Exploring the conditionality of public service motivation: evidence from a priming experiment

Scholars have demonstrated that public service motivation (PSM) may be conditional and activated in certain contexts or by particular primes. However, to date researchers have focused on the impact of positive experiences or beneficial consequences of public serving activities on employee PSM. Altruism research suggests that PSM may also respond, somewhat counterintuitively, to negative experiences. We test this in an experimental study of 456 public employees in which treatment groups were asked to recall negative or positive interactions with citizens, before responding to questions from a widely used scale of PSM. Results suggest that expressed PSM is sensitive to, and in fact increases, in response to both positive and negative experiential primes. We conclude with a discussion of implications of conditionality for our broader understanding of PSM.