Borders | Explicit and implicit basic human motives and motivation for public service (2024)

Introduction

Research on Public Service Motivation (PSM) has grown exponentially in recent decades (Ritz et al., 2016;Christensen et al., 2017). PSM involves beliefs, values ​​and attitudes that go beyond self-interest and organizational interests, and reflects a person's willingness to help society and its citizens (Perry en Wise, 1990;Kim og Vandenabeele, 2010). Not surprisingly, given this definition, it is argued that PSM is a driving force to become a civil servant and then flourish as a civil servant.Vandenabeele, 2008;Christensen et al., 2017), but the concept certainly extends beyond civil servants. Students, business employees, entrepreneurs and citizens can also feel motivated to serve the public interest (Christensen et al., 2017).

High PSM can be beneficial for both individuals and their societies (Harari et al., 2017). For example, a higher PSM is associated with higher job satisfaction (Vandenabeele, 2007;Giauque et al., 2012;Kim, 2012), greater commitment to the organization (Levitations in Vigoda-Gadot, 2017), prosocial behavior (Esteve et al., 2016), organizational citizenship behavior (Bottomley et al., 2016;Esteve et al., 2016), and innovative behavior (Miao et al., 2018). Therefore, it is important to gain a better understanding of the formation of PSM. Previous work has identified many antecedents of PSM (for a review, seePerry et al., 2008), with most studies focusing on socio-demographic or occupational variables (Perry et al., 2008;Ritz et al., 2016). The public management literature certainly recognizes the importance of deeper, more fundamental individual differences, but research on the underlying psychological antecedents of PSM is very scarce.Charbonneau and Van Ryzin, 2017;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017). Recently,van Witteloostuijn et al. (2017)examined the relationship between personality traits and PSM and reported that an individual's personality profile is strongly associated with PSM. This article takes the next step by connecting human motive theory with PSM.

The human personality consists of many more constructs than just personality traits (Buss en Cantor, 1989). In addition to traits, personality research has paid a lot of attention to human motives (Buss en Cantor, 1989;Emmons, 1989). Psychology's theory of human motives identifies three basic human motives that are believed to stimulate and drive behavior: relatedness, power, and achievement needs.McClelland et al., 1989;Schultheiss and Brunstein, 2010). Human motives theory is promising in a PSM context for two main reasons. First, PSM is defined as a context-specific expression of prosocial behavior, based on the desire or basic need to help others through public institutions.Perry en Wise, 1990;Kim og Vandenabeele, 2010). Interestingly, existing psychological work reports strong links between basic human motives and prosocial behavior.Hofer and Chasiotis, 2003;Hofer et al., 2007;Aydinli et al., 2014,2016;Hermans et al., 2017).

Second, a long history of research on basic human motives shows that people have conscious or explicit motives, but also unconscious or implicit motives. Explicit motives involve controlled or conscious information processing and propositional reasoning, while implicit motives involve automatic or unconscious information processing.McClelland et al., 1989). Current research linking psychological constructs to PSM has relied solely on explicit personality (van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017), despite the fact that both explicit and implicit aspects of personality function independently of each other, and each influences different types of behavior (Perugini et al., 2010). Therefore, the independent role of implicit motives is also taken into account here.

Based on McClelland's theory of human motives, our study aims to assess whether basic human explicit and implicit motives are related to PSM, and how explicit and implicit motives differ in their relationship to PSM. Because PSM is often considered a multi-faceted construct (Perry, 1996;Kim, 2011), with compassion, self-sacrifice, attraction to policymaking, and commitment to the public interest as subdimensions, we also explore how explicit and implicit motives relate to each of these facets of PSM.

Therefore, our study contributes to the PSM literature in at least three ways. First, by introducing basic human motives as another component of one's personality, the theoretical foundation of the PSM construct is strengthened, answering the call to apply psychological theories to advance our understanding of important social phenomena .van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017). Second, the study presents an entirely new class of antecedents: implicit human motives. In fact, the results show that PSM is influenced by both an individual's explicit and implicit motives, but in a different way. Third, because implicit concepts require different measurement techniques, this means that we are introducing a new class of assessment techniques to the PSM community and PA as a whole.

theory

Explicit and implicit motives

The individual's sociohistorical background (such as education and income) and the motivational context (e.g. institutional characteristics and cultural differences) are the two sources traditionally thought to influence PSM (Perry, 2000).van Witteloostuijn et al. (2017)were the first to evaluate the psychological antecedents of PSM. Relies on the HEXACO personality model (Ashton en Lee, 2001), they showed that PSM is strongly influenced by core personality traits. On the one hand, the more affective facets of PSM, compassion and self-sacrifice, are positively associated with the personality traits of Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Kindness, and negatively with Conscientiousness. On the other hand, the non-affective facets of PSM, attraction to policymaking and commitment to the public interest, are positively correlated with openness to experience. Their models explain 5-15% of the variance in affective, non-affective and overall PSM. Although these percentages are completely in line with other studies linking personality and motivation (Furnham et al., 2009), this implies that most of the variance in PSM between individuals remains to be explained.

