 18. Implicit Motives  387
tionships, and are more likely to seek social 
support when faced with stressful situations 
than those low in n Affiliation (Dufner, 
Arslan, Hagemeyer, Schönbrodt, & Denis -
sen, 2015; Job, Bernecker, & Dweck, 2012; 
Hagemeyer & Neyer, 2012; Schoch, Noser, 
& Ehlert, 2018; Zygar, Hagemeyer, Pusch, 
& Schönbrodt, 2018). They respond with 
not only approach behavior to nonverbal sig -
nals of affiliation, such as facial expressions 
of joy, but also vigilance and avoidance be -
havior to nonverbal signals of rejection and 
hostility, such as facial expressions of anger 
(e.g., Schult  heiss & Hale, 2007; Schult  heiss, 
Pang, Torges, Wirth, & Treynor, 2005). 
In other words, they want to be with in -
dividuals who are friendly and accepting, 
and distance themselves from people who 
are not (see Winter, 1996). n Affiliation is 
the only motive for which a gender differ -
ence has been found meta-  analytically, with 
women scoring higher than men (Drescher 
& Schult  heiss, 2016; see also Schönbrodt et 
al., 2020). Drescher and Schult  heiss specu -
lated that this difference may be due to dif -
ferential socialization and/or hormonal dif -
ferences (see below).
n Affiliation has a dark side (Weinberger 
et al., 2010) that is particularly likely to sur -
face when affiliative needs are threatened or 
frustrated. Mason and Blankenship (1987) 
report that affiliation-  motivated women are 
more likely to psychologically or physically 
abuse their partners when their relationship 
is under stress. Hofer and colleagues found 
that affiliation-  motivated individuals expe -
rienced more cynicism (Hofer, Busch, Rai -
hala, Šolcová, & Tavel, 2017), envy, and 
aggression toward others (Hofer & Busch, 
2011a) when they felt isolated, but not when 
they were engaged in meaningful relation -
ships. Boyatzis (1973) argued that n Affili -
ation is characterized mainly by a fear of 
rejection and that a motive measure tap -
ping more directly into the capacity for love 
would likely yield different results. Follow -
ing Boyatzis’s suggestion, McAdams (1980) 
developed a measure for the intimacy mo -
tive ( n Intimacy), defined as a need to expe -
rience warm and communicative exchange 
with other individuals. Initial research on 
this motive suggested that it indeed repre -
sents something different from n Affiliation: 
It correlates only modestly with the n Af -filiation measure and predicts more positive 
social outcomes (for summaries, see McAd -
ams, 1992; Weinberger et al., 2010). How -
ever, other studies do not support a strong 
distinction between n Affiliation and n Inti -
macy. For instance, in a large cross-  cultural 
study, Hofer and Busch (2011a) found that 
the two needs correlated at .67, and that 
both intimacy-  motivated and affiliation-  
motivated individuals reacted to social iso -
lation with envy and aggression. Moreover, 
Winter (1991) studied effects of affiliation- 
and intimacy-  inducing situations on affilia -
tive thought content and found their effects 
to be so similar that he did not see a justifi -
cation for a distinction at the measurement 
level.
Little is known about the developmental 
precursors of n Affiliation. In a longitudinal 
study, high n Affiliation in adulthood could 
be traced back to not only more parental use 
of praise as a socialization technique but also 
to the mother being less responsive to the 
child’s crying (McClelland & Pilon, 1983). 
These findings suggest that n Affiliation 
may be rooted at least partly in early separa -
tion anxiety or an avoidant attachment, but 
unfortunately the link between affiliation 
motivation and patterns of early attachment 
is largely unexplored (see Edelstein, Stanton, 
Henderson, & Sanders, 2010).
n Affiliation also affects people’s behavior 
outside of obviously affiliative situations. In 
achievement contexts, affiliation-  motivated 
individuals excel at tasks that require coop -
eration with others (Atkinson & O’Connor, 
1966; French, 1958) or bring them social ap -
proval (Atkinson & O’Connor, 1966), but 
show inferior performance on competitive 
tasks (Koestner & McClelland, 1992). Past 
research on management success indicated 
that high n Affiliation may be at odds with 
the typical requirements of management, 
such as making tough personnel decisions 
and holding everyone accountable to the 
same standards (McClelland & Boyatzis, 
1982; McClelland & Burnham, 2003). 
However, recent research suggests that n 
Affiliation has become a necessary ingredi -
ent for effective management, presumably 
because contemporary work contexts re -
quire managers to be more socially attentive 
(Steinmann, Dörr, Schult  heiss, & Maier, 
2015; Steinmann, Ötting & Maier, 2016).