Atkinson’s Theory of Achievement Motivation: First Step Toward a Theory of Academic Motivation?

Are achievement motivation and thinking styles related? A visit among Chinese university students

“…Based on Atkinson's (1964) achievement motivation theory, tendencies to approach success and to avoid failure are two conventional motive dispositions (Maehr & Sjogren, 1971). Since the late 1970s, achievement goal theory had been developed and "goal" had been identified as a central variable in recent studies on achievement motivation (Attenweiler & Moore, 2006;Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996).…”

“…According to Atkinson (1964), tendency to approach success is manifested by engaging in achievement-oriented activities while tendency to avoid failure is manifested by escaping from the situations (Maehr & Sjogren, 1971). These dimensions could be well measured by the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS; Gjesme & Nygard, 1970).…”

Freedom from External Evaluation

“…Like the first experiment, the design allowed for a consideration of the effects of I-eval and E-eval conditions in the case of easy and hard tasks. Additionally, Experiment II introduced two new independent variables, sex and need achievement (nAch) (Atkinson & Feather, 1966;McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell 1953; see also Maehr & Sjogren 1971). These two other independent variables could not be used simultaneously in a four-way design because the measure of nAch chosen for this study (Mehrabian 1958) requires a different form of the instrument for males and females.…”

Male and Female Achievement Orientation and Intellectual Responsibility: a British Validation Study

“…The need for a separate psychology of motivation for the two sexes has been cogently argued by McClelland (1966) and by others (Maehr and Sjogren, 1971). …”