Psychologist Atkinson said that people's behavioral motives can be divided into two categories: one is to strive for success, and the other is to avoid failure. Obviously, this is in line with our common sense. Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, puts forward that people will still be "afraid of success", which is the so-called Jonah complex.

1, Strive for Success: People tend to pursue success or bring positive emotions from success, so they pay attention to how to achieve success. When faced with important tasks such as academic work, they will choose strategies that are conducive to high-quality task completion.

2. Avoidance of failure: People tend to avoid failure or negative emotions caused by failure, that is, to prevent self-esteem from being hurt and psychologically troubled through various activities and take defensive measures.

In the theory of achievement motivation, mcclelland used a group of 5-year-old children to do the experiment of setting up stakes for children, and let them walk into the room and set up stakes in the middle of the room with ropes in their hands. Children are free to choose where they stand and let them predict how many cycles they can capture. The results show that the children who strive for success choose a moderate position from the stake, while the children who avoid failure choose a place that is either close to the stake or far away from it.

According to the experimental research, mcclelland divides the motivation of achievement into two types: one is to strive for success-the person who strives for shaping focuses on how to succeed, so he tends to choose tasks with moderate difficulty and likes to choose jobs with 50% certainty and certain risks. Avoid failure-people who avoid failure focus on how to avoid failure, so they tend to choose very easy or difficult tasks.