Investigating the Unified Motive Scales
Abstract. Explicit motives are well-studied in the field of personality and motivation psychology. However, the statistical overlap of different explicit motive measures is only moderate. As a consequence, the Unified Motive Scales (UMS; Schönbrodt & Gerstenberg, 2012 ) were developed to improve the measurement of explicit motives. The present longitudinal field study examined the predictive validity of the UMS achievement motive subscale. Applicants of a police department ( n = 168, Mage = 25.11, 53 females and 115 males) completed the UMS and their performance in the selection process was assessed. As expected, UMS achievement predicted success in the selection process. The findings provide first evidence for the predictive validity of UMS achievement in an applied setting.