Chapter 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power

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1 Chapter 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power Lauren E. Duncan and Bill E. Peterson Research on achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power motivation is tied intimately to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), co-developed by Christiana D. Morgan and Henry A. Murray (1935). In the TAT, respondents are shown pictures of people (often line drawings) and asked to write a story in response to each picture cue. Researchers assume that test takers will tell stories that reflect their own conscious and unconscious motives and impulses. As the methodology evolved, these stories (or thought samples) were content coded by experts for recurring themes that reflect major human motives. The three most studied motives, also referred to as social motives, are achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power. Early researchers conducted experiments with samples of college men to derive objective categories that would enable researchers to code stories for motive content (e.g., Atkinson, 1958; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953). For example, one group of men would be put in an achievement-arousing situation and another would be put in a neutral situation. Differences in the types of stories composed by men in the two groups were assumed to reflect differences in achievement motivation. Decades of research have shown that the resulting scoring definitions for each motive can be applied to written material in a reliable way by different researchers. In order to assess social motives, individuals write stories under neutral arousal conditions. Individuals are hypothesized to tell stories that reveal the motive concerns uppermost in their minds. For example, someone high in achievement motivation is expected to write stories filled with images of unique accomplishments under neutral arousal conditions; someone high in affiliation intimacy motivation is expected to write stories about maintaining close interpersonal relationships. This arousal methodology was used to develop and elaborate the constructs of achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power motivation. Achievement motivation is defined as a concern for standards of excellence and doing well on tasks. According to Winter (1991a), written imagery that indicates the presence of achievement motivation includes adjectives that evaluate positive performance, goals or performances that are described as successes, success in competition with others, unique accomplishments, and negative affect expressed in the face of failure. The affiliation intimacy motive is a concern for establishing, maintaining, and repairing friendly relationships as well as experiencing warm and close interactions with others. Key imagery includes companionate activities; nurturant acts; expressions of warm, positive, friendly feelings toward other people; and negative affect about the disruption of friendly relationships. Power motivation involves a heightened concern about having impact or influence over other people. Key written images that denote power motivation include strong vigorous actions that necessarily impact others, behaviors that arouse L.E. Duncan (B) Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA J.C. Chrisler, D.R. McCreary (eds.), Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology, DOI / _3, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

2 42 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson strong emotions in another person, attempts to influence others, mentions of prestige or fame, control or regulation of other people, and giving help that is not explicitly solicited. Those who conduct research on achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power motivation are encouraged to use the term picture story exercise (PSE) to denote the systematic administration of picture cues to participants (Schultheiss & Pang, 2007). Older studies of implicit motives, though, may use the term TAT in honor of Morgan and Murray s contributions to understanding human personality. However, the contemporary use of the PSE recognizes the 70 years of experimental work that have gone into the refinement and assessment of achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power motivation. In order to distinguish PSE motives from other types of motivational constructs (e.g., the hunger motive), the terms social motives and implicit motives are often used to refer to PSE achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power as a group. For any given motive, n X might be used in place of X motivation. Thus, n Power refers to power motivation. Some researchers use abbreviations when referring to each motive (i.e., nach, naff, npow), but we will not do so here. In this chapter we examine how gender has been treated by social motive researchers. In our review, we emphasize research published since the early 1980s, when Stewart and Chester (1982) last reviewed research on gender and PSE-based motives in a comprehensive way. First, though, we set the stage by discussing recent trends in motive research, best practices for assessing motives in men and women, and the difference between implicit and explicit motives. Reemergence of Interest in Social Motives The peak of social motive research occurred between the 1950s and the 1970s (Atkinson, 1958; Heyns, Veroff, & Atkinson, 1958; McAdams, 1980; McClelland, 1975; McClelland et al., 1953; Winter, 1973; Winter & Stewart, 1978). Probably because of questions about reliability and the time-intensive nature involved in the coding of social motives, psychological research after the 1970s tended to focus more on Likert-scaled questionnaire items that assessed achievement, affiliation, and power as trait-like variables. However, in the past decade, there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in studying implicit social motives. One reason new research has increased in the past decade may be attributable to Winter s (1991a, 1991b) Manual for Scoring Motive Imagery in Running Text. This manual consolidated existing scoring systems for achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power in such a way that investigators can reliably learn to content code all three motives at one time. Furthermore, the coding system can be applied to any kind of written document (including archival materials) that is not purely technical (e.g., PSE stories, letters, novels). Although not all social motive researchers use the running text system, it has opened up new content areas for possible exploration. For example, in a recent study, Winter (2007) used the running text