David McClelland

For the English soccer player, see David McClelland (footballer). For the Northern Irish unionist, see David McClelland (politician). For the Physicist, see David McClelland (physicist).

David McClelland.

David Clarence McClelland (May 20, 1917 – March 27, 1998) was an American psychologist, noted for his work on motivation Need Theory. He published a number of works during the 1950s and the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and its descendants. McClelland is credited with developing Achievement Motivation Theory, commonly referred to as "need for achievement" or n-achievement theory. A Review of General Psychology survey published in 2002, ranked McClelland as the 15th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Life and career

McClelland, born in Mt. Vernon, New York, was awarded a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in 1938, an MA from the University of Missouri in 1939, and a PhD in experimental psychology from Yale University in 1941. He taught at Connecticut College and Wesleyan University before joining the faculty at Harvard University in 1956, where he worked for 30 years, serving as chairman of the Department of Psychology and Social Relations. In 1987, he moved to Boston University, where he was awarded the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

The major themes of David McClelland’s work were on personality and the application of that knowledge to helping people make their lives better. One theme was the development of the expectancy-value theory of human motivation. A second theme was the development of tests and operant methods, such as the Thematic Apperception Test, Behavioral Event Interview, and the Test of Thematic Analysis. A third theme was the development of job-competency studies, and a fourth theme was the application of this research to helping people and their social systems, whether that was through motivation and competency development, organization and community development, and changing behavior to battle stress and addiction. David McClelland believed in applying the results from the research and testing to see if they helped people. He was instrumental in starting 14 research and consulting companies, the largest was McBer and Company (1965-1989), which later was sold to Yankelovich, Skelly & White in 1983 and even later to Saatchi and Saatchi (1985). The Hay Group, also purchased by Saatchi and Saatchi, and McBer bought themselves back from S&S in 1989 and operated as the worldwide consultancy called The Hay Group until they were acquired by Korn Ferry in 2016.

Expectancy Value Theory of Motivation

McClelland claimed that motivation is “a recurrent concern for a goal state or condition as measured in fantasy, which drives, directs and selects the behavior of the individual” (McClelland, 1985). Based on the work of Henry Murray, McClelland focused on three particular motives: the Need for Achievement (nAch); the Need for Affiliation (nAff); and the Need for Power (nPow). nAch is the desire to excel in relation to a set of standards; it is the drive to succeed. nPow is the desire to be influential and to have an impact on an organization. nAff is the desire for close personal relationships.

“According to his theory, most people possess and portray a mixture of these needs: those with a high need for achievement have an attraction to situations offering personal accountability; individuals with a dominating need for authority and power have a desire to influence and to increase personal status and prestige; and finally, those with a great need for affiliation value building strong relationships and belonging to groups or organizations.”

The work in the 1940s through the late 1960s focused on the Achievement Motive and its impact on development of economies and entrepreneurship (McClelland and Winter, 1969; Miron and McClelland, 1979). McClelland shifted his work in the 1960s to focus on the power motive, first addressing issues of addiction and alcoholism (McClelland, Davis, Kalin and Wanner, 1972), then leadership effectiveness (McClelland and Boyatzis, 1982; McClelland and Burnham, 1976), and later, community development (McClelland, Rhinesmith and Kristensen, 1975). The work on leadership and management helped to create a behavioral level of a person’s capability, which McClelland called “competencies" (McClelland, 1973; McClelland, 1998; Boyatzis, 1982; Spencer and Spencer, 1993; Goleman, 1998). This work was foundational in helping to create the competency movement in human resources. McClelland also demonstrated how important competencies relate to knowledge and personality traits in the context of academic achievement (Winter, McClelland and Stewart, 1981).

McClelland also examined cultural and country-wide effects of motives and related them to large scale trends in society, such as economic development, job creation, the provocation of wars and health.

In Search of Operant Tests and Measures

David McClelland argued that operant methods (i.e., tests where a person must generate thoughts or actions) were more valid predictors of behavioral outcomes, job performance, life satisfaction and other similar outcomes compared to self-assessments. This view was in contrast with more traditional psychologists who insisted on using self-assessment, respondent measures and avoiding operant measures because of reliability issues. McClelland claimed that his goal was to instill a value in research of extracting people’s actual thought (i.e., conscious and unconscious) along with their behavior. He was repeatedly publishing research and encouraging his doctoral students and colleagues to evidence that operant methods,compared to respondent methods, demonstrate the following: (a) more criterion validity; (b) increased insightfulness despite reduced test-retest reliability; (c) greater sensitivity in discriminating mood; (d) more unique variance and less multicollinearity; (e) greater cross-cultural validity; and (f) increased utility in applications to human or organizational development (McClelland, 1985).

