations and directions for future research were also discussed.</p>

A Systematic Review of Evolutionary-Based Conceptualisations of Family Violence and the Development of an Alternative Motivational-Emotional Systems Approach

<p>Evolutionary psychology is a field that provides distal explanations of behaviour. Although it has potential to enhance current understandings of family violence, the present state of the literature is conceptually messy. The aim of the current thesis was to bring coherence to this domain by conducting a systematic review of evolutionary conceptualisations of family violence over the past four decades. Four databases (PsycINFO, PsycArticles, ProQuest Central, and Web of Science) were searched using relevant search terms to identify any work that examined family violence from an evolutionary perspective. A total of 54 publications were included in the review, ranging from theoretical pieces and empirical studies through to several commentaries. Findings indicated family violence was conceptualised as an adaptation, by-product, or pathology. However, numerous authors had contradictory perspectives as to how certain offences should be conceptualised, others failed to make a conceptual claim at all, and there was a tendency among authors to describe the behaviour as an adaptation rather than the underlying psychological mechanisms. To make sense of the findings, six recurrent themes were developed: lack of resources, genetic relatedness as a protective factor, fast life history strategy, reproductive value, lethal violence as pathology, and male sexual and familial proprietariness. The second aim of the thesis was to develop a novel theoretical framework that conceptualised family violence in a more clear and coherent manner. This new model was labelled the Fundamental Motives Framework and mapped findings from the systematic review onto a range of motivational-emotional systems. The Fundamental Motives Framework was discussed as a promising way of providing a multi- faceted, coherent perspective of family violence that accommodates for the heterogeneity in offending. Limitations and directions for future research were also discussed.</p>

Fundamental Motives Illuminate a Broad Range of Individual and Cultural Variations in Thought and Behavior

An article published in Current Directions a decade ago introduced the fundamental-motives framework and reviewed initial promising findings using this general approach. According to this framework, a recurring set of challenges and opportunities during human evolution gave rise to overarching motivational systems in the domains of self-protection, disease avoidance, social affiliation, status seeking, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care. When activated, fundamental motives influence psychological processes by directing cognition and behavior in distinct and functionally relevant ways. In the intervening years, the approach has been expanded to a broader range of motives, individual and cultural variations in those motives, and the physiological correlates of activating different motives. In this article, we review a decade of research applying the fundamental-motives framework and point to promising new research directions.

Assessing 16 Fundamental Motives With Fewer Than 50 Items: Development and Validation of the German 16 Motives Research Scales (16mrs)

Psychometrically sound short scales are required to comprehensively and yet economically assess fundamental motives in research settings such as large-scale assessments. In order to provide such a time- and cost-efficient instrument, we conducted three studies (N = 1,568) to develop further and validate 16 German scales with three items each assessing fundamental motives [16 motives research scales (16mrs)]. In Study 1, we applied a top–down construction process to develop a preliminary item pool on the basis of a thorough revision of existing construct definitions. In Study 2, we chose an approach that allowed us to balance the optimization of psychometric properties with content coverage to select three-item scales for each of the 16 motives. For the item selection process, we combined exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, ant colony optimization algorithm, and Mokken scale analyses. In Study 3, we cross-validated the results obtained in Study 2 and placed the 16mrs in a nomological network consisting of Big Five traits and Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Fear motives. The results of these studies indicate that the 16mrs can be used to reliably and validly assess fundamental motives that represent a level of personality that differs from the Big Five and covers motivational aspects beyond the well-established Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Fear motives. Limitations concerning the reliability of the Autonomy scale and the empirical discrimination of the Dominance and Status scales are discussed. In addition to the validated German version, we also provide the English translation of the items, which, however, need to be validated before use.

Desert and ruins — landscapes of anger and traces of unbelief (landscape and Scripture)

The article treats of the experience of using two fundamental motives in architectural semantics — “desert” and “ruin” in order to resolve the hermeneutic paradox, which is peculiar to sacred architecture, considered in the context of Abrahamic tradition: canonical texts related to architecture either prescribe, or describe construction experience. Yet, purely construction motives can be supplemented not only by motives of creation, but also motives of destruction. Thus, the necessary critical (crisis) position of interpretation will be provided, revealing the pre- and post-architectonic dimensions of theophanic experience. The rhetorical topic of “desert” and “ruin” has two dimensions: one deals with phenomena of space and object, and the other with literary metaphors. Both are presented in the article in a threefold sequence: literature is replaced by the theory of memory, which in turn passes the baton to philosophy, primarily the philosophy of space, but also of time, with a return to history, either asserted or cancelled.