An Update of Murrayan Needs

Abstract

Much research work on motives has been based on the taxonomy of psychogenic needs originally proposed by Murray and his colleagues in 1938. However, many of these needs have received little attention, and some of them may be less relevant now than they were 70 years ago. Two studies were conducted to investigate current motives. In Study 1, we used the Striving Assessment to elicit the personal strivings of 255 undergraduate university students. Murray’s taxonomy was unable to account for 50% of the 2,937 strivings. These strivings were thematically groups into 11 new categories and combined with 7 Murrayan needs to form the Comprehensive Motivation Coding System (CMCS). In Study 2, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories produced by 143 undergraduate student participants were coded by these two systems. Murray’s system was unable to fully account for 42% of motives identified in the TAT stories, but the CMCS was able to account for 89%. These findings suggest that Murrayan needs may not adequately describe contemporary motivations and that the CMCS has the potential to do so. However, due to the limited demographics of our sample, further investigations are needed.

Keywords

motivation personal strivings coding systems update

Motivation is the drive behind our behaviors and the force that directs our behaviors (McClelland, 1987), and understanding it has been a focus of research and clinical practice since the beginning of modern-day psychology. The first systematic attempt to document and describe the range of human motives was made by Murray and his colleagues in the late 1930s. On the basis of in-depth studies of 51 males described in Explorations in Personality, Murray (1938) proposed 20 manifest psychogenic needs (motives). In addition, he identified eight latent needs and seven other needs (see Table 1). According to Murray’s view of personality, human nature involves a set of universal needs. Although all people have these needs, individuals tend to vary in the level of each, with idiographic variation creating the dispositional tendencies that constitute personality. Murray’s focus on these needs as a central tenet in his conceptualization of personality explicitly highlighted the motives that individuals display and the manner in which they reflect underlying personality.

Table 1.

Murrayan Needs and Their Definitions (Murray, 1938, p. 146, pp. 743-750).

Need	Definition
Manifest Needs
Abasement	To surrender. To comply and accept punishment. To apologize, confess, atone. Self-depreciation. Masochism.
Achievement	To overcome obstacles, to exercise power, to strive to do something difficult as well and as quickly as possible.
Affiliation	To form friendships and associations. To greet, join, and live with others. To cooperate and converse sociably with others. To love. To join groups.
Aggression	To assault or injure an object. To murder. To belittle, harm, blame, accuse or maliciously ridicule a person. To punish severely. Sadism.
Autonomy	To resist influence or coercion. To defy an authority or seek freedom in a new place. To strive for independence.
Counteraction	Proudly to refuse admission of defeat by restriving and retaliating. To select the hardest tasks. To defend one’s honour in action.
Defendance	To defend oneself against blame or belittlement. To justify one’s actions. To offer extenuations, explanations and excuses. To resist “probing”.
Deference	To admire and willingly follow a superior allied object. To co-operate with a leader. To serve gladly.
Dominance (power)	To influence or control others. To persuade, prohibit, dictate. To lead and direct. To restrain. To organize the behaviour of a group.
Exhibition	To attract attention to one’s person. To excite, amuse, stir, shock, thrill others. Self-dramatization.
Harmavoidance	To avoid pain, physical injury, illness and death. To escape from a dangerous situation. To take precautionary measures.
Infavoidance	To avoid failure, shame, humiliation, ridicule. To refrain from attempting to do something that is beyond one’s powers. To conceal a disfigurement.
Nurturance	To nourish, aid or protect a helpless object. To express sympathy. To “mother” a child.
Order	To arrange, organize, put away objects. To be tidy and clean. To be scrupulously precise.
Play	To relax, amuse oneself, seek diversion and entertainment. To “have fun,” to play games. To laugh, joke and be merry. To avoid serious tension.
Rejection	To snub, ignore or exclude an object. To remain aloof and indifferent. To be discriminating.
Sentience	To seek out and enjoy sensual impressions.
Sex (erotic)	To form and further an erotic relationship. To have sexual intercourse.
Succourance	To seek aid, protection or sympathy. To cry for help. To plead for mercy. To adhere to an affectionate, nurturant parent. To be dependent.
Understanding (cognizance)	To analyse experience, to abstract, to discriminate among concepts, to define relationships, to synthesize ideas.
Latent needs
Repressed Abasement	The desire to suffer pain, to succumb sexually.
Repressed Aggression	The desire to injure and inflict pain.
Regressed Cognizance	The desire to see and inspect. To probe into private matters.
Repressed Dominance	The desire for complete power. To magically control objects.
Repressed Exhibitionism	The desire to show off and expose one’s body in public.
Repressed Sex	The desire for heterosexual relations.
Repressed Homosexuality	This is not a separate need. It is the Sex drive focused on an opposite of the subject’s sex.
Repressed Succorance	The desire for security, support, sympathy, love.
Other Needs
Acquisition	To gain possessions and property. To grasp, snatch or steal things. To bargain or gamble. To work for money or goods.
Blamavoidance	To avoid blame, ostracism or punishment by inhibiting asocial or unconventional impulses. To be well-behaved and obey the law.
Cognizance	To explore (moving or touching). To ask questions. To satisfy curiosity. To look, listen, inspect. To read and seek knowledge.
Construction	To organize and build.
Exposition	To point and demonstrate. To relate facts. To give information, explain, interpret, lecture.
Recognition	To excite praise and commendation. To demand respect. To boast and exhibit one’s accomplishments. To seek distinction, social prestige, honours or high office.
Retention	To retain possession of things. To refuse to give or lend. To hoard. To be frugal, economical and miserly.

