I BUSN RES 1990:20:135-143 13.5

Achievement and Affiliation Motivation Changing Patterns in Social Values as Represented in

American Advertising

George M. Zinkhan

Jae W. Hong University of Houston

Robert Lawson University of Pittsburgh

Under various conceptual forms, achievement motivation has been used fre- quently to explore and understand human behavior patterns. Affiliation motivation is a related concept that has received relatively less attention in the behavioral sciences. Here, a content analysis methodology is used to track these two social values over a 50-year period. As predicted by Riesman’s theory of social character, the incidence of affiliation motivation appeals is found to be on the increase in ment motivation appeals to be more common in publications.

popular media advertising, while the-use of achieve- is on the decrease. Achievement appeals are found male-oriented publications than in female-oriented

Introduction

Culture is generally accepted by marketing theorists as one of the underlying determinants of consumer behavior, and there is fairly strong empirical evidence to support this point of view (Henry, 1976). There are many possible definitions of cultural or social values, but there is general agreement that the term implies widely held beliefs as well as a general guide for some set of activities (Nicosia and Mayer, 1976). Two important social values that are consistent with this definition of social values are achievement and affiliation motivation (McClelland, 1961), and those are the focus of this article.

Address correspondence to George M. Zinkhan, University of Houston, Department of Marketing, Houston. TX 77204-6283.

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136 J BUSN RES 1990:20:135-143 G. M. Zinkhan et al.

Achievement and AfJiEiation Motivation

The basic idea of achievement motivation theory is that an achievement-oriented tendency results from the combination of two opposing component tendencies: the motive to attain success and the motive to avoid failure (Atkinson, 1974). More recently, the view of achievement motivation as a more-or-less static personality trait on which individuals may differ has been supplemented by an attribution theoretic analysis in which one’s level of achievement motivation is linked to dif- ferent patterns of perceiving causes for success or failure that, in turn, have their own affective and behavioral implications (Weiner, 1974 [Chap. 61, 1985).

Affiliation motivation (n aff), or the need to form relationships, has not received nearly the amount of attention as has n sch. The recent trend in studying affiliation has been in the context of examining factors that are involved in forming relation- ships (such as attraction, anticipation of acceptance or rejection, and emotional arousal), rather than viewing affiliation as a stable personality trait (Berscheid, 1985).

Inner- and Other-directedness

Riesman’s (1950) notion of inner-directedness (the tendency to follow an inter- nalized set of goals) and other-directedness (the tendency to follow the expectations and preferences of others) are linked closely to the concepts of achievement and affiliation motivation. Both high n ach and inner-directed individuals are focused on competition, standards of excellence, and the self. In discussing individuals with high n ach, McClelland (19.55, p. 58) states, “In many ways-they would seem to be the ones whom Riesman has called ‘inner-directed’.” In contrast, both other- directed individuals and those high in affiliation motivation are concerned with relationships with other people (de Charms and Moeller, 1965). When predicting trends in social character, Riesman specified that the United States is making a transition from inner-directedness to other-directedness.

The purpose of this study is to test Riesman’s thesis, especially as it applies to the concepts of achievement and affiliation motivation. Previous content analysis investigations of this issue have yielded mixed results. In two older studies tracking achievement and affiliation motivation over time, Straus and Houghton (1960) analyzed the content of editorials from the National 4-H Club News from 1924 to 1958, and de Charms and Moeller (1965) used children’s readers from 1800 to 1950. Both studies found declining achievement motivation but were inconclusive regarding increasing affiliation motivation.

Several researchers have tested Riesman’s theory concerning the shift from inner- to other-directedness in U.S. society by means of content analysis of popular media. The basic assumption has been that symbols contained in popular culture reflect underlying social values. Riesman himself specified that evidence for his theory should be found in the value imagery of cultural artifacts, such as advertising, art, and popular culture.

One of the first empirical efforts in this area was by Dornbusch and Hickman (1959), who hypothesized that a shift in advertisement themes is likely to reflect a corresponding change in values of the audience. Dornbusch and Hickman took a random sample of advertisements in the Ladies’ Home Journal (LHJ) from 1890

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to 1956. As expected, they found that there was a marked increase in the percentage of other-directed ads in the later period (1921-1956) compared to the earlier period.

Morton (1967) conducted a content analysis similar to Dornbusch and Hickman’s but analyzed ads from McCall’s and Good Housekeeping as well as LHJ. Morton analyzed ads from five 2-year time periods between 1913 and 1964. She found that the percentage of other-directed ads increased from 1913 to 1939 but decreased from 1940 to 1964. Zinkhan and Shermohamed (1986) analyzed both LHJ and Popular Science ads from 1951 to 1980 for other-directed content. One issue from each year was analyzed for each of the two magazines. A positive correlation between time and increasing percentage of other-directed themes was found in the Popular Science, but not in LHJ. Thus, the pattern of other-directed appeals in the male-oriented publication supported Riesman’s theory, but, mirroring the find- ings of Dornbusch and Hickman and of Morton after the 1930 time period, the incidence of other-directed appeals in the female-oriented publications did not support the theory.

