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ON RECOGNITION OF NEED-RELATED
WORDS'
DAVID c. MCCLELLAND AND ALVIN M. LIBERMAN
Wesleyan Umversity
ERRATA
point was sigmficantly less for those subjects who scored high on
the TAT measure of n Achievement It was as if the subjects who
have high TAT n Achievement mamtain their motivation and their
level of performance even m the apparently most boring or least
stimulating part of an assigned task
In any event, we have now two correlated measures of n Achieve-
ment, one based on the TAT, the other based on performance in
the fifth and sixth minutes of a 12-minute anagrams test Further-
more, Qark and McClelland (2) report that these two measures
largely define one factor in a factor analysis of achievement-related
measures; that is, they are not only correlated with each other, but
covary in their relation to other measures
The purpose of the present experiment was simply to determine
the relationship, if any, between these two measures of n Achieve-
ment, on the one hand, and the ease or readiness with which need-
related words are recognized, on the other That there may be such
a relationship is suggested by the work of Postman, Bruner, and
McGinnies (5), who have shown that the time requu-ed for recog-
nition of tachistoscopically presented words is determined m part
by the connotation of the words as they relate to the individual needs
or values of the subject By determining the relation, in this case,
between n Achievement and recognition of need-related words, it
may be possible to enlarge the meaning of the n Achievement meas-
ure, and also to throw light more generally on the way in which a
need or motive influences readiness to recognize or perceive those
parts of the environment which are relevant to the need in question
PROCEDURE
The procedure involved, first, secunng measures of n Achieve-
ment on the TAT and anagrams tests as descnbed elsewhere (2, 4)
for each of 36 Wesleyan tindergradtiates About three months after
these tests had been given, each of the same 36 subjects was put
through a procedure designed primarily to determine the ease with
which the subject would recogmze achievement-related words In
general the procedure was similar to that used by Postman, Bruner,
and McGinnies (5) Specifically, it was as follows
Two judges selected a total of 30 words for use in this experi-
ment Ten of the words were intended to be neutral with regard to
238 DAVID C MCCLELLAND AND ALVIN M LIBERMAN
C Goal words
11 mastery 12 support
14 perfect 9 friend
17 success 21 comfort
26 famous 24 secunty
NOTE The practice words were presented first The numbers indicate the order of presentation.
There wai a three minute rest halfway through after belong
are not all equated for familiarity in terms of the Thorndike Word
Count (6), but subsequent study indicated that for the groups of
words used m the final analysis, the average familiarity ranking was
sufficiently close to make any interpretation of the results in terms
of such differences highly unlikely
Each of the words was typed in capitals on standard transparent
slides for use m an ordinary shde projector, the projector being
equipped with a shutter so that the words could be flashed on a
screen for 01 sec A fixation area was provided on the screen m
the form of a rectangle, about 15 inches by 8 inches, and all images
of the words appeared on the screen within this area The subject
sat normal to the screen and at a distance of about 15 feet from it
All subjects were run off individually The instructions given were
as follows:
RECOGNITION OF NEED-RELATED WORDS 239
This IS a test of perceptual acuity, designed to determine how readily
you can recc^nize words which are exposed for very brief penods of time
There will be a number of words to be identified Each word will be pre-
sented over and over until you have correctly identified it, then we will go
on to the next word
Specifically, the procedure will be as follows When I say "ready" you
are to fixate this rectangle on the screen [point out] About one second
after I say "ready" a word will be exposed very briefly in that rectangular
square If you have no idea what the word is, say "No " If on the other
hand you recognize or think you recognize the word, or any of its letters,
tell me what they are Please make your response quickly In no case will
you be allowed more than five seconds to make your response One second
before the next exposure I will say "ready," the word will be exposed, and
you will again try to identify it We will continue with this procedure until
you have correctly identified the word Then we will pass on to the next
word
Remember
Be sure to fixate the rectangular area when I say "ready " If you don't,
you won't see the word
Don't hesitate to guess about the words or any of the letters if vou think
you know what they are
RESULTS
Difference + 18 + OS + 28 + IS
odiff 13 18 13 13
Cntical ratio 1.38 28 2 IS ' 1 IS
P < OS
*Oiie subject omitted whose recognition time for one or me ' vt 'ds exceeded ttx tuindard icore units.