To assess motives, Murray and his colleagues employed new methods such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943), which became one of the dominant research tools in the field of personality and also an important clinical tool. The TAT consists of 31 cards featuring pictures about which respondents are instructed to tell stories. Because the pictures are ambiguous, respondents’ defense mechanisms are not vigilant and they project tendencies into their stories that reveal their prevailing motivations (Murray, 1938). The TAT functions then like an “X-ray picture” (Murray, 1943), and respondents’ motivations can be drawn from the stories they generate. For example, stories involving dominance and influencing others might be judged as indicative of a motive for power.

Murray and his colleagues’ original coding system for the TAT was general, covering the 20 specific manifest needs and 8 latent needs. This list has remained influential, forming the basis of other measures of motivation such as Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (Edwards, 1959), which assesses 15 of Murray’s proposed needs, and the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1967), which assesses 22 unique aspects of personality. The number of hits of these two scales in PsycInfo suggests that they are ranked in the top three most commonly used general motivation scales (Mayer, Faber, & Xu, 2007). The Personality Research Form, for example, has been used to study assertiveness training, consumer behavior, decision making, emotional development, employee attitudes, job performance, and leadership style.

Despite this, research related to Murrayan needs has been limited in breath, with only the so-called “Big Three” motives (Power, Affiliation, and Achievement) having been the focus of major research attention, and many others having been seldom studied at all, except by Murray and his colleagues. Indeed, a search using the PsycInfo database showed that 11 out of 27 motives had fewer than 30 citations in the past 70 years, and one category (Blamavoidance) had none. Although the big three motives are very important, human beings are not just driven by these three motives.

Another issue with motivation research relates to how motives are measured. Measures with open response formats like the TAT (operant measures) are said to provide a more sensitive assessment of the relative strength of internal motivational dispositions than measures that use forced-choice response formats that presuppose the possible range of motives (respondent measures). Whereas the motivational dispositions elicited by operant measures are believed to energize, direct, and select behavior over the course of daily life (McAdams, 1985; McClelland, 1985), the consciously articulated and cognitively elaborated values and behavioral tendencies elicited by respondent measures may be useful in predicting immediate responses to highly structured situations.

While, as stated above, Murrayan proposals regarding motives have guided and influenced motivation research for the past 70 years, new understanding have periodically emerged (Mayer et al., 2007). For example, Maslow’s (1943) self-related motives and Deci and Ryan’s (2000) self-determination theory have been influential, and new need categories such as the need for dependence, oneness, and food (Atkinson & McClelland, 1948; Kagan & Mussen, 1956; Siegel & Weinberger, 1998) have been proposed. New approaches, such as assessing individuals’ activated plans, have also been employed in motivation research. Specifically, Klinger’s Current Concerns, Little’s Personal Projects, and Emmons’s Striving Assessment have been developed (Emmons, 1986; Little, 1983; Mayer et al., 2007; Sellen, McMurran, Cox, Theodosi, & Klinger, 2006).

