Reading Blog 2/15 10pm

Summary of Chapter 6.
Chapter 6 discusses motivation from a psychological needs perspective. These needs are more than physiological needs in that they allow a person to grow and learn. The three psychological needs include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the need for freedom of choice in our lives and can be broken down into perceived locus of causality, volition, and perceived choice. Competence is the need to feel competent in our interaction with our environment. It is using our skills to rise to a challenge. The last psychological need is relatedness, which is the need to form bonds with other individuals. When these needs are met, it generates an overall good feeling and adds vitality in a person’s life.
The most surprising thing learned in Chapter 6.
I was most interested in the failure tolerance. How most people prefer small challenges and not easy successes. I am sure it is a big reason people get unhappy with their jobs. I am sure it is a fine line between too easy of a job, versus too challenging of a job and having high anxiety. It is surprising that successes and failures are usually equal for an optimal challenge. I would have thought there should be a few failures, but more successes.
Rating on various psychological needs and how they manifest themselves.
My autonomy level is complex, because while I feel I have the freedom to make my own choices, especially to attend school, my education limits my autonomy. I have an external PLOC, low volition, and more obligation instead of perceived choice due to deadlines and assignments. My level of competence is perfectly in flow. In my current work, I am challenged using my skills every day, but not enough to have too many failures to get frustrated. I also have the opportunity to increase my challenges if I get too bored by joining a number of committees. I have many exchange relationships from many areas: school, work, and weekend activities. For communal relationships, I have 3 people I would label as interested in my well-being, plus my parents. This I think gives me a nice mix for relatedness.
Psychological need and behavior motivation.
I choose the psychological need of autonomy. While it is my internal PLOC that made me choose to attend UNI, I had an external PLOC to read the chapter; this assignment. My volition isn’t high because I have some pressure to complete the assignment if I want a good grade in the class. I have a little perceived choice in when to complete this assignment which gives some flexibility, but essentially it has to be completed at some point which does not give me full perceived choice.
Fish picture and relation to chapter?
I think the fish picture relates to control over a person’s psychological needs. If a person does not have their psychological needs met, they feel like a fish out of water. If they don’t have autonomy, competence, or relatedness, they may feel alone, helpless, low engagement, and unable to control the situations in their lives, which affects motivational behavior.
List of terms used in post from Chapter 6: autonomy, perceived locus of causality (PLOC), volition, perceived choice, competence, flow, relatedness, communal relationship, exchange relationship, engagement, vitality.

Chapter 6 speaks of people's psychological needs and they are summed up in three specific needs. Psychological need promotes willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment that we think will help with our growth and development. Since humans are inherently active, we will seek out things in which we find pleasure and will help better us as beings.

The first of these needs being that of autonomy. Autonomy is "the psychological need to experience self direction and person endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one's behavior". Within autonomy there are three qualities which are: perceived locus of causality (which basically asks if the person's behavior is internally or externally motivated), volition (which is un-pressured willingness to engage in an activity), and perceived choice. When speaking of autonomy I would say that I have a high psychological need for this. I have always been extremely independent and my freedom to choose and navigate my life is vital. Coming to school here (out of state) has been really good for satisfying this psychological need. I have less responsibility over the other members in my family, and more over my own.

The next psychological need discussed is competence, which is "the psychological need to be effective in interactions with environment and reflects the desire to exercise one's capacity and ability". The environmental events that are involved with competence are optimal challenge, high structure, and high failure tolerance. I found Susan Harter's study on school-age children to be both very interesting and surprising. This is because I would expect children to become more frustrated with the challenging anagrams, but in fact got the most pleasure from moderate challenge. I'd rate my competence need as medium. This is because I do not have a very high failure tolerance. If I'm bad at something I do not like to put in a lot of effort. This is because I usually get frustrated and my competence is hurt so I don't like feeling that way.

The final psychological need discussed is relatedness. This is the "desire for relationships with individuals extends to relationship with groups, organizations, and communities. This psychological need is also a very high need in my life. I really enjoy being in social situations and feel weird if I am not surrounded by others. I think a lot of this stems from the environment I grew up in. Growing up in a large city, I met a lot of people very fast and was able to form bonds with many circles. This is why when I came to school here, I made sure to get involved and make friends. Though this is my third year here, I am still actively trying to meet new people and step outside my comfort zone.

If I were to guess the picture, I would say that the fish is jumping out of the bowl because it is not having it psychological needs met. Since it is living in a fish bowl it has absolutely no autonomy. It is unable to act like a fish and try and gather its own food so it has no way of practicing its competence, and since it is a single fish bowl, there are no other fish for it to relate to. Also because it is outside the ocean there is really no type of species it can relate to.

Terms used: psychological need, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, competence, optimal challenge, positive feedback, relatedness

This chapter talked a lot about pyschological needs and how they impact a person’s ability to make the decisions they do. There are two approaches to motivation: Organismic Approach and Mechanistic Approach. Organismic says that the survival of an organism depends on its environment because the environment offers resources like food, water, social support, and intellectual stimulation. Mechanistic says that the environment acts on the person and the person reacts. This chapter also talked about Autonomy. Autonomy is the psychological need to regulate one’s own behavior. There are three parts to Autonomy: Perceived Locus of Causality; Volition; and Perceived Choice. Our environment can greatly affect a person’s autonomy, either by supporting it or neglecting it. This chapter also talked about Competence. Competence is defined as our psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment. The environment can either involve our need for competence (by optimal challenges, clear and helpful structures, and high failure tolerance from others) or satisfy our competence need (by using positive feedback and the perception of progress).
The most surprising thing I read about was the three types of Autonomy: Perceived Locus of Causality, Volition, and Perceived Choice. Perceived Locus of Causality (PLOC) is an individual’s understanding of the source of his/her motivations. You can either me motivated by a personal source (internal PLOC) or an environmental source (external PLOC). Volition an individual’s willingness to engage in a particular activity. Perceived Choice is the sense of choice we have in certain environments that provide us with decision-making flexibility. I thought this was really interesting/surprising to read about because it shows how many different factors can influence how we are motivated and how we make decisions. Sometimes I don’t realize why I do the things I do or they just come natural. But we are always being motivated by something either externally or internally.
I would rate Autonomy at a medium level. I feel that it is important to be able to make your own decisions in life and the freedom that comes with that is nice. I think that the more autonomy we have, the more motivation we will have to get certain things done. For example, when I have the choice of what to do for a final project in a class, I will have more motivation to get that project done because it’s something I wanted to do. I would rate competence as fairly high. I think it is important for people to excel at things in life…it gives us motivation to keep going. It is defined as the desire for a person to exercise their capacities and skills. An example of this would be excelling in a college class that is really hard. By working hard and getting a good grade in a hard class, it gives me a sense of satisfaction which will then motivate me to work harder in other classes as well. I would rate Relatedness as high also. Every person has the desire to relate to others and feel belonging. Relatedness is defined as the need to establish close emotional bonds with other people. People tend to gravitate towards others who support this need. An example of this could be the friendships I have developed in college. When I first started college, I didn’t know many people but once I started developing relationship with others, it motivated me.
List of Terms: Organismic Approach; Mechanistic Approach; Autonomy; Perceived Locus of
Causality; Volition; Perceived Choice; Competence; Relatedness;

