Need for achievement (N-Ach) refers to an individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. The term was first used by Henry Murray[1] and associated with a range of actions. These include: "intense, prolonged and repeated efforts to accomplish something difficult. To work with singleness of purpose towards a high and distant goal. To have the determination to win". The concept of NAch was subsequently popularised by the psychologist David McClelland.[citation needed]
Need for Achievement is related to the difficulty of tasks people choose to undertake. Those with low N-Ach may choose very easy tasks, in order to minimize risk of failure, or highly difficult tasks, such that a failure would not be embarrassing. Those with high N-Ach tend to choose moderately difficult tasks, feeling that they are challenging, but within reach.
People high in N-Ach are characterised by a tendency to seek challenges and a high degree of independence. Their most satisfying reward is the recognition of their achievements. Sources of high N-Ach include:
- Parents who encouraged independence in childhood
- Praise and rewards for success
- Association of achievement with positive feelings
- Association of achievement with one's own competence and effort, not luck
- A desire to be effective or challenged
- Intrapersonal Strength
Theory
The pioneering research
work of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the 1930s, summarised in
Explorations in Personality, provided the start point for future studies
of personality, especially those relating to needs and motives. David C. McClelland's
and his associates' investigations of achievement motivation have particular
relevance to the emergence of leadership. McClelland was interested in the
possibility of deliberately arousing a motive to achieve in an attempt to
explain how individuals express their preferences for particular outcomes — a
general problem of motivation. In this connection, the need for achievement
refers to an individual's preference for success under conditions of
competition. The vehicle McClelland employed to establish the presence
of an achievement motive was the type of fantasy a person expressed on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT),
developed by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray, who note in Explorations in
Personality that "...when a person interprets an ambiguous social situation
he is apt to expose his own personality as much as the phenomenon to which he is
attending... Each picture should suggest some critical situation and be
effective in evoking a fantasy relating to it" (p531). The test is composed of a
series of pictures that subjects are asked to interpret and describe to the
psychologist. The TAT has been widely used to support assessment of needs and
motives.[2]
The procedure in
McClelland's initial investigation was to arouse in the test audience a concern
with their achievement. A control group was used in which arousal was omitted.
In the course of this experiment, McClelland discovered through analyzing the
stories on the TAT that initial arousal was not necessary. Instead, members of
the control group — individuals who had had no prior arousal — demonstrated
significant differences in their stories, some writing stories with a high
achievement content and some submitting stories with a low achievement content.
Using results based on the Thematic Apperception Test,
McClelland demonstrated that individuals in a society can be grouped into high
achievers and low achievers based on their scores on what he called "N-Ach".[2]
McClelland and his
associates have since extended their work in fantasy analysis to include
different age groups, occupational groups, and nationalities in their
investigations of the strength of need for achievement. These investigations
have indicated that the N-Ach score increases with a rise in occupational level.
Invariably, businessmen, managers, and entrepreneurs are high scorers. Other
investigations into the characteristics of the high achievers have revealed that
accomplishment on the job represents an end in itself; monetary rewards serve as
an index of this accomplishment. In addition, these other studies found that the
high achievers, though identified as managers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs,
are not gamblers. They will accept risk only to the degree they believe their
personal contributions will make a difference in the final outcome.[3]
These explorations into
the achievement motive seem to turn naturally into the investigation of national
differences based on Max Weber's thesis that the industrialization and economic
development of the Western nations were related to the Protestant ethic and its
corresponding values supporting work and achievement. McClelland and his
associates have satisfied themselves that such a relationship, viewed
historically through an index of national power consumption, indeed exists.
Differences related to individual, as well as to national, accomplishments
depend on the presence or absence of an achievement motive in addition to
economic resources or the infusion of financial assistance. High achievers can
be viewed as satisfying a need for self-actualization through accomplishments in
their job assignments as a result of their particular knowledge, their
particular experiences, and the particular environments in which they have
lived.[4]
Measurement
The techniques
McClelland and his collaborators developed to measure N-Ach, N-Affil and N-Pow (see McClelland et
al., 1958) can be viewed as a radical break with the dominant psychometric
tradition. However, it should be recognised that McClellend's thinking was
strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Murray, both in terms of Murray's model of
human needs and motivational processes (1938) and his work with the OSS during
World War Two. It was during this period that Murray introduced the idea of
"situation tests" and multi-rater / multi-method assessments. It was Murray who
first identified the significance of Need for Achievement, Power and Affiliation
and placed these in the context of an integrated motivational model.
Whilst trait-based
personality theory assume that high-level competencies like initiative,
creativity, and leadership can be assessed using “internally consistent”
measures (see psychometrics), the McClelland measures recognize
that such competencies are difficult and demanding activities which will neither
be developed nor displayed unless people are undertaking activities they care
about (i.e. are strongly motivated to undertake). Furthermore, it is the
cumulative number of independent, but cumulative and substitutable, components
of competence they bring to bear while seeking to carry out these activities
that will determine their success. Accordingly, the N-Ach, N-Aff and N-Pow
scoring systems simply count how many components of competence people bring to
bear whilst carrying out activities they have a strong personal inclination (or
motivation) to undertake.
An important corollary
is that there is no point in trying to assess people’s abilities without first
finding out what they care about. So one cannot (as some psychometricians try to
do) assess such things as “creativity” in any general sense. One has always to
ask “creativity in relation to what?” So McClelland’s measures, originally
presented as means of assessing “personality”, are best understood as means of
measuring competence in ways which break
radically with traditional psychometric approaches. (See Raven (2001) for a
fuller discussion).