Psychological Needs Flashcards
People are inherently active
Doing something and being active is our natural state, because there is never a time when we are not doing something.
What emotion signals when ones inner psychological needs are being met?
Enjoyment
What emotion triggers when ones psychological needs have been involved in an activity?
Interest
Organismic psychological needs?
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
When environments are supportive and provide what is needed
Organisms thrive
When environments are hostile and withhold what is needed
Organisms suffer
Organisms need to grow
They need to learn new information, develop new skills, be open to new interests, and discover new and more effective ways of adjusting to outdated environments that are not longer helping them to thrive
Concept of psychological needs
Asserts that there are fundamental nutrients and environmental supports that all human being require to thrive
What are the telltale signs of the presence of a psychological need
- providing particular nutrients produces growth, thriving, and well-being in the organism (plant, person)
- withholding These same nutrients produces decay, injury, and ill-being. This concept of fundamental nutriments also suggests that these needs are universal—that they are embedded within the human nervous system and are common to everyone, irrespective of age, gender, culture, socioeconomic status, and so forth.
What are the indicators for positive functioning?
- engagement
- personal growth
- intrinsic motivation
- internalization
- health
- well-being
Engagement
how actively involved the person is in the activity at hand. when highly engaged, people pay attention, concentrate deeply, exert effort, persist at the face of challenge and obstacles, think strategically, diagnose and solve problems, set goals and make plans, ask questions, and contribute constructively into the flow of whatever they are doing.
Personal growth
Personal growth refers to how agentic, mature, responsible, authentic, interpersonally connected, self-motivating, efficacious, and self-regulating the person is. The fruits of personal growth can be seen in developmental outcomes such as effective functioning, deep and enduring interests, learning, gains in talent and skill development, a sense of self-worth, a lack of anxiety and conflict, and personality integration with a sense of wholeness and identity.
Personal regression
how apathetic, immature, irresponsible, pretentious, interpersonally alienated, indolent, helpless, and dependent on others the person is.
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is spontaneous activity done merely for the enjoyment of the activity itself. An activity is fun (intrinsically motivating) precisely because it generates experiences of feeling autonomous, competent, and related (i.e., psychological need satisfaction). Intrinsic motivation is quite literally the motivation that arises from experiences of psychological need satisfaction.
Internalization
Internalization is the taking in of beliefs, behaviors, and regulations from other people (and social groups) such that they are transformed into volitional self-regulations of one’s own. Internalization is an extrinsic, not an intrinsic, motivational process, as it is not spontaneous or fun but, instead, useful or important. Internalization requires motivational fuel. We internalize others’ beliefs and behaviors easily—without friction, conflict, or resistance—when we know that the other cares for and loves us (relatedness), when we believe that the recommended beliefs and behaviors will allow us to function more effectively in life (competence), and when we understand how these beliefs and behaviors will help us accomplish the goals and strivings that are central to our interests (autonomy). However, when these same beliefs and behaviors are offered to us in an excessively controlling way (“You have to…”), in an over-challenging way, or with strings attached (i.e., conditional regard), we experience a good deal of friction, conflict, and resistance. Feeling such conflict, we tend to reject (rather than accept) the societally recommended belief, behavior, or regulation. Psychological need satisfaction is therefore the basic motivational process that supports and enables the internalization process to occur.
Health
`Health refers to the functional efficiency of the mind and body and to the absence of illness, disease, and pathology. The variable that best predicts health-related outcomes is the person’s behavior, and people are more likely to initiate and sustain a health-promoting lifestyle when their psychological needs are met
Well-being
Well-being refers generally to positive mental health and more specifically to the presence of positive emotionality, the absence of negative emotionality, having a sense purpose, and being satisfied with one’s life. Well-being is the telltale sign of the presence of psychological need satisfaction in one’s life, just as ill-being is the telltale sign of the absence of psychological need satisfaction
Need frustration
When others push their agendas on us, impose deadlines, force unrealistic expectations upon us, ignore us under these conditions the motivational and emotional experience is one not of need satisfaction but need frustration.
