CV

The goal of this research project is a consistent continuation of the DFG project “Dynamics of implicit motives in intimate couple relationships”, which showed the importance of motives for short-term motivation- and regulation processes in couple relationships: Motive dispositions orient, select and energize behavior towards the attainment of specific goals via motivational states. The experienced affect when reaching the desired goal state depends on the currently experienced motivational state (affect amplification by motivation), a process path that might explain the associations between motive dispositions and relationship quality. This functional, dynamic mode of action of motive dispositions, mediated by the current motivation, is the content of the “Dynamics of Motive Satisfaction” (DynaMoS) model, which was correlatively confirmed in the previous project by micro-longitudinal analyses for partner-related communal motives. The research project builds on these findings and addresses the fundamental question of the causality of the process paths of the DynaMoS model by testing the functional mode of action of the postulated mechanisms with the help of smartphone-based experimental microinterventions in the everyday life of couples (“ecological momentary interventions”). It will focus on comprehensively understanding the motivational system within the communal motive domain. In addition to considering the temporal component of the process, the manifestations of relationship-specific behavior and affect will be collected multimodally: Specific self and partner reports in experience sampling will be complemented by unobtrusive mobile sensing and content analysis of text messages. With this project we follow the collective call of a large number of researchers to fulfill the current desiderata of a future-oriented personality research: (a) to investigate the joint interplay of motivational, affective, and cognitive processes, (b) to link the microlevel of dynamic intrapersonal processes with the macrolevel of interindividual differences, and (c) to consider the causality of intrapersonal processes, especially those processes that act as a link between personality traits and social outcomes. Additionally, the causal approach to motivational microdynamics in intimate relationships and the natural assessment in everyday life provides an informed basis for the development of evidence-based interventions in (couple-)therapeutic contexts, suitable for everyday use. In addition to a better understanding of motivational processes in intimate relationships, the project makes an important contribution to the integration of psychological personality, motivation, and relationship research, as well as applied practice.

In several scientific fields, evidence has accumulated that the scientific literature is much less robust and trustworthy than desired, constituting a “replication crisis”. Many reforms have been proposed to increase the trustworthiness of the scientific literature, but reasonable doubts have been raised about their effectiveness, fairness, potential side-effects, and evidentiary backing. In this project, we will formalize recent arguments and reform proposals, and build agent-based models of science (where researchers are the agents) to investigate the logical coherence, efficiency, and side- effects of reforms. The models will be empirically calibrated to three disciplines from the behavioral, social, and cognitive sciences. Three specific research questions investigate the impact of reform proposals on the trustworthiness and bandwidth of scientific output: (a) Open Science as a social dilemma, or: The evolution of transparency, (b) Registered reports and a multi-layered publication system, and (c) Assessing strategies for navigating epistemic landscapes: The role of replication and theory. In a final working package (d), we aim to combine the three submodels into an integrated model. This will be used to analyze potential interactions of reforms, optimal parameter configurations, and emergent patterns arising from the interactions of the agents. We expect that the insights of this research project can inform policy development, such as journal guidelines, hiring policies of academic institutions and other incentive structures, or funder’s resource allocation strategies. Furthermore, it informs how to maximize the informational gain of scientific results, which ultimately translates to the societal utility of research.

The research project aims at an extensive examination of the relevance of implicit motives for (a) long-term developmental trajectories and (b) short-term regulatory processes in intimate couple relationships. Implicit motives are defined as dispositional needs which, despite their non-conscious representation, energize and direct subjective experience and behavior towards specific classes of affectively valued goal states. In the domain of couple relationships, such goal states can be classified as communal (i.e., related to intimacy and closeness with one’s partner) or agentic (i.e., related to independence, mastery, and dominance). Communal and agentic motives are distinct need dimensions which have been shown to be valid predictors of relationship quality in cross-sectional and prospective studies. However, longitudinal studies with repeated motive assessments that allow for analyses of the dynamic transactions between motives and couple relationships are missing. Moreover, the motivational processes and mechanisms that underly the observed associations between motives and relationships are largely unknown. The proposed research project aims to fill these gaps in our knowledge about the role of motives in couple relationships. First, we intend to assess implicit motives in a subsample of the pairfam panel study three times in time intervals of one year. This design allows for (a) the prediction of long-term developmental trajectories in couple relationships and (b) analyses of the dynamic transactions between relationships and implicit motives. Second, we intend to implement an extensive experience sampling study to investigate (a) individual short-term processes of motivation and (b) dyadic patterns of coregulation that mediate the influences of implicit motives on couple relationships.