Chapter six covered information dealing with autonomy, competence, and relatedness in connection with motivation. First, the information on autonomy gave clear differences between people who interact with a supportive-autonomous style versus a controlling style. In every outcome, the autonomous style developed people’s natural expressions and did not stifle their personal creativity. Thus, promoting autonomy encourages self-growth. Secondly, competence was discussed in terms of varying difficulty levels of activities. If an activity is too easy, and the individual is too competent in the activity, then the person will be bored after a while. However, if the activity is over-complicated then the individual will be stressed out and worried. Either one of these does not accomplish “flow”, or the feeling someone gets when their skill matches the competence level of the activity. Finally, relatedness was also discussed as a proponent of developing healthfully. Relatedness was discussed as something we all experience at varying levels, but what matters overall is the true connection we have with others. For instance, acquaintances do not fully satisfy our need for relatedness. Only when true caring between two people exists is relatedness really accomplished. Overall, autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the keys to healthy development which is something we all naturally strive to accomplish for ourselves.
The most surprising thing I learned in this chapter was the information relating to autonomy. I am VERY interested in the most effective way to motivate others. This part of the chapter really made me think about how I treat my friends, family, and clients. Mostly, I learned that the direct “just do it” method is really not the way to get people to understand and complete a task. Learning new ways to say things that communicate the same end point is effective and makes other people feel happy too. Although I probably won’t change overnight, I now know how I can help other people understand what I’m trying to say.
If I rated myself for each of the three psychological needs, they would probably change day to day. For today I would rate myself as an 8 (10 being the highest) on autonomy today. Even though I did have a meeting this morning and class this afternoon, I was able to decide when to go work-out and when to complete my homework for the day. Usually I would rate myself as a 3 because it feels like work and school dictates when I do things. However, my perceived locus of causality may be faulty because I say that school and work make me do things. In reality, I choose to go to school and I choose to work, therefore work and school aren’t making me do things but I am making myself do things to get certain results.
As for competence, I rate myself as an 8 because I am nowhere near a genius but I can hold my own in the situations I experience. Finally, I would rate myself as a 7 in relatedness. Even though I call one of my parents at least once a day and talk to my husband at night, I rarely hang out with friends. I could list all sorts of excuses but sometimes it just comes down to laziness and choices I make about my free time. When I do hang out with my friends, I am very extroverted and deeply enmeshed in their lives. For me, relationships are serious and I put a lot of meaning into them. However, I am then less inclined to start new relationships because of the work I know that take.
As for the fish picture, I thought of a lot of reasons why it might relate. One of the more funny ones was that the fish had a high need for relatedness and was alone in the tank. She/he may have been so lonely that the only option was to jump out of the bowl and deal with the consequences thereafter. However, it may also have to do with autonomy. The fish is not given any rules or requirements, just a bowl. Just because other fish choose to swim around contently does not mean that every fish is gratified with that particular way of life.
All in all, this chapter was amazing and I really enjoyed it!

This chapter’s focus is on the psychological needs that motive people. It starts out by explaining that psychological needs are a part of the organismic theory of motivation that acknowledges that environments constantly change and organisms need flexibility to adjust to and accommodate those changes. This is in contrast to physiological needs that are a part of mechanistic theories where the environment acts on the person and the person reacts. The three psychological needs are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior, and it reflects the desire to have inner resources, rather than environmental events, determine ones’ actions. People whose behavior is autonomous, as opposed to controlled by others, show positive outcomes, including gains in motivation, engagement, development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being. Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. It reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved with others in warm, caring relationships.
I thought that one of the most interesting things from the chapter was study done on pleasure of optimal challenges. In regard to competence and positive feedback, researchers had school-age children solve anagrams of increasingly difficulty. They found that the results showed an inverted-U pattern, where the easy and really hard anagrams resulted in less pleasure than the moderately difficult anagrams. I would have expected that the children would have gotten more pleasure from solving the hardest anagrams.
If I rated my psychological needs I would say that I have medium autonomy (with regard to school and my job), high competence (varies depending what skill), and medium relatedness. I think the easiest way to relate these needs to my life would be in terms of my job. My job can get repetitive and to lessen the boredom, which comes from high competence, I sometimes find something new to teach the people in my workshops. The medium amount of autonomy also allows me to add in these teachings, although I can’t do whatever I please.
I think that the fish, in the picture, is being motivated by his environment but also his psychological needs that arise from this interaction with his environment. He has a lot of autonomy but that is limited by the bowl, he must have a lot of competence (with regard to his swimming ability) because he is able to jump out of the bowl, and his lack of relatedness may be the ultimate need that causes him to leave the bowl. His limited space in the bowl probably didn’t allow him to get in ‘flow’ state so he was very bored.
Terms: psychological needs, organismic theory, mechanistic theories, autonomy, competence, relatedness, motivation, engagement, development, learning, performance, psychological well-being, optimal challenges, positive feedback, ‘flow’ state

Chapter 6 has to deal with our psychological needs and their effects on motivation and our decision making process. The author goes into great detail about organismic psychological needs, which include autonomy, competence and relatedness. These three organismic psychological needs provide people with a natural motivation for learning, growing and developing. But it is not the sole factor behind our learning, growing and developing, our environments support or limiting power also contributes a great deal when it comes to our psychological needs. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. In simple terms; it means our ability to decide what to do, when to do it and how to do it, complete freedom. Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. To simplify that definition, competence is the desire to effectively complete challenges that require a great deal of skill to complete, thus keeping us entertained throughout and experiencing “flow.” And lastly is relatedness. Relatedness is the 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. Examples of this would include our relationships with our immediate family, close friends and of course, our significant other. Together these three organismic psychological needs make up who we are and what motivates us to do what we do.

