Chapter 7
Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Chapter seven begins by explaining a few different forms of needs, the main one’s being, Quasi-Needs and Social Needs. Then it explains Achievement, or the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. It goes on to explain a few of the different conditions that involve and satisfy a person’s need for achievement. One example of this is moderately difficult tasks. The chapter explains that high-need achievers outperform low-need achievers on moderately difficult tasks, but that they do not outperform low-need achievers on easy or difficult tasks. Another condition is competition, which the chapter explains promotes positive emotion, approach behavior, and improved performance in high-need achievers. On the other hand competition promotes negative emotion, avoidance behaviors and debilitated performance in low-need achievers. The last condition that involves and satisfies the need for achievement is Entrepreneurship, which the chapter explains that high-need achievers often display the behavior of this. I would describe myself as a high-need achiever because I am driven to do well on moderately difficult tasks, I enjoy and welcome competition, and because I like entrepreneurship in the concept that I feel the need for at least some autonomy in most of the situations that I am in.
Later on in the chapter the book explains that there are two types of achievement goals, Mastery Goals and Performance Goals. Mastery goals are when a person faces a standard of excellence they seek to develop greater competence, make progress, improve the self, and overcome challenges through intense and persistent effort. Mastery Goals use a ‘self-set standard. Performance goals are when a person faces a standard of excellence they seek to demonstrate or prove competence, display high ability, outperform others, and succeed with little apparent effort. Performance goals use the concept of a person having the desire to ‘do better than others’. I believe I fit more with the concept of mastery goals because, as the chapter explains, people who adopt mastery goals compared to people who adopt performance goals tend to: prefer challenging tasks, use conceptionally based strategies, are more likely to be intrinsically motivated, and are more likely to ask for help and information from others that will allow them to continue working on their own. The four traits or characteristics I just listed all allow those with mastery goals to work harder, which working hard is something I am a huge believer in. The concept and description of mastery goals was the most surprising thing I learned in this chapter because I did not know I fit more in that category than performance goals prior to reading the chapter.
Another concept the chapter explains is Implicit Theories. There are two ways that the chapter describes people exhibit these. The first is Entity Theorists, who believe that they and others are endowed with fixed, enduring qualities, or that some people are smart and motivated while others are not. The second is Incremental Theorists who believe that people are endowed with malleable, changing qualities, meaning that people can become smarter and more motivated in proportion to their effort
The last concept the chapter explains that I felt was relevant to mention is that of Power. The book explains that people high in the need for power desire to have: impact, control, and influence. It also explains that people high in the need for power more readily acquire the goals and outcomes they seek than do individuals on the other end of the spectrum. I would say I have at least somewhat of a need for power because I desire to make an impact in most situations, I like to have control in most situations, and because I enjoy having an influence in a process.
Terms= Quasi-Needs, Social Needs, Achievement, Moderately Difficult Tasks, Competition, Entrepreneurship, Mastery Goals, Performance Goals, Entity Theorists, Incremental Theorists, Power
Chapter seven presents and discusses the various different types of social needs. Initially, the chapter makes a distinction between social needs and quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are needs that are situationally based and by meeting that need go away. An example might be the need for money. We are not consciously thinking about our need for many until something happens that reminds us we need more; possibly a bill comes in the mail and we then realize that we have a need that is not met. Once that bill is paid or money comes in, that need diminishes for the time-being. Four basic types of social needs were discussed in the chapter; these were achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The bulk of the chapter was dedicated to the need for achievement which is a desire to do well in comparison to a “standard of excellence”. Need for achievement is something discussed a lot in I/O Psychology and is often looked at as a possibility for being used in selection. Research has indicated that people who are high in need for achievement do better at complicated/complex tasks and overall are more driven and therefore, have higher levels of performance (it is important to note however that when the task is menial, high need for achievement is not as effective). Along with the discussion of this need came implications for how people behave. Whether an individual is high or low need for achievement effects whether they are approach-oriented or avoidance-oriented. Additionally, there are cognitive influences as well with the way we behave. These things together (level/intensity of need and cognitive influence), lead to the ways in which behave; this to me provides and understanding of why we see such variance in behaviors across individuals. The chapter also presents models that explain need for achievement further, one being a classical model and the other a contemporary model. I liked the distinction between entity and incremental theories. Entity theorists believe that qualities are fixed and unchangeable while incremental theorists believe qualities can be changed with effort (I’d place myself in the incremental group).
The most surprising thing to me was in regard to the need for affiliation. Need for affiliation is defined as the need for relationships with other people and is often thought to come from the fear of rejection. The most surprising thing to me was the discussion about need for affiliation and popularity. Initially, when reading this I thought that people with a high level of this need would be the more popular people but because it is the fear of rejection it is often the case that people with high need for affiliation are much less popular. This makes sense when you think that people who are high in this need are more likely to be the people that are not getting enough interpersonal relationships. Need for intimacy is similar to this but is more about needing a certain quality of affiliations (need for intimacy is a subcomponent of need for affiliation). Lastly, the need for power is the desire to make the world according to their plan and to have impact and control over people and situations.
I would rate myself highly in need for achievement because the many of the most important pieces in my life have dealt with school. This social need impacts me because I am constantly comparing myself to others and find myself needing to exceed scholastic expectations. I find this need sometimes harder to meet in graduate school because the standard of excellence is so much higher and the people I surround myself with have the same high level of need for achievement. I would rate myself moderately to low in need for affiliation. I have a desire to have good relationships in my life but it is not something I am often cognizant of. I mentioned this in a previous blog as well that I am not the friend who is making the strong effort to keep in contact with people. It’s not that I do not want to keep in touch; it is more that it is not a very important need to me. I would rate my need for power moderately as well. While it is not extremely important to me to have complete power, I do tend to want to both control the events in my life, but to also have some impact on the events going on. For example, I am an intern at the place I work, therefore am the lowest in the office, however I still find myself voicing my opinions and trying to understand in hopes of having an impact regardless of my title.
ME Terms: Social Needs, Quasi-Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Standard of Excellence, Cognitive Influences, Approach-Oriented, Avoidance-Oriented, Classical and Contemporary model, Entity Theory, Incremental Theory, Interpersonal Relationships.
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter seven is about social needs. The chapter starts off by discussing acquired needs, and the four types. Physiological needs are biological conditions within the organism causing brain structures, hormones, and major organs to regulate bodily imbalances that are necessary for life, growth, and well-being. Examples of physiological needs are thirst, hunger, and sex. Psychological needs are the desire to look for interactions to promote growth and well-being. Examples of psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Social needs are acquired psychological processes that come from a person’s socialization history and cause an emotional response to an incentive. Social need examples are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Quasi-needs are temporary wants to participate in a behavior to reduce the built-up tension. Examples of quasi-needs are needing money at a store, band-aid after a cut, and an umbrella in the rain. The chapter then focuses on social needs. Social needs are reactive, and people rely on their knowledge of what satisfies their social needs to choose environments to support this. Achievement is a type of social need, and the first one thoroughly discussed in this chapter. Achievement is based on people’s desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Achievement has been influenced by society, and the pressure placed on people by others to achieve excellence. It is has cognitive influences such as perceptions of high ability, mastery orientation, high expectations for success, strong valuing on achievement, and optimistic attribution style. Achievement also has developmental influences. Children first are motivated by the idea of wanting to please their parents, but as time goes on, they internalize achievement-related values. The classical view of achievement is Atkinson’s model. This view centers around the goals people have in achievement situations. Atkinson said that achievement behavior is based on the need for achievement and the probability of success on a certain task. There are three variables in this model: person’s need for achievement, perceived probability of success, and incentive value of success. The other model is the Dynamics-of-Action Model, which states that achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior. This stream is determined by three forces. Instigation makes the person want to approach an environmental stimuli associated with a past reward. Inhibition make the person want to avoid an environmental stimuli associated with a past punishment. Consummation is the idea that after performing an activity for a period of time the person will want to stop doing it. There are also three conditions that involve or satisfy our need for achievement. Moderately difficult tasks provide pride from success and the ability to determine abilities, so this is the best level of difficulty to choose. Competition is appealing to high-need achievers, but it causes a lot of fear and anxiety for low-need achievers. Entrepreneurship appeals to high-need achievers because it requires taking risks and assuming responsibility. There are two different types of achievement goals: mastery and performance goals. People who have mastery goals are trying to gain competence and improve themselves. People who have performance goals try to prove competence and do better than others. The fear of failure also prompts people to use performance-avoidance goals, which cause people to give up quickly or lose interest in that activity. There are two different types of implicit theories: entity and incremental. Entity theorists believe that some people have motivating traits while others simply don’t. Incremental theorists believe that their traits change and adapt. Implicit theories are a large factor in choosing an achievement goal. The chapter then discusses affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is motivated by the fear of others’ rejection, and they appear needy. Intimacy is motivated by concern, warmth, emotional connectedness, and love for others and by others. Fear and anxiety make people want to affiliate with others more. People who desire intimacy usually join social groups and go to other social settings to meet people. Those with high levels of intimacy or affiliation keep in contact with their friends more regularly. When affiliation is satisfied, the person feels relief, and when intimacy is satisfied, the person feels that they have grown and joy. The chapter next discusses power. Impact lets power-needing people gain power. Control lets power-needing people to maintain power, and influence lets power-needing people expand or restore their power. People who have a high need for power take more risks to get themselves in the public’s eye, and they have more impulses to act aggressively. Power-needing people also seek out careers to show their power such as business executive, teacher, or psychologists, and they have possessions that show prestige such as guns and high end cars. High-need power people are more likely to reach their goals. The Leadership Motive Pattern describes the social needs of an ideal leader. They are high need for power, low need for intimacy or affiliation, and high inhibition.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I found the Leadership Motive Pattern interesting and surprising. I would assume that we would want a leader that is high in all three areas. If they are high in intimacy or affiliation, they would try harder to please us because they desire our approval and want us to like them. However, they have to be low in intimacy or affiliation in order to have the “thick skin” that is required to hold a position of power. I think this is an issue in campaigning and elections. The politicians try to get us to like them, so we will vote for them. When they get elected, they seem to no longer care about our approval until the next election. Though I don’t believe that a high need for intimacy would be ideal, I think a medium level would be better than the low that the Leadership Motive Pattern suggests.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
Achievement: I would rate myself as high in my need for achievement. I try to do my best and achieve as much as possible in school and work. I’m striving to make it to graduate school, and I know this will push me to an even higher standard.
Affiliation: I think I have a medium level of affiliation. I try to please people, and I hate being told that I have disappointed anyone. I tend to go out of my way to make others happy, but I have most of my relationships for intimacy rather than affiliation.
Intimacy: I think I have a medium need for intimacy. I enjoy having friends, and I surround myself with people that care about my well-being. However, I also have times that I prefer to be by myself.
Power: I think I also have a medium need for power. I enjoy being in positions of power at work, school, and in clubs. However, I would not always want to be in these positions. I like having a balance of power and following positions.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
The need for achievement motivates many of my behaviors. I do homework, go to class, study for tests, and read text books in order to achieve success in schools. I put in extra time at my job and go to trainings to achieve success in my job. When I was in sports in high school, I went to practice, exercised outside of practice, and studied other teams to achieve success in the sports.