Emmons (1986, 1989) described personal strivings as idiographic goal-directed units that represent what the individual is typically or characteristically trying to do. They are instantiations of implicit motive systems such as achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power that can be elicited by simply asking individuals what they typically try to do. As such they are narrower than implicit motives, yet broader and more stable than specific goals or plans (Emmons, 1989). They occupy the middle level of abstraction between operant and respondent measures.

Given the paucity of research investigating the broader taxonomy of Murray’s needs, the current study aimed to explore whether underlying motivations that are elicited through personal strivings map on to this taxonomy, as well as the current relevance of Murray’s list of needs, and what might be missing. We conducted the following two studies to answer these questions.

Study 1

Study 1 started with the proposition that if Murray’s list of motives describes a comprehensive, universal, and relevant account of motives, and strivings are instantiations of implicit motive systems, then all strivings should be relatable to one or more of Murray’s motives. However, if new motives elicited through personal strivings that cannot be accounted for by Murray’s system are revealed through this comparison, this may imply that changes in underlying needs over time have occurred and/or a reconceptualization of Murray’s taxonomy may be necessary. It should be recalled that Murray’s model of motivation had its genesis in the 1930s. Since then, much has changed. The elaboration of the model occurred in the period of Great depression, the Second World War, then the recovery of world order, and the Cold War. In contrast, today people in the Western world are living in vastly different circumstances that are far more complex in so many ways due to advances in science, in particular new technologies and globalization. If Murray’s taxonomy is contemporally comprehensive and inclusive, each striving elicited from a participant will be accounted for.

Method

Participants

Two hundred and fifty-five undergraduate psychology students (185 females, 70 males) ranging in age from 17 to 52 years (M = 19.27, SD = 2.40) participated in this study for course credit. Their majors varied across most disciplines offered by the university.

Measures

The Striving Assessment (SA; Emmons, 1986) was used to generate lists of personal strivings that could be coded for underlying motives. This instrument was chosen because personal strivings are conceptually tied to motivation and involved in the action process of motivation (Emmons, 1999). As defined by Emmons (1999), they are “things that a person is typically or characteristically trying to do” (p. 181), no matter whether the person is successful in these things or not. This definition is not only consistent with contemporary influential understandings of motivation (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000) but also echoes Allport’s (1955) suggestion of effective ways to examine motivation—that is, “to find out what we are trying to do, including what we are trying to avoid and what we are trying to be” (p. 112).

The SA was originally developed to measure what individuals typically try to do in their ordinary life. Participants are given the definition and examples of personal strivings and then are asked to list their own strivings following the stem “I typically try to ___.” In Emmons’s (1986, 1999) studies, participants were asked to list 15 strivings, but according to Emmons (1999), this number was arbitrary. In our preliminary research, most participants did not list 15 strivings. Therefore, in the present study each participant was asked to list 12 personal strivings.

Emmons’s (1999) original coding system for the SA was “developed for categorizing the target of what the person is striving for” (p. 36). This scoring system consists of 13 categories: Approach versus Avoidance, Intrapersonal versus Interpersonal, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Personal Growth and Health, Self-Presentation, Self-Sufficiency/Independence, Maladaptive/Self-Defeating, Generativity, Spiritual Self-Transcendence, and Level of Specification. Emmons (1999) stated that these categories were clustered by surface similarities and not established on the basis of latent motives of personal strivings. So it is not a meticulous motivation coding system. Emmons and King (1992) have reported acceptable interrater reliabilities for most categories in Emmons scoring system, and Emmons (1999) has reported test–retest reliabilities for categories that range from .47 to .88.

Procedure

The proposal for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of New Hampshire. Students attended a laboratory in small groups, and the requirements of participation were explained to them. Before completing the SA, they signed a consent form. After they completed the SA, they were given debriefing forms.

Results

In total, the 255 participants produced 2,937 striving responses. The mean number of strivings for males was 11.24 and for females it was 11.62.

To examine whether Murray’s coding system could account for the strivings generated by participants, two trained graduate students coded the data using Murray’s (1938) needs categories. Murray’s 20 manifest needs, the 8 latent needs, and the 7 motives that were not particularly studied by Murray and his colleagues in Explorations in Personality were included. Additionally, a category of “Other” was added to code the strivings that did not fit the 27 categories of Murray (1938). The definitions of each motive were interpreted broadly to maximize the potential for the system to account for strivings.

