| Abstract: | Differences in career and achievement motivation of U.S. and Iranian male and female college and high school students were compared, employing recently developed cross-cultural methodology. Of particular interest was the differential shift in achievement orientation at different age levels in the two cultural samples. Whereas achieving and career orientations were found to be higher in the U.S. college than in U.S. high school samples, the reverse was true in the Iranian samples. Compatible with observations made elsewhere, this suggests that age-related waxing and waning of achieving orientations occur in different cycles in different cultures. Also of interest was that the culture main effect was not significant but that the culture × sex interaction was. Thus, overall, achieving orientations between the culture samples were not different but Iranian males and females exhibited greater differences in achieving orientations than did U.S. subjects, as was predicted. |
