In 1938 Henry Murray defined achievement motivation as the need for success, for doing better than others and mastering challenging tasks. We all have achievement motivation, as we all want to succeed at something, whether it is to be the best athlete in the world or to be a good mother. The individual assesses the importance of a goal, and therefore the motivation to achieve the goal.

However, in general, some people have a greater need to achieve than others. We’ll now do a little class survey to see how great your need to achieve is. So if we have a ring toss game and each of you will have to try and throw 5 rings onto the stand and there is no prize for getting them on. But you have 3 options, so think which one you would choose. You can either stand 1 metre, 3 metres or 10 metres in front of the game to throw your rings? Who would stand 1 metre? 3 metres? 10 metres? Well, those who said 3 metres have the greatest need to achieve bec

Whether we have a high need to achieve or not, we all experience two main types of motivation to achieve; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual because they enjoy or gain satisfaction from engaging in an activity. An example of intrinsic motivation is going for a run because it makes you feel good. Spence and Helmreich identified 3 facets of intrinsic motivation, these are the want for mastery at a particular task, their drive to work and competitiveness. Despite similar ability levels people motivated by mastery and the drive to work achieve more than those motivated by competitiveness, as competitiveness is more motivated by being better than others rather than the want for personal competence and growth. Intrinsic motivation leads to high achievement and motivates much creative work.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the individual to encourage the person to engage in an activity through the promise of reward or for avoidance of punishment. An example of extrinsic motivation is going to work because you’re going to get paid. Extrinsic motivation is not necessarily successful in causing achievement, it depends on how much the motivation means to the person. For example if someone promised you a handful of manure for getting a distinction in psychology I don’t think that would motivate you to try harder. However, if you were promised $500 for getting a distinction, I think this would motivate you, as money is something commonly valued by students. However, extrinsic motivation can have the power to undermine intrinsic motivation. People who are paid or rewarded for doing a task they had p

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