Term
| Need (internal) definition |
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Definition
| .A need is an internal state that’s less than satisfactory, a lack of something necessary for well-being. Henry Murray (1938), who began this approach to personality, defined a need as an internal directional force that determines how people seek out or respond to objects or situations in the environment. |
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Term
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Definition
Needs work through motives. Motives are a step closer to behavior. David McClelland (1984), an important contributor to this view of personality, said motives are clusters of cognitions with affective overtones, organized around preferred experiences and goals. Motives appear in your thoughts and preoccupations. The thoughts pertain to goals that are either desired or undesired. Thus, they are emotionally toned. Motives eventually produce actions.
e.g. To illustrate the relationship between need and motive, the need for food occurs in the tissues of the body. But the need results in a motive state called hunger. |
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Term
| Press (external) Definition |
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Definition
| Murray (1938) used the term press to refer to such external influences.A press (plural is also press) is an external condition that creates a desire to get (or avoid) something. It thus has a motivational influence, just as an internal need does ( |
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Term
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Definition
| dispositional motives.That is, some people naturally have more of a given motive much of the time than other people do. Such motive dispositions begin to form a picture of the person’s personality. |
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Term
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (Morgan & Murray, 1935; Murray, 1938; Smith, 1992).
Plus the picture story exercise (PSE). |
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Definition
Morgan and Murray (1935) suggested that needs are projected into a person’s fantasy, just as a movie is projected onto a screen. Murray called this process apperception
When your motives are being assessed by TAT, you view a set of pictures and are asked to create a story about each one.The pictures are ambiguous.Your story is supposed to describe what’s happening, the characters’ thoughts and feelings, the relationship among characters (if there’s more than one), and the outcome of the situ- ation.The key assumption is this:Through apperception, the themes in your stories will reflect your implicit motives.
The procedure in its various forms is now often referred to as the picture story exercise (PSE). |
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Term
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Definition
need for achieve- ment. This motive was studied for decades by David McClelland, John Atkinson,etc
Achievement motivation is the desire to do things well, to feel pleasure in overcoming obstacles. |
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Term
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Definition
| studied extensively by David Winter (1973) and others is the need for power. Need for power is the motive to have impact on others, to have prestige, to feel strong compared to others. PSE responses that reflect the need for power have images of forceful, vigorous action—especially action that evokes strong emo- tional responses in others. Responses showing concern about status or position also reflect the need for power. |
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Term
| Stress and power motivations |
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Definition
. Stress seems to follow when the outcome isn’t the one you are motivated for or accustomed to
Oliver Schultheiss and his colleagues have found that the need for power also relates to the sex hormone testosterone. |
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Term
| Is the need for power good or bad? (Winter and Barenbaum (1985)) |
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Definition
Is the power motive a good thing or a bad thing? Winter has suggested that the power motive is manifested in two paths, depending on whether or not the person acquires a sense of responsibility during socialization (Winter, 1988; Winter & Barenbaum, 1985). For those high in the sense of responsibility, the motive yields a conscientious pursuit of prestige, in which power is expressed in socially accepted ways. For those without this sense of responsibility, though, the motive leads to prob- lematic ways of influencing others, including aggressiveness, sexual exploitation, and alcohol and drug use
Winter and Barenbaum (1985) reported considerable support for this reason- ing. In one sample, among men low in responsibility, the need for power related to drinking, fighting, and sexual possessiveness. Among men high in responsibility, the need for power related inversely to all these tendencies. Similarly, Magee and Langner (2008) found that the two forms of the power motive resulted in antisocial and prosocial decisions, respectively. Men with a high need for power without the sense of responsibility also displayed a notable rise in testosterone when imagining and experiencing a power-related success |
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Term
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Definition
| .The need for affiliation is the motive to spend time with others and form friendly social ties.This isn’t a need to dominate others but to be in social relationships, to interact with others (for a review, see Sokolowski, 2008). |
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Term
| Affiliations and relationships |
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Definition
| Links between the affiliation motive and relationship satisfaction are complex (Meyer & Pepper, 1977). Happiness depends partly on the balance of affiliation needs between partners.That is, well-adjusted husbands and wives have affiliation needs that correlate with each other.To put it concretely, if you have a low affiliation need, you’re best off with someone who has a similarly low affiliation need. If your affiliation need is high, you’re best off with someone whose affiliation need is also high. |