The most interesting thing from chapter 6 was the section on what makes a good day. The reason I found this interesting was because although it seemed like very obvious information, I could easily make connections to my daily life. According to the chapter, the characteristics of a good day involve daily autonomy, daily competence and daily relatedness. On my “good days” I do in fact have all of these: I have the freedom to choose to go to class or not, whether to do my homework or put it off until tomorrow, as well as what I should eat for supper. These are very minor decisions in my life but together they add up to a lot of what makes me-me. Also I have various competence levels throughout the day that effect the quality of my day. My roommates and I have created a darts league and at the beginning I wasn’t very accurate, therefore I would rarely win. But the more we have played, I have surpassed all of my roommates in competence and now I rarely lose. This contributes in a small way to improving my day. And lastly is relatedness, months prior my only relatedness was with my roommates and that can only take you so far. Since I have gotten a new girlfriend I have a much deeper sense of relatedness and that has allowed me to have according to this book, more “good days” because I have a very close relationship with her.

If I had to rate myself on various psychological needs I would have to say I am all over the spectrum. As for autonomy I would consider myself very low because I do not like a lot of freedom in most instances. When it comes to school work I like direction, otherwise I feel overwhelmed with choices and sometimes make things much harder on myself than they need to be. Competence on the other hand I believe I am very high on the spectrum. If a task is too difficult and I realize that, I am very quick to give up and participate in a different task rather than work harder at the first one and attempt to master it. An example of this would be the guitar. Back in high school I casually was trying to learn to play the guitar from my cousin but my fingers didn’t seem to function well enough to pick it up. After many failed sessions, I simply gave up and participated in things that I already knew I was good at to raise my confidence. Even though I still think about playing the guitar today, I realize that I do not have enough competence or willingness to attempt to get better, so I continue to participate in things that I excel at. Lastly is relatedness and this is where I believe I am a little more middle of the road. While sometimes I am a very private person that doesn’t need to be surrounded with people or need to be the center or attention, I also sometimes I tend to get lonely if I don’t receive enough social interaction. So in-other-words I feel as though my need for relatedness varies from day-to-day.

I mentioned it a little above but the psychological need I chose to discuss is competence. I tend to get very frustrated if I cannot pick up or master something quickly. It gets worse if it is a finesse activity. I tend to only participate in things that I am already good at, this doesn’t mean that I will not try new things, but if I don’t gasp the concept immediately or struggle with its execution, I quit and will never participate again. I mentioned the guitar earlier but the same goes for video games that I cant win at, “social” activities that I am not comfortable with and classes that are too demanding or “over my head.” This may not be a desired trait but is something that makes me-me and I seemingly can’t change it no matter how hard I try.

The fish in the bowl is experiencing boredom with his environment and a lack of relatedness. The fish’s environment is dull and has no character, therefore I believe the fish would like more autonomy over his environment. Following along those lines I believe the fish is suffering from a lack of relatedness. The fish was alone in the bowl for too long with no companionship to speak of, this might have cause him dive from the bowl in hopes of finding a better environment with other fish.

Terms: Organismic Psychological Needs, Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Environment, Mastery, “Good Day Perspective”.

Chapter 6 discussed our natural psychological needs that were previously discussed in the intrinsic motivation section of chapter five. The authors begin by stating that psychological motivations involve an organismic approach to motivation. Humans are naturally active, and interact with their environment in order to meet their needs. This is the opposite of a mechanistic approach, which studies how the organism reacts to their environment. There are three types of psychological needs in humans: Autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is defined in the textbook as the psychological need to experience self-direction and persona endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one's behavior. Autonomy is subjective, in other words not everyone will feel the same autonomy is every situation. There are three aspects to perceived autonomy: Internal perceived locus of causality, volition, and perceived choice over one's actions. Autonomy can be complicated however, because one person’s autonomy might be another’s control. There is strong evidence that suggests autonomy has numerous benefits like an increased self-worth, persistence and overall life satisfaction. The second psychological need of humans is competence. Competence is defined as the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment. This is desired in school, work and relationships. Humans have a desired need to conquer a challenge. Flow is the state one is in when he or she has total involvement in an activity. When a task is challenging, and the person has the necessary skill to complete it, they enter a flow. The third psychological need that all humans have is relatedness, or the need to belong. It is the need to make emotional bonds with other people. There are two types of relationships: communal and exchange. Communal relationships involve people that care about the general wellbeing of others. Examples include friends, family and romantic relationships. Exchange relationships are usually between business partners of acquaintances. The chapter concludes by illustrating how the preceding psychological needs work together and how they affect a person’s engagement. It is when autonomy, competence and relatedness needs have all been met that one experiences overall wellbeing.

The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was the flow model. After hearing the explanation of the figure during lecture, I found it very interesting. When someone is given a very difficult challenge, and their personal skills are very low, anxiety and worry can occur. If someone’s skills are high but they are not challenged, they will experience boredom. Apathy occurs when someone has little personal skill and little or no challenge. It is when one achieves flow that the challenge is rewarding and the competence need is met. I could pinpoint a time in my life when I have felt unchallenged and too overwhelmed. Since personal skill level varies from person to person, it is important for teachers to learn this model and understand that one person’s challenge is another person’s boring busy work.

I don’t believe any of the three psychological needs rate abnormally high or low in relation to the others. My place of employment allows little autonomous control, and neither do most of my classes. With these environmental factors, I have little or no free time. Perhaps my needs for autonomy are a tad lower than average. I do feel like I have higher competence needs than autonomy. Whenever I complete a task, I desire positive feedback instantaneously. If I receive negative feedback, it is easy for me to get discouraged. My relatedness needs are pretty average. Without my friends, I would probably go insane with my busy schedule but I don’t desire to have countless exchange relationships. Rather, I seek out communal relationships. My relatedness need affects my lifestyle in that I rarely have a day when I don’t engage socially with my friends. I can’t remember the last time I had a weekend where I didn’t see anyone and instead met my autonomy and competence needs. If a relationship in my life isn’t going well, I don’t feel right until it has worked itself out.
The fish in the picture is clearly attempting to meet all three of its psychological needs. The fish bowl he lives in looks quite constraining. While living in there, he has little autonomy. Now, assuming he can fly instead of swim, he is meeting his autonomy needs by being able to explore his environment based on his interests. Perhaps the fish has been practicing jumping out of the bowl for some time, and would like to demonstrate competence by efficiently interacting with his environment. He also looks lonely, and it is likely that he is seeking out other fish to meet his relatedness need. The exchange relationship he formed with his human master probably isn’t enough so this fish must seek out someone who cares about his daily wellbeing.