Frequencies and Percentages

Table 2 shows the number of strivings assigned to each of Murray’s motive categories and the percentages of participants who demonstrated each of motives. As shown in Table 2, zero strivings were coded to some Murrayan needs (Aggression, Counteraction, Rejection, Construction, and Retention). In addition, less than 30 strivings out of 2,937 were coded into each of 11 other Murrayan needs. Significantly, 1,474 strivings (50% of the total strivings generated by our participants) did not fit in any of Murray’s categories.

Table 2.

Number of Strivings Coded as a Given Motive and Percentage of Participants Showing the Motive.

Using Murray’s Coding
Motive	Number of Strivings	Percentage of Participants
Achievement	349	82
Affiliation	526	91
Dominance	99	34
Autonomy	76	24
Acquisition	29	11
Order	45	16
Sex	7	2
Abasement	6	2
Aggression	0	0
Counteraction	0	0
Deference	13	5
Defendance	2	1
Exhibition	3	1
Harmavoidance	14	5
Infavoidance	20	8
Nurturance	178	55
Play	273	68
Rejection	0	0
Sentience	6	3
Succorance	7	2
Understanding	28	10
Blamavoidance	33	12
Cognizance	52	19
Construction	0	0
Exposition	3	1
Recognition	17	6
Retention	0	0
Other	1,474	100

To further examine the unallocated strivings, those coded as “Other” were examined for thematic coherence. Eleven categories emerged. These additional categories were Health, Intimacy, Self-improvement, Honesty/Integrity, Efficiency, Novelty, Religion/Spirituality, Enjoyment, Social Goodness, Idiosyncratic, and Not Enough Information. A summary of the new motive categories, their definition, and the number of strivings coded to each is provided in Table 3.

Table 3.

The Analysis of Strivings Coded as “Other” Using Murray’s Coding.

Motive	Definition	Example	Number of Strivings	Percentage
Intimacy	Characterized by loving and tender behavior; the sharing of intimate thoughts and ideas in a trusting context, seeking harmony with others and desiring reciprocal help; and frequent dialogue or discussions of personal and/or relationship issues	I typically try to go to see my boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/family on weekends; I typically try to put my family before anything else	211	55
Health	Characterized by a strong desire to exercise; to eat well; to live in a healthy environment; to stay in shape, and to be calm and tranquil while sleeping well and avoiding stress	I typically try to eat healthy; I typically try to keep healthy	292	74
Self-improvement	Characterized by seeking to flourish and to find fulfillment however the individual defines it, especially through developing the self and being true to the self; by the desire of self-control and self-regulation	I typically try to be true to myself; I typically try to live every moment to the fullest	237	78
Honesty/Integrity	characterized by the desire to behave and live according to moral guidelines, to exhibit integrity and truthfulness; desiring to act with a sense of responsibility toward one’s self and others	I typically try to be just and fair in all of my actions; I typically try to be honest	227	81
Efficiency	Characterized by the need to use time efficiently, to avoid laziness and staleness, and to keep one’s self busy doing things, to perform needed or otherwise important acts in one’s own and others lives	I typically try to do things which I can benefit from; I typically try to make things useful or instrumental	55	92
Novelty	Characterized by needing to experience new things, especially thrilling and sensational experiences; wanting to do new and different activities in one’s leisure time and to “blow off steam” by satisfying sudden urges	I typically try to try new things; I typically try to live on the edge	67	83
Religion/Spirituality	Characterized by a need to understand one’s higher purpose and place in the universe; desiring a strong sense of faith and loyalty to a higher power or God or gods; or seeking a deeper sense of spirituality	I typically try to be spiritual; I typically try to be loyal to God	45	98
Enjoyment	Characterized by the need of having fun, enjoying life, playing, and appreciating or being humorous	I typically try to enjoy the simple things in life; I typically try to be humorous to make people smile and laugh	45	26
Social Goodness	Characterized by a need to be a good person in the society, to do good things for others or community, to be unselfish and altruistic, to put others’ needs before one’s own	I typically try to volunteer; I typically try not to be selfish	100	42
Idiosyncratic	Characterized by nonshared social needs and goals that are unusually or uniquely expressed by the individual	I typically try to take the easy way out; I typically try to make more female friends than male friends	93	62
Not Enough Information	Characterized by insufficient information to make judgment about a person’s underlying motives	I typically try to stay focused in most situations; I typically try to read	27	69

In summary, approximately half of the personal strivings elicited from our participants could not all be accommodated by Murray’s needs categories. Those unable to be allocated were analyzed thematically and 11 new categories created. Seven of Murrayan needs—Achievement, Affiliation, Power, Autonomy, Acquisition, Order, and Sex—were broadly redefined and retained because they accounted for most of the other half of the personal strivings. These additional categories and the seven broadened Murrayan needs to which strivings were allocated could be argued to constitute a new categorization system that may be more reflective of current motives. We will call this list the Comprehensive Motivation Coding System (CMCS).

