David McClelland made his reputation through his studies of achievement motivation. Since 1948, McClelland has examined why and how people are economically successful. First, McClelland devised a means of using fantasy to measure the extent of a person's 'achievement motivation'. Typically, a person who is high on achievement motivation will be concerned to achieve good cost-benefit ratios. The actual means McClelland used to tease out this motivation seem very odd (McClelland, and Boyatzis, 1982).
The background to McClelland's thesis was religious. Max Weber, the sociologist, argued that the Reformation which saw the birth of the Protestant work ethic led to capitalism. In 1904, Weber thought both that Protestant countries like Britain and Sweden were more developed economically than Catholic ones and that Protestant workers toiled harder. Weber was particularly struck, it appears, by the hard work of Protestant shop girls. Weber's impressions were no scientific proof. McClelland both tested some of Weber's ideas empirically and extended them. First, he established that Protestant countries were more developed economically. As an index of economic development, McClelland chose kilowatt hours of electricity consumed per capita. All his countries were in temperate zones. He found striking differences between Protestant and Catholic countries -- differences of the sort suggested by Weber. McClelland turned to psychology again. He argued that Protestant parents trained their children to be more independent and more in control of their environment. Calvinists, especially, believed that you either were one of the elect and saved or you were not. Nothing you did would make you a candidate for election.
People were thus forced to try and prove to themselves that they were of the elect. The only way to do this was to achieve success. This led to the emphasis on independence in the young which, in turn, produced children high in.........
