Testing the convergent and discriminant validity of three implicit motive measures: PSE, OMT, and MMG

Abstract

Implicit motive research has shown that implicit motives are important predictors of behavior and well-being. However, little is known about the interrelationship between the different implicit motives measures frequently applied. We aimed to shed light on the convergent validity of three implicit motive measures and wanted to test their assumed statistical independence from three explicit motive measures. Therefore, we administered the picture story exercise (PSE), the operant motive test (OMT), and the multi-motive grid in one and the same study. As explicit measures, we used the personality research form, the motive enactment test, and a goal questionnaire. We investigated the statistical overlaps between all these measures (sample: 202 undergraduate students) and found that the implicit motive measures showed either no or only little correlation with each other. Furthermore, they also partly correlated with explicit motive measures. Supplementary analyses showed that the lack of statistical overlap between PSE and OMT can partly be ascribed to their different scoring systems.

Enjoying influence on others: Congruently high implicit and explicit power motives are related to teachers’ well-being

“…For example, the convergent validity of the measure was supported by significant correlations of the OMT motive scores with PSE motive scores coded according to Winter (1994;Scheffer. 2001) when arousing the respective motives experimentally (power r = .47, p < .001; achievement r = .47, p < .001; affiliation r = .31, p < .05; note that correlations are lower without motive arousal, Schüler, Brandstätter, Wegner, & Baumann, 2015). Previous work has also demonstrated that implicit motives as measured by the OMT were able to successfully predict behavior (cf.…”

Are the benefits of autonomy satisfaction and the costs of autonomy frustration dependent on individuals' autonomy strength?

“…For several reasons, we chose not to employ such a picture-based task in this study. First, the coding of such story tasks is often rather time-consuming and requires a high level of expertise (Sch€ uler, Brandstäter, & Wegner, 2015). Additionally, these tasks involve very different stimuli (i.e., ambiguous pictures) than explicit measures of need strength (i.e., structured questions), which limits the comparability between implicit and explicit measures (Brunstein & Schmitt, 2004).…”

Meta-analytic evidence for higher implicit affiliation and intimacy motivation scores in women, compared to men

“…Footnotes 1 Contemporary motive measures that did not meet these criteria and whose conceptual and empirical convergence with PSE-type implicit motive measures has been questioned in recent research include the Operant Motive Test and the Multi-Motive Grid (see Schüler, Brandstätter, Wegner, & Baumann, 2015;Schultheiss, Dirlikov, Yankova, & Schad, 2009). …”