Hypotheses

In summary, Riesman’s description of the inner-directed and other-directed char- acter and his notion of a basic shift in American values from inner- to other- directedness form the theoretical foundation of our study. To the extent that achievement motivation is uniquely a component of the inner-directed character and affiliation motivation is uniquely tied to the other-directed character, the degree of n ach and n aff can serve as surrogates for inner- and other-directedness. Hl and H2 can be viewed as reflections of Riesman’s historical shift hypothesis.

Hl: There will be a general decrease in achievement motivation found in magazine advertisements over the time period measured.

H2: There will be a general increase in affiliation motivation found in magazine advertisements over the time period measured.

Previous results, although quite mixed, generally support Hl and H2. Decreasing achievement motivation (but not increasing affiliation motivation) and increasing other-directedness (on a composite basis) have been found (de Charms and Moeller, 1962; Straus and Houghton, 1960; Zinkhan and Shermohamad, 1986).

The third hypothesis explicitly tests McClelland (1955) and others’ assumption that selected social values will be highly correlated in popular media:

H3a: Achievement motivation and inner-directedness will be highly correlated.

H3b: Affiliation motivation and other-directedness will be highly correlated

By the testing of H3a and H3b, it is possible to determine if Riesman’s theory of social character is appropriate for thinking about other sorts of social values (such as achievement and affiliation motivation). Similar assumptions have been made in the past (cf., de Charms and Moeller, 1962; Straus and Houghton, 1960) and appear to have substantial face validity; but these relationships have never been tested explicitly. The existence of potential relationships among selected social values is important, since Riesman’s approach allows for such a strong theoretical and conceptual framework for predicting future trends in U.S. social values.

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There is ample reason to believe that men and women would differ in their patterns of motivation. For example, previous researchers have consistently found that women score below men in such needs as achievement and dominance (see Koponen, 1960). Stevens and DeNisi (1980) contend that there is a greater tendency for women to attribute success to luck or to an easy task than for men. Also, Horner’s (1972) theory of “fear of success” in women suggests at least an ambiv- alence toward achievement motivation. Landon (1971, 1972) found that males and females exhibited different patterns of achievement motivation when that variable was related to purchase intentions. Landon (1972) specifically concludes, “need for achievement is probably more closely related to the male sex role than it is to the female sex role.” Thus, traditional U.S. sex role patterns suggest that achieve- ment appeals should be associated more commonly with a male audience than a female audience.

In recent years, sex roles have been rapidly changing in U.S. society. To cite one such change, women have been taking an ever-increasing role in an achievement-oriented workplace, especially during the last two decades. Based on these considerations of gender differences and the changing roles of men and women, we propose the following hypotheses:

H4: There will be a greater number of achievement-oriented appeals in male-oriented publications than in female-oriented publications.

H5: The decrease over time in achievement motivation predicted in Hl will be greater for male-oriented publications than for female-oriented publications.

The rationale for this last hypothesis is that men’s and women’s achievement motivation will both be decreasing over time. However, women’s achievement orientation is also expected to be subject to a counter trend because of their increasing involvement in the workplace over the last few decades. The net result of this counter trend is that women’s achievement motivation continues to decline, but at a slower rate than that of men.

Method

Magazines

Three magazines with fairly long publication histories were selected to represent a broad cross section of American public opinion. These three magazines were Time, LHJ, and Esquire. The last two were particularly important for addressing the issue of possible gender differences. Time was selected since it is one of the most prominent mass circulation magazines with a lengthy publication history.

Issues of these magazines from the 1930s through the 1980s were selected: 1935, 1945, 1955,1965,1975, and 1985. For the monthly publications (Esquire and LHJ) all 12 issues of each year were examined. For Time, one issue was randomly selected to represent each of the 12 months in the specified year. Thus, the sample consisted of 216 magazine issues (72 each for Esquire, Time, and LHJ). When testing our hypotheses about gender differences, we are making an assumption that Esquire/ LHJ readers are representative of male/female magazine readers as a whole. Of course, advertisers explicitly target appeals based on their estimates of fit with a magazine’s audience. However, there is considerable precedent in the content

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Table 1. Achievement and Affiliation Appeals in Three Magazines

139

Year

1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985

Totals/average

Achievement Percent of Appeal Ads with Present Ach. Appeal

775 47.8 1,511 49.0 1,025 48.2

980 44.7 846 45.2

1,068 41.8

6,205 46.11

Affiliation Percent of Total Appeal Ads with Number Present Aff. Appeal of Ads

302 18.6 1,622 570 18.5 3,087 388 18.3 2,126 424 19.3 2,193 412 22.0 1,872 554 21.7 2,557

2,650 19.69 13,457

analysis literature for using one publication to represent males or females in general (see, e.g., Dornbusch and Hickman, 1959; Zinkhan and Shermohamad, 1986). Nonetheless, a more cautious approach may be to interpret our gender-related results as applicable only to the segment of the U.S. public who read Esquire and LHJ.