Study 2

Murray and his colleagues’ systematic proposal of motivation was based on in-depth investigation of their participants, and TAT stories were their most important sources. Given that TAT stories are said to function like an “X-ray picture” (Murray, 1943) and to expose the respondents’ unconscious motivations, the inability of Murray’s system to account for around 50% of the strivings might be due to the data collection method used in Study 1, in which we elicited our data by a middle level of abstraction between operant and respondent measures: Motives apparent in conscious strivings may not be the same as those that are expressed in TAT stories. Therefore, to investigate whether the CMCS is more relevant to current college students than Murrayan needs, TAT stories were collected and coded using these two systems. This approach provides a fairer test of Murray’s taxonomy.

Method

Participants

One hundred and forty-three undergraduates (110 females, 33 males) ranging in age from 17 to 52 years (M = 19.22, SD = 3.03) participated in this study for course credit. As in Study 1, their majors varied across most disciplines offered by this university.

Materials

A total of 31 TAT pictures are available, but previous studies have usually used only five or six of them (Keiser & Prather, 1990). Based on Keiser and Prather’s (1990) review, the five most frequently used cards (1, 4, 6BM, 7BM, and 8GF) were chosen and administered. Picture 1 is of a boy who sits in front of a violin; in Picture 4, a woman is clutching a man who seems to pull away from her; Picture 6BM is of an elderly woman who stands by a window with her back to a young man; in Picture 7BM, an elderly man is watching a young man; Picture 8GF is of a young woman sitting in a chair with her chin in her hand and looking into the distance (Murray, 1943).

Procedure

The proposal for Study 2 was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of New Hampshire. Students attended a laboratory in small groups, and the requirements of participation were explained to them. They were then asked to write stories about the chosen TAT pictures using the standardized instructions provided in the TAT manual (Murray, 1943).

Results

In total, the 143 participants generated 715 stories, with five stories for each student. The stories were coded using the CMCS and Murray’s system by two trained postgraduate students. In total, 1,246 motives were coded using the CMCS and 975 motives were coded using Murray’s coding.

Frequencies and Percentages

The seven CMCS motives that are broadly based on and parallel Murrayan motives exhibited similar frequencies as the originally defined Murrayan motives, and except for Affiliation, similar percentages of participants demonstrated those motives. These motives were Achievement, Power (Dominance), Acquisition, Independence (Autonomy), Organization (Order), and Sex. For example, the frequency of CMCS Achievement was 139 and the frequency of Murrayan Achievement was 136, with 68% and 67% of participants demonstrating this motive, respectively (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Number of Motive Themes and Percentages of Participants Demonstrating Each Motive.

Using CMCS			Using Murray’s Coding
Motive Themes	Number of Themes	Percentage	Motives	Number of Themes	Percentage
Achievement	139	68	Achievement	136	67
Affiliation	93	20	Affiliation	212	82
Power	150	80	Dominance	138	67
Independence	46	30	Autonomy	50	31
Acquisition	54	28	Acquisition	53	32
Organization	7	5	Order	3	2
Sex	20	13	Sex	20	13
Intimacy	349	99	Abasement	30	20
Health	6	4	Aggression	30	19
Self-improvement	53	32	Counteraction	0	0
Honesty/Integrity	56	36	Deference	16	10
Efficiency	1	1	Defendance	9	6
Novelty	12	7	Exhibition	1	1
Religion/spirituality	18	12	Harmavoidance	5	3
Enjoyment	90	48	Infavoidance	6	4
Social goodness	15	9	Nurturance	103	53
Idiosyncratic	87	47	Play	85	47
Not enough information	50	28	Rejection	0	0
			Sentience	1	1
			Succorance	15	10
			Understanding	7	5
			Blamavoidance	19	13
			Cognizance	25	17
			Construction	1	1
			Exposition	1	1
			Recognition	9	6
			Retention	0	0
			Other	297	94

