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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on October 8, 2008
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsn030
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Exploring the motivational brain: effects of implicit power motivation on brain activation in response to facial expressions of emotion

Oliver C. Schultheiss1, Michelle M. Wirth2, Christian E. Waugh3, Steven J. Stanton1, Elizabeth A. Meier1 and Patricia Reuter-Lorenz1

1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 2Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin and 3Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

This study tested the hypothesis that implicit power motivation (nPower), in interaction with power incentives, influences activation of brain systems mediating motivation. Twelve individuals low (lowest quartile) and 12 individuals high (highest quartile) in nPower, as assessed per content coding of picture stories, were selected from a larger initial participant pool and participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study during which they viewed high-dominance (angry faces), low-dominance (surprised faces) and control stimuli (neutral faces, gray squares) under oddball-task conditions. Consistent with hypotheses, high-power participants showed stronger activation in response to emotional faces in brain structures involved in emotion and motivation (insula, dorsal striatum, orbitofrontal cortex) than low-power participants.

Keywords: implicit motives; facial expressions of emotion; motivation; power; dominance; personality; brain; fMRI

Correspondence should be addressed to Oliver C. Schultheiss, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander University, Kochstrasse 4, D-91054 Erlangen, Germany. E-mail: Oliver.Schultheiss{at}psy.phil.uni-erlangen.de

Received May 20, 2008. Accepted August 1, 2008.


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