Terms: psychological needs, organismic approach, mechanistic approach, autonomy, competence, relatedness, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, flow, communal relationship, exchange relationship

Chapter six discusses the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how they relate to motivation. According to the text, autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation of and regulation of one’s behavior—basically, we get the power of deciding what we want to do. Perceived autonomy can be divided into three main qualities: 1. internal perceived locus of causality (knowing you are responsible for what you do); 2. feeling free; and 3. perceived choice over your actions. Competency refers to how effectively we interact within our environment and how well we do at something. Relatedness refers to the desire to feel like you belong, wanting to have social interactions, and wanting to develop close emotional bonds with others. The chapter also talks about the person-environment dialectic which I think is very representative of my life. I agree with the statement “the environment acts on the person and the person acts on the environment”. I believe that my environment is constantly changing and I am changing right along with it. I’m always up for exploring new things whether it is in an academic setting or literally outside in nature and as the environment changes so do my interests and curiosities.
One thing that I found pretty interesting to read about was optimal challenge and flow related to feelings of competence. According to the text, flow is a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep involvement in an activity. It occurs when people sue their personal set of skills to complete or overcome some type of challenge, and also when challenges and skills are matched up. Flow is extremely pleasurable which makes the person experiencing it repeat the same activity over and over. I think I have a “flow experience” when I play chess. I’m pretty good at it and depending on who I’m playing against, it can be a wonderful challenge whether I lose or win.
I would have to say that I have a medium need for autonomy. With being the main boss at my job working with other students, I get to make a lot of my own decisions when it comes to managing the group of people I’m in charge of; however, with being a student there’s only so much decision making I can do before I have to get something approved by the higher-ups. With school, I like having autonomy because I have more access to things I’m more interested in and I feel good that I have a small amount of ‘choice’ power and options when it comes to certain classes, such as this one.
I would say I have a high need for competence. At my job, I am expected to help train new hires and make sure the group members are all doing their jobs correctly which means I need to know what I’m talking about. Outside of work, I always strive to do well in my academics or other outside activities. I also accept times of failure when I don’t quite get to the point I want to be at, but I just keep on trying and trying to get that goal accomplished.
I would say I have a medium need for relatedness. I sometimes enjoy having some alone-time (esp. when school gets too crazy), but over a long period of time I’d go crazy without seeing other people. I make sure I see all my close friends on a regular basis whether it is for two seconds or two hours just so I can keep up with what’s all going on in their lives. I also work mostly at night and sometimes that can hinder when I am able to hang out with my friends but I think we’re creative in finding other times we can hang out and figuring out other things we can do besides going to the Hill on the weekend.
I think the fish picture represents the person-environment dialectic. The bowl is keeping the fish from experiencing the outside world as well as decreasing feelings of relatedness because there’s no other fish in the bowl with it. The bowl also decreases feelings of autonomy because the fish is completely dependent on someone to feed it, clean the water, etc.—it essentially makes no decisions for itself. The fish is sick of being bored and wants to go interact with other things in the environment, so one day it decides to jump out and go exploring….hopefully in another body of water is it doesn’t die.
Terms Used: of autonomy, competence, relatedness, person-environment dialectic, psychological need, internal perceived locus of causality, flow, flow experience

Chapter 6 talks about psychological needs. We all have three main psychological needs. These needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The book describes autonomy as the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. One way to support someone’s autonomy is to present them with a choice. Having choices gives a person some amount of freedom that they wouldn’t have if they were just told to do something. The book describes competence as the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills to seek out and master optimal challenges. The flow model does a very good job at explaining through a model how someone having competence works. For example, if someone has very high skills and very low opportunities for challenge they will be bored. If they have moderate skills and moderate opportunities for challenge they will be in the flow area of the diagram. The best area to be in is this flow area. Relatedness is the 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. Having people around us and being able to interact with these people is very important in most people’s lives. When we have bad days it is usually because one of more of these three needs is not being met.

The most surprising thing I learned was that these three things are a huge part of our lives. If we don’t get the amount of autonomy that we need, we won’t be as happy as if we do get enough. The same goes for competence and relatedness.

I would rate myself as needing a moderate amount of autonomy. When given an assignment in school or work I want to be told what to do, but I still like to have a little bit of leeway when it comes to how the task should be done. I would say I need a fairly moderate amount of competence as well. When people tell me I did a good job doing certain tasks it makes me feel good about myself. Relatedness probably isn’t has high up as autonomy and competence for me. I do like being around people and talking to others, but I like to have my alone time also.

Competence motivates my behaviors in a positive way. If I know I did something well or I am told I did a good job at something it makes me feel really good about myself. I am more likely to repeat the behavior when this happens and do a good job the next time I do the behavior. If I feel like I didn’t do something well or I am told that it could have been better I am more likely to not put as much effort into the behavior the next time I do it.

The fish picture represents the lack of autonomy the fish has. It doesn’t have any control over anything when it is in the fish bowl. By jumping out the water it sort of has control.
Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, flow model

