Synonyms
Definition
Achievement motives are appetitive and aversive dispositions toward competence/incompetence.
Introduction
The achievement motive construct was introduced by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray (1938) and systematically formalized in the 1950s by David McClelland, John Atkinson, and their colleagues (see McClelland et al. 1953). These theorists described motives as learned associations between environmental cues and resulting affective responses. These learned associations spawn anticipation of the affective responses, which subsequently prompt achievement behavior (McClelland et al. 1953; Murray 1938). Anticipatory emotions relevant to achievement motives include anticipatory pride and shame. Anticipatory pride and shame function as the basis for the two predominant achievement motives that have received attention in the literature – need for achievement and fear of failure (Atkinson and Feather 1966; McClelland et al. 1953)....
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References
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McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. New York: Appleton.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spangler, W. D. (1992). Validity of questionnaire and TAT measures of need for achievement: Two meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 140.
Spence, J.T. & Helmreich, R.L. (1983). Achievement-related Motives and behaviors. In J.T. Spence (Ed.), Achievement and achievement motives: Psychological and sociological approaches (pp. 7–74). San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman.
Thrash, T. M., Elliot, A. J., & Schultheiss, O. C. (2007). Methodological and dispositional predictors of congruence between implicit and explicit need for achievement. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(7), 961–974.
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Hangen, E.J., Elliott, A.J. (2016). Achievement Motives. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_487-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_487-1
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