A sentence completion test assessing safety and esteem motives

Types of Power Motivation, Sense of Security, and Style of Power-Seeking in Groups

Two studies examined the hypothesis that, in men, the revised nPower system of Winter measures a specific type of power orientation, which is associated with a moderate sense of security and a moderately defensive style of power-seeking. It was also hypothesized that nPower measures a less secure and a more defensive type of power orientation than the Dominance scale (Dom) of the California Psychological Inventory. High nPower (nPow) scores were associated with a moderate sense of security, whereas high Dominance scores were associated with a high sense of security, as indicated by self-report and sentence-completion personality tests and by peer ratings. In small groups, nPow predicted the development of the moderately defensive attitude of extreme superiority, whereas Dominance predicted the development of the nondefensive orientations of leadership-seeking and unsolicited helping. nPow was negatively related to unsolicited helping. Dominance but not nPow predicted the achievement of leadership and self-confident behavior. On the basis of these results and findings from other studies, it is argued that nPow, unlike Dominance, does not predict leadership-seeking and attainment in long-term small groups.

Motives, Values and Moral Judgments

This study examined McClelland's (1981) hypothesis that operant and respondent measures of personality are orthogonal and assess different dimensions of personality structure. An operant measure of motives, a sentence completion test, and two respondent measures of cognitive schema variables, the Rokeach Value Survey and the Defining issues Test, were administered to 311 subjects. As predicted and in support of McClelland's hypothesis, 69% of the correlations between the respondent measures were significant at the alpha .05 level of probability versus 14% of the correlations between the operant and respondent measures. Further, within the domain of cognitive schema variables, it was theoretically possible to predict which values would correlate with different levels of moral judgment. The findings were discussed in terms. of their implications for person x situation models of social interaction and the prediction of criterion variables from typologies of personality.

Operationalizing Maslow's theory: development and testing of the basic need satisfaction inventory

Although Maslow's theory is frequently cited in the nursing literature and is commonly used as an underlying framework for clinical practice, it has been subjected to limited empirical scrutiny. This may be due, in part, to a scarcity of survey measures to operationalize the construct of need satisfaction. The Basic Need Satisfaction Inventory (BNSI) was developed for this purpose. The instrument, created from Andrews and Withey's indicators of life concerns and their "delighted-terrible" scale, was first examined through secondary data analysis, pilot tested (N = 21), and then administered to samples of men and women with chronic pulmonary disease (N = 109) and healthy older adults (N = 100). Emerging evidence of internal consistency reliability and construct validity suggests that the BNSI may be a useful instrument to measure need satisfaction and to test the adequacy of Maslow's theory for nursing science and practice.

Sources of self-esteem and the person X situation controversy

This study investigated various sources of self-esteem contributing to a global measure of self-esteem. Self-esteem scores for 79 male and 56 female undergraduates on a sentence completion test were analyzed by content area and sources of self-esteem were found. As predicted, sex differences were found for major sources of self-esteem. Results were discussed in terms of the utility of the self-esteem construct in interactions of persons and situations.