To this end, we will examine McClelland's basic human motives (McClelland et al., 1989). In fact, human personality consists of many more constructs than just personality traits. Basic human motives, traits, values, desires, attitudes, goals, and beliefs represent only a sample of the conceptual units that have been used in the pursuit of understanding human personality (Buss en Cantor, 1989). Of these, basic human motives and traits have clearly received the bulk of attention (Buss en Cantor, 1989;Emmons, 1989). Compared to personality traits, the human motive perspective represents a clear framework for describing individual differences in personality (Winter et al., 1998;McAdams and Olson, 2010). Characteristics refer primarily to common patterns ofHowman thinks, feels and acts, while the human motivation perspective focusesWhypeople do it. Human motives are defined as a person's ability to experience a certain type of stimuli, stimulus, or activity as pleasurable (Schultheiss and Brunstein, 2010), and refers to stable differences in classes of goals and desires from which people derive pleasure and satisfaction (McClelland et al., 1989). Instead, human motives refer to individual goals, as opposed to traits, which instead involve habitual patterns of behavior and ignore why individuals engage in these behaviors.Winter et al., 1998;Lang et al., 2012).

For example,Winter et al. (1998)suggests that extroverts may attend parties (i.e., the link between personality and behavior) to fulfill affiliative motives (i.e., the link between human motive and purpose), while introverts may do so (i.e., the link between personality and behavior) to pursuing goals of others, such as networking for a job (i.e., connection between the motive and the person's goals). This and other research (e.g.Chen et al., 2015;Hofer et al., 2015) states that human motives and personality traits are related to different levels or aspects of a person that can collectively shape that person's thoughts and feelings, and interactively predict that person's behavior over many years. In addition to personality characteristics, human motives can also contribute to understanding the individual roots of PSM.

McClelland's model of human motives identifies three main motives: the need for achievement, relatedness, and power. The power motive stems from one's desire to influence, teach, or encourage others. Individuals with a high need for power derive satisfaction from exerting social, physical, or emotional influence on others or on the world at large, but they experience social defeat and influences from others as aversive.Winter, 1973). People with a high need for achievement typically derive satisfaction from independently mastering challenging tasks, but find the inability to master such tasks individually as unsatisfying.McClelland et al., 1976). Finally, people who are motivated by connection prefer to spend time with others they like. They love to create, maintain and restore social relationships. They enjoy being part of a group and want to feel loved and accepted. Signals of rejection or hostility are experienced as unpleasant (Heyns et al., 1958).

The theory of human motives distinguishes between two types of motivational systems: an implicit system that operates outside conscious awareness and control, and an explicit system that operates at a conscious level.McClelland et al., 1989). Implicit motives differ fundamentally from explicit motives in that the former are acquired in early childhood on the basis of nonverbal, affective experiences, while the latter are cognitively more developed constructs that are acquired after language development, influenced by explicit instructions arising from in the social and cultural environment (McClelland and Pilon, 1983;Kasser et al., 2002). Using Berlew's push-pull metaphor:The Road (2004)InHermans et al. (2017)suggests that implicit motives “push” individuals toward actions they like (“want” behavior), while explicit motives “pull” them toward actions they feel obligated to do (“have to” behavior). Explicit and implicit motives are also caused by different types of stimuli, and they influence behavior only in the presence of the 'right' type of stimulus (McClelland et al., 1989;Stanton et al., 2010). Essentially, implicit motives are induced by task-intrinsic stimuli, while explicit motives are induced by social-external stimuli. A task-intrinsic incentive refers to all aspects of a task or behavior that are inherently rewarding to a person, while social-extrinsic incentives refer to social rewards and explicit instructions.Stanton et al., 2010).McClelland et al. (1989)also argued that social-extrinsic stimuli do not evoke implicit motives and that task-intrinsic stimuli do not evoke explicit motives.

Implicit and explicit human motives also differ in their behavioral impact. Implicit motives are associated with spontaneous, uncontrolled behavior and effort-related task performance, while explicit human motives predict behavior that is subject to conscious thought and deliberation, such as self-reflective judgments, judgments, and conscious choices.Perugini et al., 2010;Schultheiss and Brunstein, 2010). Given the conscious representation of the explicit system, explicit human motives can be easily assessed through self-report using questionnaires. In contrast, because implicit human motives operate outside a person's awareness, and because people often lack direct introspective insight into their implicit system, sensitive implicit measures are needed to measure these hidden individual differences.Schultheiss and Pang, 2007;Pang, 2010;Slabbinck et al., 2011).

