Autonomy, competence and relatedness. Those three words sum up chapter 6 very nicely. Chapter 5 discuss how autonomy and competence are related to intrinsic motivation. Chapter 6 expands on these needs and also includes relatedness as a psychological need for people. We are influenced by our environment. We react to situations and conversations at a psychological level and behave based on how these situations affect us. Our autonomy, competence and relatedness needs must be met and if they are not will will feel stifled, incompetent and lonely. Just like we do for our physiological needs, we strive to meet our psychological needs.
I really enjoyed both the section on autonomy and the section on competency and how to create an environment that fosters both autonomy and competency. While reading about how we achieve autonomy (via perceived locus of causality, volition and perceived choice) I thought about how I think we often fool ourselves as humans into thinking we are doing something based purely on our own will. For instance, the book mentioned an example of reading a book. Sometimes we read because we truly enjoy reading while other times we read because we are told we must. Sometimes, I think we think we are doing things because we want to when really we are doing them to achieve some sort of reward or praise. Sometimes we chose to do things in order to impress others or achieve a social benefit (i.e. reading a book that everyone seems to be reading so that you don't stick out as weird or so that you are seen as being cool or something). While the person might be choosing to read a book or dress in a certain way, it might not always be their true internal desire to read that book or wear that dress. A lot of times we "chose" to behave in a particular way because of some indirect social pressure to do so yet we think we usually perceive that we are making the choice solely for ourselves.
Moving past that, I'd like to talk a little about perceived choice. Perceived choice: do we feel like we can make the decisions we want to or are we prevented from doing what we would like? I have thought about this a bit lately. My favorite grocery store in town (Roots Market), closed recently. Roots was a great little place to buy groceries. They had most of the items that I wanted and many of them were organic and locally grown items. Just as I really started to seek out more locally grown and organic products, Roots had to close for financial reasons. I initially agonized over the loss of this great little market. Now I shop at HyVee. They don't have many organic options nor do they have that many local options. I am unable to buy what I want and it's frustrating. Even if I find an organic food item that I am looking for there is generally something about it that I am not 100% happy about (e.g. it is an overly packaged produce item...something else that annoys me). Grocery shopping has become a frustrating process because I no longer have much choice in what I buy. Sure HyVee has a lot of selection but not really of what I am looking for in food. There really is very little I can do and it is so frustrating! Oh, one little thought I was having while reading the beginning of chapter 6 was: does the need for autonomy differ across cultures? Just a curious thought.
I also want to delve into a specific area of competence: flow. When we feel competence we feel like we are able to succeed in a certain endeavor. When we feel competent we often enter a flow state or a state in which we are highly concentrated and consumed in a task or behavior. Flow is a sweet thing to experience. It results from the delicate combination of your personal skill and the difficulty level of the task you are undertaking. In other words: optimal challenge. In my own life, I seek to find that optimal challenge when I rock climb. If I climb something that is too easy, I don't feel that accomplished. On the other hand, if I climb something that is just too difficult, I feel worthless and disheartened. When I find route that is pretty tough but is still doable, I feel so great while I'm doing it and after. I can get into that flow state which is just so awesome. Like the book says, with optimal challenge, there should be just as much of a chance for failure as there is for success. That's why it is the perfect challenge. You want to push yourself by doing something difficult but you want to know that you can eventually succeed at doing it.
If I were to rank my psychological needs I would rank them as a high need for autonomy, a medium need for competence and a low to medium low need for relatedness. I don't know for sure how I would rate relatedness I guess. It's always been something I haven't considered much of a need of mine but I think I also take it for granted because I am often in situations where I have friends or family around.
Poor little fishy. In order to survive he must live in a bowl. He has no choice and therefore his autonomy is stifled. While this fish has just about succeeded in freeing himself from the constraints of the bowl, he will soon realize that he needs the bowl (the water) to survive. So really, he has no choice if he wants to live. He must remain in the bowl. Autonomy= not reached. Sad.

