ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the psychological approaches which stress the effect of variations in ability and achievement motivation. Intelligence, as measured by various pen-and-paper intelligence-quotient examinations, has relevance for social mobility because educational achievement is the main source of occupational achievement in a bureaucratized industrial society. Capacity consists of motivation or drive as much as it consists of intelligence. In a middle-class society the "bohemian" is, among other things, a person who has the intelligence but lacks the motivation to achieve. Outside the realm of sexual behavior and marriage the idea of deferred gratification has been applied most directly to achievement motivation in a study by Leonard Reissman. The process of social mobility requires, beyond the motivation to achieve, the capacity to leave behind an early environment and to adapt to a new one. Efforts have been made to develop personality tests that would locate achievement motivation as a specific personality attribute.