Research into dispositional antecedents of PSM has so far been based exclusively on explicit traits and motives, neglecting the influence of unconscious, implicit variables. Research into the origins of PSM can therefore be extended to the study of implicit antecedents. In this study, we will assess both implicit and explicit human motives using implicit tests and explicit self-reports, respectively. The exclusive reliance on self-report limits our understanding of the source of PSM to information that an individual has conscious access to and is willing to report. Implicit measures may go beyond these limitations (Greenwald et al., 1998;De Houwer et al., 2009;Gawronski and De Houwer, 2014).

Public service motivation

Public Service Motivation (PSM) refers to the motives that individuals have for engaging in behavior that they believe will have a positive impact on the public interest.Perry en Wise, 1990;Kim og Vandenabeele, 2010). PSM is often associated with four dimensions (Perry, 1996;Kim, 2011): Attraction to policymaking (APM), commitment to the common good (CPI), compassion (COM) and self-sacrifice (SS). APM describes the extent to which people are committed to public service, community building and activities to further develop the public interest. The CPI focuses on the intrinsic importance of the individual in the pursuit of common public values ​​such as justice, care for future generations and responsibility. COM refers to the intensity with which people identify with the wants and needs of others. Finally, SS refers to the extent to which people are willing to help and support others and society as a whole, even at the expense of their personal benefits and reward ethics.Kim et al., 2013).

These four dimensions of PSM are based on affective or non-affective motives.Perry en Wise, 1990;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017).Perry and Wise (1990)distinguish between rational, normative and affective motives. The ability to influence public policy as a source of personal gain or to view public policy as a means to increase self-esteem are rational motives that can serve as an incentive to participate in public services.Ritz, 2011). These rational, selfish motives are reflected in the dimension ofAPM(Perry, 1996). Typical APM-motivated people seek status, power, and wealth for their own security and convenience (Ritz, 2011). APM is the core dimension of PSM for many behavioral outcomes of politicians and is related to a power-based Machiavellian understanding of politics.Ritz, 2011,2015). APM has many similarities with the need for power.

The need for power arises from a person's desire to influence, teach, or encourage others primarily to demonstrate his own superior abilities to others.Winter, 2010a). Power-motivated employees have good leadership skills (House and Howell, 1992), excels in (organizational) politics (Winter, 2010b;Blickle et al., 2018), and thrive in hierarchically structured organizations where they strive for high-level positions so that they can determine the direction in which their company or organization moves (McClelland and Boyatzis, 1982).Gamble at Beyerlein (1991)showed that the need for power is positively associated with political activity, andWinter (2005,2010a)showed that the power motivation scores of American presidents were significantly related to historians' assessment of the president's greatness and making "big" decisions. CorrespondingHuis et al. (1991)found that measures of presidential charisma were positively related to the president's need for power. Connecting these insights, we expect that the individual's willingness to participate in political decision-making processes is related to his need for power. Because typical APM behavior is most likely both intrinsic (e.g., having a good discussion about politics is intrinsically rewarding) and extrinsically rewarding (e.g., appreciating other people) for power-motivated people, we expect APM to be related to both . implicit and explicit need for power.

H1a: APM is positively related to the explicit need for power.

H1b: APM is positively related to the implicit need for power.

BothCOMInSSare affectively grounded and arise from a motivation to help others and society (Perry, 1996;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017). Both power and attachment motives are often associated with prosocial and helping behavior.Hofer et al., 2007). However, the underlying driving forces between the two motives differ significantly. That is, power-motivated individuals do not help others and do not act prosaically, either because of an innate desire to help others or because it feels good. They prefer to help others demonstrate their own supremacy and competence. They help others to show that they are better at something, to demonstrate their superiority and then to be admired (Aydinli et al., 2014,2016). For power-motivated people, however, neither self-sacrifice nor compassion is likely to be the underlying motivation for their helping behavior. On the contrary, compassion and self-sacrifice can even thwart the motive of power because they can be interpreted as signals of weakness and submission.Schultheiss et al., 2005).

Thus, we expect that a high effect can be translated into low affectively grounded PSM motives COM and SS. Furthermore, because typical COM and SS behaviors are likely to have both task-intrinsic (e.g., helping) and extrinsic incentives (e.g., being accused of weakness) for power-motivated people, we expect similar conditions for explicit and implicit need for power.

H2a: COM is negatively related to the explicit need for power.

H2b: COM is negatively related to the implicit need for power.

H2c: SS is negatively related to explicit need for power.

H2d: SS is negatively related to the implicit need for power.

