Measuring the Motives of Political Actors at a Distancehistorical perspective—is a function of motive "fit" between the
political actor and the public.
Supreme Court JusticesAliotta (1988) studied the motives of fifteen U.S. Supreme Court
justices by scoring transcripts of their testimony at confirmation
hearings during the period 1925-84. She found that writing major-
ity opinions (a dependent variable reflecting justices' prestige and
impact on the Court and society) was, as predicted, positively corre-
lated with power motivation and negatively correlated with achieve-
ment and affiliation. Achievement-motivated justices cast relatively
fewer concurring or dissenting votes. When they did concur or dis-
sent, however, they were more likely to write a separate opinion.
Aliotta interprets this finding as a reflection of their concern with
excellence rather than with prestige or visibility. In contrast, affilia-
tion-motivated justices, who are also less likely to concur or dissent,
tend not to write separate opinions when they do. Presumably this
reflects their concern with agreement and being liked.
World Political Leaders
Hermann (1979, 198oa) scored affiliation and power imagery in
press conference transcripts of forty-five world leaders and related
leaders' scores to their foreign policy orientations. As predicted from
laboratory studies, affiliation-motivated leaders pursue a cooperative
and interdependent foreign policy, while power-motivated leaders
are more independent and confrontational. Leaders' power motiva-
tion was also related to the level of hostility (i.e., intense and nega-
tive affect) that their nations expressed toward other nations, while
their affiliation motivation predicted expressions of friendship.Soviet Leaders
Hermann (198ob) further illustrated these relationships in a study of
the motives of Soviet Politburo members in the late 19705. Members
scoring high in affiliation and low in power were relatively more
prodetente than were members with the opposite motive pattern.
Schmitt and Winter (1998) scored the reports given by each of the
general secretaries of the Communist party of the Soviet Union
(Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev) to the first