Motivational Correlates of Vigilance Task Engagement

Abstract

There is relatively little research on the intersection of state and trait motivation measures and vigilance task engagement. The present research demonstrates and catalogs the correlation between several measures of self-reported motivation and task engagement factors on the short- and long-form versions of the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (DSSQ; Matthews et al., 2002; Matthews, 2016). Data was collected from 200 participants across three vigilance studies. Evidence from correlational analyses indicated that state intrinsic motivation, trait achievement motivation, and trait self-esteem are related to perceived task engagement at both pre- and post-task. This research demonstrates that individual differences in state and trait motivation are important to consider in the measurement of vigilance task engagement and stressrelated task performance.