Unlike power, the need for relatedness is strongly associated with the desire to help others and to create and maintain social bonds with others.Sokolowski and Heckhausen, 2008). Connection motivated people help and listen to others because this creates a social bond between them. Therefore, we expect that both COM and SS will be positively associated with the need for attachment. Nevertheless, we expect differences in their relationship to implicit and explicit attachment. SS-motivated people are likely to engage in activities that are noton it's ownbeneficial for yourself. SS-motivated behavior is not reward-seeking behavior (Perry, 1996). SS encourages 'have to' rather than 'want' behavior. SS-motivated behavior is indeed caused by feelings of civic duty (Brouwer et al., 2000;Roh et al., 2016). For example,Brouwer and Selden (1998)revealed that whistleblowers in the public sector are more motivated to perform their duties and place more emphasis on self-sacrifice.

As discussed earlier, the presence of socially extrinsic incentives, such as a call to civic duties, is a necessary condition to activate explicit motives and influence behavior and perceptions.Stanton et al., 2010). Therefore, we expect a positive correlation between explicit attachment and SS. Although the result of self-sacrifice may be beneficial or satisfying to the self, the sacrifice itself is not enjoyable. With regard to motives, the absence of task-intrinsic stimuli means that a necessary condition is not met for implicit motives to become aroused and influence behavior and perceptions.Stanton et al., 2010). Thus, we do not expect implicit association to be related to SS.

H3a: SS is positively related to the explicit need for relatedness.

COM, on the other hand, reflects true altruistic motivations, characterized by high empathy (Perry, 1996). For example,Hsieh et al. (2012)found that COM-motivated individuals are more likely to engage in emotional efforts that help them put themselves in their clients' shoes and embrace the clients' interests. This so-called “deep action” is rewarding in itself and is fostered by a genuine inner drive to help others (Kanov et al., 2004;Hsieh et al., 2012), which reflects both a desire and a need for behavior. For this reason, we expect that COM is channeled by both implicit and explicit motives.

H3b: COM is positively related to the explicit need for affiliation.

H3c: COM is positively related to the implicit need for affiliation.

Finally,CPIreflects a person's sense of obligation to the society in which he/she lives. For CPI-motivated people, serving the public feels like a duty he/she has to fulfill towards the government and society (Perry, 1996). CPI refers to actions generated to conform to social norms and align with values ​​such as nationalism and loyalty to country (Perry en Wise, 1990). Furthermore, the CPI reflects collectivist values ​​and community norms that favor the community over the individual. Therefore, we expect CPI to be related to the need for connection.

The development of commitment in general and commitment to the common good requires a long socialization process. An initial idea of ​​what involvement is can be acquired early in life through socialization through parents and close family.Grusec, 1992). Yet educational programs and peer and normative pressures are greatly reshaping and transforming the idea and importance of engagement later in life.Malerstein and Ahern, 1979;Alexander et al., 1990). Because commitment reflects the process of developing explicit motives (McClelland and Pilon, 1983;Kasser et al., 2002), we expect a positive association with the explicit, but not with the implicit motives. Also, the strong sense of obligation to serve the group and the strong normative “need to” nature of CPI represent social-extrinsic incentives, reinforcing our expectation that CPI is related to the explicit rather than the implicit need for belonging.

H4: CPI is positively related to the explicit need for affiliation.

materials and methods

We use two samples of students at a Belgian and a Dutch university. After excluding unmatched studies and studies with missing data, 165 valid observations were collected: 99 are third-year students of a bachelor's degree in Business and Economics in the Netherlands, and 66 are first-year master's students in Business and Economics in the Netherlands. -speaking part of Belgium. Bachelor's students are regularly used in public administration, because they are suitable for testing the relationship between core personality traits and PSM (see e.g.Perry, 1996;Christensen and Wright, 2011;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017;Dance in Rico, 2018). Although parental socialization in general and parental occupation in particular influence a person's PSM level (Anderführung-Biget, 2012), students have limited work experience, making their PSM less influenced by context due to work socialization and other sources of work-related variance (van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017).

After reading and signing an informed consent, we administered a questionnaire with explicit motives and tests of implicit motives. Students then took a break for approximately 15 minutes, after which they completed the PSM survey (including demographic items). When independent and dependent variables are administered using self-report questionnaires, common method variance (CMV) can influence regression analyzes (Chang et al., 2010). To minimize possible effects of CMV, we separated both measures with a short break (Podsakov et al., 2012). The implicit motives test was also placed between the explicit motives and the PSM questionnaires, assessed using an indirect, computerized response latency task. This may also have reduced the chance of CMV.

