ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION THEORY OR NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT

This post focuses attention on the Achievement motivation theory, which is also known as Need for Achievement theory, developed by David McClelland.

David McClelland advanced an achievement motivation theory which argues that some people are motivated by the “need for achievement” (n-ach). Individuals with a high need for achievement have the following characteristics:

(i) They prefer situations in which they take personal responsibility for finding solutions to problems and not situations where success or failure is dependent on chance or other factors beyond their control.

· This allows them to gain personal satisfaction from their achievements.

• What is important for them is that the outcome should be the result of their own skill and effort.

(ii) They like to set moderately high goals for themselves. These goals are neither too low that they can be achieved with little challenge, nor too high that they are impossible.

• They prefer foals that require adequate use of effort and abilities (challenging goals).

(iii) They prefer concrete feedback on how well they are performing. Information about their work gives them personal satisfaction.

(iv) They seem to be more concerned with personal achievement than with the rewards/ praise or money.

(v) They always spend time thinking about doing things better.

McClelland also talked about two other types of need, the need for affiliation (n- afftil) and the need for power (n-pow)

The need for affiliation

The need for affiliation is similar to Maslow’s need to belong. According to McClelland, people in this category are those who are social in nature. They try to affiliate themselves with individuals and groups. Such people are driven by love and faith.

These people like to build a friendly environment around themselves through friendly relationships. Therefore, social recognition and affiliation with others gives them motivation.

The need for power

People in this category are motivated by the desire to influence others. This need is not simply seen as the raw (or mere) desire to control others or simply to exert autocratic authority, but rather it is a need to have some impact, to be influential and effective in achieving organisational goals. Therefore, people with a high need for power are inclined towards influence and control. They like to be at the centre and are forceful and ambitious in character. They can be motivated to perform if they are given key positions.

Measuring the Need for Achievement

The achievement motive concerns the desire to set challenging goals and to persist in trying to reach those goals despite obstacles, frustrations, and setbacks. One reason the achievement motive has been so well researched is that David McClelland became interested in finding some quantitative way of measuring social motives. His main tool for measuring achievement motivation was the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). This test consists of a series of pictures.

Participants are told to make up a story that describes what is happening in each picture. (Tests of this sort are called projective tests. At this point, it is only important to know that there are no right or wrong answers. Since the test questions are ambiguous, the answers must be created from the participant’s own beliefs, motives, and attitudes. Each story is coded for certain kinds of themes. These themes are scored according to their relevance to various types of needs, such as achievement, that is, setting goals, competing, and overcoming obstacles.

Based on these tests, McClelland developed a scoring system for the TAT. For example, a story would be scored high in achievement imagery if the main character were concerned with standards of excellence and a high level of performance, with unique accomplishments (such as inventions and awards), or with the pursuit of a long-term career or goal. Coding has been refined to the point where trained coders agree about 90 percent of the time. Participants register a high need for achievement if they display persistence on tasks or the ability to perform better on tasks, set challenging but realistic goals, compete with others to win, and are attracted to challenging tasks or careers.

People who scored high and low in achievement on the TAT were compared in a variety of situations. McClelland followed up the careers of some students at Wesleyan University who had been tested with the TAT in 1947. He wanted to see which students had chosen entrepreneurial work, that is, work in which they had to initiate projects on their own. He found that 11 years after graduation, 83 percent of the entrepreneurs (business managers, insurance salespeople, real estate investors, consultants, and so on) had scored high in achievement, but only 21 percent of the nonentrepreneurs had scored that high (McClelland, 1965).

McClelland did not believe we should all train ourselves as high achievers. In fact, he said that such people are not always the most interesting and they are usually not artistically sensitive (McClelland & Harris, 1971). They would also be less likely to value intimacy in a relationship. Studies have shown that high achievers prefer to be associated with experts who will help them achieve, instead of with more friendly people. Critics have claimed that using McClelland’s TAT is not a reliable method of testing the need for achievement. They assert that TAT stories are difficult to score because a person’s thoughts and feelings cannot be objectively analysed.

Fear of Failure

While some people are motivated by a need for achievement, others may be motivated by a fear of failure. A person displays a fear of failure, for example, when he stops taking guitar lessons because improvement seems too difficult, or she decides not to try out for the baseball team because she probably cannot make it anyway. How does the fear of failure differ from the need for achievement? People display fear of failure when they choose easy tasks offering assured success or impossible tasks with no chance of success. For example, let us say that you have your choice of three puzzles to solve.

The first puzzle is extremely easy, and you know that you can solve it. The second puzzle is more difficult, but it can be solved with effort. The third puzzle is extremely difficult, and you are certain it is impossible to solve. People with a strong need for achievement tend to choose the difficult but not impossible puzzle. People who choose the extremely easy puzzle, however, display a fear of failure. Choosing the third puzzle also shows a fear of failure because the person can blame failure on the difficulty of the task.

People who are motivated by the fear of failure often find excuses to explain their poor performances. They do this to maintain a good self-image. For example, a sprinter may explain her slow time in the race as a result of missed sleep. If you receive a poor grade on a test, you may claim that the test was biased. Although creating these types of excuses helps us maintain positive feelings about ourselves, it may also prevent us from taking responsibility for our own actions.

Fear of Success

Matina Horner (1970, 1972) asked 89 men to write a story beginning with the line, “After first term finals, John finds himself at the top of his medical school class.” Substituting the name Anne for John in the opening line, she also asked 90 women to write a story. Ninety percent of the men wrote success stories. However, more than 65 percent of the women predicted doom for Anne. On the basis of this study, Horner identified another dimension of achievement motivation, i.e. the motive to avoid success. Some people (like the females in Horner’s study) are (or were) raised with the idea that being successful in all but a few careers is odd and unlikely. Thus, a woman who is a success in medicine, law, and other traditionally male occupations must be a failure as a woman. It might have been acceptable for Anne to pass her exams, but the fact that she did better than all the men in her class made the female participants anxious.

Horner discovered that bright women, who had a very real chance of achieving in their chosen fields, exhibited a stronger fear of success than did women who were average or slightly above average. Expecting success made them more likely to avoid it, despite the obvious advantages of a rewarding career. This seemed to confirm Horner’s belief that success involves deep conflicts for some people.

Other researchers then set out to verify Horner’s findings. They quickly found that the picture was more complicated than Horner’s study suggested. For one thing, it is very difficult to define success. Being a mother might be quite satisfying for one woman but a sign of failure for someone who would have preferred a career outside the home. Also, it is often difficult to tell whether a person who does not try something is more afraid of success or failure.

In the late 1960s, when Horner’s study was conducted, medical school was still dominated by males. Likewise, nursing school was dominated by females. What if females write about males and vice versa? What if females or males write about males’ success in a female-dominated occupation? Then we find both men and women write stories reflecting Horner’s fear of success. Later, researchers analysed 64 studies bearing on the issue that Horner had raised. Measured on a mean rate, 45 percent of the men expressed a fear of success, while 49 percent of the women did, a small difference. So, fear of success is found in both men and women.