Job Competencies

McClelland et al. (1958) conceptualized a broad array of capabilities. Reviving his earlier personality theory (McClelland, 1951), McClelland and colleagues at McBer and Company intensified competency research in management and leadership in the early 1970s (i.e., skills, self-image, traits, and motives, see Boyatzis, 1982; Spencer and Spencer, 1993; Goleman, 1998). The definition of a job competency required that the person’s intent be understood, not merely that their behavior be observed. McClelland used operant methods like audiotaped Critical Incident Interviews, which he called "Behavioral event Interviews," and videotaped simulations with inductive research designs to compare effective performers to less ineffective performers. This approach focused on the person, rather than on the task/job.

This research developed a picture of how superior performers thinks, feel, and act in their work settings. Over the coming decades, it became the norm for training design, selection and promotion practices, career development, and higher education.

Helping People Change

David McClelland believed that if you know how an outstanding performer thinks and acts, you can teach others how to think and act to produce higher performance. His early projects addressed entrepreneurial development and training in achievement thinking and behavior for small business owners in India, Tunisia, Iran, Poland, Malawi, and the United States.

“Understanding human motivation ought to be a good thing. It should help us to find out what we really want so that we can avoid chasing rainbows that are not for us. It should open up opportunities for self-development if we apply motivational principles to pursuing our goals in life”.

Publications

McClelland published a number of works during his career.

Books

• McClelland, D.C., Atkinson, J.W., Clark, R.A., and Lowell, E.L. (1953). The Achievement Motive. NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• McClelland, D.C., Baldwin, A.L., Bronfenbrenner, and Strodbeck, F.L. (1958). Talent and Society. NY: Van Nostrand.
• McClelland, D.C. (1951). Personality. NY: William Sloane Associates.
• McClelland, D.C. (1984). Motives, Personality, and Society: Selected Papers. NY: Praeger.
• McClelland, D.C. and Winter, D.G. (1969). Motivating Economic Achievement. NY: Free Press.
• McClelland, D.C., Davis, W.N., Kalin, R., and Wanner, E. (1972). The Drinking Man: Alcohol and Human Motivation. NY: Free Press.
• Winter, D.G., McClelland, D.G., and Stewart, A.J. (1981). A New Case for the Liberal Arts: Assessing Institutional Goals and Student Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Smith, C.P., with Atkinson, J.W., McClelland, D.C., and Veroff, J. (eds.) (1992). Motivation and Personality: Handbook of Thematic Content Analysis. NY: Cambridge University Press.
• The Achievement Motive (1953).
• The Achieving Society (1961).
• The Roots of Consciousness (1964).
• Power: The Inner Experience (1975).
• Human Motivation (1985).

Journal publications

• McClelland, David C (1978). "Managing motivation to expand human freedom". American Psychologist. 33 (3): 201–210. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.33.3.201.
• McClelland, D.C. (1965). "Toward a theory of motive acquisition". American Psychologist. 20: 321–333. doi:10.1037/h0022225.
• McClelland, D.C. (1973). "Testing for competence rather than intelligence". American Psychologist. 28: 1–14. doi:10.1037/h0034092.
• McClelland, D.C. (1979). "Inhibited power motivation and high blood pressure in men". Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 88: 182–190. doi:10.1037/0021-843x.88.2.182.
• McClelland, D.C. (1998). "Identifying competencies with behavioral event interviews". Psychological Science. 9 (5): 331–339. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00065.
• McClelland, D.C.; Rhinesmith, S.; Kristensen, R. (1975). "The effects of power training on community action agencies". Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences. 11: 92–115. doi:10.1177/002188637501100108.
• McClelland, D.C.; Burnham, D.H. (1976). "Power is the great motivator". Harvard Business Review. 54: 100–111.
• McClelland, D.C.; Boyatzis, R.E. (1982). "The leadership motive pattern and long-term success in management". Journal of Applied Psychology. 67 (6): 737–743. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.67.6.737.
• Miron, D.; McClelland, D.C. (1979). "The impact of Achievement Motivation Training on small business". California Management Review. 21 (4): 13–28. doi:10.2307/41164830.
• Winter, D.G.; McClelland, D.C. (1978). "Thematic analysis An empirically derived measure of the effects of liberal arts education". Journal of Educational Psychology. 70: 8–16. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.70.1.8.

See also

• Need theory
• Need for achievement
• Need for affiliation
• Need for power

Further reading

• Boyatzis, R.E. (1982). The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance. NY: John Wiley & Sons.
• Boyatzis, R.E. (1998). Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Goleman, D. (1998). Working with Emotional Intelligence. Bantam: NY.
• Miller, W.B. (1981). "Motivation techniques: Does one work best?" Management Review.
• Spencer, L.M., Jr. and Spencer, S. (1993). Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. NY: John Wiley & Sons.