We measuredexplicit motiveswith the performance, attachment, and power subscales of the Personality Research Form (PRF:Jackson, 1984), a self-report inventory of basic motives. Participants were asked to what extent each statement fits who they are. Examples of the subscales are: "The ability to be a leader is very important to me" (power subscale); “I really enjoy social occasions” (affiliation subscale); and “I often set goals that are very difficult to achieve” (achievement subscale). Each subscale consists of sixteen seven-point Likert items with the anchor points 1 = 'Does not fit at all' and 7 = 'Fits very well'. For each subscale, we calculated the individual measures as the mean score for the items, with high scores indicating a good match between the subject and the participant. Each subscale showed satisfactory to good internal consistency (Cronbach's α) (PRF performance: α = 0.79; PRF affiliation: α = 0.87; PRF strength: α = 0.88).

Implicit motivesmust be met by indirect measures. Until recently, only projective methods such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the Picture-Story Exercise (PSE) were available to assess implicit motives. A typical PSE or TAT consists of four to six images of people in different social contexts. Participants write an imaginative story with each photo. The assumption is that the content of the stories reflects people's implicit motives (McClelland et al., 1989;Schultheiss and Brunstein, 2001). The content of these imaginative stories must be coded according to motivational coding schemes, empirically derived and refined over decades (see for example:Smit, 1992;Winter, 1994). Test validity work confirms the good psychometric properties of these measures (Pang, 2010). However, these measures are very difficult and extremely time-consuming for both participants and scientists.

The most interesting alternative to the PSE and TAT is the Implicit Association Test (IAT:Greenwald et al., 1998). The IAT is by far the most popular implicit measure (De Houwer and De Bruycker, 2007;Bar-Anan in Nosek, 2014). The IAT is a computerized response latency task designed to measure the relative strength of associations between two pairs of opposing concepts (e.g., “pleasant-unpleasant” and “sunshine-rain”). Participants view stimuli representative of one of four concepts one at a time on the computer screen and categorize these stimuli using two answer keys. An IAT consists of several rounds ("blocks"), each with different categorization tasks ("trials") and specific instructions. For example, in the first block, participants may be instructed to 'press the 'e' key for stimuli representative of 'nice' or 'sunny' and to press the 'i' key for stimuli representative of 'unpleasant' or 'rain'. category.” Then, in the second block, the instructions could be changed to “press the 'e' key for stimuli representative of 'unpleasant' or 'sunshine' and press the 'i' key for stimuli that are representative of the category 'pleasant' or 'rain'." If two concepts are strongly associated with each other (for example, 'sunny' and 'pleasant'), categorizing associated stimuli takes less time when the two associated concepts share the same answer key than when that is not the case.

However, conducting an IAT is quite time-consuming and requires a significant investment of time from each participant. That's why we developed oneCardIAT or BIAT. Unlike the IAT, which requires participants to focus simultaneously on the two pairs of contrasting concepts, the BIAT presents only two of the four concepts at a time (e.g., "sunshine" and "pleasant" as the focus concepts) and has simplified the instructions. The instructions instruct participants to press the same response key each time an example of one of the two central concepts is presented, and to press a different key “for something else.” These simplifications lead to a significant reduction in the duration of the task. Despite these changes, the BIAT retains the favorable psychometric properties of the original IAT (Sriram and Greenwald, 2009;Bar-Anan in Nosek, 2014;Nosek et al., 2014). Recently, and important to our research,Hermans et al. (2017)InSlabbinck et al. (2018)optimized BIAT for the assessment of implicit motives.

We assessed implicit motives by applying the BIAT procedureSlabbinck et al. (2018). We constructed a BIAT for each implicit motive. Each BIAT consists of five blocks. The first block (twelve trials) is a practice block that familiarized participants with the task instructions, and the remaining four (twenty trials each) are the critical blocks that we used to calculate participants' implicit motives. In each trial, participants simultaneously focused on two labels displayed one below the other at the top center of the computer screen. One label represented the central concept [i.e. 'Power' (Power BIAT), 'Successful' (Achievement BIAT) or 'Together' (Affiliation BIAT)], and the other labels the focal attribute (i.e. 'Fun'). Participants viewed stimuli that were or were not representative of the focus concept and trait one at a time in the center of the computer screen, pressing the “i” key as quickly as possible when the stimuli represented one of the focus categories and “e” . ” test when the stimuli were not representative of the focal categories. We derived BIAT scores – e.g. The BIAT score for “Power” – “Pleasant” versus “No Power” – “Pleasant” – by comparing participants' performance in two blocks that displayed the same central attribute (e.g., “Pleasant”). , but with two different focus concepts ("Power" and "No Power"). For a more detailed explanation, please refer totable 1.

TABLE 1

Table 1.Structure of the BIATs(Panel A)and stimuli used(panel B).

