Biological needs are compelling; they spur you into action. Other needs are compelling, too. Psychologists have long recognized that a wide variety of needs contribute to human motivation (Murray, 1938). Among these is the need for achievement.

Have you ever put in extra practice to win a competition? Or “pulled an all-nighter” working on a school assignment because you wanted an A? If so, motivational psychologists would say you were displaying a need for achievement: a desire to succeed on challenging activities that require skilled, competent performance (Elliot & Sheldon, 1997; McClelland, 1985).

The human need for achievement is evident early in life. Consider young children. In principle, they could sit around passively, just staring into space. But in reality, they are active: knocking over cups, stacking blocks, and looking proud or frustrated as their efforts succeed or fail. Their need to develop skills and mastery over the environment—to achieve—drives them on (White, 1959). Later in life, this need powers the persistent efforts that so often are necessary for success.

The strength of the need for achievement varies from one person to the next. Some people are highly motivated to achieve, whereas others do not give achievement much thought. Researchers measure these individual differences indirectly (McClelland, 1985). In other words, rather than directly asking how motivated you are to achieve, they use tasks that subtly reveal people’s personal motives.

In one commonly used indirect measure, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), people tell stories in response to ambiguous pictures (Figure 11.2). The pictures activate achievement needs in some people but not others, and story content reveals these individual differences. For instance, a TAT story filled with characters who strive for success would indicate that the storyteller has a high level of the achievement need. TAT measures of achievement motivation predict motivated behavior and professional success (McClelland, 1987); two meta-analyses confirm the positive correlation between TAT measures of motivation and performance outcomes, including professional career success (Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004; Spangler, 1992). Indirect measures of the need for achievement such as the TAT often reveal individual differences in motivation that are not detected when researchers simply ask people how motivated they are (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989).

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The need to achieve is not the only motivational force that influences people’s performance. The need to avoid failure is a desire to avoid situations in which you might fail due to a lack of competence. The two needs—to achieve success and to avoid failure—combine to influence behavior. Classic research shows how this works.

In this study (Atkinson & Litwin, 1960), researchers measured both needs in a population of college students (Figure 11.3). Two groups of students—(1) people high in the need to achieve and low in the need to avoid failure, and (2) people low in the need to achieve and high in the need to avoid failure—were asked to play a game in which they tried to toss a 10-inch-diameter ring over a wooden peg. They could decide where to stand when throwing the ring: very close, where there was little chance of missing; very far, where there was little chance of getting the ring over the peg; or at a middle distance (8 to 10 feet from the peg), where there was about a 50-50 chance of getting the ring over the peg.

Although the game and the instructions were the same for everyone, people approached the task differently. Those high in need for achievement and low in need to avoid failure looked for a challenge: They made most of their throws from the middle distance, where a particularly skillful toss could succeed. The other group—people low in need for achievement and high in the need to avoid failure—avoided challenge: They made most throws from either very close to the peg (where they couldn’t miss) or very far away (where no one could be expected to succeed; a lack of success, from that distance, thus would not be seen as a personal failure).

The point of the study is not, of course, that achievement motives influence choices on games. People often choose among varying amounts of risk, such as when choosing a profession to pursue or deciding how to invest money. Achievement needs may affect behavior on a wide variety of activities in which success requires taking chances and exercising your highest level of skill (McClelland, 1985).