 18. Implicit Motives  399
indicator of the hedonic impact of goal at -
tainment (cf. Berridge, 2000). In humans, 
spontaneous smiles reflect a positive hedonic 
response, and frowns reflect a negative he -
donic response to a wide variety of stimuli 
and situations (Larsen, Norris, & Cacioppo, 
2003). There is growing evidence that facial 
hedonic responses to motive-  specific stimuli 
are stronger in high-  motive individuals and 
weaker or absent in low-  motive individu -
als. For n Affiliation, Dufner and colleagues 
(2015) used electromyography (EMG) of 
muscle activity over the corrugator superci -
lii, activated in a frown, and the zygomati -
cus major,  activated in a smile, to assess 
individuals’ hedonic responses to pictures 
with positive affiliative content (e.g., a fam -
ily going for a walk together). They found 
that the greater participants’ positive hedon -
ic response was to such stimuli (but not to 
achievement- or power-  related pictures), as 
reflected in more activation of the zygomati -
cus and less activation of the corrugator,  the 
higher their affiliation scores were on the 
PSE. Research by Kordik et al. (2012) had 
similarly shown that n Affiliation predicted 
more corrugator  activation when research 
participants interacted with a nonsmiling, 
reserved experimenter than when they inter -
acted with a smiling, friendly experiment -
er. In studies using observational coding 
measures, individuals high in n Affiliation 
responded with more smiles to friendly en -
counters with other people (Dufner, Arslan, 
& Denissen, 2018; Hagemeyer et al., 2016), 
but also with more frowns to an interaction partner whom they expected to disagree 
with them (Schult  heiss, 1996).
Facial EMG studies of affect have also 
been reported for n Power. Relative to indi -
viduals low in this motive, power-  motivated 
people frown more when faced with a 
dominant-  acting, but not when encoun -
tering a submissive-  acting person (Fodor, 
Wick, & Conroy, 2012). Similar findings 
emerge when power-  motivated individuals 
encounter negative audience reactions when 
giving a speech (Fodor & Wick, 2009).
Another line of evidence in support of im -
plicit motives’ affect-  scaling function comes 
from research on the interplay between im -
plicit motives and the personal goals people 
pursue in their daily lives. Across four stud -
ies with six large samples from the United 
States and Germany, individuals’ reports of 
hedonic well-being strongly depended on the 
progress they made toward their personal 
goals, with feelings of satisfaction being as -
sociated with high progress and feelings of 
frustration and dejection being associated 
with low progress (Brunstein, Schult  heiss, & 
Grässmann, 1998; Pueschel, Schulte, & Mi -
chalak, 2011; Schult  heiss, Jones, Davis, & 
Kley, 2008; Schult  heiss, 2013a). However, 
this finding holds only for those individuals 
who have strong implicit motives to support 
their personal goal pursuits. In individu -
als with low implicit motives, on the other 
hand, hedonic well-being and goal progress 
were uncorrelated (for parallel results look -
ing at “universal” relatedness and compe -
tence goals, see Hofer & Busch, 2011b; for FIGURE 18.2. Schematic overview of implicit motive effects on affect, learning, attention, and behav -
ioral energization.
WANTING LIKING
Incentive Motive CuePavlovian conditioning  
AffectBehaviorAttention
EnergizationContext
Episodic learning  