Except for these parallel motives, the most frequent motive identified was CMCS Intimacy (349), which was exhibited by 99% of the participants. Other common CMCS motives were Enjoyment (90, 48%), Affiliation (93, 20%), Self-Improvement (53, 32%), Honesty/Integrity (56, 36%), Novelty (12, 7%), Religion/Spirituality (18, 12%), and Social Goodness (15, 9%; see Table 4). Nurturance (103, 53%), Play (85, 47%), Abasement (30, 20%), Aggression (30, 19%), Deference (16, 10%), Succorance (15, 10%), Blamavoidance (19, 13%), and Cognizance (25, 17%) were the most frequently identified of the other Murrayan needs. Notably, the rest of Murrayan needs were identified in only 40 of the 715 stories and they all had frequencies lower than 10 (e.g., Exhibition [1], Rejection [0], Construction [1], and Retention [0]; see Table 4). Moreover, 297 motives shown in those stories did not fit in any of Murrayan needs, and 94% of the participants produced stories that were coded to at least two motives that were not on the Murrayan need list. These results suggested that, similar to those of Study 1, some of Murrayan needs may not be salient for current American college students. Instead, new CMCS motives are more relevant to present college students.

Discussion

In these two studies, we set out to determine the relevance of Murray’s (1938) system of motivation to modern-day U.S. college students. In Study 1, we found that Murrayan need categories were unable to account for half of the 1,474 strivings generated by our participants. Furthermore, 18 of Murray’s 28 categories accounted in total of only 7% of the strivings. These findings suggested that Murray’s system is inadequate to account for our data and that 18 of Murray’s motives may not be prevalent motives in current college student populations.

When we grouped the unallocated strivings by theme, 11 new categories were created. These were Health, Intimacy, Self-improvement, Honesty/Integrity, Efficiency, Novelty, Religion/Spirituality, Enjoyment, Social Goodness, Idiosyncratic, and Not Enough Information. By combining these 11 new categories with those from Murray’s list that were retained with broadened definitions, we were able to account for the data entirely with 18 categories, including an “idiosyncratic” and an “other” category. We called this combined system the CMCS.

Since personal strivings are conscious, and Murrayan needs were considered to be predominantly unconscious and only elicitable through response formats such as that of the TAT, our second study used both coding systems to summarize the motive themes underlying TAT stories. As in our first study, we found that Murray’s coding was not able to adequately account for about almost half (42%) of all stories, and 16 Murrayan needs accounted in total for only about 9% of all the motive themes. In contrast, 16 of the CMCS motives were able to account for about 89% of all the themes. Such results indicate that the CMCS may be a more comprehensive alternative motivational system.

Differences and Similarities Between the CMCS and Murrayan Needs

As pointed out above, our coding system, the CMCS, accounted for all strivings for which adequate information was provided, and for most of the TAT stories. This system includes 16 specific motives, only some of which were expressly described by Murray (1938) in his seminal works. Using each coding system, similar numbers of strivings from similar percentages of participants were coded into these seven categories. The motives that were similar were the following: Achievement, Affiliation, Power/Dominance, Acquisition, Independence/Autonomy, Organization/Order, and Sex. In addition, three of the motives have some conceptual overlaps, Intimacy and Affiliation, Enjoyment and Play, and Social Goodness and Nurturance.

Picture Cue’s Effects

Among the new motive categories, Efficiency and Health had much lower frequencies in TAT stories than in strivings. This may be due to the influence of picture cues. Influences of picture cues refer to certain motives being potentially aroused by particular type of picture stimulus. For example, as can be seen in Table 5, our participants generated remarkably more Affiliation and Intimacy motives for the picture with a young man and a young woman. More Power motives were produced for the picture having a young man and an elderly man. In fact, picture cues have been studied previously (e.g., Haber & Alpert, 1958; Smith, Atkinson, McClelland, & Veroff, 1992). Haber and Alpert (1958) found that achievement imagery highly correlated with Achievement cued pictures, with a correlation of .71. Picture cue effects may be the reason for much fewer themes of Organization, Health, and Efficiency motives found in the TAT stories we collected.

Table 5.

Influences of Picture Clue.

