Psychological and Social Needs

This week we learnt about psychological needs and social needs and how they influence individual’s motivation.  According to Reeve (2009) psychological needs are those which are innate within us and social needs are those that arise from socialisation and the external environment. Reeve lists autonomy, competence and relatedness as psychological needs while achievement, affiliation and power are considered to be social needs. Although upon learning about these needs I did agree that they are certainty important in terms of my own motivation, I thought it was interesting that Reeve doesn’t have any discussion on why these particular needs were emphasised over other possible needs, why these needs were considered core?

On reading the chapter I wasn’t convinced that autonomy needs were as prominent as Reeve suggested they were in motivation of behaviour. However after listening to the lecture and hearing of examples that I could relate to my own life I began to realise how feelings of autonomy could motivate behaviour.  For example James gave an example of inforced choice in writing essays, as students we are forced to choose between 3 or 4 topics, all of which they may not be interested in and forced to spend a considerable amount of time reseaching and gaining an understadning of this topic. I have found that when given more choice in the past, the assessment task was much more enjoyable and encouraged more intrinsic motivation to complete the task. More so than in high school, students at universities are there because they want to learn about their chosen subject, not due to extrinsic forces such as their parents or the law. For this reason there is much more motivation to study for knowledge’s sake than their might be in high school. When tasks are set so that more choice is available, for example the text book chapter in which any topic of interest in relation to motivational and emotion  can be chosen, it is much more likely students will be intrinsically motivated to research their topic and complete the task well.

I also very much agreed with the idea of explaining why a process is necessary, to encourage motivation to complete a task. Personally, I find tasks where I don’t know why or how it might benefit me or someone else to be pointless and I have very little motivation to do them. If, for example in a work situation, I can see how my actions effect the company, I am much more likely to comply with tasks set out for me or follow policies set in place.

I could certainly relate to the discussion of competence effecting motivation. I personally do not feel very competent at “reflection” and find the task of writing this journal difficult. In this case I don’t really feel intrinsically motivated to do it, but rather see it as merely an assessment task that has to be done, thus see it in terms of a performance based task not a mastery task. I can also relate this to the approach verses avoidance motivation because I often find myself procrastinating in doing this journal, which is because of a fear of failure, or not doing a very good job. Becoming more aware of the motivational reasons why I might procrastinate on this task however will hopefully help me to overcome some of these avoidance tendencies. This in contrast to some of my other assessment pieces at university, which I often view more as mastery tasks, particularly tasks which involve research which I feel I’m quit competent at. Whilst completing tasks I feel competent at I often experience flow, which is a strong motivational force for me to complete the tasks because I enjoy doing so and feel a sense of achievement in doing a good job.

I also agree that relatedness is a strong motivational force and that it effects one’s behaviour greatly. It is linked to the socialised needs of affiliation and intimacy. I thought that exchange relationships linked with affiliation needs in that affiliation needs are deficiency based and I think more of an extrinsic type motivator. I thought intimacy needs however lead to more communal type relationships where one is motivated by the relationship itself, not by getting things off the other person or weighing up how much they deserve from the relationship.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.