system to score political documents to examine the role of social motives in international conflict escalation. He coded the diplomatic exchanges, speeches, and media commentary made by key figures of opposing countries locked in potential military disputes and found that the documents related to crises that eventually led to armed conflict (e.g., the US Bay of Pigs Invasion) contained more power imagery by both sides involved, whereas documents related to crises that were resolved peacefully contained more achievement and affiliation intimacy imagery (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis). In addition to studying war and peace (Winter, 1993, 2003, 2005; see also Smith, 2008), Winter and his colleagues have used social motives to predict the behaviors of US presidents at the aggregate (e.g., Winter, 1987) and individual levels (e.g., Winter, 1998, 2005; Winter, Hermann, Weintraub, & Walker, 1991). Because most political documents recorded statements originally uttered or written by men, there is a dearth

3 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 43 of research on women s political leadership and social motivation. The 2008 US presidential election, with the prominence of Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Hillary Clinton, punctuates the fact that this is clearly an area too long neglected but ripe for investigation. Research on women business leaders and politicians is needed and would enhance our understanding of how social motives relate to the behavior of contemporary leaders. In addition to studying a leader s motivation at a distance by coding political (and other) documents, social motive investigators have increased their use of standard experimental and survey research designs. Much of this work has focused on establishing relationships between social motives and other existing constructs. For example, Woike (Woike, Gershkovich, Piorkowski, & Polo, 1999; Woike, Lavezzary, & Barsky, 2001; Woike & Polo, 2001) has focused attention on how implicit motives influence the content and structure of autobiographical memory. In general terms, her work demonstrates that variations in the content, structure, and affect of autobiographical memories are accounted for by individual differences in social motivation. For example, Woike et al. (1999) showed that high intimacy individuals (who were also low on achievement and power) discussed emotional memories in ways that emphasized integration of themes rather than differentiation. Other constructs recently studied in relation to social motives include creativity (Fodor & Carver, 2000), emotions (Fodor, Wick, & Hartsen, 2005; Zurbriggen & Sturman, 2002), agency and communion (Saragovi, Aube, Koestner, & Zuroff, 2002), identity (Hofer, Busch, Chasiotis, & Kiessling, 2006), and life satisfaction (Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Grassmann, 1998; Hofer & Chasiotis, 2003; Hofer, Chasiotis, & Campos, 2006). It is interesting that of the 16 studies conducted in the 11 articles cited in this paragraph, 2 of them sampled men only, 4 sampled women only, and 1 did not report the gender of the participants; only 9 sampled both women and men (women made up 54% of these mixed samples). Given the evidence of unbalanced gender ratios in some of these studies, researchers interested in the meaning of gender for the expression of social motives have much work ahead of them. For most variables the correlates of social motives do not differ for women and men; however, there may be some domains (e.g., types of achievement sanctioned by society and accessible to individuals) where it is important to sample both women and men in comprehensive ways. Best Practices for Measuring Social Motives in Women and Men Social motive researchers have spent decades developing reliable and valid coding systems for assessing achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power (Smith, 1992). As noted earlier, Winter (1991b) adapted these scoring systems into a running text system that allows researchers to code all three types of motives at one time. However, for those doing laboratory research with the PSE, comparable efforts have not yet been made to establish a set of procedures to evoke motive imagery. This means that laboratory researchers have had to use their own intuitions or advice from senior colleagues about the best picture cues to use to assess motives. Because different labs use different picture cues, the comparison of absolute levels of motive scores across (and sometimes within) labs becomes impossible. For example, in an ambitious study, Veroff, Depner, Kulka, and Douvan (1980) and Veroff, Reuman, and Feld (1984) assessed social motives in two US national samples in 1957 and Unfortunately, in part because no standardized set of cues was available, Veroff and his colleagues made the decision to use different sets of picture cues for men (featuring male protagonists) and women (featuring female protagonists). For example, Card 5 for men depicted seven men grouped around a conference table, whereas Card 5 for women showed two women preparing food in a kitchen. The rationale was that matching the gender of participants with the gender of people portrayed in the cues was necessary to allow respondents to project their own desires onto

4 44 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson the characters. However, PSE researchers have noted that different picture cards pull for, or evoke, different kinds of motive imagery. For example, the picture of a ship captain tends to elicit more images of power (rather than achievement or affiliation) from both women and men. Thus, when different PSE cards are used with women and men, it becomes difficult to compare absolute levels of motive imagery across gender. In the studies above, for example, it may be that the picture cues used with women (e.g., Card 5) pulled for more affiliation than the picture cues used with men did. The cues that depict men, by contrast, might have evoked more power or achievement imagery than those that depict women. In order to address the lack of a standardized set of picture cues to use with modern motive scoring systems, Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001) and Pang and Schultheiss (2005) focused their efforts on establishing baseline motive information on classic picture cues. They tested six picture cues often used by researchers, three of which depicted both men and women (couple on bench by river, trapeze artists, and nightclub scene). Of the remaining three cues, two featured male protagonists (ship captain, boxer) and one featured female protagonists (two women in lab coats in laboratory). In these two studies the authors addressed issues such as gender differences in motive strength (women wrote longer stories and scored higher than did men on affiliation intimacy, which is discussed later), cue strength in pulling for the expression of certain motives, and order effects in the presentation of picture cues. It is a good idea for those who want to conduct research on social motives to consult this work, especially Schultheiss and Pang (2007), who provided concrete advice about motive scoring systems, picture cues, test administration, and data management (see also Chusmir, 1983; Lundy, 1988). Schultheiss and Pang (2007) suggested that researchers administer between four and eight picture cues in relaxed conditions, use cues that pull for motives of interest, and use cues that are similar to the situations in which dependent variables are assessed. Schultheiss and Pang s (2007) efforts to standardize PSE administration in this way seem reasonable. Clearly, summarizing future work that examines social motives and gender will be made easier if researchers use the same picture cues for women and men across samples. Right now, fortunately, most researchers routinely use the same PSE cues for male and female study participants. (Note that the scoring definitions for achievement, affiliation intimacy, and power contained in Winter s running text system are the same for stories written by women and men. Ideally, the identity and gender of the respondent is completely masked before scoring begins.) Distinction Between Implicit and Explicit Measures One final topic needs discussion before we consider each social motive more closely. Researchers who use the PSE have agreed for some time that social motives correlate only weakly with selfreport scales of similar motives and traits (but see Thrash, Elliot, & Schultheiss, 2007, for recent work that questions this point). For example, in his meta-analysis, Spangler (1992) found that the average correlation between need for achievement and questionnaire measures of achievement was Findings like these led McClelland and his colleagues (Koestner, Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991; McClelland, 1980; McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989) to argue that the PSE provides an operant measure of implicit motives, whereas questionnaire measures (where items are assessed on Likert scales) provide respondent measures of explicit motives. McClelland argued that PSEbased motives tap into people s nonconscious intrinsic desires to achieve, affiliate, or exercise power; expression of the motive is rewarding in and of itself. The PSE should be best at predicting long-term trends in behavior where people are free to choose their own activities. By contrast, questionnairebased motives (and traits) assess a person s explicitly articulated (i.e., conscious) image of self;

5 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 45 people high in a self-attributed motive seek to maintain consistency in social situations where motive expression is expected. Thus, people who score high on a questionnaire measure of affiliation may find it important to act sociably at dinner parties with strangers. Because social motives are sometimes out of awareness, people high on need for affiliation intimacy would desire close relations with other people, but might or might not act sociably in a public setting depending upon how comfortable they felt with the other people at the parties. They value friendships and partnerships but choose them on their own terms rather than acting affiliative to maintain consistency between their behavior and their self-image. This distinction between implicit and explicit measures continues to be refined by contemporary researchers (e.g., Schultheiss, 2007a, 2008). Researchers have used the fact that PSE and questionnaire motives rarely correlate to study the interactive effects of implicit and explicit traits and motives. For example, in two samples of adult women, Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, and Duncan (1998) found that the trait of extraversion tended to facilitate the expression of affiliation and power motivation, whereas the trait of introversion tended to interfere with motive expression. In other work, Woike (2008) introduced a model that stresses the importance of the two-motive systems for understanding the formation of autobiographical memories. In King s (1995) examination of implicit and self-attributed motives, there was no relationship between the two types of measures. However, she found that personal strivings for power correlated with PSE power for men but not for women. Although these results were based on a small sample of men (N = 28), King suggested that the relationship of implicit and self-attributed motivation might be an interesting avenue in which to examine the relations between gender and motivation. The relationship of social expectations to the expression and satisfaction of motiverelated strivings is an area ripe for future research. For the purposes of this chapter, however, keep in mind that we are reviewing only PSE-based implicit motives that use variations of the PSE for assessment (McClelland et al., 1989; Sheldon, King, Houser-Marko, Osbaldiston, & Gunz, 2007; see Spangler, 1992, for a review of explicit measures of achievement, affiliation, and power motivation). Achievement Motivation The need for achievement was defined by McClelland (1985) as a concern with doing things better, with surpassing standards of excellence (p. 190). Decades of research have shown n Achievement to be related to moderate risk taking, responsiveness to feedback, future-time-orientation, personal responsibility for performance outcomes, and participation in entrepreneurial activity (see McClelland & Koestner, 1992, for an overview of correlates). It is not surprising that research on gender and achievement motivation has been influenced by prevailing views about gender differences. Stewart and Chester (1982) focused their review of these differences on two areas differential responses to achievement arousal and behavioral correlates of achievement. At the time their chapter was published, many researchers believed that it was difficult to arouse achievement motivation in women, most likely because achievement was seen as an exclusively masculine concern. It was also quite likely that because the original arousal studies had only male participants, key imagery to distinguish between high and low achievement-motivated women was left out of the coding categories. Stewart and Chester (1982) reviewed the early research on the arousal of n Achievement, and, after pointing out flaws in research design and missed opportunities to interpret main effects, they concluded that there is no consistent evidence that the motive was difficult or impossible to arouse in women. In particular, they argued that researchers, without realizing it, were finding that expressions of n Achievement for men were restricted to the traditional domains of work and leadership and that this is linked to a rigid masculine gender role. For women, on the