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Term
| the need for intimacy (Dan McAdams) |
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Definition
| the need for intimacy. It’s been studied intensively by Dan McAdams (1982, 1985, 1989) and his collaborators. Intimacy motivation is the desire to experience warm, close, and communicative exchanges with another person, to feel close to another person. Intimacy motivation shares with affili- ation motivation a wish to be with others as an end, rather than a means. It goes beyond the need for affiliation, though, in its emphasis on closeness and open sharing with another person. |
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Term
| inhibited power motivation (McClelland, |
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Definition
| One well-known pattern combines a low need for affiliation with a high need for power, in conjunction with the tendency to inhibit the expression of the latter. This pattern is called inhibited power motivation (McClelland, 1979). |
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Term
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Definition
One such concept is incentive: the degree to which a given action can satisfy a need for you. It’s sort of a personalized weighting of how relevant an act is to the need. Incentive values determine how a motive is expressed behaviorally. For example, a person with a high need for affiliation who loves music will go to clubs and concerts with friends.
In McClelland’s view, needs influence behavior primarily at a nonconscious level, whereas values influence the more conscious process of choice. |
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Term
| Implicit Motives (PSE measure) + Explicit Motives (Self-report Tests) |
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Definition
But the self- reports turned out to correlate poorly with PSE assessment
McClelland and his colleagues argued that the two kinds of assessments are, in fact, measuring different things (McClelland et al., 1989).They used the term implicit motive to refer to what the PSE measures (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2010). They called the motives implicit because the person may or may not be aware of them.
- They used the term self-attributed motive to refer to what’s measured by self-reports (also now termed explicit motive).
Implicit motives are what we have been calling motives. Self-attributed motives are closer to what was described in the preceding section as incentives.
They found evidence that the implicit achievement motive acts primarily as an energizer, boosting effort when the person falls behind.The self-attributed achievement motive, in con- trast, acts primarily as an influence on decision making, influencing how people seek information about their skills compared to other people (for example, by choosing to continue a task or not).
self-attributed motives predict recall of general memories related to the self-concept, whereas implicit motives predict recall of specific events |
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Term
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Definition
Just as Atkinson (1957) tied the need for achievement to the capacity to feel pride in success, the need to avoid failure relates to a tendency to feel shame after failure (McGregor & Elliot, 2005)
A lot of it derived from Atkinson’s (1957) theory of achievement behavior. That theory makes its clearest predictions for people whose only motivation is to approach success and people whose only motivation is to avoid failure
People who focus their effort on trying to avoid failure report less emotional well-being and less satisfaction with their performance than people who are trying to approach success. |
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Term
| Interaction between traits and motives |
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Definition
| There’s also evidence that implicit and explicit motives relate poorly to the five-factor model (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2001). Winter et al. (1998) proposed an integration but of a different sort: They pro- posed that motives are fundamental desires and that traits channel how those desires are expressed. |
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Term
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Definition
| Murray’s concerns led him to coin the term personology to refer to the approach he preferred. He defined personology as the study of individual lives and the factors that influence their course. He believed that personology was more meaningful than other approaches because of its emphasis on the person’s life history.According to Murray (1938),“the history of a personality is the personality” (p. 604) |
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Term
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Definition
| Research has also investigated patterns of motives, such as inhibited power motive. This pattern is defined by having more of a need for power than a need for affiliation and by restraining the power need. People with this pattern do well in managerial careers, but the pattern has also been linked to political stances that preceded wars. |
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Term
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Definition
| He coined the term personology to refer to the study of the whole person, and personology was his goal.T |
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Term
| PSE (apperceive) (Murray) |
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Definition
| The contribution to assessment that’s most identified with the motive approach is the PSE. It’s based on the idea that people’s motives are reflected in the imagery they “apperceive”—that is, read into ambiguous stimuli, such as a set of pictures depicting people in ambiguous situations. |
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Term
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Definition
- Apperception The projecting of a motive onto an ambiguous external stimulus via imagery.