Terms: autonomy, competence, perceived choice, flow

Chapter six was a discussion of psychological needs. Psychological needs are what drives and motivates us into certain behaviors, whether it is the need for interactions with others, the need for food or water, or the need to make our own decisions, all are a part of psychological needs. Psychological needs are often referred to as organismic psychological needs meaning these needs provide the motivation that supports initiative and learning such as the motivation behind people exercising or reading a book. Psychological needs can be broken down into three subparts, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience the intuition and regulations of ones own behaviors, along with the need to experience self-direction. These wants and desires to make ones own decisions and choices leads to a perceived locus of causality (PLOC). PLOC is and individuals understanding of the casual source of their motivated actions. Being able to have choices and understanding where our motivation comes from to make those choices is a huge part of autonomy. The next aspect of psychological needs is competence. Competence is defined as the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment and reflects the desires to exercises ones skills, and generates the willingness to seek out optimal challenges. What this means is that want to participate in certain activities that pose somewhat of a challenge to us, but at the same time want the challenge to be within the range of the skills we currently possess. The book discusses the concept of optimal challenge and flow. What this is discussing is how we want to achieve optimal flow (a pleasurable experience that people often repeat to achieve the same amount of enjoyment they did in the first time doing the activity) and that being over challenged or over skilled in a specific task or activity can create emotion problems such as boredom and the want to give up on that task. Competence also relates to the challenges and feedback we get everyday in our day to day interactions which and help and hinder our competence in different ways. Providing feedback often helps promote competence in the need to better ones self in a certain aspect or task. The final division of psychological needs is the need of relatedness. Relatedness is our psychological need to want to belong. It is our need to establish different relationships and close emotional bonds within those relationships. This need for relatedness is what causes us to gravitate towards people that we trust and care for and what pushes us away from people we don’t trust or don’t care about their well being. To create satisfying social bonds there needs to be a sense of care about the welfare of the other in the relationship, and the mutual feeling of “liking” someone.
One thing that stood out to me was the discussion of communal and exchange relationships. Communal relationships are those between people who care about one another. Exchange relationships are those that are between acquaintances or people who do business together. The fact that surprised me about this was the books definition of the distinguished differences between the two of is the giving and receiving benefits such as money. It was just interesting to me to see relationships being defined in large part by the exchange of money. I never have thought about that as a descriptor of any type of relationship. My need for relatedness is one of the reasons that drove me to want to become a Residents Assistant in the fact I was looking to make more lasting, meaningful relationships in college through not only my resident but also my fellow RA staff members.
When it comes to rating myself as high, medium, or low on the previous psychological needs, I feel that I rate fairly high in the autonomy and relatedness sections because for the most part I feel that I fulfill the aspects of those needs. When it comes to competence however, I feel that I would rate myself as in the middle because I know I sometimes struggle with fulfilling these needs and these need aren’t necessarily always met.
When it comes to the fish in the picture, I feel it could be interpreted in multiple ways whether it is the fish is looking to meet the need of relatedness by jumping into another fish bowl, the need for competence and being challenged to get out of the bowl, or the suppressing the need for autonomy by choosing to no longer be trapped in the fish bowl. The possibilities are endless.

Terms: Psychological needs, organismic psychological needs, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, optimal challenges and flow, relatedness, communal relationships, exchange relationships.

Chapter six discusses three psychological needs based on the organismic approach to motivation. In organismic theories, it is suggested that people interact with the environment to survive, grow, and adapt as the environment around them changes. The organismic psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Autonomy is a person’s ability to be able to drive their own lives. An autonomous person takes control of their actions, decisions, and other aspects of their lives. In order to have a high level of autonomy, one needs to have several things. People need to understand why they are engaging in such behaviors, also called perceived locus of causality (PLOC). Having an internal PLOC simply means the person is driven from within themselves, and there is not an environmental incentive such as money or rewards. These environmental incentives would be referred to as external PLOC. Other aspects of autonomy are volition and perceived choice. Autonomy supportive behaviors and giving people choices are important to increase ones autonomy and intrinsic motivation (pg. 147).

Competence is another psychological need that allows us to interact and use our skills and abilities with the environment. Competence allows us enter a state of “flow.” Flow is when we are zoned out, involved in an activity, and we are fully engaged. For example, a pitcher may be in a state of flow during a baseball game. They are concentrating on their task while keeping track of the situation they are in. They are constantly trying to outthink the hitter and get them to swing and miss, or make poor contact with the ball. Whenever we are in a state of flow, we often seek out optimal challenges. The pitcher may try and play competitive baseball, challenging his skills. Sometimes these optimal challenges are successfully completed, and at times they are not. Failure tolerance is when someone fails at a challenging task. If the talent of competitive baseball is too much for the pitcher, he may be motivated to quit playing at that level because he has a low failure tolerance.

The last psychological need is relatedness. Relatedness is a persons need to have relationships, attachments, and connect with people. As discussed on page 162, “relatedness is an important motivational construct because people function better, are more resilient to stress, and report fewer psychological difficulties when their interpersonal relationships support their need for relatedness.” If a person is experiencing difficulties, having a relationship offers comfort, someone to talk to that can give you advice, listen, and give you sympathy. Relationships can vary in form. There are communal relationships, such as those between family members and good friends. These people care for each other. Exchange relationships are those between people who are acquainted by work, school, etc. One aspect that I found very interesting was on page 163, when it talked about loneliness. Everyone interacts with people just as much as everyone else, it’s just the type of interaction that exists. Many people have close-knit relationships, therefore there need for relatedness is satisfied. On the other hand, people that are lonely don’t have that closeness with their peers as other people do, and their need of relatedness is left unsatisfied. That is why they experience loneliness.

