This research concerns the motives of achievement, affiliation and power. It aims: a) to show how the motives explain income of individuals; b) to test if the postgraduate students denote a motivational profile different from the one of the graduate students; c) to test if these profiles are similar to those extracted by Rego in Portuguese samples, in which the affiliation motive predominates. The sample comprises 314 postgraduate students and 280 graduate students. The motives were measured through a questionnaire previously developed and validated. The main findings are the following: a) income correlate positively with the power motive; b) the predictive power of motives to the income is lower than the one provided by the length of time after graduation; c) postgraduate students score higher than graduate students on the power and achievement motives; d) the profile of the sample is different from the one extracted from previous Portuguese samples, although it is not possible to know if this is due to the specificity of the sample or to some change in the Portuguese motivational profile.
Motives; achievement; affiliation; power; individual income; academic achievement; motivational profile
