 18. Implicit Motives  401
instrumental conditioning using a decision-  
outcome task. In two studies, participants 
could freely decide to press one of two keys 
while simultaneously performing an unre -
lated task. One key was always associated 
with the presentation of dominant faces (a 
power disincentive) and the other one with 
submissive faces (a power incentive). Across 
trials, n Power predicted key presses favor -
ing submissive faces and avoiding dominant 
faces. Schult  heiss and Schiepe-  Tiska (2013) 
argued that the findings related to n Power- 
dependent instrumental learning point to 
a crucial role of the anterior striatum in 
motive-  driven acquisition of behavior in -
strumental for obtaining incentives and 
avoiding disincentives.
Evidence for a role of implicit motives in 
episodic memory, including autobiographi -
cal memory, is strong and has been sum -
marized by Woike (2008; Bender & Woike, 
2010) as follows: Implicit motives specifi -
cally predict encoding and detailed, vivid 
memories for emotionally arousing events, 
both good and bad, associated with the re -
spective motive. Thus, individuals high in n 
Power have superior recall for situations in 
which they were particularly powerful or 
powerless; individuals high in n Achieve -
ment have excellent recall of situations in 
which they mastered a challenge or failed at 
it; and individuals high in n Affiliation are 
prone to remember experiences of blissful 
social contact or of loss and rejection. On 
the other hand, individuals high in a given 
implicit motive are not better than others at 
encoding and recalling mundane, unspecif -
ic, or everyday experiences. The latter type 
of memory is more frequently the domain 
of explicit motives, especially if the remem -
bered events are relevant for a person’s self- 
concept and the goals derived from it.
In summary, there is substantial evidence 
for a role of implicit motives in functions 
related to the wanting phase of motivation, 
particularly in conjunction with emotionally 
arousing material—  that is, encounters with 
motive-  specific (dis)incentives. These func -
tions do not operate independently of each 
other but instead represent complex compe -
tencies only partially accessible to introspec -
tion that integrate the automatic recognition 
of relevant cues (Pavlovian conditioning) embedded in an emotionally charged situ -
ational context (episodic memory) with 
properly timed and executed goal-  directed 
behaviors (instrumental learning) in the 
service of obtaining a cherished reward or 
avoiding a dreaded punishment (Schult  heiss 
& Köllner, 2014). We believe that such com -
petencies are behind many of the successful 
life outcomes associated with implicit mo -
tives reviewed earlier in this chapter.
Motives Direct Attention toward  Incentive  Cues
According to McClelland (1987), implicit 
motives sensitize a person to cues predicting 
motive-  specific (dis)incentives. Such cues are 
particularly salient stimuli that automati -
cally attract the person’s attention. Early 
evidence for an attention-  directing function 
of implicit motives came from a study docu -
menting an influence of n Affiliation on the 
detection of human faces under conditions 
of impaired visibility (Atkinson & Walker, 
1958). More recent research has yielded 
similar results for n Power: Power-  motivated 
individuals are faster than others to detect 
unfolding facial emotional expressions in 
dynamic displays (Donhauser et al., 2015) 
and are more likely to correctly identify low- 
intensity anger expressions (Wang et al., 
2014). Schult  heiss and Hale (2007) found 
that power-  motivated individuals oriented 
their attention toward surprised faces (low 
dominance) but away from happy or angry 
faces (both high dominance; see Stanton et 
al., 2010), whereas affiliation-  motivated 
individuals oriented their attention toward 
not only happy faces but also hostile, angry 
faces, perhaps reflecting their heightened 
sensitivity to rejection cues. Recent research 
using event-  related potential (ERP) measures 
provided further evidence for the particular 
salience of anger faces to power-  motivated 
individuals (Wang et al., 2014, 2017).
In summary, these studies provide evi -
dence for a role of n Power and n Affiliation 
in bottom-  up, stimulus-  driven attentional 
processing. Despite some clues for an in -
volvement of n Achievement in attentional 
orienting to emotional stimuli (Stanton et 
al., 2010), the broader role of this motive 
in attentional processes remains to be ex -
plored.