If I were to rate myself on autonomy, competence, and relatedness, I would rate myself high on all three, maybe very high on competence. For autonomy, I feel like I drive my own life. No one can tell me when or what to do something if I don’t want to. Sure, going to school and playing basketball give have given me plenty of schedules that I’ve made my routine, but I want to do all that. It was my choice because those things intrinsically motivate me. I feel I am very competent. I’m one of those persons who have to be good at everything they do. For example, my roommates and I like to play tennis in our free time. None of us have played much tennis in the past, but when we do, we take it very seriously. I always feel the need to be good at whatever I do, whether it’s school, sports, and just everyday hobbies of mine. Generally, I’d say I do pretty well in the things I engage in. For relatedness, I would rate myself as high because I have always thought of my close friends and family to be the most important part of my life. I feel like I have to always keep in touch with them. Without knowing that I have their love and support, it would be hard for me to do what I do. The psychological need that most drives my behaviors is my need for competence. Like I said, I try to be the best at everything I do. Like school, I am motivated to learn and get the best grades possible. Teachers give us all the information we need to get good grades, it is just a matter of effort on our part to get that good grade. It bothers me when I don’t do well because I was too lazy to pick up a book. That is why I strive to do well in school.

As for the fish, you could apply all three psychological needs in this picture. The fish needs to satisfy his autonomy because he does not have the choice of where he lives, activities he does, or when he gets fed. The fish may need to get out of his restricted environment to gain freedom, where there are no barriers and he can drive his life. He may need to satisfy his competence to prove he can jump, or leap, that high or out of the fishbowl. The fish may need to fulfill his relatedness because he doesn’t have any relationships, or contact with anything else in his bowl. If he can get out of the bowl, say to another bowl or another body of water, and then he can encounter other fish and interact and form communal relationships with.

Terms: intrinsic motivation, autonomy, flow, engagement, optimal challenges, failure tolerance, relatedness, communal relationships, exchange relationships, competence, Perceived locus of control, autonomy supportive behaviors, volition, perceived choice.

This chapter discussed the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, all of which fall within an organismic approach to motivation. Autonomy refers to an individual’s initiative and regulation of his own behavior; he does things that he wants to do, when he wants to do them. Competence is “the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges” (pg. 155). In order to feel competent, we must feel moderately challenged, and feel that we succeeded in overcoming that challenge. Relatedness is our psychological need to feel attached to or close with other people; in order to have this need satisfied, we must feel like others both care and like us.

The most surprising thing that I learned is that we feel more competent when we overcome a moderate challenge than if we overcome something that we find too challenging. This is called optimal challenge. I would have thought that the opposite was true, but I learned otherwise in the section that talked about optimal challenge and flow. The book states that “flow is a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep involvement in an activity” (pg. 156). The book discusses that when a task becomes too difficult for our skill level, we begin to worry, which threatens our competence; however, if a challenge matches our skill level, we often feel the “flow experience,” which is enjoyable. This often causes us to repeat the activity in order to feel the flow experience again and again.

In regards to autonomy, I would give myself a medium rating. I like to be able to do things that I want to do when I want to do them, but I am usually not bothered when others assign me tasks to be completed by a certain time. I can also be very indecisive, so having someone tell me what to do is a relief from time to time. I would give myself a high rating for competence, as I become highly motivated to accomplish difficult tasks if I feel like I am not doing them well. I can also become very competitive if I feel like someone else is more competent in something than me; I will work even harder in order to prove to myself that I am equally – if not more – competent than they are. This especially holds true in my classes, as I am always motivated to be one of the highest scoring students. Of the three psychological needs, competence is the most important for me. I would give myself a medium rating for relatedness. I care deeply about my relationships with my family, boyfriend and close friends, but beyond that do not feel a strong desire to spend all of my time with people. In fact, I rather enjoy having time to myself. When I came to college my need for relatedness was very high, but after spending months abroad, I became more content with myself and no longer need the constant contact with others.

The fish in the picture is showing its need for autonomy. Instead of living its life within the confines of its bowl – as its instincts demand – it is choosing to finally make its own decisions instead of letting the environment decide for it. The fish’s need for autonomy was so high that it was motivated to jump out of the water, which is something that it physically needs, in order to feel free and experience psychological well-being. I bought a beta at the beginning of the year that must have had a similar desire. I told everyone that it committed suicide; now I know better. ; )

Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, optimal challenge, flow

Chapter 6 discusses the psychological needs and how we get more interested in an activity that satisfies our needs. The three main needs that are discussed are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy has to do with giving us freedom in our decision making and freedom to do what we want. Sometimes it isn’t that autonomous, for example if someone asks you if you want chocolate or white cake, there isn’t a lot of freedom to choose. There would be if the question was simply do you want cake? Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it, reflects the desire to exercise ones capacities and skills, and in doing so, seek out and master optimal challenges. It talks about how relatedness is the desire for relationships with individuals extends to relationships with groups, organizations, and companies. For each one of these 3 needs there are supportive motivation styles that provide more value and meaning to the need. The chapter also talks about how we as individuals react to the environment and if the environment changes we change as well (orgasmic theories of motivation). On the flip side, the mechanistic approach says the environment acts on the person and the person reacts, for instance when the environment gets cold you shiver.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was that autonomy to choose isn’t always that autonomous. You think just because you got to choose what color of cake you want you are getting rewarded and are given a lot of autonomy. However, you would be given more autonomy if you would have been asked do you want cake, pizza, or steak.
I rate myself high with all 3 needs. I have a lot of autonomy at my job and find myself making decisions and choices constantly on my behalf. I also have it at school considering I can make the decisions to do or not do my homework and when to turn it in. Let it be known although I rate it high considering that’s what my life is like right now, I don’t feel like I really need it that much. It can sometimes be stressful and aversive but for the most part I find it desirable. I am high in competence whether it is at work or school; I am always trying to better myself. Taking classes each semester to graduate helps satisfy this need. At work I am constantly taking training courses as well as traveling to training sessions. I feel that I score high in relatedness for the fact that I find it desirable to be in many different clubs here on campus and be a part of different organizations that pertain to my job. When I succeed at any or all of these it reinforces my desire and drive, for them what makes me focus more attention and effort on them.
The need of competence motivates me to emit the behavior of going to school and furthering my education. At work I have an appetite to soak in as much information as I can to help offenders succeed in the real world. I can’t see my need for this to go down anytime soon.
The fish obviously wants to satisfy his need for relatedness. He’s stuck in the bowl by him/herself all day long with no motivating factors until food is sprinkled in. Now it seems as if he has built up enough drive and emotion to get out of pit of despair and make some friends.
Terms: motivation, competence, relatedness, autonomy, desirable, aversive, drive, desire, appetite, psychological need, orgasmic motivation, mechanistic motivation

Chapter 6 discusses our psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how they motivate us every day. We are interested in activities that involve these psychological needs, and feel enjoyment when the activities satisfy those needs. Energy generated by psychological needs is proactive, unlike energy from physiological needs that motivate us when they are depleted. Psychological needs motivate us to explore and challenge ourselves, which in turn provides learning, growing, and developing. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. In other words, we want to be in control of what we do and how we do it. When our behavior is based on our interests, preferences, and wants, we experience autonomy. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment. It reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master challenges. In other words, we want to be good at what we do. Competence drives us to find activities that challenge us, and when we develop skills and master those activities, the need is satisfied. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. If we find relationships that continually provide warmth, care, and mutual concern, we will satisfy our need for relatedness. Activities that have autonomy support, structure, and involvement provide a supportive environment that will increase people’s engagement, enjoyment, and psychological needs.

Something that surprised me was the factors that go into the psychological need for relatedness. Before reading the chapter, I assumed that just social interaction would fulfill our need for relatedness. However, simply being around and talking to people is not enough. To be satisfying, the social bonds need to involve genuine care and liking. More importantly, the relationships need to involve self-disclosure. When you are able to show your true self and feel important to another person, you will experience relatedness.

I would currently rate myself as high in autonomy, high in competence, and medium to low in relatedness. I would like to talk about my experience with autonomy and how it has shown up in my life recently. Being in college obviously provides a ton of freedom. I get to decide what I do, when I do it, how I do it, and when I will stop doing it. Last spring I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease, and for a while, I felt my need for autonomy drop very low. The doctors instructed me that in order to be healthy, I would have to drastically change my eating habits and altogether stop drinking alcohol. This type of environment neglected and frustrated my need for autonomy. I hated that someone else had control over what I could eat or do in my social life. It took me a while to figure out how to deal with it, but I finally solved the problem. My body is my own, and my life choices are up to me; doctors cannot physically force me to do something. However, I did want to be healthy. So I made the choice for myself - I decided to eat healthy and limit alcohol because I wanted to. Doing these behaviors for myself, and not because someone else told me to, changed my perspective and attitude completely. Autonomy is a very important psychological need, and sometimes changing your perception in a situation that you feel you don’t have control can make a huge difference.

I have found that school is a great place for me to satisfy my need for competence. Last year I changed my major and also changed my attitude and work ethic when it came to my school work. I found that once I found something I was interested in, I was able to apply and devote myself more to my classes. My grades also increased dramatically and I felt competence like never before. Knowing this level of competence was possible motivated me to continue to work hard and challenge myself. When faced with a challenge, such as reading a confusing journal article or writing a paper, I give it my full attention. I am motivated to grow and enhance my skills and my knowledge.

The fish could be motivated to jump out of the fish bowl for all three psychological needs. He may feel like he has no control or freedom in his current home, and jumping out of the bowl would satisfy his need for autonomy. He may feel a lack of competence because he has no challenge or skills to master inside his fishbowl. Or perhaps he is lonely and seeking fulfilling relationships to satisfy his need for relatedness.

Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, optimal challenges, communal relationships

Chapter 6 examines the three organismic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These three needs provide people with a natural motivation for learning, growing, and developing. This chapter also describes how people find themselves in environments that support and nurture their psychological needs, then positive emotions, optimal experience, and healthy development.

