12 Facts About David McClelland

David Clarence McClelland was an American psychologist, noted for his work on motivation Need Theory.

David McClelland published a number of works between the 1950s and the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test and its descendants.

David McClelland is credited with developing Achievement Motivation Theory, commonly referred to as "need for achievement" or n-achievement theory.

David McClelland taught at Connecticut College and Wesleyan University before joining the faculty at Harvard University in 1956, where he worked for 30 years, serving as chairman of the Department of Psychology and Social Relations.

Major themes of David McClelland's work were on personality and the application of that knowledge to helping people make their lives better.

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David McClelland believed in applying the results from the research and testing to see if they helped people.

David 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”.

David McClelland's three needs, are non-sequential, but instead are used in relation to each other.

David McClelland shifted his work in the 1960s to focus on the power motive, first addressing issues of addiction and alcoholism, then to leadership effectiveness, and later to community development.

David McClelland 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.

David McClelland believed that better operant measures were possible with the use of reliable codes for processing the information in them.

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.