Measuring the Motives of Political Actors at a Distancebe used as an interesting example—for methodological purposes, at
least, if not for the enduring substantive importance of Perot as a
political leader. Winter (1995) wanted to assess Ross Perot's motive
profile as a part of his study of the 1992 U.S. presidential candidates
and campaign, since the unusual rise-and-fall cycle of Perot's candi-
dacy had generated considerable popular and journalistic interest. At
the time of the initial research (March 1992), the precise nature and
status of Perot's campaign were not clear, since he had not made any
formal announcement of candidacy. To get some estimate of his
motive imagery profile, therefore, Winter scored transcripts of four
published interviews in national magazines, comparing the resulting
raw scores to other interview-based raw scores (from a sample of
interviews with world leaders) rather than to the other presidential
candidacy announcement speeches. Then, since Perot formally with-
drew from the campaign in July 1992 but reentered it on October i,
his statement of candidacy on that latter occasion could be compared
with the other 1992 announcement speeches of the other 1992 can-
didates.
It is interesting to note that the two estimates of Perot's motive
profile were, in standardized terms, quite different; discussion of the
differences illustrates how selection of material and identification of
comparison groups affect the kinds of interpretations that can be
made. In the interviews (standardized on the group of world leaders'
interviews), Perot scored very high in achievement, low in affiliation,
and a little below average in power. Such a profile is consistent with
Perot's previous success as an entrepreneur. The later announcement
statement, however, had much lower levels of achievement motiva-
tion—below the average for the other 1992 candidates and not much
higher than affiliation or power.
Why the difference? Which was Perot's "true" level of achieve-
ment motivation? Actually, the raw achievement scores for the inter-
views and announcement were about the same; using different stan-
dardization samples for the two kinds of material (a reasonable
procedure, given the methodological considerations noted at the
beginning of this section) caused the apparent difference in the two
achievement motive imagery scores. In other words, in comparison
to world leaders responding to interview questions, Perot scored
high in achievement motivation; in comparison to other candidates