The General Maintenance Orientation Scale

Abstract: We present a new measure of individual differences in maintenance motivation. The General Maintenance Orientation (GMO) scale includes two constructs – Appreciation for the current state, and Belief in the necessity of maintenance. Both constructs showed high to moderate (retest-)reliability, convergent and discriminant validity to various other motivation scales, and were influenced by a manipulation instructing participants to respond as if they were highly motivated to maintain. Additionally, both constructs predicted domain-specific maintenance motivation, overt goal-directed maintenance behavior, and reports of actual maintenance striving across two months. Importantly, the GMO was able to disentangle maintenance from approach and avoidance in three central life domains. As such, we argue that the GMO is a useful tool for researching and theorizing about maintenance.