Psychology Motivation & Achievement & Review
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Achievement
An achievement motive is an impulse to master challenges and reach a high standard of excellence. Both personality and situational factors influence achievement motivation.
Researchers often use the Thematic Apperception Test(TAT) to measure people’s need for achievement. The TAT consists of a set of ambiguous pictures, such as one of a woman standing in the doorway of a room. Researchers ask subjects to make up stories about these pictures. Some subjects’ stories consistently contain themes that relate to achievement. Researchers consider these subjects to have a high need for achievement.
Personality Factors
High-achievement motivation tends to lead to particular personality features. These include persistence, ability to delay gratification, and competitiveness:
- Persistence: High achievers tend to be very persistent and work hard to attain goals they set for themselves.
- Ability to delay gratification: High achievers tend to have a greater ability to delay gratifying their impulses in the short term in order to reach long-term goals.
- Competitiveness: High achievers tend to select careers that give them opportunities to compete with other people.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Expectations can result in self-fulfilling prophecies. If a student expects to get an A on a term paper, she’ll work hard, and her work will be more likely to earn her an A.
Situational Factors
Some situational factors also affect achievement motivation. They include the expectation of success, incentives, control, and opportunity:
- Expectation of success: People are more likely to have a high expectation of success if they have a feeling of self-efficacy, or confidence in their own ability to meet challenges effectively. People can acquire self-efficacy by dealing with difficulties and learning from mistakes. Having good role models and getting constructive feedback and encouragement also help to build self-efficacy.
- Incentives: Incentives reward people for their competence and motivate them to achieve. However, incentives can also decrease people’s intrinsic motivation if people focus on getting incentives rather than doing tasks for their own sake.
- Control: People tend to have more motivation to achieve if they feel they have control over some aspects of their work.
- Opportunity: People are motivated to achieve only when they have the opportunity to achieve.
High Achievers Prefer Moderately Difficult Tasks
People with a high need for achievement tend to prefer moderately difficult tasks. Such tasks allow people to succeed and to see themselves as competent for having succeeded. Very difficult tasks tend to prevent success, and very easy tasks don’t allow people to feel competent when they succeed.
The Power of Goals
Goals are most likely to increase motivation to achieve if they are specific, challenging but achievable, and positive:
- Goals should be specific. The more specific the goals, the more effective they are as motivators.
Example: If Steve is trying to get all his reading done for a final exam, a specific goal, such as I will finish one chapter each week,is more effective than a more diffuse goal, such as I will make sure I’m ready for my final.
- Goals should be challenging but achievable. Goals have to be difficult enough to be challenging but easy enough to be reachable.
Example: If Kelly has been struggling to maintain a C average in a class all semester, a goal such as I will make a B on the final exam will be more motivational than a goal such as I will get an A in this class.
- Goals should be positive. It is better for people to frame goals in terms of what they will do rather than in terms of what they will not do.
Example: A goal such as I will study for an hour every weekday evening is likely to be more effective than a goal such as I will not go out on weekday evenings.
Quick Review
What Is Motivation?
- Motivation is an internal process that makes a person move toward a goal.
- Motivation may be extrinsic, intrinsic, or both.
- Drive reduction theories of motivation suggest that people act in order to reduce needs and maintain a constant physiological state.
- Abraham Maslow proposed that there is a hierarchy of needs and that people pay attention to higher needs only when lower ones are satisfied.
- Needs may be innate or learned. Learned needs are determined by values. Both innate and learned needs are influenced by society and culture.
Hunger
- A genetically influenced set point may allow people to keep their weight constant.
- The lateral hypothalamus and the ventromedial and paraventricular nuclei of the hypothalamus play key roles in regulating hunger.
- The digestive system and hormones such as insulin and leptin also regulate hunger.
- Environmental influences on hunger include availability of foods, preferences, habits, memory, stress, and cultural attitudes.
Sexual Drive
- Alfred Kinsey was one of the first people to give a modern account of human sexuality.
- William Masters and Virginia Johnson described the human sexual response.
- The sexual response cycle has four phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
- Testosterone increases sex drive, and sexual activity increases testosterone.
- Psychological influences on sex drive include internal and external erotic stimuli, desires, and cultural context.
- Researchers have found that there are some gender differences in sexual behavior and partner choice. Both evolutionary and sociocultural explanations can account for these differences.
- Estimates of the prevalence of homosexuality vary, and the causes of homosexuality remain unclear.
- Researchers have suggested that biological factors including hormone levels, genes, prenatal environment, and brain anatomy could influence sexual orientation.
- Psychologists have proposed several theories about how environment might influence homosexuality, but research has failed to support these theories.
Achievement
- Researchers often use the thematic apperception test (TAT) to measure the need for achievement.
- People who have a high achievement motivation tend to be persistent and hardworking. They are able to delay gratification to meet long-term goals, and they tend to choose careers that allow them to compete with others.
- People achieve the most when they have high expectations of success, incentives that reward competence, control over tasks, opportunities to achieve, and effective goals.
- Goals are most effective when they are specific, moderately difficult, and framed in terms of what must be done rather than what must be avoided.