ME terms: Social needs, acquired needs, physiological needs, psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, achievement, intimacy, affiliation, power, quasi-needs, optimistic attribution style, cognitive influences, developmental influences, Atkinson’s model, Dynamics-of-Action Model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, mastery goals, performance goals, performance-avoidance goals, implicit theories, entity, incremental, power, Leadership Motive Pattern
In chapter 7 the author focuses on the social needs essential for life, growth and overall well-being. Social needs are acquired through life experience, development and socialization. Social needs are unique to each individual and their unique life experiences. This particular chapter divides social needs into four distinct categories and those include: achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to standard of excellence. Achievement can often times breed competition because there is often times a standard of excellence that people strive for, but not all are able to reach. An example of this would include making the “Deans List” while in college. There is a standard of excellence that is set by the College or University that must be reached in order to “achieve” the status of being on the Deans List. The standard of excellence is set at a level that can be reached by some but not all, this is what makes making the Deans List quite an achievement. Affiliation is the opportunity to please others and gain their approval. It has also been conceptualized as “establishing, maintaining or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons.” Intimacy sometimes can be lumped together or closely with affiliation because intimacy is defined as a warm, secure relationship. Together these terms share conditions that are involved in affiliation and intimacy. Fear and anxiety often times effect the feeling of affiliation and intimacy because isolation and loneliness can cause feelings of the jitters/tension. Another important factor for affiliation and intimacy is establishing and maintaining interpersonal networks. It is human nature to want to be social and meet to people. Establishing new bonds or friendships with people can go a long way in satisfying our need for affiliation and intimacy. Maintaining these relationships can be a little bit more tricky but when achieved, can lead to amazing things. Lastly is the need or desire for power. Power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. People that have personalities that center around a need for dominance, reputation, status or position often times have the highest social need for power. And example of needing power could possibly include police officers. Some people who have never been in a position of power sometimes seek out careers that give them status or “power” over their peers. The reason they may do this is to get the respect they have never gotten in the past or to simply hold a position of power or of elite status.
Just as I was all over the place with the psychological needs scale, I have varying levels on the social needs scale as well. As for achievement I believe that I would be relatively high on the scale. I strive for excellence in most everything I do and feel like a failure if I do not meet or exceed expectations. Since coming to the University of Northern Iowa I have been on the Deans List nearly every semester. The reason that achieving the Deans List was of high importance was because I felt as though once I received the honor, I could no longer fall below that standard of excellence without disappointing myself or my family. Affiliation and Intimacy would fall relatively low on my needs scale because I often times like to be alone or like to feel free to choose my own life choices. I have a very close relationship with my family but I can typically only spend a relatively short period of time with them before I feel smothered or overwhelmed by them. Same can be said about my friends as well. If I spend too much time with certain friends I tend to get very annoyed by minor habits they have and eventually need to have time to be alone and contemplate my own life. Lastly is power and I believe power falls perfectly between achievement and affiliation/intimacy. Power is something that I believe everyone needs to have or feel, but there is a fine line between having power over your own life and being power hungry. I tend to enjoy having the power to choose my life path but I do not seek the power of controlling others. Some may enjoy having the power to make someone do something for them or hold the status of someone’s “boss,” but I prefer to be more free spirited and let things just happen.
The social need that I want to focus on is achievement. Achievement holds the most importance in my life at this juncture. As previously mentioned I have a great desire to be the best I can be at the many activities in which I participate in. In school I strive for A’s in all of my classes so that I could make the Deans List, in sports I looked to be the hardest working and best player on the team so that I could make captain and when it comes to work, I always look to be dependable and consistent so that I can be the best employee I can. These are just a few ways in which achievement plays a role in my life at this point in time but I don’t see it changing any time soon.
Terms: Social Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Competition, Fear & Anxiety, Establishing Interpersonal Networks, Maintaining Interpersonal Networks, Control.
This chapter focused on acquired needs and mostly reviewed social needs. Both of these needs are considered acquired because no one is born with a need for achievement, power, money, high GPA, or a new car. These are eventually developed through the years. Quasi-needs are situation dependent wants and desires that are not actually needs in the sense of physiological, psychological, and social needs. When a person satisfies a situational demand or pressure, the quasi-need fades away (i.e. need for an umbrella when it’s raining but no need when the rain stops). Social needs are longer lasting and arise from an individual’s personal experiences and unique developmental, cognitive, and socialization histories. Social needs act as emotional and behavioral potentials activated by situational incentives. The four social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Someone who has a high need for achievement usually has approach-oriented emotions; a person with low need for achievement usually has avoidance-oriented emotions. The dynamics-of-action model also adds the concepts of instigation, inhibition and consummation to achievement behavior. There are also different types of achievement goals such as performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. There are two types of theories that have been linked to the type of achievement goals someone might pursue. Incremental theorists would say that personal qualities and traits are malleable and can be increased or changed, whereas entity theorists believe that these qualities are fixed and enduring. The need for affiliation and the need for intimacy can both be encompassed in the term affiliation striving. The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships with others. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships. The need for power is the desire for making the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. I thought that some of the most interesting information had to deal with the idea that high need for power individuals tend to be more aggressive. Social inhibitions keep people from outwardly displaying their aggressiveness unless something like alcohol decreases those inhibitions. Also, the idea that someone with a high need for power must also have self-discipline and control to be successful and productive is intriguing. I would say that I am relatively high in the need for achievement. I typically find myself motivated to do better than those around me in settings that are naturally competitive like sports and exercising. This would be much more of a performance-approach to goals. In other areas such as academia and my job which deals with a lot of technology I have much more of a mastery goal approach. I am much more interested in learning and improving my own competence in those areas as opposed to just doing better than others. I would say that I am low in the need for affiliation, because I don’t need that constant approval and acceptance by others. I am medium to medium-low in the need for intimacy, while I do have close relationships I do not have multiple intimate relationships. For power I would rate myself as medium to low. I don’t need to be in control all of the time and intimidate people to do things my way. I will take control of a situation and help direct people if no progress is being made in a situation but it is done in a very calm and understanding way. Position, reputation, status, and dominance or not at the forefront of reasons when I do take some sort of power position but mainly to get a job done efficiently.
ME Terms: acquired needs, social needs, quasi-needs, physiological needs, psychological needs, achievement, approach-oriented emotions, avoidance-oriented emotions, dynamics-of-action model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, Incremental theorists, entity theorists, affiliation, intimacy, power.
This chapter talks about Quasi needs which originate from situational events. It is not like most needs because the need often goes away for a long period of time unlike most physiological needs which constantly have to be satisfied. They are defiency oriented and situationally reactive such as needing an umbrella in the rain because once it stops raining the need for an umbrella ceases. Social needs are not innate but rather fluxate as time passes and a few things are learned by parents . Achievement is categorized as " success in competiotion with a standard of excellence" includes competiotin with task self and others. Children develop strong achievemnet strivings when realistic standars of excellence, high ability of self concepts , positive valur of achievement are imposed just to name a few. Cognitive influences such as a mastery approach and optomistic attributional style. Pride emerges from developmental history of sucess episodes ending in mastery and shame is the oppostie both of which are not inate.
Atkinson's model : achievement motivation as an inherent struggle of approach vs. avoidance. Achevement behavior depends on 1)dispositional need for achievement 2)task specific probaility of success 3) incentive for suceding. Dynamics of action determined by instication, inhibition , and consmmtion. Entity way of leanring is looking at intelligence as something inate and unchageable and the more effort someone applies the less compentent they are precieved. Incremental is effort is looked at like a tool and is more for mastery rather than performance.
What was the most surprising thing you learned? The most suprising thing I learned was that males that are high in power make bad husbands while it doesn't matter with a female if she is high in power.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? I would rate myself as medium need for achievement, high need for compentecy
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? sometimes my unequal levles cause a problem, i want to do very well and display my competency but I just dont put forth the effort sometimes.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors. My need for intimacy is important because even though I work full time and have 19 semester hours I still feel like something is missing if I dont take time out to connect with close friends. This last thursday I could have gotten ahead on some work but I chose to get a hold of a friend and just hang out not because I felt like a loser if I didnt but the fact that I felt out of touch with that friend
Terms: Quasi needs, social needs, achievement, competition, physiological needs, cognitive influences, mastery, pride, shame, approach, avoidance, achievemnt behavior, dynamics of action, instigation , inhibition, consummtion, intimacy
Chapter seven dealt with the social needs of people. It also briefly explains quasi-needs as a situationally induced wants that create tense energy to engage in behavior capable of reducing built-up tension. In other words, a need/want develops due to a change in the environment. The chapter goes into more detail about the various types of social needs. It explains a social need as an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need –relevant incentive. Achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power are all examples of a social need.
Personally, I have varying levels of importance put on these needs. I would have to say that I have a low need for affiliation. I do not have a huge number of friends. I can count the number of friends I have using my fingers and maybe a toe or two. I am, however very close to the friends I do have. The friends I have now are the ones I have kept since elementary school and early junior high. Surprisingly, I still hang out with them all when I can.
I probably have a medium need for power. I=I like to have some control over my environment. I like the respect and status I receive from a job well done. Doing something well helps me impact and control my area in the workplace. It secures my job position, and it shows my coworkers that I am good at what I do. This is the extent of my influence because I don’t feel a need to be bossy to any of the people I work with.
I would have to say that I have a high need for intimacy. I like having friends, girlfriend, or parents that I can talk to about anything. If I have a problem to that I need help with, I can find someone to talk to within the hour usually.
Above anything else, I am achievement oriented. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get from working out, getting good grades, doing a good job at work, having a good time with a friend, finishing a book, or any other goals that I may have on a particular day. I enjoy the friendly competition me and my friends have when we play sports. I also do very well on moderately difficult tasks. Easy tasks bore me and I think hard ones are stupid and out of my reach. I would also say that I currently have a performance goal mindset in both work and school. I just want to do well with the least amount of effort possible. I don’t do anything outside of class if I want to and I leave work when I am scheduled to leave no matter how much work there is left to do. Later on, in graduate school and my future career, hopefully I can adapt the approach of mastery so that I can develop my skills and try harder
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, power, affiliation, achievement, intimacy, respect, status, impact, control, influence, competition, moderately difficult tasks, Mastery goal, performance goal.
Chapter seven focuses on our social needs. The authors begin the chapter by distinguishing between social needs and Quasi needs. Quasi needs are defined in the chapter as situationally induced wants that create tense energy to engage in behavior. Engaging in these behaviors will reduce the tension that builds up when these needs arise. Examples of these include needing money for a trip, pulling over when a policeman flashes his lights, and turning the stereo on to ease tension. Social needs are a bit more complex. They are defined by the authors as an acquired psychological process that grows out of one's socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. There are four types of social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. The chapter spends a great deal of time talking about the need for achievement, which is defined as doing something well to show personal competence. In other words, a person with a high need for achievement will perform relative to the standard of excellence. For some, this can be a stressful situation that induces negative emotion but others see satisfaction and other positive emotions when attempting to meet a standard of excellence. One's need for achievement is influenced by three factors: socialization, cognitive and developmental influences. Socialization influences arise during childhood. Children are more likely to develop a high need for achievement when they are provided with independent learning situations, and high performance aspirations from their parents. Cognitive influences focus on one's own perceptions of one's own ability. Developmental influences develop over one's lifetime. When one is faced with a standard of excellence, we develop either shame or pride. This correlates with high and low needs for achievement. There are two types of achievement goals: mastery goals and performance goals. Performance goals drives the main focus to prove one's own competence, and to outperform others. Mastery goals are more intrinsically motivated, focusing on improving one's self and to DEVELOP competence, rather than prove. Research suggests that setting a mastery goal causes someone to work harder, persist longer and perform better. The chapter also discusses avoidance motivation and its effect on the well-being of a person. This is classified by one's fear of failure. When this is the case, a person is more likely to set easily obtainable goals for themselves to avoid failure. This affects one's well being negatively, correlating with low self esteem and loss of personal control.
