What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives

What information about a person’s personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants’ interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-prote...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2023-04, Vol.49 (4), p.495-509
Main Authors: Billet, Matthew I., McCall, Hugh C., Schaller, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Credibility
Humans
Information
Motivation
Personality
Personality traits
Selfprotection
Social Behavior
Social perception
Welfare state
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Summary:What information about a person’s personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants’ interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate seeking, mate retention, kin care) across 12 experimental conditions that presented details about the person or situation. In the absence of details about specific situations, participants most highly prioritized learning about kin care and mate retention motives. There was some variability across conditions, but the kin care motive was consistently highly prioritized. Additional results from Studies 1 to 4 and Study 5 (N = 174) showed the most highly prioritized motives were perceived to be stable across time and to be especially diagnostic of a person’s trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and dependability. Findings are discussed in relation to research on fundamental social motives and pragmatic perspectives on person perception.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/01461672211069468