Priming Rival Targets – Even Without Mention of Competition – Increases Effort David Reinhard and Benjamin A. Converse University of Virginia Conclusion Introduction Rivalries are competitive relationships that emerge from a history of intense and close competition between two similar parties (Kilduff et al., 2010). Reflecting on rivalries increases motivation and affects the style of goal pursuit (Converse & Reinhard, unpublished). Previous work used explicit, in-depth reflection prompts that brought up associated emotions and characteristics of the competition. If rivalry is an elaborated competitive relationship, then merely making the rival target accessible should activate the associated competitive tendencies Because goals are cognitive structures that can become associated with other entities via repeated pairing (Kruglanski et al., 2002), simply activating the mental representation of rivals may be sufficient to increase motivation. Participants completed “Wii Running”, a running activity in the “Wii Fit” video game. Distance run served as the main DV. Conclusions should be made with caution because of the post-hoc nature of the analyses. We found that activating the mental presentations of rivals may increase motivation. This suggests that the mental representations of rivals may be associated with the corresponding competitive relationships and that simple reminders of rivals may automatically bring to mind these relationships and influence motivation. Summary We propose that merely activating the mental representations of rivals (vs. non-rivals) will increase motivation. Expt 1: There was a significant positive relationship between degree of rivalry and increased effort on an exercise activity. Expt 2: After screening based on a manipulation check, participants subliminally primed with a rival target (vs. non- rival) exhibited higher motivation on an effort-based task. These studies suggest that the mental representation of rivals may be associated with their competitive relationship and that simple reminders of rivals may increase motivation. Contact: Study 2 No significant difference in distance run between rival and non-rival conditions, t(34) = -.003, p =.998, but… There was a significant positive relationship between the rivalry score for the primed school and the distance run, r(34) =.353, p =.034. Study 1 Results Study 2 Results Primary Hypothesis - Activating the mental representation of rivals (vs. non-rivals) will increase motivation. Figure 6: Slider performance between conditions. We selected participants post-hoc based on a manipulation check (high rivalry scores for the rival target and low scores for non-rivals). Participants screened for a manipulation check completed marginally more sliders in the rival condition (M = 51.86, SD = 6.97) than the non-rival conditions (M = 47.29, SD = 6.82), t(32) =1.89, p =.068. Figure 5: Screen shot of the slider task. Study 1 Participants (N = 36) exercised in the presence of athletic apparel displaying the logo of either a rival or non-rival university. 4 conditions: Rival (Virginia Tech or UNC) and Non-rival (Florida State or Clemson). Study 2 examined whether rivalry or the desire to beat the targets influenced motivation. We selected 3 targets that differed on rivalry and desire to beat (Figures 3 and 4 for illustrative purposes): If rivalry drives motivation, Virginia Tech should elicit the highest level of motivation while Miami & Clemson should elicit lower, similar levels (motivation should follow the pattern in Figure 3). If desire to beat drives motivation, then motivation should follow the corresponding linear pattern (pattern in Figure 4). We recruited participants that felt a high degree of rivalry toward the rival target and introduced a new measure of motivation (see Figure 5). We subliminally primed Uva students (N = 128) with the name/mascot of one of the three universities. Figure 1. The room used to complete the running activity. Note the UNC t- shirt in the upper left corner serving as the prime. Figure 2: Relationship between rivalry rating and distance run.