On the nature of implicit motives

Abstract

David McClelland’s research on the different kinds of (implicit) motives and how to measure them has had a substantial influence on contemporary psychology of motivation. He did not, however, reflect on the nature of implicit motives in much detail. In this article, I fill this gap. I argue that implicit motives should not be understood as mental states the agent has no introspective access to. Instead, I propose that the implicit motives that McClelland and others in the field distinguish—the power, achievement, and affiliation motive—are generic descriptions of specific ends an agent may act for. These motives are implicit, because they are not explicitly expressed but merely implied in what the agent does, thinks, and feels. Establishing whether an agent acts for or has a certain implicit motive, then, is a matter of interpreting the agent’s expressions. This proposal is in line with and explains the empirical findings.