Unconscious Work Incentives

Traditionally,research on motivation theories has focused on conscious motives.However,not all motives are conscious.People often take action without exactly knowing their motives and value of their behavior(Locke & Latham,2004).Based on research of social psychology,the vast majority of people's behavior and information processing has no specific goals.These are carried out in a state of complete unconsciousness.So, Locke and Latham(2002) pointed out that paying no attention to the impact of unconscious motives is one major shortage of goal-setting theory,as well as other existing motivation theories.Based on the introduction of the definition of unconsciousness,this paper summarizes and concludes the origin,history and the application of unconsciousness in the field of management,especially in motivational areas.Then,this paper designs several experiments to verify and explore the relationship between unconscious goals and task performance,the stage in which unconscious goals affect individuals,and the difference between subliminal priming and supraliminal priming.The experimental results show that positive unconscious goals activated by supraliminal priming can improve task performance(exp 1,2).Positive unconscious goals activated by subliminal priming can improve task performance(exp 2).There is no great difference between subliminal priming and supraliminal priming.In addition,negative unconscious goals activated by supraliminal priming and subliminal can reduce task performance(exp 3,4).There is no significant interaction between unconscious goals and conscious goals(expl,2,3).Finally,the anticipation of the task result will influence individual's self-efficacy,and unconscious goals play moderate role in this process(exp 5).This result shows that unconscious goals can affect person in the stage of anticipating task result.However, unconscious goals can not directly affect individual's self-efficacy(exp 5). At last,this paper points out the significance of unconscious research in the field of management from both theoretical and practical perspective. Then,this paper provides several suggestions for future study.