The Effect of Need for Achievement on Motiviation and Anxiety

The present study examines the effects of Need for achievement on anxiety and motivation with the hypothesis that individuals who score high on need for achievement will be highly motivated, leading to high anxiety when faced with a task while individuals who score low on need for achievement have low levels of motivation which leads to low anxiety when equally faced with a task. 40 participants were randomly assigned to high and low anxiety conditions and anxiety was induced by limiting the time participants in each condition had to read a story and answer questions about it before solving a word puzzle while need for achievement was measured using a Smith\u27s Quick Measure of Achievement. Resulting data was analyzed using a 2 x 2 ANOVA with anxiety as the dependent variable and motivation and need for achievement as independent variables and the results indicated that there was no significant main effect for need for achievement, F(l, 36) = 1.81, p \u3e .05 as well as no significant main effect for anxiety, F(l,36) = 1.49, p \u3e .05. There was also no significant interaction effect between anxiety and need for achievement, F(l,36) = 1.85, p \u3e .05. These results were statistically insignificant and did not support the hypothesis. Detailed descriptions of the methods and analyses are discussed