6 46 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson other hand, n Achievement could be aroused with cues from a wide variety of domains because achievement opportunities in the traditional domain of work were less available to women at that time. In their review of the behavioral correlates of achievement motivation in women and men, Stewart and Chester (1982) concluded that there were no gender differences in the relationship between achievement and performance on laboratory tasks, behavior outside the laboratory, or scores on personality variables. For both women and men, n Achievement was positively related to quick and accurate performance on timed verbal and mathematical tests, career success in people who valued paid employment, and preference for taking academic classes with equally skilled classmates. Later research confirmed these early findings (e.g., McClelland & Franz, 1992; McClelland & Koestner, 1992). The expression of n Achievement, however, does seem sensitive to prevailing gender role norms. For example, Veroff (1982) examined two national data sets collected in 1957 and 1976 and found that, for men, scores on n Achievement remained consistent, whereas, for women, achievement motivation scores increased over that time period. Veroff argued that the increase in achievement motivation between 1957 and 1976 was directly attributable to the changes in gender role expectations and norms that resulted from the Women s Movement of the 1960s and the 1970s. Veroff also reported that college-educated women and men scored higher in achievement motivation than did their high school-educated peers, and that, for women, n Achievement varied depending on birth cohort. Taken together, these results imply that n Achievement is sensitive to the social context. To bolster this argument, Veroff (1982) reported a variety of positive correlates with achievement motivation and successful traditional gender role socialization in the same sample. For example, for men, high n Achievement was positively related to preferring work to leisure, seeing work as fulfilling a major life value, not seeing work as interfering with family but also with strong feelings of efficacy, happiness, marital satisfaction, low drug use, integration into the community, and good health. For women, high n Achievement was positively related to being the oldest child in the family, participating in challenging leisure time activities, seeing leisure as fulfilling a major life value, high marital interaction, and reporting many experiences of zest. Veroff argued that these findings show that for many women and men, n Achievement is correlated with excellence in traditionally gendered domains men in achieving at work, women in achieving at home, as wives and mothers. He concluded that n Achievement is related for many (but not all) people to successful gender role socialization. Consistent with Veroff s work, Elder and MacInnis (1983) found that high achievement women born in the early 1920s with family orientations tended to focus their adult lives on raising families, whereas high n Achievement women with work interests started families at a later age. It seems likely that achievement motivation is often channeled into traditionally gendered outlets but that if there are opportunities that allow excellence in non-traditional domains, some individuals will pursue achievement in those domains (see, e.g., Peterson & Stewart, 1993). For example, in research conducted in the 1980s, when women managers were relatively rare, Chusmir (1985) found that 62 female managers enrolled in an MBA program had higher achievement and power motivation than did 62 male managers enrolled in the same program (there were no gender differences in affiliation intimacy). Chusmir argued for a selection effect. That is, women who became managers in the 1970s and the 1980s probably had higher levels of achievement motivation than did men who became managers at the same time because management was a non-traditional occupation for women, and only those women looking for an occupational arena in which to express their n Achievement would seek out management positions. On the other hand, because management was a traditional career for men, those men who were motivated to pursue such a career would represent a wider range of n Achievement scores than would the women who pursed business careers (whose n Achievement scores should have been clustered at the top of the range). It might be

7 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 47 worthwhile to note that similar arguments can be made for women entering science and engineering professions today (i.e., research shows that most women who enter those professions have very high standardized math test scores, whereas men who enter those professions have a much wider range of standardized math test scores; Maple & Stage, 1991). In longitudinal research with women who graduated from college in 1967, Jenkins (1987) argued that in addition to entrepreneurial activity, which was seen as the classic achievement-compatible career in men, teaching could serve the same purpose for women, in that it involved moderate challenges, autonomy, and rapid performance feedback. She further argued that college teaching in particular could be achievement arousing. Consistent with her arguments, Jenkins (1987) found that senior year n Achievement scores were related to employment in teaching 14 years later. In terms of career values, high achievement women working in achievement-compatible positions (i.e., college teaching, supervisory business positions) valued future status mobility and competition with a standard of excellence. On the other hand, high achievement women working in positions incompatible with achievement goals (i.e., non-college teaching, non-supervisory positions) valued other, non-achievement aspects of their jobs such as working with people and wielding power. Women employed in achievement-compatible positions showed an increase in achievement motivation over 14 years compared with women employed in achievement-incompatible professions. Furthermore, Jenkins found that high achievement women working in achievement-incompatible positions were more likely than high achievement women working in achievement-compatible positions to value advancement less, to perceive fewer status mobility routes, to have interrupted careers, and to be more involved in homemaking and mothering than in work. She argued that the high