Assessing Implicit Motives using the Multi-Motive Grid

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Leadership and Human Resource Management - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Appalachian State University (Industrial-Organizational Psychology and HRM), course: Personnel Selection and Staffing, language: English, abstract: The Multi-Motive Grid (MMG) is a new instrument to measure implicit motives (Sokolowski, Schmalt, Langens & Puca, 2000). Schmalt (Schmalt, 1976) has developed the Grid-technique in order to combine the advantages of self-reports and projective tests (e.g. the TAT). Schmalt (1999) labeled these instruments 'semi-projective'. Early semi-projective tests have measured all three implicit motives separately which made it necessary to use three different tests in order to assess all implicit motives. The MMG is an advancement of these single instruments and measures all three big implicit motives with their two components at once. In difference to the TAT subjects do not have to write down a story but have to tick statements which are listed underneath each picture. Subjects have to decide whether statements fit to the depicted picture or not. The decision whether a motive-relevant statement fits to the picture or not, should be influenced by the implicit motives of the subject. Thus comparable to the TAT, it is expected that the pictures activate the implicit motive and one can conclude from the interpretation of the pictures on the implicit motives of the subject. Also comparable to the TAT, subjects are confronted with ambigious pictures which often can be interpreted in an achievement-thematic, power-thematic and affliation-thematic way. In each statement, the subject have to decide whether the statement fits to the picture or not, although only the Yes-responses are considered in the calculation of the motive scores. The statements are considered to assess all three big implicit motives with both the Fearcomponent and the Hope-Component. Although the pictures can be interpreted in different ways, some pictures stimulate one motive more than the other. There are two pictures for each component which stimulate all three motives (polythematic), two pictures for each component which stimulate only two of the three motives (bithematic) and two pictures for each component which assess only one motive (monothematic). The MMG thus consists 14 pictures. The motive content of the pictures were ascertained by informing subjects about implicit motives and explicitly asking them (N=41) to rate the pictures on all three motives. Afterwards the mean of ratings for all pictures was calculated (Schmalt et. al, 1994).