To followNosek et al. (2014)we used data from both the practical and critical blocks to calculate BIAT scores. We recoded extreme latencies below 400 ms and above 10,000 ms to these limits, and we discarded the first four trials of each block. We calculated individual BIAT scores using the so-called D measure (Greenwald et al., 2003). Positive results indicated that participants associated 'Fun' more with 'Power' (Power BIAT), 'Successful' (Achievement BIAT) and 'Together' (Affiliation BIAT) than with 'No power' (Power BIAT), 'Not successful' (Performance BIAT). BIAT) and "Alone" (BIAT affiliation)."

We measurePublic service motivationusing a multidimensional scale consisting of four dimensions: APM, CPI, COM and SS (Perry, 1996). We adoptedvan Witteloostuijn et al. (2017)weight. This scale corresponds to the revised 12-item PSM measure proposed byKim (2011), but some items have been slightly reworded to be appropriate for data collection with undergraduate students: α = 0.78 for the total PSM scale, α = 0.68 for COM, α = 0.62 for SS, α = 0 .66 for APM and α = 0.61 for CPI. Although the internal consistency values ​​are not particularly high for the subdimensions, they are broadly consistent with the reliability estimates for the PSM reported in previous studies (Kim, 2009;Anderführung-Biget, 2012;Slabbinck, 2012;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017;Awan et al., 2020). All items use a seven-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = 'strongly disagree' to 5 = 'strongly agree'.

Following previous work with PSM antecedents, we add two morecontrol variables: age of participant (in years) and gender (coded 1 for women and 0 for men). To control for possible cross-cultural differences, we included the participant's university (coded 1 for Belgium and 0 for the Netherlands).table 2presents the descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations. The correlations between the implicit and explicit motives are low. This is consistent with previous work suggesting that implicit and explicit motives are indeed different constructs, in line with theory (Schultheiss et al., 2009;Köllner and Schultheiss, 2014). Furthermore, the correlations between all independent variables are all low to moderate, with no extreme values.

TABLE 2

Table 2.Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations.

Results

Because our dependent variables are metric measures, we use ordinary least squares regressions with heteroscedastic consistent standard errors (HC3;Hayes in Cai, 2007). To assess multicollinearity, we first checked the variance inflation factors (VIF); the coefficients were all lower than 1.5 (maximum VIF value: 1.30), indicating that multicollinearity may not be a problem (Hayes et al., 2012).table 3shows the results of five regression models. For model 1, we regressed the total PSM score on the implicit and explicit motives and the control variables age, gender and university. The same independent variables were used for the next four models, each taking a different PSM dimension as the dependent variable: APM (model 2), SS (model 3), COM (model 4) and CPI (model 5).

TABLE 3

Table 3.Regression results for total PSM, APM, CPI, COM and SS.

Regarding the control variables, only the participant's university is significant in most models. Compared to Dutch participants, PSM, APM, SS and CPI are all significantly higher for Belgian participants. Model 1 shows a significant positive relationship between explicit attachment and general PSM. Neither other explicit motives nor implicit motives gain in importance. Interestingly, models 2–4 reveal different patterns for different PSM dimensions. The results of Model 2 are inconsistent with Hypotheses 1a and 1b: neither explicit nor implicit power is significantly related to APM. Instead, the implicit need for achievement is positively and significantly associated with APM.

In line with hypotheses 2a and 2b, we find that both implicit and explicit power are negatively and significantly related to COM (see model 3). The results in Model 2 further indicate that explicit but not implicit power is negatively related to SS. Hypothesis 2c is therefore supported, while hypothesis 2d is not.

In contrast to Hypothesis 3a, Model 2 shows that explicit attachment is not associated with SS. However, consistent with Hypothesis 3b, explicit attachment is significantly and positively related to COM. Hypothesis 3c is not supported because the parameter estimates for Model 4 do not show a significant relationship between implicit attachment and COM. Finally, Model 4 provides full support for Hypothesis 4: CPI is significantly and positively associated with explicit association, but not with implicit association. In addition, CPI is negatively and significantly associated with explicit power.

discussion and conclusion

Explicit attachment is the only basic motive significantly related to Overarching PSM. People who explicitly pursue care for others and seek to build, maintain, and restore social bonds also appear more motivated to serve the public interest. Thus, we find support for the idea that PSM is rooted in affiliative, affective motives, but not for the idea that PSM is also rooted in rational or egoistic motives.Perry en Wise, 1990;Perry et al., 2010). However, different patterns emerge for the sub-dimensions of PSM. For APM we find a significant and positive correlation with implicit performance. So it is not the direct reward for exercising power, but the indirect reward through policy outcomes that seems to motivate people to participate in policy making. Apparently, it is not the policy-making process itself, but the decisions and outcomes resulting from that process that implicitly motivate people to participate in policy-making. However, the implementation of decisions resulting from a political decision-making process is usually slow and can go through several stages before action is taken (Lindblom, 1968). Because implicit, as opposed to explicit, motives are more likely to predict long-term behavior (McClelland and Boyatzis, 1982;McClelland and Pilon, 1983), this could explain why we only identify a relationship with an implicit motive.