Chapter 6 was focused on psychological needs. Psychological needs are proactive as opposed to physiological needs that are reactive. They promote willingness to seek out and engage in an environment. There were two approaches discussed in the beginning of the chapter to explain psychological needs: organismic and mechanistic. The organismic approach described the environment as constantly changing and that organisms need flexibility to adjust to and accommodate those changes. This approach talks about the person-environment dialectic that is a two-way street; the environment and the person interact with each other. The mechanistic approach described the person-environment relationship as one-wayed; the environment acts and the person reacts. There are three specific psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Autonomy is to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in initiation and regulation of one's behavior. There are three aspects of autonomy: perceived locus of casuality (PLOC), volition, and perceived choice. PLOC is the individual's understanding of causal source of his/her motivated actions. This can be internal (personal) or external (environmental). Volition is the unpressured willingness to engage in an activity or, essentially, feeling free. Perceived choice is the sense of choice we experience when we find ourselves in environments that provide us with decision-making flexibility. With choice, there is this debate about whether the choices we make are because we presented with "either-or" options or if it is a "true choice". In an autonomy-supportive motivating style, you take the other's perspective and value personal growth opportunities compared to a controlling motivating style where you pressure the other person toward a prescribed outcome or targets a prescribed outcome. There are four ways of relating to others that promotes an autonomy-supportive style: nurture inner motivational resources (interests, preferences, and psychological needs), rely on informational language (solve problem, don't criticize it), provide explanatory rationales (communicate value/importance), and acknowledge and accept negative affect (listen and accept as a valid reaction then work with them). Benefits from autonomy support include nurturing not only autonomy and also enhancing various aspects of engagement, development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being.
Competence is to be effective in interactions with an environment and reflect desire to exercise one's capacities and skills, which in turn seeks out and masters optimal challenges. When you reach the optimal challenge, flow occurs. Flow is a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep involvement in an activity; this occurs when skill and challenge are both moderately high or high. If skill is low but challenge is high, worry or even anxiety can occur. If challenge is low but skill is high, boredom will occur. If both challenge and skill are low, apathy can occur. It is important to also realize there is an interdependency between challenge and feedback. Structure is also important in competence; it is the amount and clarity of information about what the environment expects a person to do to achieve desired outcomes. Finally, it is also important to have failure tolerance. Success and failure are equally likely in most situations, and failure produces opportunities for learning. To support competence, positive feedback is crucial. It can come from the task itself, comparing the current performance to own past performances or other's performance, and evaluation of others.
Relatedness is to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people and reflects desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. There are communal and exchange relationships. Communal relationships are with people like your friends, family, and significant other that care about your welfare. This kind of relationship satisfies the psychological need for relatedness. On the other hand, exchange relationships are with acquaintances and people you do business with; these people have no obligation to care about you. Internalization is a process to transforms externally prescribed regulation or value into an internally endorsed one. High relatedness, however, doesn't guarantee this will occur.
At the end of the chapter, it is explained how of these aspects work together and make a good day. This is shown in an engagement model.

What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned was about failure tolerance. It was interesting to learn that more people would rather take part in a more difficult challenge than easy success. It is also interesting that the book said it is good to fail and be okay with it. I am sure it would be difficult for me to be okay with failing. I will have to work on being more tolerable.

If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
When it comes to autonomy, I feel like I am at a more medium-high rank. I am not one to enjoy having completely free reign in anything I do. I have to have some kind of guidelines. I think this may be a reason why I like school so much because my teachers give me direction in class and for assignments. This also may be a reason why I want to become a teacher because I am able to have quite a bit of say in how I teach but I still have guidelines. My job on campus is the same way (most of the time). For competence, I would say I have a high rank. The majority of the time I have flow when I am doing a task. I also like immediate positive feedback, and it is difficult for me to not take negative feedback personally. This pertains to all school work and any tasks I do in my committees as well as among friends with life choices. I would say I have a high rank for relatedness. I am a very social person and like to interact with others. I have many exchange relationships I have met through classes, my job, and groups I am involved in. I also have quite a few communal relationships in my life. These people care about my well-being and I for them.

Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
The main psychological need in my life would be relatedness. It would extremely difficult for me not to interact with people for a entire day. First of all, I live in the dorms so I see my neighbors, who are also my friends, all the time. I always make sure I make time to do some socializing at some point in my day. By being away from people, it would greatly affect my overall mood for the day especially if I didn't see certain people.

If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
The fish is trying to satisfy all three psychological needs. By being kept in the same habitat 24/7 as well as having very little say in what his daily routine is, the fish is trying to have more freedom and self-direction or autonomy. By jumping out of the bowl, the fish is showing that it is competent enough to make the decision to jump out of the water. Since the fish is by itself in the bowl and it is hard for people to interact with fish, the fish is lacking relatedness. It may think that if it jumps from the bowl, it will be able to interact with more things.

ME Terms: psychological needs, organismic approach, mechanistic approach, person-environment dialectic, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, inner motivational resources, informational language, negative affects, autonomy-supportive style, controlling style, competence, flow, structure, failure tolerance, positive feedback, relatedness, communal relationships, exchange relationships, internalization, engagement model

Chapter 6 discusses 3 main ideas of psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. First, autonomy is our ability to decide what we do, when we want to do it. The more autonomous we are, the more we desire to make our own decisions, while the less autonomous the more we seek directions from others. When looking more into the feelings we have, it is important to understand volition which is our willingness to engage in certain activities. It is also important to remember this can work in a way where it keeps us from doing something we do not want to do because of the results it may give. Such as smoking, most will chose not to do it because of the health hazards it reports causes. Autonomy deals a lot with choice, the more choices=more autonomy. It was very interesting to me to read about this. I see myself as a fairly high autonomous person, so to actually think some people ENJOY being told what to do, that is insane! But it helps me understand others and their personalities. Supportive autonomy is important in the sense we need to understand why it is important to others before it may become appealing to us. We may choose to donate our time to help someone if we know why they need the help.
Next, competence is discussed and this is our desire to be effective with our lives. We all strive to succeed at what we see as important. We often choose employment that is something we can handle, but will still give us somewhat of a challenge. Many would not take a job if it was "below" their ability to perform. To support our competence we seek out feedback. Positive feedback can come from others or even our perception of how we did. If we feel we did better than others, its a positive feedback we take from the situation. For competence, again, I would say I rank high. Feeling accomplished and successful at day to day life is important to me. I will strive to do work that gets me to the goal I want.
Finally, relatedness is discussed and this is our need to feel as though we belong. We need close bonds, either physical or emotional, with people in our lives. When I think of the interactions I have with people, it's fairly interesting. We almost all desire to feel warmth and comfort but a lot of people claim to be guarded and fearful of letting people in. This leads to the feeling of being alone, which in turns, creates our desire for someone (almost anyone). When a bond of relatedness is broken, the damage is sometimes hard to repair.
When combining these concepts we create ourselves. For me, looking into my autonomy side and how it fits into my life it seems truthful. I can say attending school and being told to do this assignment and take this test about this information is killer. I enjoy the classes that fit my major but would rather not attend the general studies class. I would rather just pick something on my own and do the work. When I look at my grades, I can tell where I put my effort, into the classes I enjoyed and wanted to learn in. As for the future career I desire that is still unknown but I do know I do not want 5 bosses barking orders at me. Nor do I want to boss others around, I want to be responsible for myself.
As for the fish, it may be more autonomous than its habitat is allowing it to be. If is jumps out of the bowl, it may find a place where the decisions are his. By actually jumping, he is showing he can, he is competent to do as he pleases. He would lack relatedness in his tiny fishbowl. He may just be jumping to find his fish buddies.
autonomy, competence, relatedness, volition, positive feedback, supporting autonomy, supporting competence.

