Human Motivation

Human Motivation examines the methods behind four major human motive systems - achievement, power, affiliation and avoidance.

David C. McClelland (Author)

9780521369510, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 January 1988

676 pages
23.2 x 19.4 x 3.6 cm, 1.145 kg

Human Motivation, originally published in 1987, offers a broad overview of theory and research from the perspective of a distinguished psychologist whose creative empirical studies of human motives span forty years. David McClelland describes methods for measuring motives, the development of motives out of natural incentives and the relationship of motives to emotions, to values and to performance under a variety of conditions. He examines four major motive systems - achievement, power, affiliation and avoidance - reviewing and evaluating research on how these motive systems affect behaviour. Scientific understanding of motives and their interaction, he argues, contributes to understanding of such diverse and important phenomena as the rise and fall of civilisations, the underlying causes of war, the rate of economic development, the nature of leadership, the reasons for authoritarian or democratic governing styles, the determinants of success in management and the factors responsible for health and illness. Students and instructors alike will find this book an exciting and readable presentation of the psychology of human motivation.

Preface
Foreword
Part I. Background: 1. Conscious and unconscious motives
2. Motives in the personality tradition
3. Motivation in the behaviourist tradition
Part II. The Nature of Human Motives: 4. Emotions as indicators of natural incentives
5. Natural incentives and their derivatives
6. Measures of human motive dispositions
Part III. Important Motive Systems: 7. The achievement motive
8. The power motive
9. The affiliative motives
10. The avoidance motives
Part IV. Contextual Effects on Human Motives: 11. Motivational trends in society
12. Cognitive effects on motivation
13. How motives interact with values and skills to determine what people do
14. Motivation training
15. Milestones in the progress toward a scientific understanding of human motivation
Bibliography
Acknowledgements.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Psychiatry [MMH], Physiological & neuro-psychology, biopsychology [JMM], Psychological theory & schools of thought [JMA]