Affiliation and Intimacy are two other types of social needs. Affiliation and intimacy can be easily confused, though they differ greatly. Need for affiliation is an attempt to reassure social acceptance, and prevent social isolation. Need for intimacy attempts to form warm, close relationships. In other words, affiliation reflects fear and anxiety of NOT having relationships and compensates thereafter. Intimacy focuses on gaining interpersonal relationships for the sake of gaining, not fear of losing.
Power is the final social need. It is defined as the need have impact on others. It attempts to have impact, control and influence over others. There are four conditions that cater to the need for power: leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. A person who has a high need for power will likely engage in aggressive behavior in order to meet their goals. Research suggests that people with a high need for power meet their goals more frequently. This section concludes with a description of successful leadership qualities which entails a high power need, low affiliation need and high self control. Many presidents have displayed such traits.
The most surprising thing about this chapter for me was the section describing the differences between master goals and performance goals. Kim's lecture reinforced my interest by analyzing the education system and how it promotes performance goals, rather than mastery goals. I realized that it is very hard to focus on mastery goals in school because at this point in our education, all we worry about are grades. This is the second hybrid class I have taken I have found that this style of learning promotes mastery. If I were to bomb my first few posts, it allows me to improve, and grade my finished product, rather than my work in progress.
After learning about the four social needs manifested in all of us, I can apply them to myself and how I utilize them in my everyday life. I would say that I have the highest need for intimacy. My interpersonal relationships are very important to me and I always jump at the opportunity to strengthen the bonds I already have. Growing up, I believe I had a higher need for affiliation. I don't like it when people are made at me. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any enemies I have. To this day, if any sort of social unrest occurs between me and someone else, I am always the first to apologize and try to make up. I've found myself in the past waking up in the morning after a party with my friends and having anxiety about what I may have done to mess up a friendship; a false premise indeed. I have a rather low need for power because of this. Though I like to have an influence over people, I don't enjoy boasting my power, or making people unhappy while doing so. Over the past five years, my need for achievement has risen. I believe this is because I want to be successful in college and find a career that I enjoy. Most of my friends have dropped out of school, and I don't want to be like that. Perhaps I'm proving I can graduate to someone else, but I'd like to believe I'm doing it for myself.
Terms: social needs, quasi needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, competence standard of excellence, socialization influence, cognitive influence, developmental influence, achievement goals, mastery goal, performance goal, avoidance motivation
Chapter 7 discusses the various types of social needs. At the start of the chapter, the authors make a distinction between two categories of acquired psychological needs—one being social needs and the other quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are situationally provoked wants/desires that are not considered needs on the same level as physiological, psychological, and social needs. We humans get social needs through experience, development, and socialization. Four types of social needs discussed in the chapter include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is about doing something well to show you’re competent. Humans want to do well relative to a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with the person rating themselves related to success vs failure, win vs lose, etc. One example of this could be student’s working hard in school so they can be on the Dean’s List or receive other academic recognition. I for one work very hard in school so I can maintain a high GPA so I can get into graduate school. Making the Dean’s List is something that makes me feel competent and confident in myself and my academic achievements. Three situations that involve and can satisfy the need for achievement include moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. The chapter also discusses the two different types of achievement goals: mastery goals and performance goals. When someone achieves a mastery goal, it means they made progress according to a standard they set for themselves. When someone achieves a performance goal, it means they believe they did better than everyone else. The need for affiliation occurs when we have an opportunity to please other people and gain their approval. People who are high-need people in this category things all the time about their friends and relationships with other people, is considered to be a loving, warm person, engages in self-disclosure, is a good listener, etc. The need for intimacy is our way of needing warm, secure relationships with other people. The need for power is the desire to have an impact on other people in one way or another. The chapter discusses four conditions that involve and satisfy the need for power: 1. leadership (establish influence over other people); 2. aggressiveness (response to impulses to act more aggressively if you are a high power needing person); 3. influential occupations (e.g. teachers, business executives, political figures); and 4. prestige possessions (e.g. cars, flat screen TVs, belong to a country club).
I have varying levels of social needs, just as I did on the psychological needs scale a couple weeks ago. For achievement, I would rate myself fairly high on that scale. I work really hard at school and at my job so I can be the best and do the best job I am capable of. I believe that people get out of something what they put into it, so it’s important to me to be a good student, employee, friend, etc. Like I mentioned before, being on the Dean’s List every semester I’ve attended college is so important to me because getting good grades makes me a more well-rounded candidate for grad schools that I have applied to. If I wouldn’t have made the Dean’s List every semester, I probably would have been disappointed in myself and nervous at the same time because I recognize the importance of a high GPA for grad school among other qualifications. I would consider myself to be about in the middle on the affiliation and intimacy scale. I really enjoy spending time with my family and friends, but after a certain amount of time, I start feeling like I want to spend some quality time with just myself. It also depends on who I’m spending time with. For example, I can spend more time with my friends on average before I feel overwhelmed compared to spending time with my family. Not that I don’t like spending time with my family, but it seems like whenever I go back home for a visit they just can’t leave me alone for any amount of time—especially my younger siblings! As for power, I think I fall in the middle of the scale as well. I am the coordinator/supervisor of the students that work at my place of employment both here at school and back home, so I feel like I have to have a certain need for power just because I’m in that position.
The social need I want to focus a little more on is power. There’s so many times within my job where I feel horrible because I can’t please everybody whether it be related to scheduling or just random comments/concerns people have about each other. I’m confident in myself to make the needed decisions for the group, and I feel that the majority of the time they all agree with my decisions. I feel like a maintain a good, healthy balance of power because I never go outside of my abilities or qualifications just to get something I want while at the same time I don’t let anybody walk all over me. As for having aggressive feelings related to satisfying the need for power, I don’t really recognize myself as acting upon aggressive feelings towards others. Sure, I have to be a little stern sometimes when an employee is behaving wrongly, but I don’t think I tend to get into more arguments or anything like that. Maybe I think I’m a little higher on the scale than I really am…?
This chapter talks about two different “Acquired Psychological Needs” that every person has: Quasi Needs and Social Needs. These two are needs that are learned/gained from society—we are not born with them. Throughout life we develop a striving to reach these two needs. Quasi-Needs are different wants/desires we have based on our unique situations at that time in our life. Social Needs are any needs that we get through experience, development and socialization. The chapter also talked about three main influences on Achievement: socialization, cognitive, and developmental. There are also three things that satisfy our need for achievement: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. It also talks a little about Affiliation/Intimacy and Power.
The most surprising thing to me in this chapter was the “Atkinson’s Model”. I had never heard of this before so it was really interesting to read about. This model describes achievement as a “two-edged sword” where we are feeling excitement and pride in doing a good job, but we are also experiencing fear that we may not be able to do it. This theory contains four variables: achievement behavior and three predictors of that (need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success). I thought it was interesting how we have a motivation to achieve success but, at the same time, we have the motivation to avoid failure. I had never really thought about it this way before, but people want to succeed just as much as they don’t want to fail.
I would rate myself as medium for the social need of Achievement. I do like to succeed at certain things I do, especially things like academics. I like getting A’s and learning things in class to apply in a real job I may have someday, but it’s not the most important thing to me. I’m ok with just doing average most of the time and I don’t feel the need to be the best at everything that I do. There are certain areas that I would like to achieve more in than some other areas, but I’m usually ok with just doing average. I don’t need to have the best grades, or the most friends, or the highest paying job, etc. I would rate myself as high on the social need of Affiliation/Intimacy. I like developing relationships with people. It’s important to me to have good, close friends who I can share things with and who can share things with me. I tend to have a need to feel wanted by people, and I love when people seek help from me and trust me enough to share things with me. The book said that most people in this category are not extroverted, friendly, or social, but have a “needy” personality. I would agree with this for the most part. I am a very introverted person and not very social most of the time, but I would like to think I am friendly. I would say that I rate fairly low on the Power social need. I don’t really like having power and haven’t had a desire to be powerful in any way throughout my life. I tend to be more of a follower when it comes to making decisions or working on things, and that’s how I like it.
The social need of Affiliation/Intimacy has lots of ways of motivating my behavior. Like I said before, I am not a very extroverted person, but this need of mine to develop close relationships with others motivates me to step out of my shell sometimes. It makes me go up and talk to new people or open up more to the friends I have, just so I can keep those relationships growing stronger. It would also have an influence on the different activities I am involved in. If I have a friend who likes to do certain activities, and I want to grow deeper in my relationship with them, I would be motivated to do the things that they like to do.
TERMS: Quasi-Needs; Social Needs; Achievement; Affiliation/Intimacy; Power; Atkinson Model;
Chapter seven is all about social needs such as acquired needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. Acquired needs focuses on two main needs, social and quasi. Social needs are learned through a person experience and the way they develop. Quasi-needs are wants and desirers, things that we don’t really need but would like to have. These needs however, can affect the way we might feel or think.
Achievement, the need to do well and experience and success, the big thing with achievement is “standard of excellence”. Standard of excellence is a challenge of competence, or simply put, win or lose. To this, people can react in different ways. The book states that people with a higher need of achievement tend to have an approach-oriented emotion. Meaning they have more sense of accomplishment and pride. People with a lower need of achievement tend to go for the avoidance-oriented emotions. This means the person is afraid of failure and would rather not try. Socialization, cognitive and developmental influences can affect a person’s achievement goals. Developmental influences are shown throughout a person’s life span. It starts off when you’re young. Young children have high beliefs; they don’t care so much for failure and tend to ignore it. As they grow older and hit middle school they start to pay more attention to their performance level. The older we get the more we strive for success. Socialization influences is where the strength for achievement comes from. When we are children, we learn this from the help of our parents. Learning this can range from independent training, positive valuing, and a sensible but clear standards of excellence. The third is cognitive influence. This is where you pick a task, usually a more difficult one, and depending on how you do on it will either increase or decrease your effort. People with approach-oriented usually take on this task as a challenge while avoidance-oriented shy away and pick the easier task. There are more than just influences, but also goals. There are two different goals, mastery and performance. The mastery goal benefits you. This is how you develop competence, make progress, and improve. Performance goal is more like a competition, a time when you show off what you know and got.
Affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is the want to gain approval by pleasing others. Intimacy is a secure relationship with friends, family, boy/girl friend, husband or wife. Those with a higher need for affiliation tend to interact with others to remove any negative emotion the may have. These people also usually come off as needy and are less “popular” then people with a low need for affiliation. Also for a person with a high intimacy need is usually thinking about friends and family, they are good listeners, and can relate to others with warmth.
The need for power! People with a high need for power want to have the control over others. They have the goal to become the leader, to have the highest position. Although these people might not be the most liked, they are the group that, once fixed on a goal, will most likely achieve it. The power seeking people can become also become very aggressive when getting their goal.
The most surprising thing that I read in this chapter would have to be reading about affiliation and intimacy. What it is and what comes with it. The fears and anxiety it can create. How to establish and maintain networks.
Rating myself in the social needs. Achievement, I would rate myself as high. I want to do well and have a high competence is various things. It kind of depends on what mood I’m in if I pick a task that is challenging or not, it also depends on the subject. If its math I’m going for the easy one! If I get the question right, whether it’s hard or not I’m going to be overjoyed either way. Affiliation is a medium. I don’t have a high for affiliation. I use to always want to please others, but that gets stressful and it doesn’t really pay off in the long run. There are times when I don’t want to please others but focus more on myself. You have to gain approval of yourself before you can gain others. I don’t need to be “popular”. I like my little group of friends and I know they will always have my back, instead of people saying they do and really don’t. Intimacy is a medium as well. I love my friends and family to death. I feel that I have a strong bond and warm relationship with them now, and I don’t feel the need to push it further. And for power, I’m a low. I don’t need power. I admit, at times I can be a little pushy and demanding but that’s rare, I’m more of a “lets come up with something together person”. It’s better to find something we all agree on then choosing for everyone. Besides, I don’t really like to decide things…
I’m going to choose achievement for my social need. When I achieve something I feel awesome, like I could take over the world! It’s when I push myself to get a good rating or better grade and to see it pay off in the end. With achievement brings competence, and with competence brings everything else, affiliation, intimacy, power. At least that’s how I see it.