Chapter 6 discusses psychological needs. The three main psychology needs are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Studying psychological needs requires one to take an organismic approach on motivation. Psychological needs are proactive because people (organisms) are active. People use their psychological needs to interact with the environment and the environment, in turn, acts on people. Sometimes the environment acts in a supportive manner but at times it can frustrate as well.

Autonomy is the need to experience self direction and it reflects a desire to have oneself choose its direction rather than to be told which direction to take. Autonomous people require a great deal of freedom and this motivates and encourages them. Being able to satisfy one’s own needs shows the importance of autonomy as a psychological need.

Competence is the second major psychological need and with competence comes the ability to interact effectively with the environment by using one’s skills, talents and interests to master challenges. When personal challenge and the environment act positively together than “flow” is experienced which is a psychological state of high enjoyment, concentration and give’s one the ability to get lost in an experience.

Relatedness reflects the need people have to develop strong emotional bonds and form attachments with other people. Caring and liking are necessary to satisfy our need for relatedness and without it, loneliness and despair can take over and cause us psychological harm.

Chapter 6 also discusses the engagement model of motivation which illustrates how all three psychological needs interact and the more people experience satisfaction in all three areas, the happier and more motivated they are.
I wasn’t terribly surprised by any information in chapter 6, however, I found the section on “What Makes for a Good Day?” very interesting. Good days happen when the events in our lives satisfy all of our psychological needs. I never thought about it from that level before but looking back it makes perfect sense. Especially in the example of exercisers where the exercisers who reported the most enjoyment in their exercising were those who reported experiencing autonomy, competence and relatedness while exercising.

I would rank myself as high in autonomy, high in competence and high in relatedness. Some examples of how these levels manifest themselves in my life are:
1. Autonomy: I like to do my own thing on own terms. I prefer classes that let me work at my own pace and I am choosing a career that will let me set my own hours, develop my own area of expertise, choose my own patients and where I can be own boss.
2. Competence: I am very driven and I get pleasure out of a job well done. When something does not come easy to me, I try again and again and as I do better I want to keep doing it. I am currently on Weight Watchers. I have a challenge to lose 25 pounds before summer. Each week when I weigh in I experience a thrill at watching my weight go down. Eating healthy has been a huge challenge and I never thought that the effort would be worth the satisfaction I feel.
3. Relatedness: I think relatedness is so important. When people do not experience relatedness they can become depressed and lonely and a host of physiological need can be at risk as well. Relatedness is experienced when I go to work and hang out with my friends and it is also the close emotional bond I have with my son, my family and my boyfriend. All of this meets my psychological need to be loved, cared for and liked.

The fish picture is a great example of autonomous organism. That fish probably couldn’t stand swimming around in that bowl any longer and the psychological need for freedom and choice drove him to jump out of the water. That is my guess anyway. It demonstrates that the need to meet our psychological needs with satisfaction is enormous.

Chapter 6 was about psychological needs. The three main psychological needs that the chapter focused on were autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I learned from this chapter that positive emotions, optimal experiences, and healthy development are a result of environments that are supportive and nurture people's psychological needs. I thought it was interesting to learn that psychological needs motivate proactive behavior unlike physiological needs which cause reactive behavior. I also liked reading the section “What Makes for a Good Day?” because it helps me understand people that I consider to be moody so much better. I was surprised that it simply takes feeling like their psychological needs have been met for someone to have a good day.

If I had to rate myself on psychological needs, I would rate myself as medium for autonomy because I don't like being told what to do unless I ask for direction. I would also rate myself medium for competence because I enjoy using the skills that I have and challenging myself to acquire new ones. I would rate myself very high for relatedness. I have a strong need to be around others and my friendships are very important to me. I believe relatedness is even what interested me in getting a Psychology major because I was interested in taking classes where I could learn information that I could apply to my personal life, improve how I interact with people, and enhance my relationships. I am constantly seeking social interaction and avoid situations where I have to be completely alone.

If I had to guess, I would say that the fish picture is related to the chapter because of it was motivated by the three psychological needs to escape the fish bowl. It is possible that the fish did not like being confined to the fish bowl because it takes away from the fish's ability to make decisions for itself (autonomy). The fish might also be accomplishing it's goal of working to be competent to make the escape from the fish bowl (competence). A third reason could be that the fish feels isolated and is seeking social interaction with others and therefore wanted to escape.

Terms: psychological needs, motivation, autonomy, competence, relatedness

Chapter 6 is on psychological needs. A major focus of this chapter is on 3 psychological needs. The first of these needs is autonomy. Autonomy is the feeling of having choice, decision making flexibility and freedom. Autonomy is about self-direction. The important thing about autonomy is self-perception of it. High autonomy means having a sense of internal locus of causality, volition and perceived choice over one’s actions. An important part of autonomy is autonomy-supportive motivating style (which is pretty self-explanatory) versus controlling motivating style (also pretty self-explanatory). Autonomy-supportive motivation has many benefits over controlling motivation. This is something surprising I learned. I wasn’t aware of how ineffective controlling motivation is. Autonomy-supportive motivation promotes engagement, development, learning, performance and overall psychological well-being. Autonomy-supportive motivation focuses on intrinsic motivation which we have already covers is better than extrinsic motivation.

Another one of the psychological needs is competence. Competence is the need to feel effective and capable of your abilities. One component of competence is having optimal challenge and flow. Flow occurs when skills are used to overcome a challenge. Another component of competence is interdependency between challenge and feedback. This just means that to experience the challenges we are faced with we must also experience feedback to that challenge. A third component of competence is structure. Structure is important for competence because it tells the person what they are supposed to do to achieve an outcome. The last component of competence is failure tolerance which must be experienced to feel up to tackling challenges.

The last of the psychological needs is relatedness. Interaction with others is the key part of relatedness. Perception of a social bond is also important to achieving relatedness. Communal relationships (caring about the welfare of one another) are necessary for relatedness. Internalization is something that can occur in relatedness and internalizing a previously external regulation.

