IF-THEN METHOD - international version - [page 5]
PINCIPLE OF DETECTION
FUNDAMENTAL CONDITION
In order to detect the individual social motive for the player participating in the game situation
by using the if-then forms mentioned above, a set of four games, at least, is logically necessary be-
cause a total of nine normative motives (2 4 > 9 > 2 3) is used in the method. In this case, the test
is essentially constructed on the assumption that the player does not change entirely his/her response
tendency of sequential decisions during the process of responding to the specific four games selected
with a criterion. Suppose that the series of a subject's responses for the four game situations are
as follows: namely, the response I for both the game G04-3 (in the form A-A) and the game G03-2 (in
the form A-A), and the response II for both the game G01-5 (in the form A-A) and the game G07-3 (in
the form B-B). From this series of these four responses (I, I. II, II) which is called the "response
array" in the set of tasks, we can judge the response tendency to be "individualism". If the response
array for the same four tasks is "I, II, II. II", we would determine the tendency to be "competition". A
social motive detected by using the four responses for the four games is called the "social motive
component" in the "IF-THEN method", If only the adequate four tasks (the four combinations of a game
and an if-then form) are adopted, we could always detect uniquely and separately the subject's social
motive from the array of responses as long as he/she continues to respond with these four tasks with-
out any change in the response tendency. The series of four tasks indicated in this example is really
only one of the adequate combinations selected from the sets of tasks shown under "pro." (meaning the
"Proseries") on the right side of Figure 4.
Fig.4