TERMS- social needs, acquired needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, quasi-needs, standard of excellence, approach-oriented, avoidance-oriented, developmental influences, Socialization influences, cognitive influence, mastery goal, performance goals, competition, aggressive
Chapter 7 is about social needs. Unlike psychological and physiological needs, social needs are learned and can change throughout the lifetime. Before discussing social needs, there is another type of need human’s posses called quasi-needs. Quasi needs are wants and desires that come about depending on the environment. These needs are not necessary to live and grow, but they are important things to be satisfied in daily life. Examples of quasi-needs are money, a new computer, or socks. While each thing is important in situations, we don’t need to it live.
As stated before, social needs are acquired through experience. These needs can change from childhood to adulthood and change even throughout adulthood. People chose to do things throughout their lives that satisfy their social needs, like what career they chose or what type of student they’ll be. The main social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the need to do well when compared to a standard of excellence. This need drives people to accomplish goals and tasks, but whether their need is high or low determines what types of goals they have and tasks they engage in. There are three origins for achievement that researchers have discovered: socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. Socialization influences come from the people around you. Children are greatly influenced by their parents and the type of parents a child has effects the type of person that child becomes. For example, parents that provide high ability self-concepts and explicit standards for excellence have children that develop a high need for achievement. While this information is helpful, longitudinal studies showed that achievement needs changed from childhood to adulthood. Cognitive influences include: perceptions of high ability, mastery orientation, high expectations for success, strong valuing of achievement, and optimistic attributional style. What this means is that the way you think affects your need for achievement and that when the previous cognitive influences are present, satisfying the need for achievement is greater. The third origin is developmental influences and this refers to how a person’s way of thinking changes and develops over time. Younger children have high ability beliefs and don’t relate their failures to their lack of ability. As they get older, they begin to pay more attention to comparisons to peers and eventually understand their realistic ability beliefs.
There are two models to describe achievement motivation: classical view (Atkinson’s) and achievement behavior. The classical view consists of a formula to determine the tendency to approach success. The formula is Ts (tendency to approach success) = Ms (motive to succeed) x Ps (probability of success) x Is (incentive value of success). There is also a formula for the tendency to avoid failure which is the same as the success formula which just replaces success with failure. When combining these two formulas, you can understand if you have a higher need for success or higher need to avoid failure. It’s important to understand each part of the formula to understand what types of situations can create a high tendency to approach success. The other model is achievement behavior, or Dynamics-of-Action Model. In this model, “achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior”. There are three forces that determine the stream of behavior: instigation, inhibition, and consummation. Instigation is the tendency to approach success. Inhibition is the tendency to avoid failure. Consummation is the fact that you will stop doing an activity once you’ve become tired of it. This model helps to understand the latency and persistence of a behavior.
These two models discuss how achievement behavior occurs but what about answering why this behavior occurs? The book discusses the concept of goals and how in everyday life, we are required to meet certain goals, whether it be at work, school, or in our personal lives. There are two main achievement goals called mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals develop one’s competence, improve the self, to make progress, and use effort and persistence to overcome difficult situations. Mastery goals lead to intrinsic motivation and the desire to learn something. Performance goals are set to outperform others and prove they have high abilities by using little effort. Performance goals can meet the need for achievement but it’s done in a rather negative way and can be unproductive. Therefore, it’s important to promote mastery goals to increase intrinsic motivation and well-being.
There are two types of implicit theories as to the differences between people’s need for achievement. Entity theorists are people who believe that everyone has fixed qualities. This means that you have to work with what you’ve got and you can’t change your personality. Entity theorists tend to have performance goals and usually care about not looking stupid and performing well in front of others. They believe that high effort equals low ability so when faced with difficult tasks, they often withhold effort and self-handicap themselves to not look dumb. On the opposite end are incremental theorists. Incremental theorists believe that all qualities can be changed by trying your hardest and learning what you can. They adopt mastery goals because they want to learn new things and improve their abilities. For incremental theorists, effort is a tool used to use their abilities the best way possible. Using effort increases learning and skills.
The next two needs, affiliation and intimacy, although different concepts, go hand in hand. The need for affiliation means a need for acceptance of others, approval, and relationship security. The need for affiliation can be considered a deficiency-oriented motive because people feel the need to stay away from situations that consist of loneliness, separation, and rejection. People with a high need for affiliation are often anxious about the people in their relationships rejecting or leaving them. They come across as needy and bring about negative emotions. It’s important, however, to meet your own need for affiliation because not satisfying this need brings about anxiety, suffering, and pain. People seek others in times of fear to gain support and comfort because of this need. This is why groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous are so popular. Satisfying the need for affiliation brings feelings of relief and acceptance rather than happiness.
The close relative to the need for affiliation is the need for intimacy. While the need for affiliation can be looked at in a negative way, the need for intimacy is the opposite. The need for intimacy is the motivation to experience close, warm relationships with others. People with a high need for intimacy often think about their friends and relationships, are good listeners, share personal information, and view love as a meaningful life experience. The need for intimacy is considered a growth-oriented motive because they want their relationships to grow and become more intimate. People with a high need for intimacy care more about the quality of their relationships rather than how many they have. They spend more time becoming close to their friends and report being more satisfied as the relationship grows.
The last social need discussed is power. The need for power is when one wants to make people and things to conform to their image/plan. People with the need for power do things because of their need for reputation, status, dominance, or position. If an individual has a high need for power, they strive to become leaders. There are four conditions that can satisfy the need for power: leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. Each condition is pretty self-explanatory but some things are worth mentioning. People in leadership positions with a need for power don’t do well in relationships. They force their opinions and tend not to make the best decisions. There are certain things a person needs to be a successful leader: high need for power, low need for intimacy/affiliation, and high inhibition. When it comes to aggressiveness, people with a high need for power don’t always act aggressive due to societies’ rules, but alcohol is one way that these people express their aggressiveness.
The most surprising thing I learned is how much information there is on the subject of achievement. I didn’t realize there are so many aspects to it. I think that means that it’s an important social need and it takes more than simply achieving something to fulfill that need. Rating myself on each need, I would say I’m an 8 for achievement. Although I’ve achieved many things in my life, I still have several goals to accomplish. I believe that most of my goals are mastery goals although anything that involves my job is purely performance because I have no intrinsic motivation when it comes to that. For affiliation, I think I’m at a 10. There’s no one that I want to gain approval from and I feel no fear or anxiety about any of my relationships about whether or not they will stick around. For intimacy, I think I’m at a 10. I have very good friendships and a very good relationship with my boyfriend. I also have a good relationship with my family. I think this is the highest I’ve been with intimacy in a long time. For power, I think I’m an 8. Having power isn’t too important to me so it’s not a huge deal if I don’t impact people but I know that I affect the people in my life. Most of the time my friends and family listen to what I have to say and if it’s advice, they usually follow it.
One need that motivates a lot of my behavior currently is achievement. I’m a junior in college and plan on going to grad school so I have a lot of hard work ahead of me but I know I can accomplish it. I’m going to grad school because I want to receive the most education I can about my major, so I have mastery goals. I also try to achieve with my physical self. I’ve been working out almost every day this semester because I want to be in shape and I’m working towards the goal of having a toned body by my birthday.
Terms: achievement, mastery goals, social need, performance goals, intrinsic motivation, affiliation, intimacy, power, reputation, status, dominance, position, leaders, leadership, inhibition, aggressiveness, growth-oriented motive, deficiency-oriented motive, entity theorists, incremental theorists, effort, competence, persistence, Atkinson’s Model, Dynamics-of-Action Model, instigation, consummation, quasi-needs
Chapter 7 is about social needs and quasi needs. Quasi needs are wants with a high degree of energy behind them that arise based on a situation. Social needs can be different for different people and are acquired through socialization and experience and can (probably do) change with maturity. Social needs motivate us when an incentive is present. There are 4 different social needs which are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
Achievement means doing well compared to some standard of excellence. People can either take approach or avoidance orientated actions when it comes to achievement. High versus low need for achievement in a person comes from their socialization, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. High need achievers and low need achievers differ on how they satisfy their need for achievement. High need achievers prefer moderately difficult tasks, competition, and situations in which they have the opportunity to be an entrepreneur. Achievement goals can be split into mastery goals and performance goals. Mastery goals are achieved through effort and show a person’s progress and create competence. Performance goals are achieved when the person proves competence and shows little effort to others. Performance goals are centered around a fear of failure and mastery goals are centered around becoming better or more competent.
Affiliation is like a need for acceptance from people and intimacy is a need for close, meaningful relationships. People high in affiliation avoid conflict at all costs and probably have many friends. People high in intimacy probably have fewer friends but their friends are more important to them and the relationships are closer.
Power is a need for dominance and to be seen basically. Leadership positions include people with a high need for power. Aggressiveness is also a characteristic of people with a high need for power.
I think I have a high need for achievement for most things in my life. I have a high need for achievement in classes and at work. Within school and work, I have some mastery goals and some performance goals. It just depends on what the achievement is. If I enjoy learning about a certain topic I will put more effort into learning about it. If I couldn’t care less about a topic I will only learn it to achieve a high grade. Something that I have a low need for achievement for is public speaking so for this, I have performance avoidance goals.
I have a lower need for affiliation. I don’t really care about being everyone’s friend or pleasing everyone. I like my time alone and enjoy times when I have nothing to do. My need for intimacy is high. I love my friends and I don’t like to call someone my friend unless I feel close to them. I have like 5 best friends and not too many other real friends and that is perfectly fine with me because the friends I have are important and substantial in my life.
I think I have a moderate need for power. When I’m with people I don’t know that well I have a lower need for power but around people I am comfortable with I have a little bit higher need for power. Among strangers I do not like to stand out or be the center of attention and I pretty much keep to myself and am pretty quiet. Among my friends I’m loud, aggressive, and I’m always the one they ask to make the decisions probably because that’s how it will happen anyway. When I’m around people I don’t know they usually hear a lot of “I don’t knows” from me. When I’m around my friends I make sure I’m heard and I always participate in the conversations, debates, and decisions. I usually am able to get what I want when it comes to negotiating decisions with friends but I am easily persuaded to accept another’s decision in an unfamiliar group. Also, I often become the center of attention in my group because of my aggressiveness but I never am aggressive with people I don’t know that well.
Terms: quasi-need, social need, socialization, incentive, motivate, achievement, approach/avoidance, high/low need, mastery/performance goals, competence, affiliation, intimacy, conflict, power, dominance, standard of excellence
Chapter 7 was about social needs and quasi needs. Quasi-needs are those which are situationally induced needs that seem pressing at the moment due to an environmental demand. They are unlike the psychological and physiological needs we have studied in previous chapters because they are not considered crucial to our well-being. When quasi-needs are met, then those needs go away. For example, I might have a quasi-need to find my reading glasses because I need to study or I might need money to pay my cell phone bill. Once I find my glasses and pay the bill then my quasi-need is met.
Social needs last longer and are more complex. They arise from our personal experiences and individual development and cognitions along with our socialization histories. The four social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. Individuals vary on the intensity of each of these needs. Achievement needs are met by doing something well or showing personal competence relative to a standard of excellence. Achievement needs are often met in three major situations which include moderately difficult tasks, competition and entrepreneurship. Affiliation needs are met when we have the opportunity to please others or when we get approval from others. Intimacy needs are met through warm and emotional relationships we have with select individuals. Power needs are met through how we impact others, recognition and leadership and accumulating possessions.