achievement women working in achievement-incompatible professions pursued excellence through their families, hobbies, or volunteer work, rather than through ambitious career goals. Jenkins concluded that life structure interacts with n Achievement to affect life outcomes and life satisfaction in both women and men. One s life structure could act specifically to arouse or suppress achievement motivation or channel it in different directions. Motive to Avoid Success Measures of the motive to avoid success (fear of success) were developed in response to early researchers who thought it was difficult to arouse achievement motivation in women. The fear of success had its analogue in early conceptualizations of power motivation, which included both a hope for power and a fear of power (Veroff, 1992). Fear of success was assessed by asking women (and men) to write a story in response to the verbal cue, After first term finals, Anne (John) finds herself (himself) at the top of her (his) medical school class. Stories were coded for absence of instrumental activity, lack of responsibility for goal attainment, interpersonal engagement, and negative consequences (Fleming, 1982). Fear of success is a learned, latent, stable characteristic of the personality acquired early in life in conjunction with the learning of sex role standards and other learned motives; is more prevalent and much more easily aroused in women than in men; is not equally important for all women; is much more strongly aroused in competitive achievement situations reflecting intelligence and leadership ability than in noncompetitive settings; will function, once aroused, as a negative inhibitory tendency acting to reduce the expression of the positive tendency to achieve; and is presumed to interact with other motivational and personality variables as a complex function of motive strength, incentive value, and probability of success (Fleming & Horner, 1992, pp ). Horner s (1968) early research showed that the expectation of negative consequences of achievement was related to anxiety in women study participants (Fleming & Horner, 1992). Although the

8 48 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson PSEs of men who participated in these studies also showed evidence of fear of success, the negative effects on performance were far greater for women. The early studies were criticized on methodological grounds, and Horner and her colleagues worked to develop a more reliable coding system for the motive (Fleming, 1982; Fleming & Horner, 1992). The original interpretation of this construct located fear of success as a dispositional characteristic created by gender socialization. Other researchers critiqued the dispositional argument and posited instead that women were simply reflecting in PSEs their knowledge of the very real negative consequences of non-traditional achievement for women (see Fleming, 1982; Fleming & Horner, 1992, for reviews). In general, it appears that motive researchers have largely abandoned the construct of fear of success as assessed via PSEs (in a search of PsycINFO conducted in May 2008, the most recent article found was published in 1998, although Schultheiss and colleagues continue to reference the construct in theoretical models; e.g., Schultheiss & Pang, 2007). However, researchers have not abandoned the construct altogether; rather, the research appears to have transformed in two ways. First, Metzler and Conroy (2004) have attempted to resurrect the construct with a questionnaire measure developed by Zuckerman and Allison (1976) to assess fear of success in sport. Note that this line of research rejects the gendered assessment of fear of success and instead focuses equally on the anxieties male and female athletes experience while seeking success. Second, a more closely related construct in social psychology, stereotype threat, has captured the imaginations of many researchers. Stereotype threat (Steele, 1997) was developed to explain the underperformance of African Americans (relative to European Americans) on standardized English tests and the underperformance of women (relative to men) on standardized math tests. Defined as the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs, stereotype threat can be elicited by simply making salient the group membership that is associated with a negative stereotype. Further, removing that stereotype as a possible explanation for poor performance has the effect of equalizing performance on these tests. Similar to the motive to avoid success, stereotype threat is related to performance decrements for members of subordinate groups. However, unlike fear of success, it is assumed to be a situational variable, not a personality characteristic, and thus fairly malleable. Relationship of Implicit Measures to Explicit Measures of n Achievement Contemporary researchers appear to utilize questionnaire, or self-attribution measures, of n Achievement more frequently than implicit PSE measures (see Senko, Durik, & Harackiewicz, 2008, for a current review of theory and measurement of explicit achievement motivation). As mentioned earlier, research has established that these two types of measures are usually unrelated and predict different phenomena. In two meta-analyses of the validity of implicit (PSE) versus self-attributed (questionnaire) measures of achievement motivation, Spangler (1992) found that PSE measures of achievement were positively correlated with career success measured in the presence of intrinsic, or task-related, achievement incentives (e.g., farm or industry output). On the other hand, extrinsic questionnaire measures of achievement were positively correlated with outcomes, particularly in the presence of external or social achievement incentives (e.g., school grades; see also Brunstein & Maier, 2005). Spangler also found that, on average, PSE correlations were larger than questionnaire correlations. More recent research has shown that implicit and explicit measures of achievement motivation may not be as unrelated as they have seemed from previous studies. Thrash et al. (2007) found that when implicit and explicit measures of n Achievement were matched on content, there was a

