ABSTRACT
Purports to explain MOTIVATION orientations in terms of how individuals define their goals.
Striving for success is often seen as a manifestation of an achievement motive (or MOTIVATION), something that induces a person to direct his or her behavior toward the attainment of certain goals. Motive is from motus, Latin for move. The whole field of sport is guided by an achievement ethos, or climate: Victory is sought-after, and defeat is to be avoided in every endeavor. Competitors are energized by an achievement motive in the sense that they personally seek success rather than failure and are prepared to defeat others in their pursuit of that GOAL. Exercisers too are typically motivated to attain specific results. The influential research of John W. Atkinson-especially with D.
C. McClelland, J. W. Atkinson, R. A. Clark and E. C. Lowell, in The Achievement Motive, published in 1953-shed light on the composition of the achievement motive. It was the combination of two dispositional personality constructs: the motive to approach success and the motive to avoid failure. According to Atkinson, all humans have both; it is the way in which they combine that affects whether one person will be achievement-motivated. Atkinson’s research involved testing subjects for both the motives to succeed and to avoid failure. For example, would they look for challenges, show persistence, remain unafraid to lose and blame themselves when making the attribution for success or failure? Or would they try to avoid failure, dodge challenges, preferring to compete against easy opponents, dislike being evaluated by others and attribute their performance to external factors, such as luck or hard opponents? Those who scored big on the first scale were said to have an achievement motive. Situations also factor into Atkinson’s model, which rates prob-
ability of success from 0 (no chance) to 1 (certainty) and builds in an incentive value (the lower the chance of success, the greater the
incentive). An achievement-motivated football kicker faced with a 50-yard field goal chance to win a game and no time left on the clock would relish the opportunity. A kicker without a strong motive would prefer either an easier, more certain task, such as a 25-yard attempt, or an impossibly tough kick from outside field goal rangeto avoid being blamed for the failure. So, the type of situation determines whether the behavioral tendencies of the achievementmotivated player will come to the fore. As many situations in sport have a midrange chance of success without a very high incentive value, the high achievement-motivated athlete is not always an asset; many situations demand a more conservative performer-a ‘‘safe pair of hands.’’ M. L. Maehr and J. G. Nicholls rejected many of Atkinson’s
assumptions about the invariance and objectivity of success and failure. Instead, they proposed that they are much more subjective, based on the perception of reaching or not reaching goals. There is, according to Maehr and Nicholls, ‘‘cultural variation in the personal qualities that are seen to be desirable.’’ In other words: Success and failure will be viewed differently in different cultures. While they do not examine the relationship between the achievement ethic and the achievement motive, Maehr and Nicholls acknowledge that it is necessary to understand the meanings of achievement rather than assume there is a single definition that holds good for all. Their interest was in exploring how, for example, winning may be only criterion of achievement for some, while pleasing a coach by performing well may constitute achievement for others. Different goals give rise to different perceptions of success and failure. But, significantly, all individuals use goals of some kind to evaluate their achievements. Achievement goals can be grouped into three kinds, according to
Maehr and Nicholls: (1) to demonstrate ability; (2) to be taskinvolved (mastering a competence rather than assessing oneself against others); and (3) to seek social approval. The same competitor may have a different goal for each different sport, or at different times in his or her life, or even have several goals at once. While much research has focused on achievement motives in sport,
their relevance in exercise has been revealed in a number of studies in recent years, for instance Robert LaChausse’s study of cycling offering an exploration of how cyclists who rode for fun differed markedly in their motives from competitive cyclists: ‘‘Non-competitive cyclists were more likely to endorse weight concerns and affiliation as motives. Road cyclists were more likely to endorse goal achievement and COMPETITION, while mountain bikers endorsed life meaning as a motivation for cycling.’’