Another section of this chapter was devoted to implicit theories. These theories shed light on the two ways most people think about their personal qualities. Entity theorists believe that qualities are fixed and enduring such as the example in the book “You are either intelligent or you are not.” Incremental theorists believe personal qualities are malleable and can change through effort and learning. These guide the types of goals that people choose to pursue.
The most surprising/interesting thing I learned when reading this chapter was that there are 3 major achievement goals which are performance-approach, performance avoidance and mastery. I really liked how the text broke down each one and explained it, especially when it comes to the differences between performance –approach and mastery. Prior to reading this chapter, I would not have been able to discern a difference between the two. Mastery goals develop someone’s competence by improving on the self and overcoming difficulties with persistence and often a lot of effort. They are far more intrinsically motivated and individuals who adopt a mastery goal seem to work harder and longer and are more likely to ask for help. Performance goals differ in that they are to prove someone’s competence through talent and good ability, seem to take less effort and seek outperform.
If I had to rank myself on the four social needs I would say that I am high in achievement. I almost always seek to approach the standard of excellence in most situations. I seek to perform well in almost everything I do including school and work. I get frustrated when I feel that I have not met the standard of excellence whether it is scoring high on a test or not having the most satisfied customers at work. I would rank myself moderate in affiliation. I really like pleasing others, especially when it comes to my friends and family but I am not so high in affiliation that I have to be around people all the time. Many times my friends ask me to do things but I choose to stay home and relax. I do not feel an enormous pressure to be overly sociable all the time or to be included in everything. I would rank myself high in intimacy. I have a few close and very emotional relationships and I really enjoy having that. I am not someone who likes to be alone all the time or that can’t open up to a select few individuals. Finally, I would give myself a moderate to high ranking in my need for power. I definitely would rather be a leader than a follower but I don’t feel like I need to control everything. I am attracted to influential occupations but I would definitely say that I do not use aggression as tool of power.
Achievement motivates much of my behaviors. The best example I have for this class is probably our weekly quiz shows. My motivation does not come from social pressures to do well but rather I consider earning the 5 points to be a standard of excellence. It is moderately difficult and each week I have lasted longer during the quiz. I read the chapters differently, I prepare for class more, I write down specific details to remember later. It is more about proving to myself (mastery) that I can do it rather than being better than anyone else by outperforming them.
Terms used: Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, standard of excellence, implicit theories, entity theorists and incremental theorists.
Chapter 7 discusses social needs. First, it explains the difference between a social need and a quasi-need. A quasi-need is a situational need for something such as an umbrella when it rains. A social need is where an emotional response is activated from the psychological process of one's socialization and the incentive. One thing to understand about the difference is that the need in a quasi situation will go away when the situation does.
Next, the book discusses achievement related to motivation. Achievement can be seen as high or low. If a person is high in achievement it often seen that their parents gave them essential independence, high performance expectations and realistic expectations. It is also important to remember traits will change with maturation. Another influence of one's achievement is their cognitive ability. They will be high in achievement if they perceive the ability, expect to succeed or have an optimistic outlook.
Next, two different models are explained related to achievement motivation. First, Atkinson's Model is a classical view which includes four variables: achievement behavior and the predictors need for achievement, probability of success and incentive to succeed. The second and contemporary model is the Dynamics-of-Action Model. This model looks into the instigation, inhibition and consummation. With the latter being a difference from the first example.
There is also avoidance motivation relating to achievement. And this would deal more with the idea of not wanting to fail, working extra hard to succeed. Or maybe not taking on a task because of the fear of not doing good enough.
Affiliation and Intimacy are discussed next. Affiliation is having positive relationships with other people. If a person was high need in affiliation, they would often have numerous friends and more worried about their friend's perceptions. Related to this, if a person is high in the need for intimacy they often listen closely or engage in self-disclosure. Fear and anxiety are a huge part of these concepts, the more a person worries about the way others think of them, the more likely they are to change who they really are due to anxiety.
The book next discusses power and this is the idea of impacting the world in a way they conform to your views. A person high in the need for power is often described as desiring for impact, control and influence. They will often desire leadership in work or relationships, and sometimes come off as aggressive. Another commonality in people who strive for power is their desire for possessions that give off the appearance of high power.
For me, the most surprising thing I learned deals with the perception of people who desire acceptance. These people are going the extra mile to be nice and get approval and a lot of the time others will just look at them as weak or lonely, not the idea they are trying to give off. For me, I am more of the type to achieve in a sense that I look better than others. I am not trying to be the best according to the books but I want to look a step above others in efficiency. This has shown up in my life when looking back in high school. I did enough to pass and be average but I was not striving to be the valedictorian. I played sports but was never the all star.
Terms: Quasi need, social need, Atkinson's model, dynamics-of-action model, achievement goals, avoidance motivation, affiliation, intimacy, fear, anxiety, aggressiveness, prestige possessions, power.
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 is over two categories of acquired psychological needs; social needs and quasi-needs. Psychological needs are defined as an innate psychological process that underlies the proactive desire to seek out interactions with the environment to promote growth and well-being. The first category of acquired psychological needs is quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are defined as situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that physiological, psychological, and social needs are. An example of a quasi-need would be when your electric bill arrives in the mail you want to put together enough money to pay for it. Social needs are described as an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. The four incentives related to social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is defined as the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence and it motivates people to seek success in competition with a standard of excellence. Socialization, cognitive, and development processes all influence the level of need of achievement in an individual. Also individuals have a high need for achievement, enjoy moderately difficult tasks, tasks that are competitive, and tasks that allow them to use their entrepreneurial skills.
Affiliation is defined as the need for approval, acceptance, and security in interpersonal relations. Intimacy is the more positive facet of affiliation defined as the willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. There conditions that affect affiliation and intimacy are fear and anxiety. Affiliation is strongly affected by fear and anxiety compared to intimacy which is based more on the positive affect of having relationships. Individuals who have a high need for intimacy are more likely to join a social group or club and form very close long lasting relationships with the people they connect with. They are also more likely to maintain these networks and connections for a long period of time because of the value of the connections to them.
Power is defined as the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. People who have a high need for power enjoy having an impact, controlling, or impacting decisions, people, or large groups. Individuals who have a high need for power also do well in leadership positions and are very aggressive in order to achieve them. An interesting fact is that Presidents of the United States who had a high need for power were some of the most successful Presidents in the history of the United States.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing that I learned was the difference between affiliation and intimacy. I didn’t realize how much people with a high need for affiliation were affected by their social environment. Also, I didn’t realize how individuals with a high need for intimacy don’t operate with a high level anxiety like individuals with a high need for affiliation. When I read the paragraph heading “Affiliation and Intimacy” I thought that they would be more interrelated then the positive and negative feelings towards interpersonal relationships.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I would rate myself as high achievement, medium affiliation, medium intimacy, and medium power. My medium need for affiliation manifests itself in my life by the anxiety that I feel on occasion if I find myself not included in an event that I have regularly attended. I don’t feel that I need a large amount of relationships because I’m comfortable with or without a large amount of friends but because of the anxiety I occasionally feel I would rate it as a medium need. I would rate my need of intimacy as a medium need because I appreciate it when I have a close friend or significant other that I can have a very close interpersonal relationship with. I don’t think that I would be too concerned without someone like this in my life but I know that it is a plus at some points in time. I rate my need for power as medium because I like to be in control of a lot of decisions of groups that I am a part of. The only reason I didn’t rate this as a high need is that I feel like I don’t need to be in control but I just have a preference for it. I chose to rate my need for achievement as high because I feed off of competition and love to set the standard of excellence. This social need motivates me to continually pursue a career in online poker. I spend about fifty hours a week playing online poker, studying probabilities and situations with other professionals from around the world, and reviewing new content to excel above the rest of the competition placing myself on the leaderboards on a weekly basis. If I had a lower level of need for achievement I would be perfectly content putting in ten to fifteen hours a week and making a few dollars. My high need for achievement has me constantly working to achieve goals that I have set out for myself and constantly put myself in a situation to continually improve to be one of the best eventually.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, incentive, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power
Chapter seven is titled Social Needs. It first goes through the difference between social and quasi-needs. In short, quasi-needs are what the situation calls for. An organism in any particular situation may need something then and there and not any other time. An example of a situationally induced quasi-need is an umbrella when you are walking to work and it starts raining. Quasi-needs do not count as “full-blown” needs because the definition of a need is, “any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being”. Because an umbrella is not necessarily needed for life and growth it cannot be a full-blown need. A social need is a psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need. Social needs exist in four forms: Achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. One may have a high need for achievement or a low need for achievement; however, a low need for achievement does not necessarily mean they person is a low achiever. Having a low need for achievement typically means they do not work as hard and are less likely to take responsibility. How one is raised by their parents standard of excellence will influence their adult standard of excellence. There are three conditions to satisfy the need for achievement: moderately difficult, competition, and entrepreneurship. Each condition has a separate standard of excellence. Competition, for instance, would have a standard of excellence as the other person. The goals one sets for achievement may be either mastery goals or performance goals. In mastery goals, the goal is to improve the self. People who adopt mastery goals generally prefer more challenging tasks, use conceptually based learning strategies, have more intrinsic motivation, and are more likely to ask for help because it is the outcome that matters. Benefits of mastery goals cause one to work harder, perform better, and persist longer. Performance goals are when displaying high abilities to others is more important. People who have performance goals choose behaviors that they know they can succeed at. It has been proven that having normative information, or information relative to others’ outcomes, increases one’s motivation, so in a sense it is good to compare yourself to others. The chapter also discussed avoidance motivation and well being. Having a fear of failure leads to performance avoidance goals. Someone who adopts performance avoidance goals may have low self-esteem, and low personal control. Within the intimacy need, one may talk about relationships and love and receive positive effects from these aspects of their life. One’s memory may also be enhanced within intimacy relationships. Also, intimacy relationships are harder to obtain and keep than affiliation relationships. An affiliation need is a deficiency-oriented need where one feels like he or she is not good enough, this is otherwise known as a need-satisfying condition. People who have a strong affiliation need work extremely hard, and strive for social acceptance. The need for power is the need to have influence over others. A high need for power is generally associated with a high need for achievement and a low need for affiliation. Characteristics of someone with a high need for power are leadership, aggressiveness, and owning prestige possessions.
The most surprising thing I learned in this chapter is that by trying to figure out whether someone is mastery or performance goal oriented you can determine their future behavior because with mastery goals one works harder, performs better, and persists longer. So I found it very interesting that by determining one’s motivation will enable you to predict their future behavior.
If I had to rate myself on the various social needs I would say I am high in the achievement need and have mostly mastery goals when it comes to academia and working-out because I want to improve my own grades, and my own health and not compare them to others. When it comes to playing sports or video games with friends and family I am more performance goal oriented as I wish to display my high abilities to others. When it comes to the need for power I would say I am very low because I do not feel a desire to influence others, other than when I am babysitting my little brother and want him to do what I ask the first time. I would say I am high in the need for affiliation as well as intimacy. I do want people to like me and admittedly I do worry when I feel as though they don’t. An example of when the need for affiliation has immersed itself into my life is when I didn’t get invited to something with a group of old work friends. I am high in intimacy needs as well because I enjoy and get a positive feeling from love and close relationships.
The social need for achievement is the strongest within my life currently. I hold a high standard of excellence for myself when it comes to my grades, and future career. My parents have always had high standards of excellence for me and my siblings and I feel as though that has influenced me. I wish to obtain good grades to prove to myself that I was correct in choosing this major for myself and that I am capable of obtaining my ideal career.