Autonomy
the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of ones behavior. the hallmarks of autonomy are volitional action and wholehearted self-endorsement (ownership of that action)
When is behavior autonomous?
When our interests, preferences, and wants guide our decision-making process to engage or not engage in a particular activity.
When are we not self-determining
when some outside force take our sense of choice away ad, instead, pressures us to think, feel, or behave in other prescribed ways.
Personal endorsement
Heartfelt affirmative answer to the questions such as, is this my decision? is this my behavior? do I fully agree with this decision, with this goal pursuit, and with this course of action? is this decision and this behavior congruent with my own personal interests, preferences, and strikings
Personal conflict
” I am only doing this because I have to, not because I want to”
Autonomy supportive
When external events, social contexts, interpersonal relationships, and cultures tap into, nurture, and satisfy a persons need for autonomy.
Controlling
When external events, social contexts, interpersonal relationships, and cultures neglect, silence and thwart a persons need for autonomy.
Autonomy supporting motivation style
An interpersonal tone of understanding
Autonomy controlling motivation style
interpersonal tone of pressure.
How to support autonomy (when attempting to motivate others)
- take the others perspective
- nurture psychological need satisfaction
- provide explanatory rationales
- acknowledge and accept expressions of negative effect.
- use invitational language
- display patience
Taking the others perspective
To support another person’s autonomy, one first needs to take that person’s perspective, adopt their frame of reference, be nonjudgmental, and ask questions such as the following: “If I were in the other person’s place, what would I be thinking? What would I want and need?” Perspective taking is seeing the situation as if you were the other person.
Nurture psychological need satisfaction
Supporting another’s autonomy involves finding ways to involve (awaken) and satisfy (nurture) the other’s psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. For the teacher, parent, or close friend, social interaction is an opportunity to tap into the other person’s psychological needs so that he or she will be fully capable of energizing, directing, and sustaining their own motivated activity in productive ways.
Provide explanatory rationales
Nurturing inner motivational resources is a helpful motivational strategy when the task at hand is a potentially interesting thing to do, but sometimes we ask others to do relatively uninteresting things. For instance, parents ask their children to clean their rooms, and teachers ask students to follow the rules. To motivate others on uninteresting tasks, people with an autonomy-supportive style communicate the value, worth, meaning, utility, or importance of engaging in these sorts of behaviors, as in “It is important that you follow the rules because we need to respect the rights of everyone in the class and to help everyone feel safe and accepted.”
Acknowledge and accept expressions of negative affect
Sometimes, people complain, show resistance, and express negative affect about having to engage in uninteresting or difficult tasks. They sometimes show “attitude” when having to do things like clean their rooms, follow rules, run laps, and be nice. People who adopt an autonomy-supportive style listen carefully to these expressions of negative affect and accept them as potentially valid reactions to being asked to do things that seem, to them, uninteresting and not worthwhile. Essentially, autonomy-supportive individuals say “okay” and then work collaboratively with the other person to solve the underlying cause of the negative affect and resistance, usually with the end result of redesigning the uninteresting activity into something that becomes more interesting or appealing to the person. People who adopt a controlling style, on the other hand, make it clear that such expressions of negative affect and resistance are unacceptable, saying things such as “Stopping your whining; it’s my way or the highway.”