9 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 49 small positive correlation (r = 0.17). In addition, they found that for people who scored high on private body consciousness (i.e., awareness of their own physiological arousal), low on self-monitoring (i.e., less concerned about how they appeared to others), and high on need for consistency, implicit and explicit achievement motivation were correlated. They concluded that implicit and explicit motives are more closely related than previously thought, but that the relationship between the two is often attenuated by methodological inconsistency and moderated by certain individual difference variables. In sum, research on gender and achievement motivation has reflected the social-evaluative and competitive aspects of the construct and indicates that people who score high on achievement motivation are interested in living up to their own internal standards and that these standards are influenced by prevailing social values about gender. If the construct were to be reinvented today, researchers would need not only to include women in derivation experiments but also to focus on aspects of excellence relevant to both women and men. That is, the original derivation experiments put men in traditional academically competitive situations and emphasized competition with others. Certainly women have been able to hold their own in academic settings; however, what might achievement motivation look like if the competitive with others aspect of the construct was deemphasized and setting a goal for oneself was emphasized? Early studies on fear of success make it clear that women s awareness of the negative consequences of surpassing others means that an achievement motivation defined mostly on competition with others is probably less likely to capture the full spectrum of achievement motivation, especially in groups stigmatized for achieving success. Affiliation Intimacy Motivation As with the need for achievement, the coding categories for the need for affiliation were developed with male participants in the initial derivation studies (Heyns et al., 1958). However, as noted by Stewart and Chester (1982), subsequent research showed that women s and men s need for affiliation could be aroused in the same way and that similar patterns of correlates across gender exist for the affiliation motive. Stewart and Chester (1982) reported that women sometimes scored higher on n Affiliation relative to men but that these findings were often confounded by the gender of protagonists in picture cues, and so direct comparisons were not possible. In early studies, women were more likely to be shown PSE picture cues featuring girls and women rather than boys and men. Due to social stereotypes about women s communal interests, the presence of female characters may have led any test taker, man or woman, to express more affiliation imagery. Koestner and McClelland (1992) provided a general summary of research on affiliation motivation. Classic studies indicate that people high in n Affiliation (compared to those low in affiliation) spent more time interacting with people, learned social networks quickly, expressed sympathy toward others (and accommodated them), and had an aversion to interpersonal conflict, although it is interesting that n Affiliation seemed to be negatively (albeit weakly) correlated with popularity among peers. The latter finding and others like it led researchers to argue that a fear of rejection often underlies the behaviors and actions of people high in affiliation (Boyatzis, 1973). That is, highly affiliative people (especially under stress) may try too hard to establish connections and avoid rejection, which can lead other people to move away from them. Critics of the affiliation motive note that the original derivation studies often involved arousal of the motive by placing people in situations where rejection or acceptance by peers was emphasized. Thus, the coding categories for affiliation motivation may have inadvertently picked up on a fear of rejection embodied by the arousal manipulation. In order to develop a measure of affiliation that tapped more purely the positive aspects of interpersonal exchange, McAdams derived a new PSE measure of intimacy motivation.

10 50 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson McAdams (1992) summarized his validation efforts in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In the end, his measure seemed to tap a preference for warm, close, and communicative interaction with other people, and it emphasized only the positive aspects of interpersonal communion. As reported by McAdams (1992), scores on affiliation and intimacy tended to correlate positively within samples in the range. Although early studies suggested that men and women were equally likely to express intimacy motivation in PSE stories (e.g., McAdams & Constantian, 1983), later research showed that women tended to score higher than men. In an article devoted to the topic of gender differences, McAdams, Lester, Brand, McNamara, and Lensky (1988) provided evidence from a sample of 1,500 undergraduate students that women scored significantly higher than men on most of the subcategories that define the intimacy coding system. The magnitudes of the effects for each of the coding subcategories were not always large but were reliable. Women seemed to be more likely to express intimacy themes in response to PSE picture cues. This gender difference could reflect women s greater socialization as girls to express intimacy or their training in the maintenance of close relationships. Regardless of any gender differences in absolute levels of n Intimacy, the correlates of intimacy motivation are generally the same for men and women. Thus, for example, McAdams and Constantian (1983) showed, through the use of experience sampling (using pagers), that individuals high on intimacy motivation were more likely to be caught thinking about or interacting with other people than were those low on intimacy. In a later study, McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, and Day (1996) found no gender differences in how people high in intimacy motivation reconstructed important autobiographical memories in communal terms. It seems reasonable to conclude that women probably have higher levels of implicit intimacy motivation but that not all studies show a gender difference. Furthermore, the patterns of correlates for n Intimacy are virtually the same for men and women. Because need for affiliation and need for intimacy tend to overlap, Winter (1991a) simplified and combined the two measures into a single scoring system that assesses affiliation intimacy motivation in running text. Researchers partial to either affiliation or intimacy have not objected strongly. Rather, many PSE researchers seem to recognize the value of such a merging. However, they also recognize the advantage of using the older system if one is interested in the more anxious aspects of affiliative need and of using the new intimacy system if one is interested solely in the positive aspects of interpersonal union. Contemporary research on gender and affiliation intimacy has focused on relationships and physiological correlates. Affiliation Intimacy and Relationships Although people high on affiliation intimacy are interested in establishing