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You’re too much for me: Contagion of motivation depends on perceiver-model distance

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Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the conditions under which motivational contagion occurs. Based on assimilation/contrast models in priming research, we hypothesized that motivational contagion should only occur in case of moderate distance between perceiver and model’s motivation. A first lab-study supported this hypothesis by showing that the effect of the exposure to a model presented as highly intrinsically motivated (compared to a model presented as moderately intrinsically motivated or to a not-presented model) depended on participants’ initial intrinsic motivation. While it led intrinsically motivated participants to invest more effort to learn a new activity, those who were weakly intrinsically motivated exerted less effort. A second study in a real educational context confirmed our hypothesis by showing that weakly intrinsically motivated students invested more effort during a physical education term when yoked with a peer with a moderate intrinsic motivation than when yoked a highly intrinsically motivated peer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire LAMHESS (EA 6309), Faculté des Sciences du Sport, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, 261 route de Grenoble, 06205, Nice Cedex 3, France

    Rémi Radel, Marion Fournier, Virginie de Bressy & Fabienne d’Arripe-Longueville

  2. University of Toulon-Var, Toulon, France

    Rémi Radel, Marion Fournier, Virginie de Bressy & Fabienne d’Arripe-Longueville

Authors
  1. Rémi Radel
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  2. Marion Fournier
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  3. Virginie de Bressy
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  4. Fabienne d’Arripe-Longueville
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Correspondence to Rémi Radel.

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Radel, R., Fournier, M., de Bressy, V. et al. You’re too much for me: Contagion of motivation depends on perceiver-model distance. Motiv Emot 39, 374–383 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9451-0

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