Negative affect (motivation problem)
The bored student complains to the teacher, the misbehaving child shows anger, and the poorly performing athlete shows anxiety and stress. A typical, albeit controlling and ineffective, response to such disengagement, misbehavior, and poor performance
Use invitational language
People with an autonomy-supportive motivating style rely on informational, noncontrolling, nonpressuring, and invitational language when encouraging others to undertake some goal or behavior (e.g., brush their teeth, eat a healthy diet; Koestner et al., 2012; Vansteenkiste et al., 2005). Using informational, noncontrolling language refers to verbal and nonverbal (tone of voice, facial expressions) communications to minimize pressure while conveying choice, flexibility, and volition. Nonpressuring language means avoiding pressure-packed utterances such as “you should, you have to, you must, and you just got
Display patience
Patience is the calmness one person shows as the other struggles to adjust his behavior from something that is ineffective, indolent, and irresponsible into something that is relatively more effective, energized, and responsible. Displaying patience means to wait calmly for the other person’s input, initiative, and willingness. It means giving the other person the time and space he needs to overcome the inertia of inactivity to then explore better ways of behaving, to plan, and to alter personal goals and problem-solving strategies. In practice, what autonomy-supportive patience looks like is a lot of listening and postponing advice until one first deeply understands why the person is acting in an ineffective, indolent, or irresponsible way and second senses that the other is open and ready to hear one’s suggestions.
When do choices truly lead to a sense of autonomy?
only when people are given a true choice over their actions, and when they are offered choices that are meaningful to their lives
What does autonomy support nurture?
- psychological need for autonomy
- inner range of motivational sources including, competence and relatedness need satisfaction.
Competence
the psychological need to be effective in one’s interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to stretch and extend one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges and personal growth opportunities
What are the hallmarks of competence?
experiences of effectance, mastery, and making progress.
Optimal challenge
Optimal challenge needs not to be too easy so that it will not produce boredom but not too hard that it will produce frustration.
Flow
a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep involvement in an activity (Keller & Bless, 2008). What people say when they are in a state of flow includes, “I am in the zone,” “I am totally focused on what I’m doing,” and “It feels like everything clicks” (Martin & Jackson, 2008).
optimal experience (flow)
When challenge and skill are perfectly matched.
most important practical implication of flow theory is the following
Given optimal challenge, any activity can be enjoyed. Doing electrical work, writing papers, debating issues, writing a paper, exercising for 30 minutes, playing a musical instrument, sewing, mowing the lawn, and other such activities do not necessarily make the top of most people’s list of must-do activities, but the balance of skill with challenge adds the spice of flow—concentration, absorption, enjoyment, and optimal experience.
Structure
environments can be structured (or designed) to make competence need satisfaction and flow more likely.
What are the three elements of a highly structured learning environment
- clear expectations
- guidance
- feedback
How can you tip the balance of an experience away from incompetence to competence when learning new skills?
by offering clear expectations, progress, enabling-guidance and constructive feedback.
what does constructive feedback help people do?
adjust and reorganize their strategies and performances into a clear path to future progress.
what one hallmark of optimal challenge
success and failure are equally likely.
when are people most likely to seek out optimal challenges
When there social environments are autonomy-supportive and failure-tolerant, rather than controlling and failure-intolerant (failure teaches more than success).
error tolerance, failure tolerance and risk taking rest on
the beleif that we learn more from our failure than we do from successes.
three constructive features of failure producing unique opportunities
- Failure urges people to identify its causes (and its eventual remedy)
- Failure prompts people to revise and update the quality of their coping strategies
- Failure prompts people to recognize their need for advice and instruction.
Relatedness
psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. Relatedness is the psychological need to care and to feel cared for, to love and to feel loved. We want to matter in the lives of others, to be seen as significant in their eyes, to be appreciated, and to have other people care about and take an interest in what we say, do, and believe.
What are the hallmarks of relatedness
- feeling socially connected
- both giving and receiving care
- benevolence to those people (and social organizations) we deem to be significant in our lives.
What are people looking for in a need-satisfying relationship
- opportunity to relate the self to another person in an authentic, caring, reciprocal and emotionally meaningful way.
Once people form social bonds they are
generally reluctant to break them.
What are the active ingredients that produce relatedness satisfaction?
-other person understands me and offers and acceptance to support the self. and this is true even during conflict or disagreement