and maintaining close relationships with others, research has shown that, under conditions of threat, highly affiliative people act prickly or defensively (Boyatzis, 1973; Winter & Carlson, 1988). Mason and Blankenship (1987) assessed affiliation motivation, life stress, and activity inhibition (a measure of restraint) in undergraduate students who were married or in dating relationships. They found that highly affiliative women who were low in activity inhibition were more likely than any other group to inflict physical and psychological abuse on their male partners when experiencing high levels of life stress. There were no main effects or interactions with men s affiliation motivation, although the impact of men s power motivation (also measured in the study) on abuse is discussed later. Similar findings regarding affiliation intimacy motivation were found in research by Zurbriggen (2000), who studied motives and aggressive sexual behavior. Affiliation intimacy in men was uncorrelated with self-reports of sexual aggressiveness toward women. For women, however,

11 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 51 affiliation intimacy was correlated positively with using sexual coercion and seduction in their relationships with men. The positive relationship between affiliation and coercion was most prominent for women who made cognitive associations between power and sex. That is, women centrally concerned with maintaining romantic relationships who associated dominance with intimate relationships tended to try to maintain those relationships by using manipulation and coercion. In interpreting these relationships results, keep in mind that the PSE measures used involved affiliation intimacy (or affiliation alone), which includes its defensive aspects. The McAdams (1992) measure of intimacy motivation has not, to date, been associated with problematic romantic behavior. (In fact, McAdams and Vaillant, 1982, showed in a longitudinal sample of male Harvard graduates that age 30 PSE intimacy predicted marital satisfaction in the mid-40s, r = 0.38.) All of the findings discussed about relationships need to be further qualified by the fact that only heterosexual relationships were examined. How affiliation intimacy motivation might direct the relationship strategies of lesbians and gay men, absent heterosexual power sex linkages, is a question for future research. Much work remains to be done to clarify for all people how affiliation intimacy motivation enhances romantic unions and how it might create fractures under some conditions. Physiological Correlates of Affiliation Intimacy As discussed in more detail later, recent work on the physiological correlates of affiliation intimacy has focused on the gonadal (sex) hormones such as progesterone. However, McClelland s (1987) early work on the biological substrates of affiliation intimacy examined other types of hormones and cellular activity. To give two brief examples, Jemmott et al. (1990) showed that low stress people high in affiliation had the greatest levels of natural killer cell activity (a major component of the body s immune system). In another study, McClelland, Patel, Stier, and Brown (1987) had people watch films saturated with affiliation images. After participants viewed these films, a positive correlation emerged between levels of dopamine and PSE affiliation motivation. Although both of these studies included both women and men as participants, neither article reported results by gender. It is unclear whether McClelland and his colleagues found no gender differences or whether they did not think participant gender would influence the relationships between affiliation motivation, natural killer cell activity, and the release of dopamine. More recent work on the relationships between affiliation intimacy and sex hormones, by contrast, has focused on gender because levels of these hormones differ in the bodies of men and women. For example, Schultheiss, Dargel, and Rohde (2003) examined how implicit motives were related to the presence of gonadal steroid hormones in women. They separated women into two groups 18 women who were using oral contraceptives and 18 with normal menstrual cycles. A group of 18 men was also examined and tested at what would be menstrual, midcycle, and premenstrual phases in normally cycling women. Two findings from this study are illustrative. One, women using oral contraceptives scored higher on affiliation intimacy than did people in the other two groups. Two, in normally cycling women, levels of progesterone and affiliation intimacy were positively correlated. With regard to the first finding, the authors suggested that gender differences in levels of affiliation intimacy that are found in some studies may be due to the numbers of women who were taking birth control pills in these samples. The authors argued that the high level of gestagens (synthetic progesterone) in oral contraceptives presumably induces increased levels of affiliation intimacy in women. However, it is also quite likely that women high in affiliation intimacy motivation are more likely than those low in affiliation intimacy to be involved in committed intimate relationships and using birth control pills as contraception. Also interesting in this study is that progesterone levels

12 52 L.E. Duncan and B.E. Peterson in men were negatively related to affiliation intimacy. The authors explained that progesterone is related to reduced sex drive in men and argued that affiliation intimacy reflects to some extent sexual motivation (p. 300) for both men and women, so low progesterone should be related to high affiliation intimacy in men. (See also Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton, 2004, and Wirth and Schultheiss, 2006, for additional studies of the relations between progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and affiliation intimacy arousal.) The implications of Schultheiss work on the physiological correlates of affiliation intimacy are not yet clear. Schultheiss and colleagues are working at the level of sex differences and similarities in physiological arousal. Biological sex, however, is not always a good marker of psychological gender. Right now researchers working on the biology of motives seem rather agnostic in their approach to gender. They pay close attention to gender when dealing with sex hormones, but collapse across gender for other physiological variables (e.g., natural killer cell activity). In sum, researchers have found that women score higher than men in affiliation intimacy motivation in many studies. However, few gender differences have been found in the correlates of affiliation intimacy. Why gender differences have been found in absolute motive levels is unclear. Some