Describe the needs for achievement and affiliation, and identify some of the characteristics associated with each of these needs.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students' answers may vary.

The answer should contain the following information:

Need for achievement: The need for achievement is a stable, learned characteristic in which a person obtains satisfaction by striving for and achieving challenging goals. People with a high need for achievement seek out situations in which they can compete against some objective standard. But people who have a high need for achievement are selective when it comes to picking their challenges: they tend to avoid situations in which success will come too easily or situations in which success is highly unlikely. Instead, people high in achievement motivation generally choose tasks that are of intermediate difficulty. In contrast, people with low achievement motivation tend to be motivated primarily by a desire to avoid failure. As a result, they seek out easy tasks so they are sure to avoid failure, or they seek out very difficult tasks for which failure has no negative implications because almost anyone would fail at them. People with a high fear of failure will stay away from tasks of intermediate difficulty because they may fail where others have been successful.

Need for affiliation: It is an interest in establishing and maintaining relationships with other people. People who have higher affiliation needs are particularly sensitive to relationships with others. They desire to be with their friends more of the time and alone less often, compared with people who are lower in the need for affiliation. However, gender is a greater determinant of how much time is actually spent with friends: regardless of their affiliative orientation, female students spend significantly more time with their friends and less time alone than male students do.