The Importance Of Achievement Motivation

Behavioral scientists have observed that people with a high level of achievement motivation exhibit certain characteristics. Achievement motivation is the tendency to endeavor for success and to choose goal oriented success or failure activities.

Achievement motivation can be considered as the basic for a good life. People who are oriented towards achievement, in general, enjoy life and feel in control. Being motivated keeps people dynamic and gives them self-respect. They set moderately difficult but easily achievable targets, which help them, achieve their objectives. They do not set up extremely difficult or extremely easy targets. By doing this they ensure that they only undertake tasks that can be achieved by them. Achievement motivated

Thornton III, Andreas Frintrup and Rose Mueller-Hanson. It is based on the premise that performance motivation results from the way broad components of personality are directed towards performance. As a result, it includes a range of dimensions that are relevant to success at work but which are not conventionally regarded as being part of performance motivation. Especially it integrates formerly separated approaches as Need for Achievement with e.g. social motives like dominance. The Achievement Motivation Inventory (AMI) (Schuler, Thornton, Frintrup & Mueller-Hanson, 2003) is based on this theory and assesses three factors (17 separated scales) relevant to vocational and professional success.

Achievement Motivation

Achievement motivation is regarded as a central human motivation defined as the need to perform well or the striving for success, and evidenced by persistence and effort in the face of difficulties. Psychologist David McClelland (The Achieving Society, 1961) measured it by analyzing respondents ' narratives; rather more controversially he hypothesized that it was related to economic growth. Lack of achievement motivation was, for a period during the 1950s and 1960s, a fashionable explanation for lack of economic development in the Third World—notably among certain American modernization theorists.

Those who are more highly motivated to achieve are likely to respond well to challenging assignments, strict grading corrective feedback, new or unusual problems and the chance to try again. But, less challenging assignments, simple reinforcement for success, small steps for each task, lenient grading and protections from embarrassment are probably more successful strategies for those students who are very eager to avoid failure.

At this point, the significance of early academic motivation to future academic success should be clear. However, different types of academic motivation have different implications for academic achievement. If a student has high levels of academic motivation, knowing whether that student is extrinsically or intrinsically motivated may be important in making predictions about those students? Academic career. As discussed earlier, individuals who are intrinsically motivated to learn do so for the pleasure of learning, rather than for external rewards (Slavin, 2006).