Terms: achievement need, mastery goals, performance goals, power, affiliation, intimacy, standard of excellence
Chapter seven focuses on the acquired psychological needs in the two categories of quasi-needs and social needs. An example of a quasi-need is when it’s raining out and you find yourself in need of an umbrella. An umbrella is not essential for life but is reactive to the situation you find yourself in. It’s interesting to learn and yet very evident if you stop to think about it but quasi-needs are “deficiency oriented” like when your short of cash when you get to the checkout or needing the umbrella.
An example of a social need is one that is unique to the individual’s experience or their socialization history. Setting the bar high for academic excellence is an example that I can relate to. For me setting the excellence bar high is because I have a willingness to approach my education with personal responsibility. This also involves a cognitive aspect of thinking, my perception of learning motivates persistence and a desire to obtain mastery of the subjects in my classes. The excellence bar in education may stem from parental influences because they set realistic standards. These standards would need to be age appropriate and ones that stimulate curiosity for learning.
This chapter also reveals the complex aspects of avoidant behaviors and how they are based on the fear of failure which leads to low self esteem, a lower sense of control and negatively affects psychological wellbeing.
If I had to rate myself on the social need of achievement, I would have to say that I have a high need for achievement in setting a self standard for mastery in my education. I constantly set goals for learning with the focus on applying what I am learning.
I would rate my intimacy needs very high within my family with a stronger need for affiliation within my family and a somewhat lesser degree with my extended family and the lowest affiliation need within social settings. Outside of my family I think I have a low affiliation need and yet my lowest score would be the need for power.
The most interesting thing I learned in this chapter is how the dispositional characteristics of poor life skills and neuroticism that may cause avoidance behaviors in living. I am still thinking how a person who avoids a party because they feel they’re boring and that’s just the way it is. This person doesn’t keep trying because they perceive little progress in change through effort but if they would just focus on being friendly they might find that they are enjoying themselves. Others may then find this person interesting and therefore raise the wellbeing of the previous avoidant behavior and encourage a positive change. This is amazing how just changing a focus or perspective can begin to change behavior!
Terms: quasi-needs, psychological needs, social needs, deficiency oriented, reactive, personal experience, socialization history, excellence, personal responsibility, cognitive thinking, motivates, persistence, mastery, realistic standards, stimulating curiosity, avoidant behavior, low self-esteem, achievement needs, intimacy needs, affiliation needs, power needs, dispositional characteristics, poor life skills, neuroticism, and well-being,
Summary of Chapter 7.
Chapter 7 discusses the difference between quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are needs that get our attention, are based on situational experiences, and fade once the need has been met. Social needs are more like psychological and physiological needs in that they form from experience. There are four social needs which include: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the need to succeed according to a “standard of excellence”. It derives from socialization, cognitive, and developmental influences. People who are high-need achievers require moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship to thrive. These things help a person succeed in their goals, but also feeling the pride in completing a challenging task. To achieve these goals, a person takes on either a mastery goal approach or a performance goal approach. Performance goals can be further broken down into performance-approach goals or performance-avoidance goals. Mastery goals are more intrinsically motivating and are set for pure challenge of learning something new. Performance-approach goals are set so that upon conclusion, the person will be better than someone else. Performance-avoidance goals are goals which are set to avoid a negative outcome. The goal is just to complete something just to be able to say it was not failed. Affiliation is the need to please others, while intimacy is the need to be involved in relationships. Power is the need to influence other people. There are four conditions that complete the need for power: leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. People high in power are often seen as leaders, but with that comes a low desire for affiliation.
The most surprising thing learned in Chapter 7.
I was most surprised that a high need for affiliation is considered negative. I was completely wrong about what affiliation was, but I guess it makes sense that if affiliation is seeking approval from others, too high of levels would be detrimental to that person. Affiliation and intimacy to me seem similar, but it made it more confusing to group them together in the same section; like they were supposed to be seen as one item.
Rating on various social needs and how they manifest themselves.
I have a high need for achievement and have a combined approach and avoidance tendency. I usually set more performance-approach goals because all the work I do is for the grade. I guess I try to compete with all other peers, even though I rarely succeed at being the best, but the end grade is what is more important to me. My need for affiliation is medium because I don’t feel I am “needy” for approval from others, yet I do generally like approval from others in certain situations. There are other situations where I don’t care about someone else’s acceptance of me. Once again, I would consider myself a medium in intimacy. I laugh and smile at others and am a good listener, but I don’t do a lot of self-disclosure. I don’t really like talking about myself, and I don’t like to share a lot of stories about the people close to me because I feel these are not my stories to tell and don’t want to seem a gossip. I think I am medium in power because I work in a teaching profession and have heard my vehicle is considered a high status vehicle; though it is not a convertible. But I am not aggressive and do not consider myself a leader, nor do I put myself in positions to become more of a leader.
One social need and how it motivates behavior.
I will go a little more in depth about my high need for achievement and my performance approach goals. My goal is to graduate from college with as high of GPA as I can. I also plan to go on to graduate school and do the same there. In each individual class, I strive to get as high of grades as I can on each task and constantly compare my progress with others. In e-learning, there is a place to see the average test scores, yeah, I always look at that to compare my score to others. I don’t like to make errors, but it doesn’t make me too anxious as long as my grades stay above the “B” range.
List of terms used in post from Chapter 7: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, standard of excellence, mastery goals, performance-approach goals, performance-avoidance goals, competition, entrepreneurship.
Chapter seven included discussion about several different types of needs that differ from physiological needs; social and quasi-needs. Even though these needs differ from physiological needs, it does not mean that they are any less influential towards behaviors and actions. Associated with these different types of needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. A striking amount of information in the chapter covered achievement. This may be because it is so multifaceted and is influenced by the self and society so much. For instance, a person who has high need for achievement may simply believe they have a high ability for achievement, they may focus on mastering an activity and they may expect a certain level of achievement from themselves. Many of these qualities people are not innately born with and therefore something influenced these characteristics in them. However, understanding that each person is built differently, it is also possible that certain people respond to situations in a more powerful way and so impose some of those characteristics on themselves alone. Overall, the roles of achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power are heavily related to social imposition. It is true that people are not born with these traits, however the need still exists because the consequence of having or not having them is massive.
The most surprising thing I learned in this chapter was the bit about approach tendencies and avoidance tendencies. Even though one is not better than the other, there are clear benefits to obtaining an approach oriented tendency. When both are established together in a balanced way, that is when real progression can be made. Not only this, but also many parts of the book have made me think about how we can manipulate our own actions and behaviors so that others will react towards us in a different way than we are used to. By acknowledging that gaining information will increase our chances of doing better in any given situation, we would already be taking a step out of our box of power and control (which eventually leads to avoidance only tendencies and thus leads to loss of vitality in life).
I thought a lot about where I would land on some of these social and quasi-needs and this is how I ranked myself from high to low: Achievement, Power, Intimacy, and Affiliation. I positioned achievement first because without my parents ever telling me that I needed to A. take the ACT B. apply to colleges C. apply to graduate school programs, I felt the drive to do so myself. Frequently I become so stressed out about doing well that I find the need to blame someone, only to have the finger pointing back at me. This is something I am only now not in denial about and even though I am proud for my accomplishments, I need to realize what place achievement should really have in my life. Hopefully it can become more of a useful tool than a stress inducing cycle of despair.
As for power, I have always felt the need to be able to influence and impact people around me. I also do not have a comfortable relationship with this aspect of myself and therefore am unsure how to discuss its role in my life. I am an oldest child, I expect high achievement, which means influencing people lends itself to my personal goals, and it is simply easier for people to do what you say than to discuss why.
Lastly, intimacy and affiliation fall low on the totem pole. People often describe me as outgoing and extroverted but I say it is all in the name of achievement, power, and control. However cold it might sound, if I can connect with someone, then it is easier for me to accomplish my goals. Positive relationships and connections obviously have their benefit (i.e. networking and recommendations). In my day to day life I could go without talking to friends for an extended period of time, however I have a great time when I do hang out with my friends and am not at all awkward. I could take it or leave it. However, intimacy is rated above affiliation because I hunger for the almost daily chats with each of my parents and the hilarious discussions with my husband when I am done with work and school. In all honesty, close relationships are important to me and that is why I do not have many. Close relationships take time and effort that I do not have for 20+ people. This is why intimacy and affiliation take last place.
Needs, physiological needs, social and quasi-needs, behaviors, actions, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, society, high ability, mastering, approach tendencies, avoidance tendencies, approach oriented, vitality, accomplishments, influence, impact
Chapter seven discusses the two categories of acquired psychological needs, social needs and quasi-needs. Both of these needs are not inherent but rather determined from the individual’s past experiences. Quasi-needs are purely situational. Different circumstances provoke different needs. For example becoming hungry when you see others eating. In extreme situations this acquired psychological need has the ability to dominate your other innate needs and is therefore considered a need. This chapter particularly focused on social needs. Social needs are activated by incentives which have previously proved to be pleasurable and efficient at fulfilling innate needs. There are four main social needs; achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement can by further divided by mastery goal or performance goal. Performance goals display high ability rather than practicing to improve. Performance goals also often appear to succeed without effort mostly because they would not attempt a task not knowing they would succeed. Mastery goals are more intrinsically motivated and therefore often provide a better outcome. Affiliation is the need to please others and seeking approval from others. Intimacy is the needs for close relationships such as communal relationships. Power, the fourth social need is the need to control or have influence over others.
I was surprised to learn that quasi-needs are considered a need. I used to think of needs as the basic essentials to survive. I can understand now how quasi-needs fall in the category to acquired needs since it does have to ability to dominant other needs. I just had a hard time classifying them as needs because they are not innate and they do not seem essential for survival however they do contribute to growth and well-being.
Rating me would be as follows; intimacy-high, affiliation-medium, power-low, and achievement-high. Intimacy I know is high because the relationships that I do have are very close. My best friend just recently moved and I find that I am extremely lonely even when I hang out with my other friends. I have also always had really close relationships with my family. Affiliation is medium to high because often times I do find it difficult to make decisions in fear of disappointing others. Sometimes I feel I am more concerned with pleasing others than myself. Achievement I ranked myself high because I constantly need to do accomplish something. During the Summer I often find myself missing school and feeling very disappointed at my laziness and lack of accomplishments. When it comes to power I am very low. I do not want to have influence over others and I am last to volunteer as a leader. I think my need for affiliation is too high to have a high need for power.
The social need that I would choose is achievement. In almost any task that I do I find myself trying to find a level that I can consider adequate and shoot for that. I make most anything a competition. One example is my boyfriend took this class last semester and I became obsessed about getting a better grade than him. This would be an example of performance goal by trying to do better than him. Another example of achievement is taking classes in my major. I find it enormously rewarding when I have passed a class that was difficult. Not only do I find it rewarding to pass the class but also being knowledgeable on the topic. This would be an example of a mastery goal.
Terms; acquired psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, affiliation, intimacy, power, achievement, mastery goals, performance goals
Chapter 7 reviews two of our psychological needs: social and quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are based on situation needs. They aren’t necessary for survival but arise out of external wants or desires at a particular time. These needs go away after our particular desire is no longer needed. Social needs arise when there is a social incentive that needs to be fulfilled. The four social needs that the chapter discusses are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The chapter focuses the most on the desire for achievement which can be influenced socially, cognitively, or developmentally. Humans have an innate tendency to strive for success and avoid failures, but there is also a combination of the two. They want to fulfill a need to be successful in their job, school, or goals while trying to avoid fear, failure, or social isolation. Two theories discuss whether these social characteristics are fixed (entity theorists) or if they are flexible and able to be changed (incremental theorists).