The PSM affective motives SS and COM are both negatively related to power. As expected, SS relates only to explicit power, while COM is associated with both implicit and explicit power. Thus, internal (COM) and/or external (COM and SS) feelings of power appear to prevent power-motivated people from engaging in affectively motivated PSM. Unlike COM-motivated PSM, SS-motivated PSM is apparently not driven by one's explicit need for affiliation. Furthermore, our evidence shows that CPI is positively associated with explicit attachment and negatively associated with explicit power. Apparently, actions and obligations to serve the common good are not consistent with personal power motives, confirming the selfish nature of power.Dubois et al., 2015).

Overall, our first contribution is to confirm that PSM is fueled by individual “deep” characteristics (van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017). In addition to its rapid growth in popularity, PSM research is increasingly criticized for its conceptualization (Bozeman and Su, 2015). Researchers additively bring together related but slightly different concepts and measures. This dispersion contributes to conceptualization issues, leading to increasing research on PSM as an independent construct.Bozeman and Su, 2015;Schott et al., 2019). There are too few studies examining the fundamental roots of PSM and how they relate to the development of a person's PSM.Bozeman and Su, 2015). Our study partially addresses this ontological problem and shows that different basic human motives influence each PSM dimension differently. The reported relationships between implicit and explicit motives on the one hand and PSM (dimensions) on the other serve as further evidence that PSM has trait-like aspects and is therefore not a pure attitude concept. Our second contribution, and perhaps of much greater importance, is to provide consistent and comprehensive evidence that several basic human motives play a role in the formation of PSM. We did this by introducing a newly developed implicit measure, the BIAT (Slabbinck et al., 2018), in the public administration literature. The BIAT is highly flexible and easily adaptable to measuring many other personality and attitude constructs (Sriram and Greenwald, 2009;Slabbinck et al., 2018), which opens a gateway to a wide range of future research opportunities in the tradition of behavioral public administration.

Our results are also relevant from a practical perspective. This is especially the case because implicit and explicit motives are caused by different types of stimuli: implicit motives are stimulated and influence behavior by task-intrinsic stimuli, while explicit motives are caused by social-extrinsic stimuli.McClelland et al., 1989;Stanton et al., 2010). We found that implicit performance is positively related to APM, while explicit need for affiliation is positively related to CC and CPI, and explicit power is negatively related to all facets of PSM except APM. Therefore, different motives need to be addressed to promote different types of PSM. For example, attracting citizens to participate in policymaking should not only look for people who are motivated by implicit performance needs, but, perhaps more importantly, should also portray policymaking as a task or job that is rewarding. . on it's own. This can be done by framing policymaking as a job or task that offers ample opportunities to learn and exceed one's own standard of excellence, as these are positions that are particularly attractive to implicit performance-motivated people.Brunstein and Heckhausen, 2008). Likewise, if the goal is to encourage self-sacrifice or increase commitment to the public good, one should be more likely to emphasize the socially extrinsic rewards of PSM-related outcomes. For example, the idea that involvement in PSM-related tasks will gain social approval or appeal to one's moral duties may be particularly effective strategies for promoting SS or CPI, because these characteristics are particularly attractive to people high in explicit attachment.Sokolowski and Heckhausen, 2008).

A full discussion of reward preferences and incentives is beyond the scope of this article, but these implications may shed new and refreshing light on the debate over whether intrinsic rewards provided by the nature of the job can be more important than extrinsic rewards.Wright, 2007;Wright en Grant, 2010). Our implications suggest that not only the type of incentive but also the implicit and explicit motive profile of the individual should be taken into account when selecting effective incentives to promote different facets of PSM. This obviously needs to be addressed in future research.

Of course, this study is not without limitations, which points to further future research opportunities. First,van Witteloostuijn et al. (2017)invoked the HEXACO personality model and reported that PSM is generally rooted in honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, and openness to experience, but not in agreeableness. Our evidence only suggests a link between explicit attachment and general PSM. Basic human motives are not identical to personality traits (Winter et al., 1998). Yet, connectedness can be associated with honesty, humility, and emotionality, but if at all, connectedness will most likely also be associated with kindness. From that perspective, one should not expect a connection between explicit attachment and PSM. These different patterns require further research into the fundamental human motives in combination and interaction with personality traits as antecedents of PSM.

