Priming motivation through unattended speech

Rémi Radel (1) , Philippe Sarrazin (2) , Marie Jehu (3) , Luc Pelletier (3)

1 LAMHESS - Laboratoire Motricité Humaine Expertise Sport Santé
2 SENS - Sport et Environnement Social
3 Laboratoire de Recherche sur la Motivation Humaine

This study examines whether motivation can be primed through unattended speech. Study 1 used a dichotic-listening paradigm and repeated strength measures. In comparison to the baseline condition, in which the unattended channel was only composed by neutral words, the presence of words related to high (low) intensity of motivation led participants to exert more (less) strength when squeezing a hand dynamometer. In a second study, a barely audible conversation was played while participants' attention was mobilized on a demanding task. Participants who were exposed to a conversation depicting intrinsic motivation performed better and persevered longer in a subsequent word-fragment completion task than those exposed to the same conversation made unintelligible. These findings suggest that motivation can be primed without attention.

Domaines: Psychologie

Rémi Radel, Philippe Sarrazin, Marie Jehu, Luc Pelletier. Priming motivation through unattended speech. British Journal of Social Psychology, 2013, 52 (4), pp.763-772. ⟨10.1111/bjso.12030⟩. ⟨hal-00947433⟩