Having a high need for intimacy and affiliation is actually linked to being less popular than those with a low need. High needs are fulfilled for the sake of reducing fear and to avoid negative emotions, and often have high anxieties. People with low needs for intimacy and affiliation are content with their personalities and seeking approval isn’t the main focus of their actions.
People having a high desire for power are more likely to attempt to control all aspects of their life from their job to personal relationships. They like to feel dominant and be leaders with focus on a forceful style of living. Some occupations that attract this personality type are teachers, business executives, psychologists, and journalists.
The most surprising thing in the chapter to me was to learn that a high need for affiliation or intimacy results in lower popularity. Although it does make sense because it becomes the main focus of a person’s daily life and can transform their personality to become less desirable as a friend.
When it comes to me and the different social needs, I find myself to be on the medium level when it comes to achievement. I am willing to work towards my goals but it isn’t life or death if it isn’t met. The affiliation need I would also rate myself as medium. I am a people pleaser but it doesn’t consume my life. I understand that not everyone will like me and as long as I stay true to my personality I will make friends because of who I am. I have a high intimacy rating. It has always been in my nature to want to care for others and be around people who are caring about me. The need for power has never appealed to me. In my job I recently got promoted to a head of staff so I had no choice but to take control. I consider myself a medium status because I do like to have control but still take into account other people and what they might consider to be best.
The one social need that motivates my behavior the most is intimacy. I plan my days and nights out around the people that I have strong relationships with. They influence my daily activities and basically every action that I take. I always want to be around them and will choose my close friends over any type of achievement I’m striving for, making new friends, or having a situation of power.
Terms used: psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, entity theorists, incremental theorists, low, medium, high social needs,
The chapter discusses psychological needs, specifically quasi-needs and an in-depth discussion on social needs. Quasi-needs are created by a time constraint or sense of urgency. However, social needs are more long lasting. These needs can be divided into need-activating incentives: Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Power.
Achievement is the need to do well relative to a standard of excellence; it can be broken down into three types: Mastery, Performance Approach, and Performance Avoidance. Mastery is intrinsically motivated; performance and performance avoidance are externally motivated by seeking the result or avoiding the punishment respectively.
Affiliation is the need for relationships and is closely associated with intimacy. In fact, Affiliation is linked with rejection anxiety, and intimacy is linked with affiliation interest.
Power is the need to influence others. This is usually found in leaders and requires a certain mix of high power and inhibition needs with low affiliation needs.
I would rate myself high in achievement, lower affiliation, and high in power. An example of the achievement, I am in this class for no benefit for my major, I took it simply to learn more about motivation. I see myself low in affiliation because It does not bother me a great deal to not do anything on the “party” nights of the week, and I see myself as high power because I seek out ways to influence others, clubs, organizations, student boards, etc.
Looking at the power need specifically, I see myself in an executive role in Rho Epsilon, a student organization; I have taken leadership roles in the classroom setting—student leader, as well as in individual groups. I feel more comfortable taking control of the outcome compared to the alternative.
Terms: Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Mastery, Performance Approach, performance Avoidance, Quasi needs, Social needs.
Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 talks about social needs: Acquired, achievement,affiliation and intimacy, and power. Acquired needs are basically things you learn to have to need for like a high GPA or a Car. Acquired psychological needs are broken down into quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that the social needs are and they originate from situational demands and pressures. Social needs are acquired through experience, development, and socialization.
The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. It motivates people to try. Social needs come from three traits: social, cognitive, and developmental processes. There are two models that help us understand the need for achievement. The first on is Atkinson's Model. He stated that achievement behavior depended not only on the individual's dispositional need for achievement but also on his or her task-specific probability of success. There are four variables in Atkinson's model: Achievement behavior and its three predictors: need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. The second model is the Dynamics-of-Action Model. In this model achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior, and the stream of behavior is determined by three forces. The first is instigation, which occurs by confronting environmental stimuli associated with past reward. The second is inhibition. It occurs by confronting environmental stimuli associated with past punishment, and the final force is consummation. Consummation refers to the fact that performing an activity brings about its own cessation.
The next social need is affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation was conceptualized as establishing maintaining or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons. Intimacy is a willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. Someone with a high need for intimacy thinks frequently about friends and relationships.
The final social need is the need for power. The need for power is a desire to make a physical and social world conform to one's personal image or plan for it. Impact, control, and influence allow people to, respectively, establish, maintain, and expand or restore power. Four conditions involve and satisfy the need for power. They are leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. People with a high need for power more readily acquire goals and outcomes.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
In this chapter I found that I had previously learned most of the material in other classes so nothing really jumped out at me as surprising.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
Acquired needs- I feel that I am pretty average when it comes to acquired needs. I don't feel I need more then most and I don't feel that I need less. I am comfortable with having the basics in life.
Achievement- I feel that I have a high need for achievement. I love to get projects done and done well. I can at times be competitive when it comes to situations and try to be the one who does the best.
Affiliation and Intimacy- I have a high need for this. I don't have a large circle of friends, but the ones that I do have are highly valued. I do anything I can to strengthen a friendship and will do anything for my friends. It is very hard to come between me and a friend or regain my friendship after it has been lost.
Power- I would say I have a high need for power. I like to be in control of situations and hate it when things don't go how I planned. I think that since I am the oldest child the need for power is really an acquired need.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Need for power- Like I said before I like to be in control and hate when things don't go the way I planned. I like to keep a written schedule of things that I have going on keep to that schedule. It is very rare that something will be switched around. I always keep my composure, and this makes me the go to person in my friendships if any life problems arise because I can think clearly and see both sides about any situation and not let certain factors get in the way. In group projects I like to be the one to be in charge so I can guide things the way I think they should go. I usually leave a good impression and try to make an impact anywhere I can.
Terms: Acquired needs, Quasi-needs, social needs, Atkinsons model, achievement behavior, Dynamics-of-Action model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, affiliation, intimacy, power, impact, control, influence,
Chapter 7 is about social needs. The chapter is divided into three sections: acquired needs, achievement, and affiliation and intimacy. Quasi-needs and social needs both fall under the category of acquired psychological needs. Quasi-needs are wants or desires that emerge from situations in which a specific environmental demand is causing a sense of urgency. Social needs come from a person's life experiences and are more related to a person's specific developmental, cognitive, and social history and are more constant than quasi-needs. Achievement is based on a wanting to do well when compared to a standard of excellence. People with a high need for achievement typically exhibit approach-oriented attitudes while those with a low need for achievement are generally acting to avoid failure. Affiliation encompasses both anxiety of social rejection as well as the desire for having close, positive (intimate) relationships. The chapter ended with information on the need for power and discussed how people that have strong desires for power seek leadership roles and desire recognition or prestige.
If I had to rate myself on the various social needs, I would say that I have low need for achievement because I feel like I have so many things I am thinking about at any given time that I find myself doing just what I absolutely need to in order to get through the day (avoiding failure instead of choosing to engage in difficult achievement-related tasks). I would say that I have a very high need for affiliation and intimacy because, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, I fear social isolation and avoid situations where I am by myself and I am maintain a lot of interpersonal networks and am always establishing new ones. I believe my high needs for affiliation and intimacy drive a majority of the decisions I make. Examples of this would be how I have gotten involved in my sorority, joined other clubs and organizations, and even selecting my major so I could better understand myself and others to be able to foster the relationships I have now and will have in the future. Even with everything I have going on at UNI, I still make keeping in touch with my high school friends (my most intimate relationships) a priority by texting, calling, skyping, or emailing them weekly and visiting them as often as possible.
Terms: social needs, acquired needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, quasi-needs, power
Chapter 7 focused on social needs. It begins with discussing acquired needs and how there are two categories: quasi-needs (situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs like the others) and social needs (acquired through experience, development, and socialization). There are three specific types of social needs: achievement, affiliation, and power.
Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a person's sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success vs. failure, etc. To achieve a goal, there is normally competition with a task, with yourself, or with others. Someone with a high need for achievement is associated with approach-oriented emotions; he/she is more likely choose moderately difficult to difficult tasks, quickly engage and not procrastinate, show more effort and better performance, have persistence, and take personal responsibility. A need for achievement originates with socialization (i.e, high performance aspirations), cognitive (i.e, high expectations for success), and developmental influences (i.e, learn to be pride- or shame-prone). There is a classical and contemporary view on how to look at achievement. Atkinson's model (classical view) states that achievement behavior depends not only on individual's dispositional need for achievement but also on his/her task-specific probability of success at a task and incentive for succeeding at that task. Three equations measure achievement involving the tendency for success (Ts), tendency to avoid failure (Taf), and tendency to achieve (Ta, a combination of the former). Obviously stated, the tendency to achieve is highest when Ts > Taf and lowest when Ts Affiliation deals with establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive, affective relationship. This need is rooted in fear of interpersonal rejection. To add a positive side to affiliation, researchers have discovered that people have a need for approval AND intimacy. Intimacy motive is the willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. The need for affiliation is a deficiency-oriented motive, and the need for intimacy is a growth-oriented motive. Conditions that involve affiliation and intimacy needs include fear and anxiety (to reduce this, people use a strategy of seeking out others)and establishing and maintaining interpersonal networks. To satisfy a high need for affiliation, a person will avoid conflict, competition, and talking negatively about others; are unselfish and cooperative; and resist making imposing demands on others. He or she is looking for social acceptance, approval, and reassurance. A person can satisfy a high need for intimacy by touching more frequently (in a non-creepy way); cultivate deeper and more meaningful relationships; find satisfaction in listening and self-disclosure; and looking, laughing, and smiling more during interactions. He or she is looking for relatedness within a warm, close, reciprocal, and enduring relationship.
Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one's personal image and plan for it. A high need for power includes three factors: impact, which allows an establishment of power; control, which allows a maintaining of power; and influence, which allows expansion/restoration of power. Conditions that involve and satisfy power needs include leadership and relationships, aggressiveness (more impulsive but also more societal inhibitors), influential occupations, prestige possessions (power symbols). People with a high need for power more readily acquire goals and outcomes they seek. Finally, the leadership motive pattern was discussed, which is three-fold: a high need for power, a low need for intimacy/affiliation, and high inhibition.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned was that certain theorists' beliefs about personal qualities coincide with certain goals a person will have. For example, believing in malleable, changing qualities means you are more into mastery goals that require you to learn from your mistakes.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
For achievement, I have a high need. I am more likely to go after a moderately difficult task that I can learn from than an easy task that requires little to no brain power. I like to challenge myself. I am also more focused on mastery goals; I am always gearing towards improving myself and am never afraid to ask for help. For affiliation I have a medium-need; however, for intimacy, I have a very high-need (learned from the profile presented in the book). I don't like when people are mad at me or do not like me. I like being close to people. I am more likely than not to touch you on the shoulder when I see you. I am always smiling and laughing and think eye contact is important. For power, I have a medium need. I want to be a teacher, which gives me some power. However, I am one to be more concerned with working with the whole of the group than taking control, but I like to delegate tasks among a group.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Having a high need for intimacy definitely determines some of my specific behaviors. The profile in the chapter fit me to a tee: "thinks frequently about friends and relationships; writes imaginative stories about positive affect-laden relationships (did when I lived at home); engages in self-disclosure, intense listening, and frequent conversations; identifies love and dialogue as especially meaningful life experiences; is rated by others as warm, loving, sincere, and nondominant; and tends to remember life episodes as those that involve interpersonal interactions." Some of the behavior it motivates includes giving people hugs instead of shaking their hand, having many conversations throughout the day, always thinking about my friends and family and their well-being, and making sure I have time to spend with the relationships that are closest to me.
