Examining brain structures associated with the motive to achieve success and the motive to avoid failure: A voxel-based morphometry study

Abstract

The motive to achieve success (MAS) and motive to avoid failure (MAF) are two different but classical kinds of achievement motivation. Though many functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have explored functional activation in motivation-related conditions, research has been silent as to the brain structures associated with individual differences in achievement motivation, especially with respect to MAS and MAF. In this study, the voxel-based morphometry method was used to uncover focal differences in brain structures related to MAS and MAF measured by the Mehrabian Achieving Tendency Scale in 353 healthy young Chinese adults. The results showed that the brain structures associated with individual differences in MAS and MAF were distinct. MAS was negatively correlated with regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)/orbitofrontal cortex while MAF was negatively correlated with rGMV in the mPFC/subgenual cingulate gyrus. After controlling for mutual influences of MAS and MAF scores, MAS scores were found to be related to rGMV in the mPFC/orbitofrontal cortex and another cluster containing the parahippocampal gyrus and precuneus. These results may predict that compared with MAF, the generation process of MAS may be more complex and rational, thus in the real world, perhaps MAS is more beneficial to personal growth and guaranteeing the quality of task performance.

Keywords:

• Achievement motivation
• Motive to achieve success
• Motive to avoid failure
• Voxel-based morphometry (VBM)
• Regional gray matter volume (rGMV)

We thank the participants, the experimenters for the ongoing project, and all our other colleagues for their support.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31470981], [grant number 31070900], [grant number 30800293], [grant number 30970892], [grant number 31170983], the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (2011) by the Ministry of Education, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number SWU1209101], [grant number SWU1309117], China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project [grant number 2012M510098], the Research Funds for Southwest University [grant number SWU09103], the Key Discipline Fund of National 211 Project [grant number NSKD11007], and the postgraduate Innovation Foundation of Science and Technology of Southwest University [grant number kb2011002].