- Diagnosticity The extent to which a task provides information about something.
- Implicit motive A motive assessed indirectly because it’s relatively inaccessible to consciousness.
- Incentive The degree to which an action can satisfy a particular need for a person.
- Inhibited power motivation The condition of having more need for power than for affiliation but restraining its use.
- Motive Cognitive–affective clusters organized around readiness for a particular kind of experience.
- Motive disposition The dispositional tendency toward a high or low level of some motive.
- Need An unsatisfactory internal condition that moti- vates behavior.
- Need for achievement The need to overcome obstacles and attain goals |
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Term
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Definition
- Need for affiliation The need to form and maintain relationships and to be with people.
- Need for intimacy The need for close communication and sharing with someone else.
- Need for power The need to have influence over other people.
- Personology Study of the entire person.
- Picture story exercise (PSE) Any one of a family of tests that uses stories written about pictures to assess motive strength through narrative fantasy.
- Press An external stimulus that increases the level of a motive.
- Self-attributed motive A motive that’s consciously reported.
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) A particular method of assessing the strength of a motive through narrative fantasy. |
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Term
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Definition
Needs are directive: They help determine which of many possible actions occurs at a given time. They are directive in two senses.
- First, when you have a need, it concerns something in particular.When you need water, you don’t just need; you need water. Needs thus pertain to classes of goal objects or events.
- Needs are also directive in that they create movement either toward the object or away from it. A need aims to get something or to avoid something.Thirst reflects a water-related need, but it’s more than just water related. Fear of going swimming also reflects a water-related need. Thirst reflects a need to get water. Moving toward versus moving away is part of the directionality of all needs. |
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Term
| Need + Press --> Motive --> Behaviour |
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Definition
| Internal need states and external press can both influence motives to engage in particular kinds of action, which in turn become realized in overt behavior. |
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Term
| Needs (for food) vs Motives (hunger which is subjective) |
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Definition
| To illustrate the relationship between need and motive, the need for food occurs in the tissues of the body. But the need results in a motive state called hunger. Unlike the need for food, hunger is experienced directly. It creates mental preoccupation and leads to behavior that will reduce the hunger (and the need for food). Thus, we distinguish needs from motives partly by the existence of a subjective experience.A need is a physical condition you don’t sense directly. It creates a motivational state that you do experience. |
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Term
Press vs. Needs and Motives
(satisfied by a packed lunch then you get hungry again by your friends hot pizza) |
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Definition
| Imagine your need for food creates a hunger motive.You respond by eating lunch.Your simple sandwich, dry and crumbly, satisfies the need for food. But just as you finish, someone walks in with an extra-large pizza (or whatever you find irresistible). Suddenly you aren’t as satisfied as you were a moment before.The motive to eat has been rekindled—not by a need but by a press |
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Term
Motive States and Motive Dispositions.