ME Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, standard of excellence, socialization influences, cognitive influences, developmental influences, Atkinson's model, Ts, Taf, Ta, future achievement orientation, Dynamics-of-Action model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, achievement goals, mastery goals, performance goals, entity theorists, incremental theorists, affiliation, intimacy, deficiency-oriented, growth-oriented, power, impact, control, influence, leadership motive pattern
Chapter 7 discusses two types of acquired needs. Quasi needs are ephemeral, situationally induced wants that create tense energy to engage in behavior capable of reducing the built-up tension. Examples include needing money at the store and an umbrella in the rain. A social need is an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. Examples include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success versus failure, win versus lose, or right versus wrong. A standard of competence includes competitions with a task, competitions with the self, and competitions against others. The need for achievement comes from three main sources: socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. Achievement motivation can be described by two models. The classical view or Atkinson’s model includes the dynamics-of-action model. The stream of behavior is determined by three main forces: instigation, inhibition, and consummation. Three situations satisfy the need for achievement: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. The contemporary view is a cognitive approach that centers on the goals people adopt in achievement situations. This model focuses more on why a person shows achievement behavior. The two main achievement goals are mastery goals and performance goals. With mastery goals, the person facing the standard of excellence seeks to develop greater competence, make progress, improve the self, and overcome challenges through intense and persistent effort. Achieving a mastery goal means making progress according to a self-set standard. With performance goals, the person facing the standard of excellence seeks to demonstrate or prove competence, display high ability, outperform others, and succeed with little apparent effort. Achieving a performance goal means doing better than others. The two main models can be combined and integrated into a single comprehensive model. In the integrated model, mastery goals and two different types of achievement performance goals exist: performance-approach and performance-avoidance. The fear of failure prompts people to adopt performance-avoidance goals, such as trying to avoid making a mistake, performing poorly, or embarrassing one’s self. These avoidance-oriented goals lead people to underperform, quit quickly, and lose interest in what they are doing. Affiliation strivings include the need to engage in warm, close, positive relations (intimacy need), and the anxious need to establish, maintain, and restore interpersonal relations (affiliation need). There is also a need for power which is the desire for making the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image for it. People high in the need for power desire to have “impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.” Four conditions satisfy the need for power: leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. The most interesting thing I read about was the information on implicit theories which are the way people think about their personal qualities such as intelligence and personality. The entity theorists are people who believe they are endowed with fixed, enduring qualities. The incremental theorists are people who believe they are endowed with malleable, changing qualities. These two implicit theories are important because they guide the type of goals people pursue. It never occurred to me that some people feel extreme one way or the other. I would rate myself middle on need for achievement, middle to high on tendency to avoid failure. I have always been a procrastinator. After reading this chapter, I have to wonder, is it my fear of failure that causes me to procrastinate? Often times, I don’t want to start a project because if I can’t at least attempt to do it well, I don’t want to do it at all. I would rate myself middle on affiliation because I do want to help others and not disappoint them. However, I wouldn’t consider myself needy. I would rate myself high on a need for intimacy. This need for intimacy guides many of my decisions. I have many close friends and family. I truly believe that love is the ultimate rational act, so I spend a lot of time loving and caring for others. I would have rated myself low on power before reading this chapter. However, I desire to have an impact and influence on others and I often find myself in leadership roles. I would rate myself middle on power because I also like to follow, am not very aggressive, and relatively not tied to prestige possessions.
Terms: quasi needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, standard of excellence, achievement motivation, Atkinson’s model, mastery goal, performance goal, implicit theories, entity theorists, incremental theorists.
In Chapter 7, there are two categories discussed, and they are social needs and quasi-needs. We are not born with such needs, however through life experience we take what has been positive, and organize our lives around them. These needs also develop from socialization and personal experience. This is especially true when speaking of social needs. Social needs stem from our likings through experience, socialization, and development. Quasi-needs however, are situation based and surrounds itself around immediate needs and desires.
Quasi-needs influence our cognitive behavior by affect how we think, feel, and act. They also stem from demands and pressures that arise from different situations. Basically, quasi-needs will come and go as demands are met or arise. For example, you pay a bill, that quasi-need has been fulfilled. Quasi-needs can also be reoccurring, though a need may have been satisfied once, that does not mean it will not need to be taken care of again at a later time. Quasi-needs do play the role of necessity in our lives when it comes to life, growth, and well-being, which therefore means that because these needs only arise during periods of pressure and urgency, it cannot be seen as an essential need. So, it is this pressure that motivates quasi-needs.
As stated earlier, social needs originate from experience, development, and socialization. Within social needs there are various incentives that contribute to the construction of our social needs. These incentives include: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. When social needs are acquired, they become "emotional and behavioral potentials that are activated by particular situational incentives". The motivating factor behind social needs are when "need-satisfying incentives appear". People depend upon their own recognition of social needs in order to seek environments that would promote and fulfill these needs.
Achievement is a need that is the "desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence". This meaning that any challenge presented would test a person's competence and would hopefully lead to a successful outcome. People have different emotional reactions when its comes meeting standards of excellence. The need for achievement comes from different sources which include: socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. There are two theoretical approaches to achievement motivation understanding and they are classical and contemporary. The classical view is called the Atkinson's model of achievement. Atkinson asserted that the "need for achievement only partly predicts achievement behavior". His theory centers itself around four variables which include: achievement behavior, need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. So, it asks how much people "need" achievement, how they avoid failure, and how behaviors will lead them to avoid or approach. The classical view also consists of the dynamics-of-action model. This is when achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior. There are three forces that contribute to this model which are: instigation (which causes "rise in approach tendencies and occurs by confronting environmental stimuli associated with past reward"), inhibition (which occurs when "avoidance tendencies arise and occurs by confronting environmental stimuli associated with past punishment"), and consummation (which refers "to the fact that performing an activity brings about its own cessation"). The contemporary goal has the factors of: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. Both theories can be combined.
I would say that I have a moderate need for achievement. I consider myself to be motivated when it comes to my success, however, I do not become completely downtrodden when failure occurs. I know though because I do have some drive, is why I am here today. When I first came here, I came as a biology major, but soon realized that I would not be very successful in that subject, and decided to switch to psychology. My avoidance for failure in biology led to my approach for success in psychology.
The other aspects discussed in the chapter where affiliation and intimacy, and power. Early research concluded that the need for affiliation is obtained by "establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons". There are different conditions surrounding affiliation and intimacy needs which include: fear and anxiety (which will increase a person's desire to affiliate), establishing interpersonal networks (which is when more intimacy will be created), and maintaining these interpersonal networks (making all efforts to stay connected).
I have a high need for affiliation and intimacy. This is because I feel more comfortable in social settings, for the setting does not remain constant and I am a person that likes variety and spontaneity. When I moved into my new place this year I immediately got to know people who lived around me and started to form my own social network. This is also something that motivates me, bringing together people. I think people have a lot more in common then they would suspect, so I like to bring about diversity because I think it in turn bring cohesion.
Another condition that would satisfy affiliation needs is power. Power is "the desire to make the physical and social world conform to to one's personal image or plan for it". People who want power want to fulfill three conditions which are: impact (establish power), control (maintain power), and influence (expand power). There are other conditions which bring about satisfying power and that is leadership and relationships (making oneself visible and take on leadership roles), aggressiveness, and influential occupations (types of jobs involving power positions).
I would say I have a moderate need for power. It is not something I would necessarily say I need, but enjoy. I like when I get leadership positions but will not go out of my way or become extremely competitive to get it. If I am qualified then I will not have to worry as much.
So, whether it is a social or a quasi-need, we as humans have different ways of satisfying them. There are many different approaches and conditions surrounding these as well. The more a person is aware of their needs, the more likely they will be able to fulfill them.
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, socialization influence, cognitive influence, developmental influence, Atkinson's Model, Contemporary model, Classical Model, Dynamics of Action Model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, affiliation and intimacy, power, impact, control, and influence
Chapter 7 was concerned with social needs. The chapter focused on 2 different types of psychological needs: (1) social needs (2) quasi-needs. There are four types of acquired needs which are physiological, psychological, social, and quasi. What is unique about the social and quasi needs they are not innate but rather they orginate socially. Quasi needs is not quite the same type of need as the other three acquired needs, they arise from a situation often accompanied with sense of urgency. Social needs on the other hand are gained through socialization, development, and experience. It is a psychological process which activates emotional responses to a need-relevant incentive. The book considers four social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Social needs motivate behavior because certain situations, objects, environments can activate a particular emotional pattern and behavior pattern. The first social need is achievement which is defined as "the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence". There are three influences and processes which is where the need for achievement orginates these include socialization, cognitive, and developmental. Certain particular conditions can satisfy and involve the need for achievement. The ones spoke in class and listed in the book are moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. With the need for achievement there are also goals that individuals might adopt either mastery goals or performance goals. Two other social needs are affiliation and intimacy. The need for intimacy is the need for warm and secure relationships. The need for affiliation is the need to please others and gain others approval. Individuals who seek affiliation like to belong and fear social isolation. The need for affiliation can also be considered as consisting of two different needs: need for approval and need for intimacy. The last social need is the need for power which is the "desire to have impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large." Leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions all involve and satisfy the need for power.
I believe that I have a medium to high need for achievement. But I believe this need is soley based on what I deem as actual achievement, or important to me. I have fairly high self competence and self efficacy and I have noticed in the past there have been incidences that I try to prove my competence. I think alot of this arises from my mother who has always had very high expectations, so I try to impress her with my abilities (or achievements). This has manifested itself in a class that I took last semester: psychological statics, which at attending the first day I realized it was assumed I had taken a pre-requisite of another stats course which I had not. The professor advised me to give it a try before dropping it right away while my mother advised that I should drop it immediately. I stayed in the class and on the first test was the only student to recieve 100%. Therefore I think this example would also be a performance goal. I wanted to prove my competence to my mom that I could do well in the class, and that I could do as well or better than other students in the class that had taken the class. Because this was a performance goal I also notice many of the downsides, after I did really well on the first test I felt that the task wasn't difficult enough for my need for achievement. After telling my mom my score I felt that I already proved her wrong so I didn't need to ace all the other tests, and I had recieved the reaction that I wanted so I didn't feel need to continue to put as much effort in the class. So I definately feel that if I would have been more concerned with mastering statistics versus just to prove a point I would have work harder, persist longer, and perform better.
Social needs, quasi needs, physiological needs, psychological needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, acquired needs, socialization, need-relevant incentive, entrepreneurship, goals, mastery goals, performance goals, impact control influence, leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, prestige possessions, competence
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 talks about the social, how are you influence our motivation, the need for achievement and theories that explain this. Also includes a section that introduces us to the terms of affiliation and intimacy and power.
What Was The Most Surprising Thing You Learned?
The most interesting thing for me has been read as cognitive influences can affect our behavior, for example, that a person has an optimistic attributional style or a high perception of their skills can be the difference between success or not, taking into account that real skills can actually be very similar and beliefs are just that someone has about himself that makes the difference.
If You Had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the social Various Needs, What Would Those ratings be?
I scored medium in socialization Influence, Influences cognitive high because I have great confidence in my abilities and Developmental Influences low because growth in a conflict environment that taught me the necessary tools to grow successfully.
Choose one and discuss how Social Need it Some of your specific motivated behaviors.
The need for affiliation influences my doing which seeks to relate to other people to feel part of something, to have the feeling that I am not alone and that was part of an environment that can help me if I have problems.
You have to feel safe to interact more with people, this also affects my self esteem and I need to feel that I am part of a group to feel good.
Terms, Power, Social Need, Quasi-Needs,, Achievement, affiliation, intimacy, sognitive Influence, Developmental Influences, socialization influences.