ACHIEVING SOCIETY

Rating:
Summary: fascinating document from a failed research program
Review: This book documents a research program of McClelland and associates in the late 1950s and 1960s to isolate and document the "achievement motive" ascribed to individuals (or groups) as an explanation of "the rise and fall of civilizations," largely unmediated by the influence of institutions or other social or historical forces. Although it is fair to say that little if any of this perspective would be accepted by contemporary social scientists, the book is fascinating in retrospect as it documents McClelland and Co.'s attempts to quantify the "achievement motive" for example by scoring the content of folk tales, elementary school reading primers, and popular music, and then the linkage of these measures to other social outcomes, complete with ex post rationalizations of the results (or lack of results) obtained in these exercises.