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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1–3Cite as

Achievement Motives

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Synonyms

Achievement dispositions; Competence motives

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)....

Keywords

  • Achievement Motivation
  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
  • Private Body Consciousness
  • Explicit Motivation
  • Family Orientation Questionnaire

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    Emily J. Hangen & Andrew J. Elliott

Authors
  1. Emily J. Hangen
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  2. Andrew J. Elliott
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emily J. Hangen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Lodz, Smugowa 10/12, 91-433, Lodz, Poland

    Monika Wróbel

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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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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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