Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory Technical Manual

Describes the development of the MVPI, presents correlations with other tests, reviews interpretive scale descriptions, and outlines administration and scoring processess.

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Conceptual Background

INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITIONS
R. S. Peters (1958) points out that we use motivational terms to explain social behavior and argues that motivational terms are explanatory concepts, par excellent. Peters also distinguishes between two categories of motivational terms—causes and reasons—each of which is used to explain social behavior. Causal explanations refer to processes (biological or physiological drives) inside people that somehow propel them into action. Reasons as explanations refer to people’s intentions, goals, and preferences; reasons are mental or intrapsychic constructs that explain the direction and focus of people’s actions. Although many people regard needs or drives as primary, Peters (1958) notes that the concept of need or drive postulates a mysterious end-state of satisfaction or tension reduction that is never measured or observed. He goes on to argue that, for most everyday purposes, we explain a person’s behavior in terms of what he or she intends by a course of action. Thus, interests, goals, values, and preferences have a unique role to play in the explanation of social action.

Hogan and Blake (1996)1 regard needs, values, and interests as closely related concepts. Distinguishing among them seems to be a matter of semantics and personal choice because the terms have been used interchangeably in much of psychology. Although values are often seen as the most inclusive construct, Dawis (1980) notes that, depending on the author, values are equated with beliefs (Allport, 1961; Rokeach, 1973), attitudes (Campbell, 1963), needs (Maslow, 1954), interests (Allport, 1961; Perry, 1954), and preferences (Katzell, 1964; Rokeach, 1973).

We believe that needs, values, and interests differ primarily in their breadth and level of abstraction. Super (1973) puts needs at the most abstract level of the hierarchy. He sees values and interests as lower-order constructs that are derived from needs. He defines values as objectives sought in order to satisfy needs and he defines interests as the specific activities and objects through which an individual pursues values and satisfies his or her needs. Interests, then, are the least abstract constructs in Super’s hierarchy of motivational terms.

Dawis (1980) suggests that interests, attitudes, needs, values, and preferences belong to a set of constructs that represent “an affective orientation toward stimulus objects” (p.77). Like Super, he suggests the constructs are arranged in a hierarchy: “Attitudes appear to be the most general construct and refer to a favorable-unfavorable (accept-reject) orientation toward attitude objects. Needs and values refer to the importance-unimportance to the subject of the stimulus object. By contrast, preferences and interests refer to the dimension of liking-disliking for the stimulus object” (p. 77). Although there are some differences between Dawis’ and Super’s hierarchies, they both
regard interests as the most specific construct in a hierarchy of motivational terms.

The higher-order constructs must be translated into specific exemplars in order to be assessed. Thus, to measure the need for achievement, one must identify the values, preferences, and interests that characterize that need—e.g., valuing success and accomplishment, preferring recognition over anonymity, and being interested in competitive activities. Assessing constructs at the lowest
level of the hierarchy does not require inferences about their relationships to higher-order constructs. For example, interpreting the item “I like tennis” requires no assumptions about the motives or goals that explain a person’s attraction to the sport; that preference could be based on any of a number of underlying motives. Klinger’s (1977) distinction between “needs” and “current concerns” seems relevant. According to Klinger:

. . . a need or motive such as “achievement” or “affiliation“ can subsume a wide range of possible concrete goals, any one of which may be the focus of a current concern. Thus, someone with a high “need to achieve“ may have separate current concerns about setting a
new sales record, beating his or her tennis partner, and patenting a new design for a mousetrap. On the other hand, someone interested in setting a new sales record may be doing it for the money, not because of a need to achieve. (p. 350)

Thus, connecting interests with more abstract motivational constructs may be difficult; being interested in an activity can stem from any number of more abstract motives. More importantly, interests can predict behavior without identifying a higher-order construct to explain the prediction. That is, in fact, how vocational interest measurement developed. Moreover, a considerable empirical literature demonstrates the predictive utility of vocational interest measures. Thus far, however, there seems to have been comparatively little progress in connecting interests to constructs in other domains (Dawis, 1980; Holland, 1976). Holland (1976) notes the separation of interest measurement from the rest of psychology with marked dissatisfaction:

The interest literature still remains largely outside the mainstream of psychology and sociology. The sheer empirical success of these inventories may have relieved interest enthusiasts of the need to cultivate other parts of psychology. Subsequently, neither group—
interest types and the other types in psychology—have developed useful dependencies upon one another. Consequently, the interest literature remains a rambling, formless literature integrated only by a few popular inventories and unable to draw on the strengths of
personality and learning theory and vice versa. (p. 523)

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