Our approach largely emphases:
- The theoretical triggers that distally catalyze personality-related behavior. These triggers include latent needs & motives such as the motive to achieve, the motive to aggress, and the motive for power.
- The theoretical mechanisms that serve to channel the implicit triggers into observable behaviors and actions. These mechanisms include implicit cognitive biases that serve to rationalize or justify motive-based behavior. For example, someone with a strong motive to aggress is able to justify harming others (often without provocation or reason) by unconsciously framing the target of aggression as having malevolent or harmful intent (e.g., hostile attribution bias) or as particularly deserving of aggression because of some negative quality such as being unethical, untrustworthy, evil, stupid, etc. (e.g., derogation of target bias). In addition, individuals with a strong motive to aggress often frame acts of aggression as signs of strength the send a message that one is not to be trifled with (e.g., potency bias); and, such individuals reason that acts of aggressive retaliation are more logically appropriate than acts of forgiveness or reconciliation (e.g., retribution bias).
- The objective measurement of the mechanisms requires the indirect assessment of specific cognitive biases via objective problem-solving.
- The accumulation of validity evidence linking our new tests of implicit personality to important behavioral criteria. For example, our measure of the motive to aggress (denoted the CRT-A) has been used to predict a wide array of behaviors including overt physical aggression, verbal aggression, retaliatory theft, workplace deviance. In addition, we have found that teams with higher mean levels of aggression are more likely to witness increased levels of negative socio-emotional behaviors, resulting in decreased performance, commitment, and cohesion.