Achievement motivation may be understood as an individual’s concern for becoming successful, doing well, meeting obligations, overcoming obstacles, and attaining a sense of excellence. In the field of psychology, the concept first emerged as one of the basic needs identified in Henry Murray’s (1938) groundbreaking theory of human motivation. Murray proposed that internal states of disequilibrium drive individuals’ behaviors, and that disequilibrium emerges when individuals have a sense that they lack something and a need to address it. Murray classified needs as being primary (such as those that are biologically based like the need for food, air, water) or as secondary (such as those either driven by biological needs or an individual’s psychological makeup, like need for affiliation, power, recognition, autonomy). Murray conceptualized the need for achievement as a secondary need. That need has been one of the most studied, along with the need for power and affiliation, and has...
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Achievement Motivation. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_23
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