Motives And Motivation

Carrots of many colors by Stephen Ausmus – This image was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, with the ID K11611-1 (next). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Annotated Links

Carrots, Not Sticks, Motivate Workers A study co-authored by Michigan State University business scholar Karen Sedatole suggests workers respond better to the promise of reward, or carrots, than they do the threat of punishment, or sticks. Summary from PhysOrg, June 20, 2012.

David McClelland A summary of McClelland‘s 3-Need Theory: Achievement, Affiliation, and Power from David X. Swenson at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

David McClelland’s work and related theories are summarized here.

Henry Murray A description of Henry Murray’s 27 Psychogenic Needs.

Need for Achievement An overview of McClelland‘s work on the achievement motive, including the characteristics of people high in need for achievement and examples.

TAT Research: An Overview by Wesley G. Morgan at the University of Tennessee, including references and a description of the history of sample cards.

Assignments, Exercises, and Activities

Participate in Online Research The Social Psychology Network, maintained by Scott Plous, Wesleyan University, lists over 150 web-based experiments, surveys, and other social psychological studies. Click on the section labels Personality and Individual differences to find links to studies on various topics such as the Five Factor Model, birth season, motivation, anxiety and more.

Electronic Texts

Examples and Illustrations

Lecture Notes

Slide Presentations

Tests, Measures, and Scales

Desirability of Control Scale From Burger, J. M., & Cooper, H. M. (1979). The desirability of control. Motivation and Emotion, 3, 381‑393, this 20-item scales measures individual differences in the general desire for control over events in one’s life. Opens in Microsoft Word (doc) format. See Burger & Cooper (1979). Opens in PDF format.

Multimedia Resources

Motivation: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Dan Pink, author of books about the changing world of work, gave a talk on motivation at a recent convention of The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). In this video, he presents a condensed version of his talk while an artist draws amazing graphics to illustrate his ideas. The result is a stunning tour-de-force summary of about a dozen or so psychological studies on what motivates us (runs 10 minutes, 48 seconds).