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3 - How do self-attributed and implicit motives differ?
- Edited by Charles P. Smith, City University of New York
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- Book:
- Motivation and Personality
- Published online:
- 16 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 1992, pp 49-72
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Summary
From the beginning of the work on the achievement motive (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953), it has been apparent that motive dispositions as coded in imaginative thought from stories written to pictures differ from motive dispositions with the same name as measured in self-reported desires or interests. The authors of the studies on achievement motivation wanted to demonstrate that the variable they had identified in fantasy functioned like an animal drive in the sense that it energized, directed, and selected behavior. In this tradition (cf. Melton, 1952) it was particularly important to show that a motivational disposition that these authors labeled n Achievement (for the need to achieve) would select behavior or facilitate learning just as hunger would facilitate a rat's learning a maze. When McClelland et al. examined a self-reported desire for achievement, they observed that it did not facilitate learning in the same way that n Achievement did and so concluded that self-reported desires do not function like motives. An early study (deCharms, Morrison, Reitman, & McClelland, 1955) showed that the two measures of achievement motivation were uncorrelated and that their behavioral correlates were different. For these reasons deCharms et al. urged that the two measures be distinguished in future research by referring to the variable identified in fantasy as n Achievement (for the need to achieve) and the self-reported desire for achievement as v Achievement (for valuing achievement).
9 - The achievement motive
- Edited by Charles P. Smith, City University of New York
-
- Book:
- Motivation and Personality
- Published online:
- 16 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 1992, pp 143-152
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Summary
This chapter is intended to tell how and why a thematic apperceptive measure of achievement motivation was developed and to explain the significance of the measure for current theory and research. Because space does not permit a systematic review of the hundreds of studies on this topic or an explication of the increasingly complex and technical theoretical developments, we have provided a list of major books dealing with achievement motivation at the end of this chapter.
DERIVATION OF A FANTASY MEASURE
The development of a measure of the need for achievement, labeled n Achievement or n Ach, using Murray's (1938) nomenclature, began with attempts to arouse achievement motivation by telling young men that performance tests they were taking would yield information about their general intelligence and leadership abilities, and then giving them feedback on how well or poorly they had done (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953). The unique effects of this type of arousal were examined in brief imaginative stories the men wrote afterward because previous research on hunger had demonstrated that such stories sensitively reflect varying degrees of motive arousal (Atkinson & McClelland, 1948).
To arrive at an empirically justified system of content analysis, a scoring system was developed based on the differences between stories written under achievement arousal versus neutral testing conditions.
13 - The affiliation motive
- Edited by Charles P. Smith, City University of New York
-
- Book:
- Motivation and Personality
- Published online:
- 16 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 1992, pp 205-210
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- Chapter
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Summary
DERIVATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE FANTASY MEASURE OF N AFFILIATION
Affiliative motivation is defined as a concern over establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or group of persons (Heyns, Veroff, & Atkinson, 1958). The system for scoring the need for affiliation (n Aff) from imaginative thought content (see chapter 14) was developed by comparing stories written by college men after they had been socially evaluated by their peers with stories written under neutral conditions (Atkinson, Heyns, & Veroff, 1954; Shipley & Veroff, 1952). Similar evaluative conditions were shown to arouse affiliative concerns in stories written by women (Rosenfeld & Franklin, 1966). The same scoring system is used for males and females.
The procedure for eliciting associative thought content that can be coded for n Affiliation is identical to that used for the achievement and power motives. This procedure is sometimes referred to as the Picture-Story Exercise (PSE) and requires subjects to write 5-minute stories to a series of four to six pictures like those of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). It is recommended that the PSE be administered by an experimenter who behaves in a relaxed, friendly, and approving manner (Lundy, 1988). It is also advisable to avoid administering the PSE immediately after an objective test or cognitive task (Lundy, 1988).