I think I have pretty high competence because I’m able to tackle my challenges and feel good about it. This motivates me because I enjoy the challenges of school because I feel able to accomplish these tasks as long as I work hard to do so. I also think I have pretty high relatedness but not so high autonomy. I think my lower autonomy is due to some of the controlling-motivation I encounter from school and work. At this point I only have extrinsic motivation to go to work and only half intrinsic motivation to go to school.

I think the fish is jumping out of the fishbowl to achieve autonomy because he feels like he has no control over his situation. I also think he needed to experience competence which he was not getting in the fishbowl because he had no challenges in the empty fishbowl. Leaving the fishbowl and succeeding is creating competence in itself. The fish also needs relatedness which he is leaving the fishbowl to find. He had no social interaction in the fishbowl because he was isolated.

Chapter six discusses the three psychological needs; autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We are able feel enjoyment, experience a dopamine release, through satisfying these needs. Autonomy is described as individuality, freedom, and the gratifying feeling of making decisions through true valuable choices. In order for the psychological need of autonomy to be fulfilled it is important that the individual experiences high volition and understands the perceived locus of causality (PLOC). If PLOC is external that individual might not experience satisfaction because it would form extrinsic motivation where intrinsic motivation creates a higher level of satisfaction, greater amount of dopamine release. The need to fulfill competence depends on the challenge that is provided and is quite a complex need. The challenge itself needs to be moderate in comparison with that individual’s level of skill. If the challenge is too difficult of too easy it will not be satisfying because to the contrary that individual experiences anxiety, worry, or boredom. When satisfying the need for competence there must be structure as to how that goal is to be accomplished and feedback as to the level of success. It is important to note that failure tolerance is necessary to fulfill this need because it is a goal directed behavior and there is always potential for failure. Finally individuals need to feel related to others. In order to fulfill this need individuals not only need to have not only exchange relationships but communal relationships. Intimate relationships need to exist to satisfy this particular psychological need.
What was surprising to me was actually the complexity of autonomy. It is not as simple as to say feeling freedom through choice. You must also take into consideration the perceived locus of causality and level of volition. The types of choices are also going to determine whether or not this need is actually fulfilled. If the individual is coerced into choosing an option they will not fulfill this need. Also that individual must want to pursue the options available. Therefore it is a matter of creating intrinsic motivation to complete the task by providing rationales behind the behavior.
I believe that my rating for autonomy would low. Being a senior I definitely feel more extrinsic motivation to finish school in comparison to when I was a freshman. Also with being a senior there is less of a choice as to what classes I will be taking. I have also recently moved in with my boyfriend and this has definitely decreased my autonomy because decisions that I previously made on my own are now more limited. However this relationship with my boyfriend has increased my fulfillment of relatedness. I would rate my relatedness at high. The relationships that I have are very close and intimate. I have a very close relationship with my family, my boyfriend, and several friends that I care deeply for. Competence I would rate as high. I work full-time, go to school full-time, and participate in many volunteer activities. Balancing this lifestyle is quite the challenge for me however I do find that it is quite rewarding.
Autonomy—As discussed above I have experienced a decrease in my autonomy satisfaction by cohabitating with my boyfriend. I insisted on getting the money to the landlord and being responsible for making sure that the other “house” bills are paid. I feel as if I needed to know that I had the option of being able to be “charge” of making sure bills are paid. My roommates were more than happy with this idea and now that I don’t feel like I have a choice I hate being responsible for this task. I feel like I have lost motivation to pay the bills because now, since I volunteered I have to. An example of fulfilling my autonomy need is by volunteering. With such a busy lifestyle it is nice to be able to do something simply because you want to, not for money or for a diploma. I take care of horses and this includes cleaning stalls. Normally I don’t think that individual would find it rewarding to clean up horse manure and if this were my actual place of employment I might even dread it. Because it is an activity I participate in “just because,” I thoroughly enjoy it.
The fish is most likely displaying its need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. First the fish’s need for relatedness is not being met due to lack of intimate relationships. This fish might be also experiencing low autonomy due to the restrictions of the environment. The fish can fulfill its need for autonomy by choosing to escape in hope of fulfilling its relatedness need while fulfilling its competence need by successfully escaping the bowl.
Terms;
Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, dopamine release, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation

Chapter 6 is about psychological needs. Psychological needs derive from biologival deficits. Psychological needs are also known as growth needs. Psychological needs give us the motivational cause to engage in our environment in order to involve and satisfy our psychological needs. The chapter spoke about the organismic approach to motivation. The three organismic psychological needs are competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Organismic theories emphasize person-environment dialectic. This means there is a reciprocal interaction/relationship between the environment and person: the environment acts on the person and the person act on the environment. This approach is based on the assumption that organisms is inherently active. The organismic psychological needs paragraph in the book give examples such as: need for competence can be summed up as wanting to do something better than you did before; the need for relatedness can be summed up as what someone regards as important depends on important people in their lives such as attitudes, values, skills etc; and the need for autonomy can be summed up as experimenting what to do, how to do, when to do, and whether to do etc.
I think I have a medium need for autonomy. I believe I already have a fairly autonomous life therefore I do not believe the need is very great. I feel that I make a little decisions, and have a decent amount of control in my life especially since I have been away at college. But I know at different times of my life that my need for autonomy has varied greatly. Mostly what comes to mind was when I was teenager I had very high need for autonomy.
I think I have a very high need for competence. I feel that I'm constantly striving to be better at certain tasks or proving is various ways that I am competent. I enjoy learning as well which is why I think I have high need for competence. It is very important to me that I know what people are talking about, I hate sounding incompetent and I strive to be "smart". In my life I really value competence which is why I think I have a higher need. I think this is a value that has been passed down to me from my parents.
I believe I have medium to high need for relatedness. I feel that at my enviornment at home I do not have as high of a need for relatedness but away at college I think that need becomes greater and I must try harder to fullfill the need for relaatedness. When I am not at home without some of my close friends and family I have to take more effort to fullfil the needs like belonging, social interaction and etc. There also different type of relatedness when comparing family to other individuals. By definition my family we are "related" and I have accepted many if not almost all my parents values, attitudes, skills, and others. When I do not succeed at meeting my relatedness needs I feel lonely.
One of the surprising or interesting things I liked was figure 6.5 graphing Beyond boredom and anxiety. I felt that I perfect fit that graph practically a T. I feel that I become extremely worried about things when I am uncertain about my competence and skills, but fairly often I become pretty bored with alot of tasks and challenges especially when I feel that my skill or competence outweighs the task or challenge. This is something I have noticed in classes and many areas of my life which is especially something I would like to work on to have the motivation for. I may have over exaggerated my competence in my own mind which is why I might procrasinate on alot of projects and my to do lists. And I have noticed sometimes that when the tasks and skills match there is a flow, and I would like to be able to have more flow on complex tasks and lesser complex tasks.
If I had to take a guess the fish was suffering from the lack of relatedness. I would assume it was very boring all alone in the fish bowl. I think that was the overwhelming need but I'm sure autonomy and competence have their own parts in there as well. I think jumping out also fulfilled his needs for autonomy and competence. I think the picture is pretty motivational.
Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, organismic theory, person-environment dialectic, flow, growth needs, biological deficits, organismic psychological needs