possible explanations are that women are better socialized at intimacy expression than are men or that greater levels of circulating progesterone increase affiliation intimacy motivation. A third potential explanation could relate to the particular picture cues used to elicit imagery. A useful avenue of future research might test alternative cues meant to elicit affiliation imagery in men. For example, stories written in response to a picture of a father and a son interacting in an affiliative manner might elicit more affiliation imagery in men. (Other ideas include a picture of a group of men playing a friendly game or a man proposing marriage to a woman.) Another explanation for these consistent gender differences is related to women s lower social status. That is, people in low power positions need, for their own safety and survival, to be attentive to the needs of others and to avoid interpersonal conflict. This is an intriguing possibility, one that could be tested experimentally by manipulating status and subsequently measuring motives. This would be most interesting, of course, if it were tested in both people of color and White women and men. Similar strategies were used successfully to show that status, rather than gender, was implicated in the differential use of influence strategies (Sagrestano, 1992) and indirect aggression (Duncan & Owen-Smith, 2006). Research of this sort may also shed light on why women (but not men) high in affiliation intimacy are more likely to behave in problematic ways when romantic relationships are under stress. Power Motivation Fairly early on, researchers devoted theoretical attention to the question of gender similarities and differences in the expression of power motivation. For this reason, psychologists now have a fairly sophisticated understanding of how need for power operates in the lives of women and men. Two overlapping but distinct types of power motivation were part of the original conceptualization of the construct: fear of weakness and hope for power (Veroff, 1992; Winter, 1992). Over the years, research on power motivation has emphasized the latter, or people s desires to attain and wield personal power. In fact, the scoring definitions for Winter s (1991a) running text system focus on power as impact over others rather than concerns with personal autonomy or weakness in the face of another person s power. A recent review of key findings in the power motive literature can be found in Winter (in press). The classic correlates indicate that power motivation at the individual level is related to (among other things) gaining formal social influence (e.g., through elected offices), ownership of prestigious

13 3 Gender and Motivation for Achievement, Affiliation Intimacy, and Power 53 possessions (as defined by one s peer group), taking risks to get noticed, a preference for jobs where one controls the behavior of other people, a somewhat negative self-image, aggressiveness, and impulsivity. With regard to gender, Stewart and Chester (1982) noted that power motivation is aroused in women and men in the same way (e.g., inspirational speeches, watching a hypnotist control another person) and that women and men do not differ on levels of power motivation expressed in the PSE. Based upon our review of research since 1982, the observations of Stewart and Chester seem to hold true as much now as they did then. Furthermore, the behavioral correlates of power motivation also continue to show similarities across women and men. For example, Fodor and Carver (2000) found that negative feedback from a person in power compromised the creativity of power-motivated women and men. Schultheiss and Brunstein (2002) found that when highly power-motivated women and men (who were also high in activity inhibition) were placed in a power-arousing situation, they were more verbally fluent and used heightened gesturing and eyebrow lifts to make their arguments more convincing to others. In both of these studies the authors reported no significant gender differences. However, consistent gender differences are found in the relationship of power motivation to profligate or impulsive behavior, though these relationships are moderated by individual differences in levels of responsibility. Profligacy and Responsibility Training As discussed by Winter and Barenbaum (1985), women and men high in power motivation are adept at gaining formal social power and influence. Alongside this socialized form of power, however, evidence also shows a relationship, especially in men, between high power motivation and excessive alcohol use, drug use, gambling, physical and verbal aggression, and the exploitation and repression of women. Given this pattern of findings, it is not surprising that heterosexual men high in power experience significant trouble in their intimate relationships with women (Stewart & Rubin, 1976). Indeed, research has shown that power motivation in men is related to sexual aggressiveness (Yost & Zurbriggen, 2006) and the infliction of physical abuse on women (Mason & Blankenship, 1987). Evidence suggests that these correlates are enhanced in men who have formed cognitive associations between power and sex (Zurbriggen, 2000). Heterosexual women high in power do not have this record of negative relationships with men. Winter and Barenbaum (1985) found that individual differences in personal responsibility moderated the negative effects of power motivation in both women and men. That is, women and men who were high in responsibility exercised power in prosocial ways, whereas women and men low in responsibility were more likely to engage in profligate behaviors. Winter (1988) also showed that formal responsibility training at home during childhood (e.g., taking care of younger siblings, frequency of household chores) also channeled power motivation away from profligacy for both women and men. Alternatively, the absence of responsibility training led high-powered adults toward profligate expressions of the motive. Winter (1988) argued that high-powered women in general do not behave in profligate ways because girls in contemporary society are given more responsibility training while growing up than are boys: Thus, the differences between responsible and profligate expressions of the power motive may have to do with variables that reflect socialization rather than sex as such (Winter, 1988, p. 518). Furthermore, because power is intimately tied to privilege, it may be that individual differences in motive expression reflect individual differences in levels of entitlement in both women and men. Future researchers could examine how social status affects individual differences in the desire to have an impact on others or on the world at large. Much like Jenkins (1987)