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Assessing implicit motives with an online version of the picture story exercise

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Abstract

An online version of a Picture Story Exercise (PSE) was administered to 180 participants to assess implicit motives for achievement, affiliation, and power. First, data were analyzed with respect to different aspects of participant behavior (dropout, writing time, story length, setting). Second, online data were compared with data collected in the laboratory (n = 93). Results regarding motive density, internal consistency, picture profiles, and position effects were comparable among samples and consistent with previous research (Pang and Schultheiss in J Person Assess 85:280–294, 2005; Schultheiss and Brunstein in J Person Assess 77: 71–86, 2001). In addition, online participants completed self-report measures assessing explicit motives and the Big Five personality factors. Explicit motives showed no substantial overlap with PSE motive scores, replicating previous research. Personality factors revealed gender differences in correlates: men with a high implicit power motive reported less agreeableness and conscientiousness. Results suggest that administering the PSE online yields reliable and valid data.

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Notes

  1. For a recent list of studies conducted online see the American Psychological Society (APS) experiment list maintained by John Krantz: http://psych.hanover.edu/research/exponnet.html.

  2. Typed stories were found to be by a third longer than handwritten ones, but when corrected for word count the two methods of administration produce comparable motive scores (Blankenship and Zoota 1998; Schultheiss et al. 2008a).

  3. The PSE assessment was part of a questionnaire for a larger research project on long-term relationships.

  4. Six participants did not provide stories to all four picture cues and were therefore not included in the analysis for overall word count.

  5. When we used raw motive scores we found the same effects: both the Picture × Motive interaction, F(2, 215) = 70.28, p < 0.001, n² = 0.25, and the three-way interaction were significant, F(6, 211) = 2.34, p < 0.05. n² = 0.01.

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Acknowlegments

This research was supported in part by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes with a scholarship awarded to the first author. We thank Alena Friedrich, Yousuf Haq, and Rebecca Wheeler, for their help in collecting and coding the data, Carol Dweck and Ulf Reips for their support in conducting this research, and Gregory Walton and David Yeager for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Erfurt, Postfach 900221, 99105, Erfurt, Germany

    Katharina Bernecker

  2. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Katharina Bernecker & Veronika Job

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  1. Katharina Bernecker
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  2. Veronika Job
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Correspondence to Katharina Bernecker.

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Bernecker, K., Job, V. Assessing implicit motives with an online version of the picture story exercise. Motiv Emot 35, 251–266 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9175-8

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