Coding Procedure

For each magazine, three separate coders examined every advertisement that was one-half page or larger. This resulted in a sample size of 13,484 ads. Of these, 5,263 appeared in LHJ, 4,775 appeared in Esquire, and 3,446 were in Time.

The coders studied each ad (both illustration and text), looking for achievement and affiliation appeals. The coding criteria shown in the Appendix were used to place each ad into one of four categories: a) achievement appeal present, b) affil- iation appeal present, c) both achievement and affiliation appeals present, or d) neither achievement nor affiliation appeal present in the ad.

The same three coders also assessed inner- and other-directedness for 3,000 ads (1,000 from each of the three magazines). These 3,000 ads represented a subset of the 14,484 ads from the main sample and covered precisely the same time periods (i.e., 1935,1945,1955, 1965,1975, and 1985). The indices used to represent other- directedness were the same as those employed by Morton (1967) and by Zinkhan and Shermohamad (1986).

Reliability was assessed by comparison of the percentage of agreement among the three coders. For both achievement (average percent agreement across the three coders equals 95.6) and affiliation (average percent agreement equals 97.1), the level of reliability seems satisfactory for this type of research (Kassarjian, 1977). In cases of disagreement between raters, a caucus of the three coders was able to unanimously resolve this dispute in 99.8% of the cases. The remaining 0.2% of the ads (27 ads) were discarded as uncodable, resulting in a final sample size of 13,457 ads.

Results

The coding results for the entire sample of 13,457 ads are shown in Table 1. Under the coding procedure employed, the raters classified some ads as having both achievement and affiliation appeals present. For analysis purposes, this both-

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Table 2. Achievement Appeals in Ladies’ Home Journal and Esquire Magazines

Year

1935

1945

1955

1965

1975

1985

Totals or means

Ach. Percent

Appeals- Ach.-

Esquire Esquire

228 55.3 524 46.6 352 48.6 374 46.2 315 46.5 492 48.4

2,285 47.94

Ach. Percent

Appeals- Ach.- LHJ LHJ

353 51.0 600 48.7

410 49.5

327 43.3 270 39.8

452 42.3

2,412 45.93

x2 (comparing distribution of ESQ Ach Appeals to LHJ Ach appeals) = 8.47, df = 1, p < 0.01.

appeals-present category was included with both the achievement category and the affiliation category. For example, in 1935, there were 251 ads that used affiliation appeals, 724 ads that used achievement appeals, and 51 ads that used both appeals. Thus, as shown in Table 1, 302 ads were classified as using affiliation appeals and 775 classified as using achievement appeals.

The overall results generally support hypotheses one and two. As shown in Table 1, the incidence of achievement appeals declines from a high of 49.0% in 1945 to a low of 41.8% in 1985. The magnitude and pattern of this decline is significant across the six time periods (r = - .88, df = 4, p < 0.05). There are periods when the incidence of achievement appeals has increased (e.g., 1945, 1975), but the general pattern has been a decrease in achievement appeals across the time period investigated. The significant negative correlation coefficient is viewed as evidence in support of Hl.

In the same way that the incidence of achievement appeals is decreasing, the appearance of affiliation appeals is on the increase throughout the time period studied. Specifically, affiliation appeals are in the 18% range in the 1930s through the 1950s and rise to the 21 or 22% range in 1975 and 1985. Again, this pattern of results is significant at the.05 level (r = .86, df = 4). Thus, some support is found for hypothesis two.

Hypotheses 3a and 3b are also supported as the correlation between achievement and inner-directedness is.42 (t = 27.92, p < 0.001) and the correlation between affiliation and other-directedness is.53 (t = 40.36, p < 0.001). These pairs of concepts are not identical, but they do share a moderate amount of variance in common. Thus, Riesman’s theory of social character does appear to be appropriate for thinking about other categories of social values (in this instance, achievement and affiliation motivation).

Hypotheses 4 and 5 specify expected gender differences. Specifically, the fre- quency of achievement appeals is expected to be greater in male-oriented as op- posed to female-oriented publications. Relevant results are shown in Table 2. Overall, it is found that achievement appeals are more prevalent in Esquire (47.94%) than in LHJ (45.93%). Although this difference is not particularly large, it is significant at the.01 level (x” = 8.47, df = 1). In four out of the six time periods examined, the percentage of achievement-oriented appeals was higher in Esquire than in LHJ. The years of 1945 and 1955 appear as exceptions to this trend, but the bulk of the evidence supports the fourth hypothesis.