	Picture
Motives	A Boy With a Violin	A Man and a Woman	A Young Man and an Elderly Man	A Young Woman	A Young Man and an Elderly Woman
Achievement	68	8	27	29	7
Affiliation	17	65	4	7	0
Power	38	8	57	14	33
Independence	8	5	10	11	12
Acquisition	11	5	14	16	8
Organization	2	0	1	3	1
Sex	0	12	0	6	2
Intimacy	32	103	40	71	103
Health	0	0	0	6	0
Self-improvement	9	6	19	13	6
Honesty/Integrity	5	18	18	2	13
Efficiency	0	1	0	0	0
Novelty	1	3	2	5	1
Religion/Spirituality	2	0	4	5	7
Enjoyment	35	10	9	29	7
Social Goodness	2	4	3	3	3
Idiosyncratic	30	16	19	12	10
Not Enough Information	5	7	16	11	11

Trends of Motivation

In addition to the categorical and definitional differences, the CMCS motives and Murrayan needs exhibit different characteristics. In general, Murrayan needs appear negative and passive, whereas CMCS motives show a more positive and active pattern. For example, Murray (1938) defined “Harmavoidance” as a need “to avoid pain, physical injury, illness and death, to escape from a dangerous situation, and to take precautionary measures” (p. 197). In contrast, we characterized “Health” as a strong desire to exercise, eat well, live in a healthy environment, avoid stress, sleep well, and be calm and tranquil. The CMCS “Health” is much more proactive and positive than “Harmavoidance,” even though they might share the same ultimate objective of being healthy. Another example of a negative and passive pattern in Murrayan needs is “Abasement,” the need “to submit passively to external force, to accept injury, blame, criticism, punishment, to surrender, to become resigned to fate . . .” (Murray, 1938, p. 161). Strivings and stories that show such desire are very rare, at least in our data set. Quite to the contrary, we found that the most common motives appearing in our data—Achievement, Affiliation, Power, Intimacy, Health, Self-improvement, Honesty, and Social Goodness—are all positive and active (see Table 2). Thus, Murrayan needs appear to be negative and passive, whereas the motives among contemporary college students of the United States appear to be more positive and active.

The negative and passive pattern of Murrayan needs can be at least partially explained by the popular psychological theories and the social environment of Murray’s time. According to Murray (1938), two influential schools of that time, psychodynamics and behaviorism, influenced his theory. Psychoanalysts believe that human nature is “dark,” and behaviorists believe that our behaviors are directed by physiological needs and environmental experiences. Therefore, it is not surprising that Murrayan needs exhibit passivity and negativity. Furthermore, in the 1930s, as pointed out in the introduction, the United States society was experiencing the Great Depression; people were suffering from hunger, unstable situations, and uncontrollable environments (Kennedy, 1999). Thus, it is understandable that their motives showed a negative or passive pattern. Nowadays, people of the United States are living in a more stable and plentiful environment. It is reasonable that contemporary college students of United States are driven by positive and active motives in their pursuits, and it can therefore be argued that the CMCS provides a more up-to-date motive list than Murrayan needs.

Implications for Motivation Theory

Ever since Murray and his colleagues’ seminal work on motivation, motives have been classified into conscious and unconscious. Later, Maslow (1943) proposed his hierarchical model of human needs, which suggested that individuals need to satisfy lower level desires (e.g., safety) first before moving to higher levels (e.g., self-actualization). Deci and Ryan (1985) and Ryan and Deci (2000) proposed a dynamic model of motivation, which differentiated intrinsic motivations and extrinsic motivation. However, motivation can also be understood in terms of two other dimensions: self- versus social-oriented motivation (e.g., MacCrimmon & Messick, 1976; Mayer, et al., 2007) and biological- versus spiritual-oriented motivation (e.g., Judd, 1907; Tiebout, 1951).

Self-oriented motivation directs one to satisfy self-oriented desires, which mostly involve self-improvement and self-control, for example, Self-Improvement and Honesty. Social-oriented motivation is other- or society-oriented and includes motives that guide individuals to establish a good relationship or to be accepted by the society or to do good things to others or the society, for instance, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Social-Goodness. The motivations observed in these findings resonate with the notion of movement toward other-directedness, as posited by Riesman, Glazer, and Denney (2001) in this sociological analysis of the American society, “The Lonely Crowd.” Within an increasingly service- and consumption-oriented economy, personal relatedness and communications have perhaps taken a more central role in individual’s motives. Indeed, using his paradigm of change, some evidence for this shifting social character over the decades since Riesman’s analysis has been provided (Tansey, Hyman, Zinkhan, & Diaz, 1992; Zinkhan & Shermohamad, 1986). Another factor in this movement toward social, communal needs may be increases over time in the immigration rates of individuals from collectivist societies, such as those in Latin American countries (http://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics).