Autonomy can be described as the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one's behavior. The three experimental qualities that define autonomy is perceived locus of causality, which refers to an individual's understanding of the causal source of his or her motivated actions. I play sports because I like hanging out with friends and because it also keeps me in shape. It's more of a personal choice (internal PLOC) and self-interest. Volition is an unpressured willingness to engage in an activity centered on how one feels vs coerced people feel while they are doing what they want to do. Whenever I have a test coming up, I will say to myself "alright, I'm going to study a couple days earlier because I need to do good." But that's usually never the case. I usually end up studying the night before because I have to due to my test. The last concept that makes up autonomy is perceived choice which is that sense of choice we experience when we find ourselves in environments that provide us with decision-making flexibility that affords us many opportunities from which to choose. At my internship, I feel like I have a pretty flexible perceived choice. There is a lot of task variety available and although sometimes projects I'm given have a deadline I can usually choose when I want to do it and don't have to feel rushed. Autonomy is very important as a psychological need in anything a person does, in school, college, career, and even growing up as a child some autonomy can be good. External events, environments, social contexts, and relationships all vary in how much or how little they support a person's need for autonomy. If I had to rate autonomy as high, low, or medium in my life, I would probably rate is as being medium. I think autonomy is very important but we can't always control or have a say on our choices in our life and sometimes I even like being told what to do because I'm a pretty indecisive person.

The second psychological need described in this chapter is competence which is the psychological need to be effective in interaction with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one's capacities and skills, and to seek out and master optimal challenges. Competence is a huge psychological need in the role of performance management in organizations. It also increases performance management. The key concepts of competence are optimal challenge, clear and helpful structure, and high failure tolerance from others, and the number one concept that satisfies our need for competence is positive feedback and the perception progress. Feedback comes from one or more of the following: task itself, comparisons of one's current performance with one's own past performances, comparisons of one's current performance with the performance of others, and evaluation of others. Feedback can be a very positive motivation when doing almost any task, even the simplest ones. It can also act as a reinforcement reminder. For instance, whenever I forget my my key at home and I go to work and come back I always think right before I get out of my car, "Crap I forgot my house key, I hope the doors aren't locked." There's been one time where I was locked out and now I remember my key all the time. If I had to rate this psychological need I would rate it medium. I'm more competent in different areas of my life than I am or should be in others. It all depends on the situation.

The last psychological need from this chapter is relatedness which is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people and it it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. This is very important motivation construct because people function better, are more resilient to stress, and report fewer psychological difficulties when their interpersonal relationships support their need for relatedness. One main characteristic of relatedness is interaction. People usually seek positive interactions and interaction partners and in doing so, gain the opportunity to involved the need for relatedness. We form many types of relationships with people but only communal relationships satisfy the relatedness need. This relationship is between people who care about the welfare of the other (family, friends, romantic relationships). If I had to rate this psychological need in my life, I would definitely say high. I'm a very open person and I need to feel relatedness towards certain people in order to be able to talk to them. I also have very close bonds with my family and friends which increases my relatedness.

The psychological need of relatedness is probably the most important need in my life. I do take concern for my friends, family, and I guess if a stranger were to come to me, for them as well when it comes to their concerns. I truly enjoy being around people all day, every day. At my job right now, I get to be around people and help them with their problems. I would say when I'm around people I engage in emotional engagement which is interest or enjoyment. I enjoy meeting new people and relating to them is very important. I think relatedness motivates me to be more outgoing. It makes me happy and according to the book, being happy motivates us to do tasks more promptly and more effectively. I'm actually motivated to write this entry because I was currently in a happy mood before writing this. I'm also listening to good music right now so that's also motivating me to write more because the music is upbeat and it relates to my attitude. Overall, this chapter was a good chapter over the 3 organismic psychological needs.

Terms: Autonomy, Perceived Locus of causality, internal PLOC, volition, perceived choice, feedback, interaction, communal relationships, competence, optimal challenge, emotional engagement

I think the picture describes the fish as being highly motivated to get out of the bowl because of the lack of autonomy it is experiencing. It didn't have the choice to live in a bowl so now it's retaliating by jumping out of the bowl.

Overall, the chapter was about three basic psychological needs. These include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. There are two important assumptions that go along with these three needs. The first assumption is that people are inherently active whereas the second is that a person use inherent psychological needs to interact in the environment. In an organismic approach to motivation, people have an innate motivation to learn, grow, and develop in a way that is good for their bodies. This growing takes place when their psychological needs are satisfied. The book defines autonomy as the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. It also states that instead of always relying on external sources of motivation, people want to have inner resources for motivation. The main concept of autonomy is self-determination. Competence, however, is the need to effectively interact with the environment around you. If a person doesn’t get to use their capacities and skills or work on improving them, they are not satisfying their need for competence. Optimal challenge, high structure, and high failure tolerance are three main components for competence. Also, when people experience flow, or a psychological state characterized by maximal enjoyment, concentration, and absorption in a task, they have high personal challenge and skills interacting in the environment. Lastly, relatedness is described as the need to establish close emotional ties and attachments with others around them. This is the internal need to be interpersonally connected as well as emotionally connected with others at some level. These social bonds must include some extent of caring and liking.

