Assessing Implicit Motives using the Multi-Motive Grid

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - 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-techniquein 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 measuredall three implicit motives separately which made it necessary to use three different tests inorder to assess all implicit motives. The MMG is an advancement of these single instrumentsand 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 tickstatements which are listed underneath each picture. Subjects have to decide whetherstatements fit to the depicted picture or not. The decision whether a motive-relevant statementfits to the picture or not, should be influenced by the implicit motives of the subject. Thuscomparable to the TAT, it is expected that the pictures activate the implicit motive and onecan 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 canbe interpreted in an achievement-thematic, power-thematic and affliation-thematic way. Ineach 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. Thestatements are considered to assess all three big implicit motives with both the Fearcomponentand the Hope-Component. Although the pictures can be interpreted in differentways, some pictures stimulate one motive more than the other. There are two pictures for eachcomponent which stimulate all three motives (polythematic), two pictures for each componentwhich stimulate only two of the three motives (bithematic) and two pictures for eachcomponent which assess only one motive (monothematic). The MMG thus consists 14pictures. The motive content of the pictures were ascertained by informing subjects aboutimplicit 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).