The concept Quality of Experience (QoE) tries to assess the subjective quality which an observer experiences when consuming multimedia content. In the current proposal, QoE should be extended by a new central component, namely the emotional state an observer experiences when watching a video. The core of our project is to extract emotionally relevant key features if videos using several machine learning approaches, which in turn are used to predict the experienced emotion of the observer. In order to realize this interdisciplinary research question technically, we draw upon and extend psychological models of emotion, which are then computationally implemented by engineers. Supervised machine learning approaches are trained by comparing the predicted with the actual emotional experience of an observer. This learning stage will use a Crowd Sourcing approach which allows to gather a large amount of data for relatively low costs. The large sample allows a broad generalizability of the results, and allows to investigate how personality characteristics of the observers modulate the emotional impact of the videos. The results from the online study will be cross-validated and extended in a controlled laboratory experiment. In this study, objective and indirect indicators of the experienced emotions are assessed (electromyography of facial expressions; changes in skin conductance). The interdisciplinary project is composed of researchers from psychology and computer engineers and works on the following research questions: a) Is it possible to determine a mapping of technical features onto emotionally relevant stimuli? b) Are psychological models able to correctly predict the experienced emotions based on relevant stimuli of the video and personality features of a person? Goals of the project are, on the one hand, to implement existing psychological theories of emotion, validate them using large data sets, and to develop them further based on these results. On the other hand, the technical framework should be employed to classify a large set of videos concerning the emotional impact on observers. Furthermore, the project will generate a standardized data base of videos, for which the emotional impact is very well known. We expect that such a data base will have a huge impact and benefit for future studies in the area of human emotions.

Die Messung impliziter (nicht-bewusster) Motive mithilfe des Thematischen Apperzeptionstests und verwandter Verfahren (“Picture Story Exercises”; PSE) hat eine lange Tradition in der klinischen Praxis und in der psychologischen Grundlagenforschung. Gleichzeitig hat das Interesse an impliziten Motiven in den letzten 15 Jahren, unter anderem auch inspiriert durch die strikte Unterscheidung zwischen impliziten und expliziten Dispositionen, stark zugenommen. Die psychometrische Qualität der PSE-Methodik wurde häufig kritisiert, obwohl ihre Validität vielfach und eindrucksvoll belegt ist. In Reaktion auf diese Methodenkritik wurde wiederholt argumentiert, dass die Klassische Testtheorie keine geeignete Rahmentheorie für PSE- Messungen ist. Allerdings existiert bis heute kein Konsens darüber, wie eine alternative Messtheorie aussehen sollte. Das beantragte wissenschaftliche Netzwerk soll Expert/innen der Motivationspsychologie mit Expert/innen für statistische Methoden und Psychometrie vernetzen, um gemeinsam eine Messtheorie für PSEs zu entwickeln. Dazu sollen bestehende theoretische Ansätze gesammelt, integriert und erweitert sowie mögliche Modifikationen der PSE-Methode diskutiert werden. Neben der Vernetzung der einzelnen Forschungsprogramme bestehen die konkreten Ziele des beantragten Netzwerks zum einen in der Erstellung und Einreichung eines gemeinsamen Überblicksartikels und zum anderen in der Konzeption und Beantragung kooperativer DFG-Projekte zur Untersuchung noch offener und neu aufgeworfener Fragen.