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141

Disc

Hypothesis 5 is generally not supported. Here, it was expected that the frequency of achievement appeals would be declining faster in the male-oriented publication than in the female-oriented publication. Instead, the opposite trend is apparent. The LHJ results show a greater decrease in the incidence of achievement motivation appeals over time (r = - .90) than do the Esquire results (I = - .58). The difference between these two correlation coefficients is significant (Fisher’s z = 27.7, p < 0.001).

In summary, some support is found for the first four hypotheses, but the opposite effect is observed in the case of hypothesis five. Specifically, the use of affiliation appeals appears to be on the increase from the 1930s to the 198Os, while the use of achievement appeals is found to be on the decrease. It should be noted, however, that the appearance of an achievement appeal is still twice as common as the appearance of an affiliation appeal. Despite the direction of the trends, achievement is more likely to be highlighted in an ad than is affiliation.

With respect to the expected gender differences, it is found that achievement appeals are more likely to be found in a male-oriented publication than a female- oriented one. At the same time, however, the frequency of achievement appeals is found to be decreasing faster in the female-oriented publication than in the male- oriented magazine.

:ussion

In contrast to the vast amount of research that has focused on psychologically based, consumption-related processes, relatively little attention has been paid to the larger social, cultural, or historic contexts of consumer behavior. A likely reason for this state of affairs is the difficulty of empirically capturing these larger phe- nomena. A particularly promising approach has been the study of changing cultural values through content analysis (Kassarjian, 1977). The present study has sought to chart the course of the levels of achievement and affiliation motivation in U.S. society over the last 50 years by performing a content analysis of magazine advertisements.

In general, the findings of this study indicate that, during the 1935-1985 time period, achievement appeals declined in popularity, while affiliation appeals are more frequently used. In addition, it is found that achievement appeals are more common in a male-oriented publication than in a female-oriented publication. A basic assumption of this study (and others employing a content analysis method- ology) is that these changes in media symbols represent a corresponding change in societal values.

These findings provide support for Riesman’s theory of social character. Mc- Clelland (1955) himself was one of the first to note the striking similarity between his notion of n ach and Riesman’s concept of inner-directedness. The pattern of our results (i.e., the high positive correlations found between n ach and inner- directedness, and between n aff and other-directedness) indicates that this proposed link between Riesman’s and McClelland’s major ideas might be valid. Both theories address issues concerned with personality characteristics in the context of large social units. Whereas McClelland’s original ideas have inspired finer-grained psy- chological analyses of these human tendencies, Riesman’s thesis of a basic shift in social character serves to remind us that personalities exist in a larger social context.

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Riesman’s theory of social character has spawned dozens of articles and studies, but it remains a theory that is difficult to test directly. The content analysis meth- odology that we have employed provides one such approach for testing this im- portant theory, and, as mentioned above, the pattern of results generally supports Riesman’s predictions.

Theorists such as McClelland or Riesman have been very influential in the development of social sciences since the 1950s. Many of their ideas and hypotheses are very broad in scope and call for a methodology that is equally broad. The difficulty of developing and validating such methodologies should not be allowed to inhibit the testing and refinement of such important theories.

Appendix: Indicators of Achievement and Affiliation

Achievement Appeals

The achievement motive (n ach) is indicated by someone in an advertisement wanting to perform or do something better, or by someone caring about performing or doing something better. Alternatively, an ad can promise better performance (achievement appeal). Achievement appeals include:

1. Outperforming someone else (e.g., getting a higher grade, running faster, getting the promotion).

2. Meeting or surpassing some self-imposed standard of excellence (e.g., doing something faster, cheaper, more efficiently.

3. Doing something unique (e.g., inventing something). 4. Being involved over a long term in doing something well when there is an

indication of great involvement over time in the achievement goal (e.g., being a success in life, becoming a welder, entrepreneur, dentist, etc.).

Ajjiliation Appeals

The affiliation motive (n aff) is indicated by someone in an advertisement wanting to be with someone else and enjoy mutual friendship. Alternatively, an ad can promise the benefits of mutual friendship (affiliation appeal). Affiliation appeals include:

5. Wanting to establish, restore, or maintain a close, warm, friendly relationship with another or others (e.g., “grandma enjoys bowling with grandpa, some neighbors, and her two grandchildren”).

6. Being emotionally concerned over separation from another person, which indicates a desire to restore a close relationship (e.g., “after months at sea, this marine wasted few of his precious days of leave in traveling. He came home by air to be with his family and friends”).

7. Desiring to participate or being concerned with participating in friendly, convivial activities, such as a club reunion (e.g., The main character in the ad is shown at the local bar talking to all of his buddies).

Both picture and text were analyzed for achievement and affiliation appeals.

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