In addition to personality theory, PSM research can also benefit from theories from other disciplines. sociology. We leaned heavily on McClelland's theory of human motives (McClelland et al., 1989). Yet human motives, and certainly implicit motives, seem to have much in common with Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus'. Similar to implicit motives, Bourdieu defined habitus as an individual's second nature that regulates the individual's thoughts, perceptions, and behavior in a deeper, pre-reflexive, and unconscious manner.Costa in Murphy, 2015). Also consistent with implicit motives, habitus is formed through social interactions that have already been internalized in the early stages of one's socialization process.Costa in Murphy, 2015). Because different elements of a habitus influence the formation of a person's personality (Pimples, 2005;Kaiser and Schneickert, 2016), it is very likely that the elements of one's habitus, whether or not in interaction with implicit or explicit aspects of one's personality or motives, can also determine the formation of PSM and its various subdimensions. However, to determine whether and how habitus and (implicit) motives influence the formation of PSM (and many other constructs in public administration research), more interdisciplinary research is needed.

The assessment of PSM is not yet perfect, as evidenced by its generally quite low dimensional reliability. In fact, the measurement of PSM is generally (Bozeman and Su, 2015) and the often relatively low internal consistency estimates of especially its subdimensions (Kim, 2009;van Witteloostuijn et al., 2017;Awan et al., 2020) are concerns shared by many PSM researchers. The low internal consistency of the PSM subdimensions not only poses a risk to the interpretation of the results of our and other studies, but also illustrates the need for PSM researchers to move beyond the use of explicit, self-reported survey questions to assess PSM and assess its associated aspects. subdimensions. Researchers are investing heavily in developing better measures of PSM (Perry et al., 2010;Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017). However, to our knowledge, these efforts are limited to developing or improving explicit questionnaire-type PSM measures.

However, in addition to basic motives and personality traits, PSM may also have an implicit or unconscious side that cannot be captured with traditional, direct measuring instruments. The development and validation of an implicit PSM measure is therefore potentially a valuable investment. The research ofResh et al. (2019)only reinforces this belief. That is, in their efforts to better understand when and under what circ*mstances prosocial motivations translate into prosocial work behavior in public and nonprofit organizations, they have assessed prosocial motivations both implicitly and explicitly. Their results show that the relationship between implicit prosocial motivations and prosocial work behavior is more difficult to bias (e.g., by providing financial incentives) than the relationship between explicit prosocial motivations and prosocial work behavior. Similarly, the development of an implicit PSM measure could open up an entirely new avenue of inquiry in PSM research, exploring the relationship between explicit and implicit PSM (and its dimensions) and its potentially differential impact on a wide range of attitudes and actions. investigated.Slabbinck et al., 2018;Marvel en Resh, 2019;Resh et al., 2019).

We used a cross-sectional design to empirically test relationships that are theoretically causal. So we cannot make causal claims based on our empirical evidence. A better way to investigate the causal relationship between implicit motives and outcomes (here PSM) is of course to use a longitudinal design (Antonakis et al., 2010). Such a design would not only provide better insight into the relationship between basic fundamental drives and personality traits on the one hand and PSM on the other, but would also provide insight into the stability or feasibility of (the relationship between) the two. implicit/explicit motives and (the dimensions of) PSM. Note that, given the existing evidence regarding the relative stability of core human motives and personality traits, the claim that causality runs from these constructs to PSM, and not the other way around, is theoretically plausible.

Another problem concerns the measurement of PSM and its relationship with behavior. How does the PSM study measure relate to actual behavior? Here the evidence is mixed. For example,Esteve et al. (2016)report results showing that the research measure of PSM is positively associated with that person's investment in the public good in an experimental laboratory setting, butAwan et al. (2020)find that the research measure of PSM is positively associated with reported, but not actual, blood donation. This suggests that further work is needed to explore the complex web of (lack of) relationships between survey measures of PSM (and its underlying dimensions), personality traits, explicit and implicit motives and perceptual attitudes, and actual behavior.

A final note concerns our sample. Our sample includes only undergraduate and graduate students from only two countries. Future studies could seek to investigate whether the associations we found also hold in samples from other countries and of different types of practitioners. For example, a future research opportunity is to analyze whether the effects of implicit and explicit motives on PSM and its dimensions vary depending on characteristics of national cultures and/or the extent and nature of work experience. This fits well with the argument for more replication in public administration, both of the exact and extended types (Walker et al., 2019).

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors without undue reservation.

Ethical statement

Ethical review and approval were not required for the study involving human participants, in accordance with local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants gave their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contribution

HS and AV contributed equally to the study conception and design, data collection, and statistical analysis. HS wrote the first draft of the manuscript. AV revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the revision of the manuscript, read and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

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.

References