Measuring motivational gravity: Likert or scenario scaling?

Abstract

Despite a growing body of findings that individualistic achievers incur punitive social costs in the workplaces of collectivistic and equalitarian cultures, little attention has so far been paid to measuring such motivational gravity in psychometrically appropriate ways. From egalitarian Australia, reports psychometric data from two organizational surveys, evaluating the 20‐item “Tall Poppy Scale” (TPS), a Likert instrument which measures attitudes towards high achievers in society, and the twin‐item “Motivational Gravity Scenario Scale” (MGSS), which focuses instead on behavioural intentions towards high achievers in one’s own workplace. In Study I, involving 80 employees of a retail chain, scores on the TPS were significantly and positively associated with social desirability effects on the Marlowe‐Crowne Scale, whereas the MGSS remained free of such confounding. In Study II, 47 employees of a major service organization rated the MGSS as significantly more satisfactory than did 49 university undergraduates, who preferred the TPS. Workplace scenarios may be more appropriate than the conventional Likert TPS for describing organizational cultures, but recommends the development of multiple‐item instruments for assessing individual differences in motivational gravity.