Empirical Validation of the Integrated Action-Driver Theory (IADT): Multiplicative Interaction Effects Across Civic, Health, and Financial Decision Domains
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866901112451235840 |
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| author | Mehrhoff, Patrick |
| author_facet | Mehrhoff, Patrick |
| contents | <p>For more than eighty years, behavioral science has modeled the determinants of human action as additive, with each factor contributing an independent increment to the probability of a given outcome. The Integrated Action-Driver Theory (IADT) challenges this assumption by proposing that four theoretically specified forces, Environmental Forces, Temporal Triggers, Motivational States, and Affective-Cognitive Filters, combine multiplicatively such that each force conditions the effect of every other force on action. No prior empirical program has tested whether such a domain-general multiplicative model outperforms additive alternatives across decision domains. The present paper reports three studies using publicly available secondary data spanning civic participation (American National Election Studies 2024, N = 3,779), health behavior (Hagger et al., 2021, Theory of Planned Behaviour replication, N = 2,538), and financial decision-making (Pongratz and Schoemann, 2026, Intertemporal Choice Database, 98,458 trials from 4,715 subjects across 100 studies). In all three domains, the multiplicative model significantly outperforms the additive baseline. The Motivational States x Affective-Cognitive Filters interaction is the strongest or among the strongest two-way interactions in each study, confirming the IADT's most specific prediction. Pillar alignment effects demonstrate non-additive force combination, as civic turnout rises from 61.7% when zero pillars are active to 97.8% when all four are active. The health behavior finding replicates independently in United Kingdom and German samples. Effect sizes range from very small in structured laboratory tasks (Cohen's d = 0.048) to medium in field surveys (f-squared = 0.068), consistent with IADT predictions about domain complexity constraining interaction magnitude. These results establish that additive specification is a systematic misspecification rather than an acceptable simplification and position the IADT as a testable alternative to prevailing additive models.</p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_19178224 |
| institution | Zenodo |
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| publishDate | 2026 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
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| spellingShingle | Empirical Validation of the Integrated Action-Driver Theory (IADT): Multiplicative Interaction Effects Across Civic, Health, and Financial Decision Domains Mehrhoff, Patrick <p>For more than eighty years, behavioral science has modeled the determinants of human action as additive, with each factor contributing an independent increment to the probability of a given outcome. The Integrated Action-Driver Theory (IADT) challenges this assumption by proposing that four theoretically specified forces, Environmental Forces, Temporal Triggers, Motivational States, and Affective-Cognitive Filters, combine multiplicatively such that each force conditions the effect of every other force on action. No prior empirical program has tested whether such a domain-general multiplicative model outperforms additive alternatives across decision domains. The present paper reports three studies using publicly available secondary data spanning civic participation (American National Election Studies 2024, N = 3,779), health behavior (Hagger et al., 2021, Theory of Planned Behaviour replication, N = 2,538), and financial decision-making (Pongratz and Schoemann, 2026, Intertemporal Choice Database, 98,458 trials from 4,715 subjects across 100 studies). In all three domains, the multiplicative model significantly outperforms the additive baseline. The Motivational States x Affective-Cognitive Filters interaction is the strongest or among the strongest two-way interactions in each study, confirming the IADT's most specific prediction. Pillar alignment effects demonstrate non-additive force combination, as civic turnout rises from 61.7% when zero pillars are active to 97.8% when all four are active. The health behavior finding replicates independently in United Kingdom and German samples. Effect sizes range from very small in structured laboratory tasks (Cohen's d = 0.048) to medium in field surveys (f-squared = 0.068), consistent with IADT predictions about domain complexity constraining interaction magnitude. These results establish that additive specification is a systematic misspecification rather than an acceptable simplification and position the IADT as a testable alternative to prevailing additive models.</p> |
| title | Empirical Validation of the Integrated Action-Driver Theory (IADT): Multiplicative Interaction Effects Across Civic, Health, and Financial Decision Domains |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19178224 |