Biological-oriented motivation involves keeping individuals surviving and reproducing the next generation, such as Health and Sex. Spiritual-oriented motivation refers to psychological or spiritual desires, for example, Religion/Spirituality. Some people may be less spiritual than others; some may be more motivated by biological desires than others. People can be differentiated by the degree of their motivations on these dimensions. The CMCS motives more strongly show these different aspects of human motivation than Murrayan needs. Against the background of a growth in rising health care consumerism and access to better health information from numerous sources, such as the Internet (Hicks, 2012), biological-oriented motivations may well be more prominent than before. Furthermore, numerous factors such as the introduction to the West of eastern spirituality, the rise of “new age” and holistic conceptions of existence, and increased public education around psychological health may have contributed to the increased saliency of a spiritual motive.

It must be noted, however, that the CMCS does not include negative motives of human motivation, for example, Aggression and Abasement. Although modern-day people are more positively motivated, these negative motivations cannot be ignored.

Despite the apparent advantages of the CMCS over Murray’s coding system, it should be recognized that the above findings are based on data derived from a relatively small sample of college students. Murray (1938) suggested that all people have to some degree all the motives described by him, so in the same way, we could argue that all people may have to some degree the motives described by the CMCS. However, because of the narrow age band in our sample, there may be other motives that did not appear in the personal strivings and TAT stories reported by our participants. That is to say, they may not have primacy or be salient at this stage of life for our participants. A further study with a broader sample would assist in resolving this issue.

Expanding on this point, the various dimensions of motivation discussed might be considered within the developmental context of individuals. As Stern (2010) suggests, individuals operate in the service of supra-individual tasks, which are not reducible to specific biological or psychological processes. Drawing on his work in child psychology, he contended that motives based within any one perspective, be it biological, social, or psychological, become relevant only when considered as converging on higher-order values that relate to the specific contextual nature of human development at any one point. Along similar lines, psychologists such as Adler (1992) suggest that motive-related goals are always relative and dynamic rather than nomothetic and static. Therefore, considerations of individual motives are best to be free of presuppositions, and instead concerned with particular circumstances and the subjective worldview of individuals.

Given these considerations, a cautionary note must also be added regarding approaches such as this that attempt to aggregate, categorize, and compare motives across individuals. No system of categorization can be expected to entirely capture individual variation by comparing differences between individuals or groups. As Lamiell (2000) points out in his critique of trait theories of personality, comparisons between individuals, or indeed groups, can only be an exercise in relativity rather than one that reliably predicts or explains the individual themselves. However, the intention here is not to cast a net so as to capture all aspects of individuation but rather to identify commonalities in motives among individuals as a way of understanding broad needs and their relevance within the current sociocultural environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Murray’s motives did not account well for our data, and it seems that a more contemporaneous system is required. The alternative system developed from the personal strivings includes some motives that overlap with Murray’s but also a number of new motives. These motives are generally more positive and active than Murray’s and may more accurately represent the prevailing motives of the current population. Given the limitations of this study, further investigation of the proposed system for motives is needed.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Dr. John D. Mayer and Dr. Kimberly A. Barchard for their help with an earlier draft of this article and to Dr. Rebecca Warner and Michael A. Faber for assistance with the study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Xiaoyan Xu is an associate professor of psychology in the Institute of Education at Sichuan Normal University in China. Her research focuses on the field of motivation, including theoretical and applied aspects, and published papers on motivation. She teaches psychology undergraduate and graduate students and supervises graduate students.

David Mellor is a professor in the School of Psychology, and Associate Dean (International) for the Faculty of Health at Deakin University in Australia. He has researched and published in a variety of areas of applied psychology. Until recently, he was the director of the Postgraduate Programs in Psychology at Deakin, and he continues to teach into these programs and to supervise postgraduate research students.

Yangang Xu is a researcher working at Research Administration Department of Sichuan Normal University, China. He has researched and published in a variety of areas of psychology in Chinese.

Liqiong Duan is a lecturer in the Institute of Education at Sichuan Normal University, China. She has researched many aspects of infants, including needs, and published papers in Chinese.

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