Abstract
Although growing research indicates that certain personality traits change over the lifespan, implicit motives are often deemed to be rather stable personality characteristics. Researchers have been interested in implicit motives for several decades, but our understanding of how these dispositions change still lacks clarity. This article gives an overview and a discussion of the current evidence for the stability of and the changes in implicit motives. After elaborating on the theoretical background of the motive construct and its measurement, we present an overview of studies that have investigated the trainability of implicit motives and their dispositional stability and changes using cross-sectional and longitudinal methods. Although the results are inconclusive concerning the direction of change, the reviewed studies suggest that implicit motives adapt to life circumstances much like other personality traits. This review sets out to contribute to a better understanding of the functioning of implicit motives and to present a roadmap for further research.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
We give an overview of studies that have analyzed the stability of and changes in implicit motives by cross-sectional and by longitudinal methods
We briefly describe the respective studies and summarize the results, we report the authors’ theoretical assumptions about the stability of and changes in implicit motives
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. A meta-analysis based on 92 studies on changes in personality traits showed significant changes in various personality dispositions, for example, a decrease in openness and an increase in conscientiousness, over the course of one’s life (Roberts et al, 2006). Such changes do affect the big five, and other personality characteristics such as self-confidence, self-control, and intelligence (e.g., Verhaeghen and Salthouse, 1997; Roberts and Mroczek, 2008). It is of paramount importance to get a general idea of different propositions and theoretical points of view concerning the stability of and changes in implicit motives, since this will open up new avenues for future research
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