Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations

Where does need for achievement collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one name, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningmotivationcompare the meanings
How to read this

Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to need for achievement is motivation.

Hold this as a prompt, not a verdict. Two constructs sitting close in meaning is a reason to read them side by side and decide for yourself whether they are one idea under two names. It is not proof that they are. Compare the meanings in the Collider.

need forachievement3 CONSTRUCTSAchievement motiveMCCLELLAND · TATNational nAchMCCLELLAND · SOCIETIESImplicit vs explicitMKW 1989 · SPLIT

Spokes are fields; dashed arcs are shared lineage. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.

1953Achievement motive1953Implicit vs explicit1961National nAch
2026

Drag to watch the word get claimed. Each field appears at the publication date of the earliest source cited for it. Tap a year to see which.

Motivation psychology

a stable motive to do things well and compete against a standard of excellence, measured indirectly from story themes.

The need for achievement, or nAch, is a stable motive to do things well and to compete against a standard of excellence, first set out by McClelland and colleagues in The Achievement Motive in 1953. Because they treated it as a largely non-conscious disposition, they measured it indirectly: a person writes stories about ambiguous pictures in the Thematic Apperception Test, and trained coders count achievement themes such as competing, striving, and doing something better than before. Atkinson's 1957 expectancy-value model added that the pull toward a task is the strength of the motive multiplied by the expectancy of success and the incentive value of that success, which is why people high in the motive tend to prefer tasks of moderate difficulty. The thing being measured here is a property of one person, scored from what they imagine rather than from what they say about themselves.[1][2][3]

Unit
One person's motive to strive against a standard of excellence
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Scored from stories written to the Thematic Apperception Test, coded for achievement imagery

Economic development

a population's average need for achievement, scored from cultural texts and claimed to predict later economic growth.

In The Achieving Society in 1961, McClelland took the same motive and moved it up a level, arguing that the average need for achievement in a population predicts how fast its economy will later grow. He scored achievement imagery in cultural material such as children's readers and folk tales across many countries and time periods, then compared those national scores with later measures of economic output. The claim was bold and it remains contested, both for the causal story it tells and for reading a personal motive off shared texts. What matters for this map is that the unit of analysis has changed: the thing being measured is now a whole society, not a person, even though the name and the coding method carry over unchanged.[2]

Unit
A population's average achievement imagery, read from its cultural texts
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Achievement imagery coded in children's stories and folk tales, compared with later economic growth

Implicit vs self-attributed motives

the argument that implicit and self-attributed achievement motives are two distinct motives that correlate only weakly.

McClelland, Koestner, and Weinberger argued in 1989 that there are really two achievement motivations wearing one name, and that they should not be expected to agree. The implicit motive is what the story-based test captures, an inclination that works without much self-awareness; the self-attributed motive is what a questionnaire captures when it asks people how achievement-oriented they believe they are. Across studies the two correlate only weakly, so a high score on one does not imply a high score on the other. They also predict different things: the implicit motive tracks spontaneous, long-run behavioural trends, while the self-attributed motive tracks the choices people make when a situation spells out what is expected of them. Treating a projective score and a questionnaire score as the same thing because they share the label achievement motivation is the measurement version of the jingle mistake.[4][1]

Unit
The gap between a person's projective and self-report achievement scores
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
The same person scored both by a projective test and by a self-report questionnaire, then compared

Next

Run it through the Collider, or take the citations with you.

See how need for achievement sits against neighbouring constructs in the Collider, or export every reference on this page in one click.

Open in ColliderExport BibTeXReport this collision

Nearby collisions

motivation6 fields · 18 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsgrit6 names · 9 citationsjangle · six names, one construct, concededachievement goals4 names · 5 citationsjangle · renamed, then re-partitioned

References

  1. McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. Appleton-Century-Crofts. ISBN 978-0-8290-0126-6. ISBN 9780829001266
  2. McClelland, D. C. (1961). The achieving society. Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-920510-5. ISBN 9780029205105
  3. Atkinson, J. W. (1957). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. Psychological Review, 64(6, Pt. 1), 359–372. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043445
  4. McClelland, D. C., Koestner, R., & Weinberger, J. (1989). How do self-attributed and implicit motives differ? Psychological Review, 96(4), 690–702. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.4.690

Cited on this page?

Confirm your construct, or correct us.

If your work is cited behind one of these entries, you know better than we do whether we captured the meaning right. Confirm it, suggest an edit, or dispute it, and your name goes on the entry as an author who has checked it, linked to your ORCID.

Claim your construct