Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jun 21:15:698777.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.698777. eCollection 2021.

Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment

Liang Meng  1 , Guanxiong Pei  2 , Yupei Zhang  1 , Jia Jin  1
Affiliations

Desire for Success Awakens: Proof of Competence Restoration in a Non-competitive Environment

Liang Meng et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

Pioneering studies reported that individuals who worked on a highly difficult task and experienced competence frustration beforehand would activate a restorative process and show enhanced autonomous motivation in a subsequent irrelevant activity. In this follow-up study, we explored the effect of prior competition outcome on one's autonomous motivation in a subsequent non-competitive environment. According to our experimental manipulation, participants were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (a winning group and a losing group) and a control group. The experiment lasted for three sessions. Participants in the control group completed a single-player stop-watch (SW) task all along, while those in both treatment groups worked on a competitive SW task and competed for monetary rewards during Session 2 only. Electrophysiological data in Session 1 serve as the baseline and measure one's trait-level autonomous motivation towards the SW game. For participants in the losing group, more pronounced difference wave of feedback-related negativity was observed in Session 3 compared with Session 1, suggesting enhanced autonomous motivation in Session 3. Such a pattern was observed in neither the winning group nor the control group. These results suggested that failure in a prior competition would activate one's competence restoration in a subsequent non-competitive environment. Task difficulty and social competition are varied sources of competence frustration. Thus, our findings advanced understanding of the competence restorative process and helped clarify the dynamics between competition and human motivation.

Keywords: competence frustration; competence restoration; competition; event-related potentials; feedback-related negativity; motivation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Demonstration of the experimental paradigm. (A) Procedures of single-player and competitive stopwatch (SW) tasks. (B) The experimental design and procedure.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
d-FRN results upon feedback. Grand-averaged d-FRN waveforms from electrodes F1, Fz, F2, FC1, FCz, and FC2 are shown for group (control group, success group and failure group) and experimental session (session 1 and session 3) conditions.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Demonstration of the interaction effect between experimental group and experimental session on the mean d-FRN magnitude.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Albrecht K., Abeler J., Weber B., Falk A. (2014). The brain correlates of the effects of monetary and verbal rewards on intrinsic motivation. Front. Neurosci. 8:303. 10.3389/fnins.2014.00303 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bartholomew K. J., Ntoumanis N., Cuevas R., Lonsdale C. (2014). Job pressure and ill-health in physical education teachers: the mediating role of psychological need thwarting. Teach. Teach. Educ. 37 101–107. 10.1016/j.tate.2013.10.006 - DOI
    1. Bartholomew K. J., Ntoumanis N., Ryan R. M., Thøgersen-ntoumani C. (2011). Psychological need thwarting in the sport context: assessing the darker side of athletic experience. J. Sport Exerc. Psychol. 33 75–102. 10.1123/jsep.33.1.75 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Brehm J. W., Self E. A. (1989). The intensity of motivation. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 40 109–131. - PubMed
    1. Chen B., Vansteenkiste M., Beyers W., Boone L., Deci E. L., Van der Kaap-Deeder J., et al. (2015). Basic psychological need satisfaction, need frustration, and need strength across four cultures. Motiv. Emot. 39 216–236. 10.1007/s11031-014-9450-1 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources