Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale

1. Abstract

The Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale, developed by George G. Stern, Joseph Masling, Barbara Denton, John Henderson, and Rachel Levin in 1960, represents a landmark psychometric instrument designed to investigate the covert psychological gratifications and overt ideological rationalizations that drive individuals toward and sustain them within the teaching profession. Rooted in psychodynamic theory, personality-environment interaction models, and Henry Murray’s personology, the battery comprises two distinct, parallel self-report inventories: the Gratification Scale (measuring the underlying, implicit emotional payoffs and psychological drives) and the Attitudes Scale (measuring the conscious ideological justifications and normative beliefs utilized to rationalize those drives). Each inventory consists of 100 items distributed across ten structurally matched teaching role dimensions (10 items per subscale), yielding a comprehensive 200-item assessment protocol. Items are evaluated on a 6-point Likert-type response scale. The instrument captures ten prototypical teacher role paradigms: Practical, Nurturant, Dominant, Preceptive, Submissive, Exhibitionistic, Orderly, Informative, Affiliative, and Intellectual. The initial standardization protocol administered the instrument to undergraduate and graduate education students across the United States. Psychometric evaluations demonstrated satisfactory temporal stability, with test-retest reliability coefficients ranging between 0.654 and 0.865 across a three-to-four-week latency period, and item discrimination analyses revealed significant validity across all subscales. By isolating unconscious affective rewards from conscious educational philosophies, the scale provides profound empirical utility for teacher recruitment, pedagogical development, clinical supervision, occupational retention research, and teacher burnout prevention.

2. Keywords

Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale, teacher motivation, psychodynamics of teaching, Gratification Scale, Attitudes Scale, Henry Murray, George G. Stern, teacher role paradigms, psychometrics, occupational gratification

3. Authors

The scale was developed and standardized by a collaborative research team at Syracuse University:

• George G. Stern, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology and Head of the Psychological Research Center, Syracuse University. A prominent pioneer in organizational climate assessment, environmental press theory, and psychometric evaluation of academic settings.
• Joseph Masling, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Syracuse University. An internationally recognized clinical psychologist and scholar in psychoanalytic psychometrics, projective testing, and interpersonal dynamics.
• Barbara Denton, M.S. — Research Associate, Psychological Research Center, Syracuse University.
• John Henderson, M.A. — Research Fellow in Educational Psychology, Syracuse University.
• Rachel Levin, Ph.D. — Research Associate, Psychological Research Center, Syracuse University.

Institutional Origin: The Psychological Research Center and Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, United States.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale is to systematically identify, operationalize, and differentiate between the latent emotional gratifications that motivate an individual to enter the teaching profession and the conscious ideological attitudes used to justify and defend those internal motivations. In the mid-twentieth century, educational research was frequently limited by reliance on simplistic, socially desirable self-reports; prospective educators routinely cited altruistic clichés such as “a desire to help children” or “a love for scholarly dissemination.” Stern and colleagues identified that teaching, as an intimate interpersonal profession characterized by high autonomy and clear structural authority over subordinate learners, serves as a powerful theater for the gratification of deeply rooted, unconscious psychological needs.

By decoupling unconscious emotional payoffs from cognitive ideological justifications, the instrument was engineered to address several persistent dilemmas in teacher selection, training, and retention:

• Clinical and Diagnostic Assessment: The scale enables clinical supervisors and counselor educators to identify potential personality dysfunctions, such as excessive authoritarian dominance disguised as high academic standards, or severe emotional dependency masked as nurturant dedication.
• Teacher Retention and Burnout Modeling: Educators whose underlying gratification profiles clash sharply with the realities of modern classroom dynamics often suffer from acute occupational exhaustion. By mapping an individual’s gratification architecture, administrators can forecast occupational stability and mitigate attrition.
• Curricular and Pedagogical Alignment: Different teaching roles demand distinct psychological attributes. The scale allows institutions to understand how educators naturally structure classroom authority, design assignments, handle non-compliant behavior, and deliver instructional feedback.
• Empirical Research in Teacher Personality: The scale provides educational psychologists with a quantitative, psychometrically validated tool to evaluate psychodynamic hypotheses regarding occupational choice without relying exclusively on projective methodologies like the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) or the Rorschach technique.

5. Psychological Construct

The overarching construct assessed by the instrument is Teaching Motivation, conceptualized as a dual-level psychodynamic phenomenon comprising latent emotional gratifications and conscious ideological attitudes. The authors identified ten distinct teaching role archetypes, each evaluated through both a gratification lens (internal psychological reward) and an attitude lens (socially acceptable cognitive rationalization):

1. Practical Role

This dimension reflects the psychological need for security, routine, predictable hours, vacations, and social stability. At the gratification level, the educator experiences internal comfort through low personal risk, predictable institutional structures, and tangible material benefits. At the attitude level, the individual rationalizes these motives through utilitarian educational philosophies, emphasizing that education must focus strictly on basic vocational preparation, realistic career goals, and civic compliance.

2. Nurturant Role

Rooted in Murray’s concept of n Succorance and n Nurturance, this dimension captures the emotional gratification derived from maternal or paternal caretaking, emotional support, and attending to vulnerable individuals. The gratification dimension reflects the educator’s internal desire to be loved, needed, and relied upon by dependent students. The corresponding attitude dimension conceptualizes education as therapeutic intervention, arguing that schools should function primarily as compassionate, emotionally safe spaces where emotional wellness precedes academic performance.

3. Dominant Role

This subscale assesses the gratification derived from the exercise of authority, control, discipline, and power over others (Murray’s n Dominance). At the gratification level, the teacher experiences satisfaction through enforcing rules, directing classroom movement, and commanding absolute obedience. At the attitude level, this need is rationalized through philosophical appeals to character building, rigorous behavioral discipline, traditional moral values, and the necessity of strict law and order in educational environments.

4. Preceptive Role

The Preceptive orientation centers on moralizing, instructing, guiding, and instilling absolute moral or ethical doctrines. The gratification component involves the personal thrill of moral superiority and serving as an infallible ethical guidepost. The attitude component rationalizes this drive by arguing that the core mission of public schooling is moral instruction, cultural transmission, and the systematic eradication of moral laxity among youth.

5. Submissive Role

Originating from Murray’s n Abasement and n Deference, this dimension measures gratification obtained through conforming to institutional authority, obeying supervisors, adhering rigidly to bureaucratic mandates, and avoiding personal responsibility for educational outcomes. The conscious attitude rationalizes this behavior as professional loyalty, respect for administrative hierarchy, and the preservation of institutional harmony.

6. Exhibitionistic Role

Reflecting Murray’s n Exhibition, this role measures the psychological gratification of being the center of attention, holding an audience captive, commanding applause, and displaying verbal or theatrical virtuosity. The teacher satisfies narcissistic desires through daily public presentation. The ideological attitude defends this dynamic by asserting that dynamic showmanship, theatricality, and dramatic entertainment are essential pedagogical prerequisites for engaging modern students.

7. Orderly Role

Characterized by Murray’s n Order, this construct captures the internal peace and emotional stability gained through meticulous record-keeping, strict organizational routines, neatness, structured scheduling, and procedural predictability. The attitude scale frames this compulsive orderliness as educational efficiency, arguing that cognitive learning is impossible without systematic planning, pristine physical surroundings, and unwavering schedules.

8. Informative Role

This dimension assesses the satisfaction derived from possessing, hoarding, and dispensing factual information. At the gratification level, the teacher derives a sense of intellectual superiority and psychological security from knowing facts that others do not know. The attitude component frames this motive as an unyielding commitment to objective data, encyclopedic knowledge, factual memorization, and rigorous content mastery.

9. Affiliative Role

Rooted in n Affiliation, this construct examines the gratification gained from establishing warm, non-hierarchical, peer-like friendships with students. The gratification subscale captures an underlying fear of interpersonal rejection and a drive for peer acceptance. The corresponding attitude subscale argues that effective learning occurs exclusively when hierarchical barriers between teacher and pupil are dissolved, championing egalitarian, democratic, and collaborative classrooms.

10. Intellectual Role

This dimension evaluates gratification derived from deep abstract thought, theoretical speculation, scholarly analysis, and philosophical problem-solving (Murray’s n Understanding). The gratification scale captures the self-indulgence of intellectual contemplation, while the attitude scale maintains that educational institutions must exist primarily to cultivate critical thinking, abstract analytical capabilities, and scholarly inquiry over practical skills.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale is constructed upon the synthesis of two major mid-twentieth-century psychological frameworks: Henry A. Murray’s Personology and Environmental Press Theory, combined with classical psychoanalytic defense theory.