(TAT (Thematic Apperception Test) to measure motive dispositions) |
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Definition
| He and his colleagues generated a list of needs that they believed underlie personality.Murray believed that all people have the same basic needs, but that everyone has a dispositional tendency toward some particular level of each need. |
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Term
Need for Achievement
(people high in achievement motivation prefer tasks of middle difficulty) |
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Definition
| Why do people high in achievement motivation prefer tasks of middle difficulty? Maybe it’s because these tasks give the most information about ability (Trope, 1975, 1979). If you do well at an easy task, you don’t learn much about your ability, because everyone does well. If you fail at a hard task, you don’t learn much about your ability, because almost no one does well. In the middle, though, you can find out a lot. Perhaps people high in achievement motivation want to find out about their abilities. |
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Term
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Definition
People high in the need for power are concerned about controlling the images they present to others (McAdams, 1984).They want to enhance their reputations.They want others to view them as authoritative and influential. Not surprisingly, they tend to be somewhat narcissistic, absorbed in their importance (Carroll, 1987).They also are more sexually active than persons lower in this motive
For example, U.S. presidents high in the power motive were more effective than those who were lower |
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Term
Stress (Cortisol) and the need for power
(High cortisol/i.e. high stress --> After success strangely for those with Low power motivation as they are not accustomed to success) |
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Definition
| Interestingly, people with a low need for power have an increase in cortisol after a success! Apparently, what constitutes a stressor differs between these two sorts of people (see Figure 5). Both success and failure can be stressful but they’re stressful for different people. Stress seems to follow when the outcome isn’t the one you are motivated for or accustomed to. |
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Term
| Implicit Motives (Motives) vs. Self-attributed motives (incentives) |
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Definition
| An increasing body of evidence indicates that implicit motives and self-attributed motives are different. Implicit motives are what we have been calling motives. Self-attributed motives are closer to what was described in the preceding section as incentives. |
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Term
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Definition
| The motive approach to personality assumes that behavior reflects a set of underly- ing needs. As a need becomes more intense, it’s more likely to influence behavior. Behavior is also affected by press: external stimuli that elicit motivational tendencies. Needs (and press) vary in strength from moment to moment, but people also differ in patterns of chronic need strength. According to this viewpoint, this difference is the source of individual differences in personality. |
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Term
| Summary - The Need for Achievement |
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Definition
| the need for achievement: the motive to overcome obstacles and to attain goals. People with high levels of the achievement motive behave differently from those with lower levels in several ways: the kinds of tasks they prefer, the level of task difficulty they prefer, their persistence, and their performance levels. Early research on achievement tended to disregard how approach and avoidance motives might separately influence behavior. More recent work has begun to examine those distinct influences. |
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Term
| Summary - The Need for Power |
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Definition
| The need for power—the motive to be strong, compared to other people—has also been studied extensively. People who score high in this need tend to seek out positions of influence, to surround themselves with the trappings of power, and to become energized when the groups they’re guiding have difficulties. People with high levels of the power motive tend to choose as friends people who aren’t influen- tial or popular, thereby protecting themselves from undesired competition.The power motive can lead to unpleasant forms of social influence, unless it’s tempered by a sense of responsibility. |
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Term
Summary - The Need for Affiliation +
The Need for Intimacy (not in Murrays list) |
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Definition
The need for affiliation is the desire to spend time with other people—to develop and maintain relationships. People who score high in this need are responsive to social influence, spend a large proportion of their time communicating with other people, and when alone, often think about being with others.
- A related motive that isn’t represented in Murray’s list but has received attention in recent years is the need for intimacy. People high in this need want warm, close, and communicative relation- ships with others. People with strong intimacy needs tend to spend more time in one-to-one interaction and less time in groups.They tend to engage in interactions that involve a lot of self-disclosure and are concerned about their friends’ well-being. |
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Term
| Summary - Inhibited power motive (need for power more than a need for affiliation) |
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Definition
| inhibited power motive. This pattern is defined by having more of a need for power than a need for affiliation and by restraining the power need. People with this pattern do well in managerial careers, but the pattern has also been linked to political stances that preceded wars. |
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Term
| Summary - Motives vs. Incentives |
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Definition
Incentive value—the extent to which a given action will satisfy a given need for a person—helps to explain why people with the same motive express it in different ways.
What’s assessed by the PSE has come to be called implicit motives, and what’s assessed by self-report has come to be called self-attributed or explicit motives. Implicit motives are thought to function mostly unconsciously, and self-attributed motives are thought to function mostly consciously. |
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