Life and career
McClelland, born in Mt. Vernon, New York, was awarded aExpectancy 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, D.C. (1987). ''Human motivation''. New York: University of Cambridge. Basing his work on the work of“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. He 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 to leadership effectiveness, and later to community development. The work on leadership and management helped to create a behavioral level of a person's capability, which McClelland called “competencies.' He also led efforts to show how important competencies were relative to knowledge and traditional personality traits in the desired outcomes of higher education (Winter, McClelland and Stewart, 1981). His work on power extended into research on the body's natural healing process. In an exception from the typical focus of a psychologist, 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. McClelland's work on motivation was cited as the most useful approach to motivation in a study by the former accounting firm Touche Ross & Company (Miller, 1981).
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 much more valid predictors of behavioral outcomes, job performance, life satisfaction and other similar outcomes. Specifically, he claimed that operant methods had greater validity and sensitivity than respondent measures (i.e., tests calling for a true/false, rating or ranking response). He fought against more traditional psychologists insisting on using self-assessment, respondent measures and avoiding operant measures because, in traditional views, operant measures suffered from less traditional measures of reliability. McClelland believed that better operant measures were possible with the use of reliable codes for processing the information in them. He claimed his lifelong quest was to instill in psychological researchers a value 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 show that operant methods, as compared to respondent methods, consistently show: (a) more criterion validity; (b) increased insightfulness despite less test-retest reliability; (c) greater sensitivity in discriminating mood and such differences; (d) more uniqueness and less likelihood of suffering fromJob Competencies
McClelland and colleagues conceptualized a broad array of capabilities. Reviving his 1951 personality theory, McClelland and his colleagues at McBer and Company intensified competency research on management, leadership and professional jobs 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 is understood, not merely that the person's behavior is observed. They used operant methods like audiotaped Critical Incident Interviews, which they called Behavioral event Interviews and videotaped simulations with inductive research designs comparing effective with ineffective or even less effective performers. This approach was focused on the “person,” rather than the tasks or job. The research results developed a picture of how a superior performer in a job thinks, feels, and acts in his/her work setting. This became a model for how to help anyone in a job, or aspiring to one, develop their capability. It became, over the coming decades, the norm for training design, selection and promotion practices, career development and even higher education in developing people for such jobs.Helping People Change
David McClelland believed that if you know how an outstanding performer thinks and acts, you could teach people how to think and act that way. The early projects addressed entrepreneurial development and training in achievement thinking and behavior for small business owners in India, Tunisia, Iran, Poland, Malawi and the US. “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, D.C. (1951). ''Personality''. New York: William Sloane Associates. * McClelland, D.C., Atkinson, J.W., Clark, R.A., and Lowell, E.L. (1953). ''The Achievement Motive''. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. * McClelland, D.C., Baldwin, A.L., Bronfenbrenner, and Strodbeck, F.L. (1958). ''Talent and Society''. New York: Van Nostrand. * McClelland, D.C. (1961). ''The Achieving Society''. New York: Van Nostrand. * McClelland, D.C. (1964). ''The Roots of Consciousness''. New York: Van Nostrand. * McClelland, D.C. and Winter, D.G. (1969). ''Motivating Economic Achievement''. New York: Free Press. * McClelland, D.C., Davis, W.N., Kalin, R., and Wanner, E. (1972). ''The Drinking Man: Alcohol and Human Motivation''. New York: Free Press. * McClelland, D.C. (1975). ''Power: The Inner Experience''. New York: Irvington Publishers, Halstead 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. * McClelland, D.C. (1984). ''Motives, Personality, and Society: Selected Papers''. New York: Praeger. * McClelland, D.C. (1987). ''Human motivation''. New York: University of Cambridge. * Smith, C.P., with Atkinson, J.W., McClelland, D.C., and Veroff, J. (eds.) (1992). ''Motivation and Personality: Handbook of Thematic Content Analysis''. New York: Cambridge University Press.Notes and references
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. * Kelner, Stephen P., Jr. (2005). ''Motivate Your Writing!: Using Motivational Psychology to Energize Your Writing Life.'' Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. {{DEFAULTSORT:McClelland, David 1917 births 1998 deaths Harvard University faculty Boston University faculty Wesleyan University alumni University of Missouri alumni Wesleyan University faculty 20th-century American psychologists American consciousness researchers and theorists Motivation theorists American Quakers 20th-century Quakers Fellows of the American Physical Society