I found competence to be the most interesting topic to me because I didn’t realize how important competence is to people. I realized that autonomy and relatedness are important aspects of a person’s life, but to not be able to use your skills and abilities didn’t register to be as important to me. I see now that it is, however, and I’m seeing it in my everyday life. For example; I’m learning how to speak up and be part of conversations in bigger groups and meetings (class, for example). A year ago, I never would’ve intentionally talked in class or taken part in conversation. However, I recently discovered that I can do this with confidence and have been aiming to excel at it. For work I had to go to a meeting full of board members. And since I’m new and it was the first time I had been to a meeting, I decided it probably wasn’t my place to speak up and provide input quite yet. Thus, I wasn’t able to exercise my newfound skills and therefore, I felt incompetent.

Overall, I would say I have a medium need for relatedness, a medium need for competence depending on the situation, and a medium to low need for autonomy. I love to be around my friends and family but too much relatedness for me just becomes overwhelming. I love to be alone but I love to be around people as well. My competence just depends on the situation, because sometimes I feel that I am using my abilities to interact with my environment, and sometimes (like the situation I described above) I feel like I need to be doing something more to further my competence. Autonomy is kind of a tough one for me. I have an awful time making decisions for myself and tend to look at how others view the decision. It’s not a very fun time, but it’s been working for me anyway. I also like the satisfaction of making a decision for myself, too however so it varies.

I discussed above how competence motivates me to speak up in class and use the knowledge I have learned in college and in life overall. It’s fun especially in psychology-related situations because I feel like I have learned many skills and can provide appropriate input. Competence also relates to school work, working out, and many other aspects of my life. I feel as though I have learned skills and have the abilities to carry these things out so with my competence I am able to carry these things out.

It took me a while to figure out what the fish had to do with anything. But I decide he probably is being neglected of all his psychological needs (given that a fish has psychological needs). He’s stuck in his solitude so he has no relatedness except with the faces outside the bowl. He has no way to use the skills or abilities he has because he’s in a tiny little bowl with nothing to do but float. And he has no autonomy. He doesn’t get the luxury of making choices for himself or carrying out any actions for himself because he really doesn’t have an option. It looks to me like he's trying to break out of his bowl so that he can attempt to go and fulfill his psychological needs. This was a good chapter though I enjoyed it!

Terms: Autonomy, competence, relatedness, optimal challenge, structure, failure tolerance, flow

Chapter 6 discusses how we are affected by our psychological needs. This chapter focuses on the three different psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These are also referred to as the organismic psychological needs. This means that what we are dealing with is alive and is reacting to the environment around them. These are the basic fundamental needs that the environment provides for organisms like food, water, cognitive stimulation, and other needs. This also says that we must learn to adapt to the constant changing environment. The opposite, mechanistic, the environment acts on the organism, and it must react. Our first psychological need is autonomy. Autonomy is our freedom to be able to make our own decisions. The next psychological need is competence. Competence is our ability to build our skills whether they are in sports, school, music, or whatever the individual is interested in. The third psychological need is relatedness. Everyone needs social interaction. People will always strive to have more relationships and more meaningful relationships.
The most surprising thing in the chapter was the fact of exchange relationships. I wasn’t surprised like it was the first time I had heard of it, it’s just that I can think of many examples of people I know that have those. It was one of those “A-ha!” moments. There are many relationships like that especially in Hollywood. How often do we see a Hollywood star marry a regular person compared to Hollywood stars that marry other stars? Maybe they are not receiving any monetary value from the marriage, but when these stars are on tabloids they still receive attention. Any publicity is good publicity (Kim Kardashian).
My levels of psychological needs vary greatly between the three categories. I would rate myself as a medium in autonomy. One example I can think of is my job. I definitely like to be a decision maker and leader at work, but I have no problem receiving constructive criticism, suggestion, and orders in general from a boss. I would rate myself as a low for competence. One poor aspect of my personality is that I am not as headstrong as I could be when it comes to learning new things. The things I know how to do I strive to master, but if something does not spark my attention right away, I will not be interested in it. I am definitely a high on relatedness. I love having friends, period. I strive to be friends with all of my coworkers, and I am just a very talkative guy in general.
I think that relatedness influenced my decision on the part-time job that I have right now. The first two years I worked at Hy-Vee, I worked as a checker and bagger. I switched over to Chinese Express because I was able to communicate with my coworkers more and it was all around a more social job.
I think that the fish picture is describing autonomy. The fish is not going with the crowd; he is making his own decisions. Obviously he is doing it in a humorous way because if you were to take this picture seriously, then you would be thinking about how the fish is going to die.

