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David McClelland advanced a 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.
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