The previous chapter spoke of physiological needs, which motivate people to action when something is lacking. Psychological needs, which this chapter focuses on, exist as an opportunity for personal growth rather than a deficit need, and motivate people to proactively improve their personal experience in life. Organisms, including humans, live in environments that they interact with in a reciprocal fashion to meet their needs, adapt, and grow. The three psychological needs this chapter focuses on are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

People possess a psychological need for autonomy. We need to be the ones deciding what to do rather than other people telling us what to do (have an internal perceived locus of causality). We need to feel we’re entering into these actions willingly (volition), and we need to feel we have true choice, rather than a couple “either-or” offerings we’re bound to. This need for autonomy can be supported by our environments, or it can be neglected with a controlling environment. Environments that are autonomy-supportive care about a person’s interests, preferences, and psychological needs. Poor performance and negative affect are accepted, seen as information that something’s not right, and attended to with care and understanding to address the core of the problem. Autonomy-supportive environments also answer all the “But why?” questions, while controlling environments usually respond with, “Because I said so!” A controlling motivational style seeks only to gain compliance, and it does so by neglecting autonomy needs and using threats, commands, consequences, guilt, hierarchies, rules, threats to self-esteem, and complete lack of acceptance for negative affect or poor performance. There are countless benefits to having autonomy-supportive environments rather than controlling ones, including increased intrinsic motivation and engagement, deeper learning, improved performance, and greater development and psychological well-being.

Another psychological need everyone has is a need for competence. We need to feel we are optimally challenged and capable of rising to meet those challenges, and we need to act on this. The sensation of flow is experienced when people have medium to high levels of skill that are equally matched with medium to highly challenging tasks. Time goes by without you even noticing when you experience flow, and the competence need is being met. It is a very pleasurable experience. We also need some amount of structure, because if we are to do something well, we kind of have to know what a good performance looks like and know what we have to do. Positive feedback is important for us to know we are meeting challenges, and an environment which not only tolerates but in fact values failure is essential.

As a very social species, people also psychologically need relatedness. It is important for us to have relationships that are warm and affectionate, where we value each other as people. We like this to be reciprocal and get it through interaction with others. We need to know the other person truly cares for our well-being and knows our true, authentic self. These communal relationships are the ones we’re really going for, and they do satisfy our relatedness need. We also have some business-style relationships (exchange relationships) that do not meet our relatedness need, though they may serve to get us other things we need or want.

When all of our psychological needs (for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) are being involved and satisfied, we have the experience of a good day. People whose needs are being met on a daily basis have less psychologically negative experiences such as anxiety and depression, and they experience a far greater level of vitality, engagement, well-being, and personal growth.

The most surprising thing to me was that the text presents each of these things as psychological NEEDS. I’ve always known I desire these things, and that they are very important to me, but they don’t seem to be things everyone gets truly satisfied very often. The concept that they are in fact needs, just like food and water, really helps me feel better about how much value I’ve placed upon them my whole life.

I have an incredibly high psychological need for autonomy. I absolutely hate it when people tell me what to do. I actually dropped out of school for a couple years because I couldn’t handle the structured demands all the time and the lack of personal choice I felt in the whole matter. As far as competence, I’ve been fairly blessed in my life with relatively high talent, so my performance usually reflects back to me that I have a high level of competence. However, I also have had a hard time finding things that are actually an optimal challenge for me. I have handicapped myself in the past to try and reach a flow experience, but this usually leads to a less than desirable experience. Recently I have been finding things, like figuring out what life is really all about, that are able to provide me with more difficulty. The sort of flow experience I get from this is far greater and more pleasurable than what I’m used to experiencing (like turn the paper 1/4 turn to the right…great job!). I’d say this is a medium need for me. Relatedness is something I definitely crave on a very high level. Interacting with people energizes me in an amazing way that nothing else can. I generally surround myself with many people and generate incredibly close and genuine relationships with them. Having these has always been a top priority in my life.

I’ll choose to go into more detail on my psychological need for autonomy. When I was younger, I generally dismissed this need. Children are always told what to do, and when I did what I was told, I experienced the external rewards promised from it and enjoyed them. After a while, though, I began to realize I was not acting from desires deep within myself, only those imposed upon me. I reached a point where I was very depressed. As I began to listen to myself and exercise more autonomy in my life, I felt better. I liked feeling I was becoming closer to my authentic self. This felt so good that I began to do exactly what I was told NOT to do, just to find out what I, personally, thought about each thing. Now I’m finally coming around to a place where I can act on what I need, despite what other people say on the matter. I can take my external motivations into account, but freely choose what to do from deep inside of me. This produces even more of a feeling of autonomy than simple rebellion ever did, and I love it.

If I were the fish in that fish bowl, I would probably do exactly the same thing. There’s nothing to do in there, no challenges presented, so the fish’s need for competence isn’t being addressed at all. In addition, there no other fish to satisfy a need for relatedness. The poor thing is ridiculously lonely, and that can get depressing for anyone. Also, it’s bound by the glass to a very small area. It can’t go where it wants to or do what it desires because there’s a huge “wall” up all around it. To have any chance at its need for autonomy being met, it must break free and go out into the rest of the world. Of course, since it’s a fish in a tank surrounded by air, it is essentially committing suicide, but hey, it doesn’t know that. It’s just trying to get out. All it would know is that where it’s at is a miserable place where none of the psychological needs are being met, and would be more than willing to take a chance to get out and meet those needs.

physiological needs, psychological needs, deficit needs, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, true choice, autonomy-supportive, controlling motivating style, negative affect, intrinsic motivation, engagement, learning, performance, development, psychological well-being, competence, flow, structure, feedback, relatedness, communal relationships, exchange relationships, a good day, vitality, engagement, well-being