adopted * As Table II shows, the subjects who were high and low
on the two measures of achievement reacted quite differently to these
two types of words In general the high n Achievement group, by
either measure, recognized the + words more quickly than the low n
Achievement group, but the same relationship did not hold for the
words
Attempts were made to refine the relationship between the two
measures of n Achievement and recognition time by further break-
downs of the distribution into thirds and fourths, but the results,
while suggestive, proved statistically unreliable in every case There-
fore on the grotinds that the two measures show the same relation-
ships in Table II and on the basis of previous work by Clark and
McClelland (2), it was decided to combine the two measures mto a
single one which would represent a probably more reliable estimate
of a given subject's level of n Achievement Several different meth-
ods of combination were tried, all of which seemed to yield sub-
stantially the same results The one finally adopted was simply to
rank the scores on each measure of n Achievement, average the ranks
for a given subject, and then rerank the combined ranks The re-
sulting combined rank distribution was then broken into thirds to
plot more precisely the relationship between increasing n Achieve-
ment and recognition of + and need-related words The results
are summarized in Table III and Figure 1.
Considering first the achievement + words, we note that there
IS no increase in sensitivity from the low to the middle n Achieve-
ment group, but that there is a large significant increase in sensitivity
from the medium to the high group In nonlinear relations of this
sort. It has seemed most conservative to compute the t-values of the
differences between the mean of each group and the other two means
A correlational analysis was attempted to discover whether the words whidi
on a pnon grounds were supposed to belong to a given group actually did covary
empincally It was found that the recognition times for the depnvation or
words (unable, obstacle, failure) had an average lntercorrelation of -f- 46 as com-
pared with one of -f 33 with the other seven achievement-related words l h e
four goal words (success, famous, perfect, mastery) likewise had a higher cor-
relation on the average with each other ( + 50) than they did with the other six
words (-1-34), but the instrumental words apparently did not form a discrete
group smce they correlated the same on the average with each other as they did
with other words in the list Nevertheless, it was deaded to throw them m with
the goal words m two grounds (1) they correlated shghtly higher on the average
with these words than they did with the deprivation words, and (2) they were
all three recogniied more quickly by the high TAT n Achievement group, which
was also characteristic of all four goal words but not of the depnvation words
242 DAVID C MCCLELLAND AND ALVIN M LIBERMAN
TABLE III
MEAN RECOGNITION TIMES I N STANDARD SCORES FOR ACHIEVEMENT- AND
SECURITY-RELATED WORDS FOR THE UPPER, MIDDLE, AND LOWER THIRDS
OF THE N ACHIEVEMENT DISTRIBUTION AS OBTAINED BY COMBINING
RANKS ON THE T A T AND ANAGRAMS MEASURES OF N ACHIEVEMENT
Security
' + words
AchlevoDBiit
- words
'One (abject omitted whoae recognitioii time for one or more of the word* exceeded tii ttandard Kore
omtt
**Near or beyond the 5 per cent level of tigmfiaince
\
\
AchieTsmeat
words
\
Security
words
Neutral
words
takes most vigilant account of 'reality' " (1, p. 76) However, their
expenments have not led to any definite conclusion as to when one
proress rather than the other occurs In fact, m one experiment they
conclude "we now find sensitization in the presence of 'dangerous'
stimulus objects" (1, p 75), and in another experiment "value
orientation leads to perceptual defense against inimical stimuh"
(5, p 154) The value of the present study is that it helps define
more precisely what the conditions are which lead to defense or
sensitization in the recognition process It shows, in fact, how both
of the conclusions about dangerous stimuli quoted above could be
correct, depending on what level of motive intensity was involved.
It therefore seems reasonable to conclude on the basis of the in-
ternal evidence from this expenment and a companson with the
results of other experiments that increasing n Achievement operates
first to motivate the subjects to avoid failure (to onent them around
a minimum level of aspiration) and then to concentrate on success
(to fix their attention on a maximum level of aspiration).
SUMMARY
Thirty-six male undergraduates, on whom an apperceptive and
a performance measure of n Achievement were available, were asked
to try to recognize 30 tachistoscopically presented words They were
given successive 01 second exposures of the words at increasing
illuminations until they were able to identify them correctly Ten
of the words were neutral, 10 security-related, and 10 achievement-
related The number of exposures taken to see the need-related
words was converted into a standard score in terms of the distribu-
tion of recognition times for the neutral words for each subject The
subjects' incorrect guesses or presolution hypotheses were also re-
corded and analyzed The major findings were
(1) The subjects with high n Achievement, as determined
either by the apperceptive or the performance measure, recognized
the achievement-related words with positive (success) connotations
( + words) more quickly than did the subjects with low n Achieve-
ment There were no differences for the achievement-related words
connotating failure or difficulty ( words)
(2) When the imaginative and performance measures of achieve-
ment were combined to give a more reliable estimate of each subject's
RECOGNITION OF NEED-RELATED WORDS 251