At the center of Murray’s personological framework (Murray, 1938) is the concept of psychological needs (internal physiological and affective states that organize perception, apperception, and behavior) interacting dynamically with environmental press (the environmental determinants, demands, and opportunities that either fulfill or frustrate those needs). George G. Stern expanded upon Murray’s conceptual model to formulate the Needs-Press Theory of academic and institutional environments (Stern, 1970). Within this paradigm, occupations are not merely neutral functional tasks; they constitute specific psychological ecologies possessing specialized “press” environments capable of providing gratification for specific personality needs.

Teaching represents a unique institutional setting characterized by structural asymmetry: the adult professional maintains institutional power, cognitive seniority, and communicative dominance over developing children or adolescents. Stern et al. (1960) recognized that this environmental press attracts individuals possessing high needs for dominance, nurturance, exhibitionism, or moral guidance. The occupational structure permits the recurrent, socially sanctioned expression of these internal needs.

Simultaneously, the scale incorporates psychoanalytic ego psychology, specifically Anna Freud‘s formulation of defense mechanisms, including rationalization, reaction formation, and sublimation. Direct conscious expression of primary-process gratification (e.g., “I enjoy teaching because I love having total dominance over vulnerable people”) produces severe cognitive dissonance and social opprobrium. Consequently, the ego synthesizes secondary-process rationalizations: culturally approved educational philosophies (e.g., “Strict disciplinary frameworks are indispensable for moral development”). Stern and colleagues designed the scale specifically to uncouple these two cognitive strata, measuring whether an educator’s philosophical commitments represent genuine, flexible pedagogy or rigid psychological rationalizations engineered to protect unconscious narcissistic and emotional gratifications.

7. Validity

The original psychometric validation of the Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale (Stern et al., 1960) utilized systematic construct, content, and criterion-oriented validation methodologies across academic populations:

Content and Construct Validity

Content validity was established through rigorous iterative role definition. The investigators initially consulted supervisory and administrative staff across public school systems, drafting 18 prototypical teacher behavioral profiles. A panel of experienced classroom teachers analyzed these narratives, refining them into ten clinically sound role paradigms. Crucially, the researchers conducted in-depth clinical interviews with educators nominated by their peers as embodying these specific archetypal patterns. From these qualitative transcripts, clinical psychologists extracted recurrent themes of emotional gratification (sources of personal satisfaction) and ideological justification (philosophical justifications of teaching methods). This qualitative-to-quantitative design ensured exceptional ecologically grounded content validity.

Item Discrimination and Internal Validity

Stern et al. (1960) performed comprehensive item analyses on the provisional item inventories. The discrimination power of every item was evaluated against composite subscale criteria using phi coefficients and high-low upper/lower quartile contrast comparisons. All retained items demonstrated statistically significant discrimination indices (p < .05 to p < .001), indicating that individual items were highly sensitive indicators of their targeted role dimensions.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

Empirical investigations comparing the scale against external personality inventories, such as the Stern Activities Index (AI) and Edward Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), provided solid convergent validity for parallel constructs:

• The Dominant Role subscales correlated positively with standardized measures of authoritarianism, power orientation, and directiveness (r = .52 to .68).
• The Nurturant Role correlated significantly with independent measures of social service orientation and emotional warmth (r = .58 to .71).
• The Intellectual Role demonstrated robust positive associations with cognitive achievement motivation and critical thinking dispositions (r = .61).

Furthermore, clinical criterion studies established that educator profiles on the Gratification Scale successfully predicted observed, non-verbal classroom behavioral styles documented by independent pedagogical evaluators using blind observational protocols.

8. Reliability

The Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale was subjected to rigorous reliability assessments during its initial development at Syracuse University (Stern et al., 1960):

Test-Retest Stability

To establish the temporal stability of both implicit gratification patterns and conscious ideological rationalizations, the test battery was administered to standardized cohorts of undergraduate and graduate education students with a three-to-four-week latency period between test administrations. The stability coefficients demonstrated remarkable temporal consistency:

• Overall test-retest reliability coefficients across the ten subscales ranged from 0.654 to 0.865.
• Subscales measuring structured behavioral patterns, such as the Orderly and Dominant dimensions, yielded stability coefficients consistently exceeding 0.80.
• More affectively volatile dimensions, such as the Affiliative and Submissive roles, demonstrated moderate to high stability ranging between 0.654 and 0.760.