Terms: Psychological need, relatedness, autonomy, competence, organismic psychological needs

Ch. 6
We feel and are aware of our sense of interest and enjoyment. From this awareness we gain a “willingness” to partake in an environment that will “nurture” our psychological needs. This chapter the big three psychological needs: Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness. Which is based off of an organismic approach to motivation that and are often referred to as psychological needs.
The idea of the organismic approach starts from the base word organism, which is anything that interacts with the environment. By saying this we can also understand that in order for this organism to survive it really depends on the environment resources that are offered. An always changing environment really needs a flexible organism to survive. Bringing the focus back to how the organism adapts to the environment and the ability to understand, change, and grow as a function of “those environmental transactions.” The person- Environment dialect is the idea that the environment and the organism are reciprocal and constantly changing by acting on each other. And we start to see intrinsic motivation coming into play from chapter 5 on why the person interacts on the environment and curious to change it. The person- Environment dialect also brings up that environment events do affect the organism, that contains relationships that support or frustrate the psychological needs. Here is where it gets important as it is key to take note that the ability to develop skills can only go as far as the environment around the organism allows it to develop. Tailing into Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness giving us organisms natural motivations for learning, growing and development.
Autonomy, this inert ability that makes us desire to choose everything we do in our lives. “Behavior is autonomous” as we determine what coincides with our own interests, and then comes our own decision of engaging in a particular activity or not. On the other hand though we cannot determine something outside of our control; caused by the environment. All choices do not fulfill autonomy. A more specific definition to choice as defined by a “true choice” which involves a choice that is meaningful to the persons life. When people are offered “unrestricted choices” they are more likely to have intrinsic motivation and begin to reflect their own personal values giving this psychological need to satisfy that specific autonomy. As we begin to work in the field of counseling or social reactions, I feel that we will be using an autonomy supportive base to begin and instue conversations. As we listen we will understand these people inner motivations and we can identify and nurture these interests. This is also used in teaching and it is important because it will eventually turn into competence and a sense of relatedness.
Competence... our need to be the best we possibly can. This ability to challenge ourselves, and wanting to grow, with this we feel satisfied and happy. A psychological need to be affective in a chosen environment, and the desire to “exercise one's capacity” and master the challenge. It is very important that the challenge gains the optimal experience otherwise it will not be as effective. Through Flow which is when a person is able to overcome a challenge through their skills. Through optimal experience the person gains competence and wants to achieve and participate more; on the other hand if the challenge is overwhelming or someones skills are too good for the challenge, it challenges our competence which manifests into emotions (like worry or anxiety). Just because the skills maybe balanced does not mean that competence will gain; for example if someone has low skill and is given a low challenge they will just be bored and gain nothing from the experience. Flow works best when both skill and challenge are moderately high.
On to our last psychological need Relatedness, the need to belong. Being human makes us want to be liked by others and also have the ability maintain warm and affectionate relationships. Making us the organisms willing to interact with others and create social bonds. People seek an emotionally positive interaction with other people. Based off of general principles of warmth, care and mutual concern. Through this people can form bonds and eventually create affectionate relationships that the person shows their one “true-self.” When relationships are involved people don't care about how many friends they have but how good their relationship with their friends are “quality over quantity.” Through friendships we satisfy this need to want to belong. Exchange relationships are considered more professional relationships; while communal relationships are friends and families that care for your livelihood. The main difference between the two are giving and receiving benefits (ie money or emotional support).
These psychological needs play off each other motivating through the subject of curiosity (Autonomy) and striving for the optimal result (competence), going back to the original motivation to be involved (relatedness). I feel that I have a high autonomy as my inspirations and understandings motivate my direction. My competence on the other hand has been hurting lately as I feel the challenges presented and my skills don’t always match up (procrastination?). My relatedness is fairly high though as I am engaged to get married and my group of friends satisfies really everything I need. I think these levels manifest themselves in my life by making me look stupid, as I have the motive and understand and support behind something but my competence or skill may be lingering behind.
I am going to reflect on Autonomy and how it “motivates” me. I wake up with a decision ahead of me to get up or go back to bed, which then I prevail to the shower and to eat, or not to eat breakfast. this goes on all day but it all reinforces the fact that everything I do is motivated by my decision, and the intent behind the decision. It is a direct effect and I see my decisions outcomes usually instantly which therefore affect my competence and relatedness.
I feel that the fish jumping out of the bowl is a combination of all three psychological needs. Starting from autonomy which gives the fish the ability to jump from the bowl and then clearly moving to competence as this challenge is presented towards the fish. Which leads me to my final point and the reason why the autonomy was chosen as the fish felt the need to “belong” to whatever it wanted to belong to.

Terms: Psychological Needs, Organismic Approach, Organism,The Person- Environment Dialect, Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness

Chapter 6 dealt with the psychological needs we have in our life. When an activity involves our psychological needs, we feel interest. When an activity satisfies our psychological needs, we feel enjoyment. So, we feel and are aware of our sense of interest and enjoyment. Psychological needs have three major components which are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. Basically we decide what we want, when we want it, how to do it, and when to stop it. Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and in doing so to seek out and master optimal challenges. Competence is basically when seek out challenges in which we engage in activities to get some sort of satisfaction. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in relationships This means we tend to relate and gravitate to people who we trust to care for our well-being and drift away from those who don’t.

