Arousing Motives or Eliciting Stories? On the Role of Pictures in a Picture–Story Exercise

Abstract

Picture–story exercises (PSE) form a popular measurement approach that has been widely used for the assessment of implicit motives. However, current theorizing offers two diverging perspectives on the role of pictures in PSEs: either to elicit stories or to arouse motives. In the current study, we tested these perspectives in an experimental design. We administered a PSE either with or without pictures. Results from N = 281 participants revealed that the experimental manipulation had a medium to large effect for the affiliation and power motive domains, but no effect for the achievement motive domain. We conclude that the herein chosen pictures cues function differentially across motives, as they aroused the affiliation and power motives, but not the achievement motive.

Measuring implicit motivations: a qualitative approach

“…At the same time, researchers have questioned the validity of the PSE test. Because researchers must interpret the content of the stories, this leads to PSE being a tool dependent on the researcher’s perspective and the coders’ opinion (Schäpers et al , 2021). In response to these ambiguities, researchers of implicit motivations have standardized and developed PSE implementation methods, published detailed and detailed scoring guides, provided detailed instructions for how to use this test and provided many documents to familiarize researchers with the technique of scoring motivational images (Müller et al , 2021; Pang and Schultheiss, 2005).…”