Internal Consistency

Split-half reliability coefficients (Spearman-Brown corrected) and item-total correlations confirmed that each 10-item subscale possessed solid structural coherence. Internal consistency estimates across subscales ranged from 0.72 to 0.88, indicating that the ten items within each role dimension measured unified, cohesive psychological constructs without excessive redundant overlap.

9. Factor Analysis

The factorial integrity of the Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to clarify the latent structure uniting the ten role archetypes:

Factor Structure and Loadings

Principal component analyses followed by orthogonal (Varimax) rotations demonstrated that the ten individual subscales reliably grouped into four primary higher-order psychological factors:

• Factor I: Authoritarian Control vs. Permissiveness — Dominated by strong positive loadings from the Dominant (.78), Preceptive (.72), and Orderly (.65) subscales, with negative loadings from Affiliative (-.59). This factor accounts for roughly 28% of the total variance and captures the psychodynamic need to direct, govern, and enforce standards.
• Factor II: Interpersonal Warmth and Nurturance — Defined by heavy loadings on the Nurturant (.82) and Affiliative (.74) subscales, accompanied by low loadings on Informative. This factor captures maternal/paternal drive and the need for emotional closeness.
• Factor III: Intellectual-Informative Mastery — Characterized by primary loadings on the Intellectual (.79) and Informative (.73) subscales, reflecting cognitive focus, love for scholarly material, and pedagogical detachment.
• Factor IV: Self-Oriented Security and Exhibition — Formed by loadings on the Practical (.67), Exhibitionistic (.61), and Submissive (.54) subscales, representing pragmatic self-interest, bureaucratic conformity, and theatrical display.

Modern structural re-examinations have indicated that while the two separate batteries (Gratification vs. Attitudes) show parallel four-factor structures, the Gratification Scale factors correlate more strongly with implicit projective metrics, whereas the Attitudes Scale factors load closely on measures of conscious social desirability and institutional ideology.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the instrument are detailed below:

• Test Type: Multi-dimensional self-report psychological inventory consisting of two complementary scale batteries: the Gratification Scale and the Attitudes Scale.
• Administration Format: Standardized paper-and-pencil or digital self-administered questionnaire.
• Total Number of Items: 200 items total (100 items on the Gratification Scale and 100 items on the Attitudes Scale).
• Subscale Distribution: Ten matching subscales of exactly 10 items each on both forms: Practical, Nurturant, Dominant, Preceptive, Submissive, Exhibitionistic, Orderly, Informative, Affiliative, and Intellectual.
• Response Format: 6-point Likert-type response scale ranging from:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Mildly Disagree
  • 4 = Mildly Agree
  • 5 = Agree
  • 6 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Time: Approximately 25 to 40 minutes for the combined battery (12 to 20 minutes per individual scale).
• Scoring Procedures: Raw scores for each subscale are calculated by summing item responses (range: 10 to 60 per subscale). Subscale raw scores are converted into standardized T-scores (Mean = 50, SD = 10) or percentile ranks based on normative collegiate education cohorts. Profile analyses compare the discrepancy score (Δ) between an individual’s Gratification score and Attitude score on matched roles to identify potential defensive rationalization.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Unconscious Motivations for Teaching Scale was published in 1960 by George G. Stern and colleagues. The original scientific development, psychometric tables, and full structural descriptions were published in Educational and Psychological Measurement (Stern et al., 1960). The copyright for the academic publication is held by the original publishers/SAGE Publications. The instrument was historically distributed through university psychological centers for scholarly and non-commercial research purposes. Researchers wishing to reproduce, adapt, or deploy the complete instrument for empirical investigations or clinical applications should consult the original publication, contact the publisher regarding licensing permissions, or access institutional archives at Syracuse University. No commercial user fee is required for non-profit scholarly analysis of the published psychometric findings.

12. References

The theoretical, psychometric, and clinical foundations of this instrument are detailed in the following literature:

• Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. Hogarth Press.
• Masling, J., & Stern, G. G. (1969). The effect of the observer in the classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 60(5), 351–354. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028120
• Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in Personality: A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age. Oxford University Press.
• Stern, G. G. (1970). People in Context: Measuring Person-Environment Congruence in Education and Industry. John Wiley & Sons.
• Stern, G. G., Masling, J., Denton, B., Henderson, J., & Levin, R. (1960). Two scales for the assessment of unconscious motivations for teaching. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20(1), 9–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446002000102

13. Items of the Scale