Individual Differences in Motivation and Behavior in Particular Situations

Abstract

niN INITIAL ATTEMPT has been made elsewhere (2) to state a principle of action (or performance) that would accoimt for the result of expenments in which individual differences in the strength of particular motives are inferred from imaginative (TAT) stories and related to overt behavior The pnnciple extends an assumption made earlier to account for the fact that strength of achievement motive as measured in imaginative stories is positively related to recall of interrupted tasks and the Zeigamik effect only when the. tasks are presented as tests of important abilities (1) The assumption was "that the achievement motive measured m imaginative behavior becomes a determinant of overt stnving only to the extent that a particular performance is perceived as instrumental to the goal of personal accomplishment" (1, p 387) A more general statement of this idea is that the strength of the behavioral tendency (B) IS a joint (positive) function of the strength of a particular motive (m) and the strength of the expectancy (e) that a particular act IS instrumental to attainment of the goal of that motive, B = f (m, e) This principle is similar to recent statements of the expectancy leaming theory prmciple of activation (8, 13) except in the conception of a motive as an antiapatory goal state having directive (vector) properties, l e, as a selective energizer of behavior, rather than as dnve, a nondirective impetus to action (see 2, p 81 and 5, p 2 for this distinction)The purpose of the present investigation was to rephcate and extend the findings of the earlier study which suggested this pnnciple ' This research was conducted during the period of an SSRC fellowship 350 JOHN W ATKINSON AND ALFRED C RAPHELSON of actionIn each of two expenments to be reported, individual differences m strength of the achievement motive (n Achievement) and motivation for social acceptance (n Affiliation) were measured by the TAT method (9, 3) on one occasion, and then performance on specific tasks was measured on another occasion following experimental arousal of certain expectancies concerning the consequences of performance It was expected that differences in the strength of n Achievement would be more clearly manifested in behavior when instructions and other cues foster the expectancy that performance is instrumental to personal achievement, than when cues for performance are deliberately manipulated to minimize this expectancy The measure of n Affiliation was included in both experiments to determine whether or not this motive, which is related to approval-seeking (3) and conformity (7, 14), might be an important source of motivation for performance when there is no expectancy of achievement but the total situation implies that the experimeter (E) will be pleased by cooperation and disapprove noncompliance with his instructions EXPERIMENT I SynopsisTwenty-four male students in an undergraduate cou rse in psychology each wrote 18 stories m response to pictures to provide measures of the affiliation motive (n Affiliation) and the achievement ...

Achievement motivation and task recall in competitive situations.

“…The results relating scores on the ARPS to task recall indicate that this test may be a valid motive measure. The findings replicated those of Atkinson (1953) and Atkinson and Raphelson (1956) when a Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was used to assess achievement motivation. It is of interest to note that the relation between recall and scores on the ARPS supports the prediction for male subjects, while the results for females do not confirm the hypothesis.…”

Effects of induced success/failure and attributions on the problem-solving behavior of psychologically androgynous and feminine women

“…The fact that success and failure affected the relative attributions to ability and task difficulty for the androgynous subjects but failed to do so for the feminine subjects suggests the possibility that androgynous women are more responsive to feedback than are feminine women. Such a conclusion is congruent with the results of other investigators (e.g., Atkinson, 1953;Atkinson & Raphelson, 1956;Homer, 1970;Weiner, 1966), who have demonstrated that whereas the problem-solving and memory performance of males is responsive to different conditions of competition, the performance of females is not. The relative nonresponsiveness of feminine subjects re-ceives further support in the present study from the fact that their expectancies on the anagram task were less highly related to their performance than were those of androgynous women.…”

The interruption of tasks: Methodological, factual, and theoretical issues.

“…Atkinson (1953) found that high need achievement (n Ach) 5s increased their recall of incompleted tasks while low n Ach Ss decreased their recall of incompleted tasks when instructions were more skill oriented. Atkinson and Raphelson (1956) found no differences between high and low n Ach 5s under nonskill instructions. However, under skill instructions high n Ach 5s recalled more I tasks than low n Ach 5s.…”

“…Alper's strongego 5s have higher need recognition and need dominance and react to failure with more increased effort than do her weak-ego 5s (Alper, 1948). People with low n Ach recall relatively more I tasks under nonskill instructions and relatively more C tasks under skill instructions (Atkinson, 1953;Atkinson & Raphelson, 1956;Caron & Wallach 1957, 1959. People with weak egos and high n Ach recall relatively more C tasks under nonskill instructions and relatively more I tasks under skill instructions.…”