Internal and External Encoding Style and Social Motivation

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511735066.013

11 - Internal and External Encoding Style and Social Motivation

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010

Pawel Lewicki

Edited by

Joseph P. Forgas ,

Kipling D. Williams and

Simon M. Laham

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Pawel Lewicki: Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa
Joseph P. Forgas: Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Kipling D. Williams: Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Simon M. Laham: Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney

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INTRODUCTION

It is probably trivial to state that the main reason for the wide variety of social motives we encounter daily is that the people we observe simply differ from each other. If so, then it is surprising to find that research on social motivation usually deals with explanatory processes that are assumed to work similarly across individuals, and that very little research attention is devoted to individual differences (for some notable exceptions, see Kernis & Goldman, and Rhodewalt, this volume).

One of the possible reasons for this paradox is the lack of success of traditional research on individual differences to offer sufficiently deep explanations (i.e., explanations in terms of underlying processes) and a preoccupation with relatively simple taxonomies that have typically been descriptive (as opposed to explanatory) in nature. Traditional research on individual differences has been of more benefit to applied areas (e.g., personnel selection in industrial-organizational psychology) than for understanding the general determinants of social motivation.

One of the potential sources of new relevant evidence that could help us understand the nature of social motivation is research on implicit cognition and knowledge acquisition. As summarized by Greenwald and Banaji (1995):

Much social cognition occurs in an implicit mode…. The missing ingredient is now available, as cognitive psychologists have succeeded in producing several varieties of unconscious cognition reliably in the laboratory (see overviews by Greenwald, 1992; Kihlstrom, 1987 …), and investigations of implicit social cognition are well underway…. Perhaps the most significant remaining challenge is to adapt these methods for efficient assessment of individual differences in implicit social cognition.

(p.20)

Type: Chapter
Information: Social Motivation
Conscious and Unconscious Processes
, pp. 194 - 209

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511735066.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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