The thing I found most surprising was the comparison between controlling and autonomy supportive motivation. I liked the chart that showed things that autonomy support would say (listen carefully, allow others time to talk, provide rationale, encourage effort, praise progress, mastery, respond to questions. While controlling people would say hold/hog learning, show correct answers, tell correct answers, speak, directives, commando, should, must have to statements, asking controlling questions, seem demanding. When I think about all my educational experiences, they mostly been controlling. Just imagine if teachers allowed for a more intrinsic environment in their classrooms. Students could learn so much more because they actually want to do the learning. It’s the something they can relate to and want to explore. I think all learning should be like this.

If I had to rate myself in psychological needs, I would say I’m high on autonomy, high on competence and medium on relatedness. I love to explore and learn about the thing I like. My autonomy is very because of this. I’ve struggled with things I don’t like in my educational settings. When I finally found what I liked and was good at suddenly everything was easy. I found school to be simple and my grades were drastically better. I rated myself a high on competence because I’m a very competitive guy. I love things that challenge me and I’ll go above and beyond what I have to do to achieve my ultimate goal. Whether it be training to beat my friends in a race or just playing a game until I’m the best, I just plain don’t like to lose. This has benefited me greatly because I acquire a large amount of skills and confidence. I rated myself a medium in relatedness because I don’t really look to people for emotional bonds. I’ve always done everything on my own so I don’t have many close people in my life. I have my family and friends that I can rely on but usually it’s just me and I’m fine with that.

I really don’t have much of a clue about the picture and what it supposed to mean. If I had to take a guess it’s probably relatable to autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The fish has no autonomy in the fish bowl because there’s nothing to do in it. It can’t explore any interests that it might have because it can only swim around. It can compete and challenge itself because there’s no one else around. Finally, it can’t related or fall back on anybody because the fish hasn’t established any close connections to other people because it’s alone. I’m assuming it’s jumping out to experience what life has to offer; to live a life worth living.

Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, controlling, autonomy supportive, intrinsic motivation,

This chapter was devoted to explaining psychological needs using three terms: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy can be described as the desire to have control over what you do. This means we want our behaviors connected to our interests, performances, wants, and desires. We want to decide for ourselves how we spend our time. Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s skills to seek out and master optimal challenges. Therefore, when we engage in a task with a level of difficulty that is right for our skills and talents, we feel a strong interest in that task. Relatedness can be described as the need to belong. Everyone desires social interaction and everyone wants friends. We want others to accept us and be responsive to our needs. I think once you have a firm understanding of these three terms, chapter 6 becomes easier to understand.

One surprising thing I learned in this chapter was that the satisfaction of our psychological needs can whether we have a “good” or “bad” day. For instance, a study described in the text showed that individuals who experienced higher levels autonomy and competence also had better days. The more you satisfy your psychological needs, the better you feel on a day-to-day basis. This goes to show that a daily dose of autonomy, competence, and relatedness can make your life more enjoyable and turn your bad days into good ones.

I recognize the importance of all three psychological needs, but I would rate my need for autonomy as high and my need for competence and relatedness as medium. I have a high need for autonomy because I am a much happier person when I’m doing things I want to do versus things I’d rather not do. Having a need for autonomy has also caused me to get familiar with rationales. For instance, I can’t always participate in the things I want to and sometime must do things I’d rather not do, this is where rationale comes in. I can rationalize the benefits of doing something I don’t want to do, which leads me to have more of autonomy perspective in regards to that task. I view my need for competence as medium because I recognize its importance, but I don’t overdo it. I challenge myself with things I have a better chance of accomplishing. I don’t waste my time trying to understand things that aren’t relevant to me. My need for relatedness is also medium because I recognize the importance of interacting with others and I view myself as an outgoing person. However, I feel like I have already been exposed to the most important people to me therefore my need for relatedness isn’t high.

Autonomy motivates my behavior more so than the other two needs. It pushes me to do what I want to do and it makes me happy. For example, I volunteer because it’s something I want to do and I genuinely enjoy the feeling it get from doing it. Another way autonomy motivates my behavior is through working out. The reason I workout is because I enjoy spending time in the gym and it acts as a major stress reliever for me.
I think the fish picture represents all three needs discussed throughout this chapter. It portrays autonomy by showing that the fish has control to change its surroundings and do what it wants to do. It represents competence by showing the fish has greater skills than what its environment allows, therefore it’s leaving its environment to seek bigger challenges. Lastly, the picture represents relatedness by showing the desire the fish has to interact with things outside of the fish bowl because they fish bowl doesn’t offer any social interaction. All in all, I think the picture shows how important each of these needs is and that we should all be willing to fulfill them for our own well-being.

Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, rationale, optimal challenges, psychological needs

I found this chapter to be very intruiging. It discusses our three psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Humans have a natural process of being motivated to learn, grow, mature and they do so in an evironment where it supports their psychological needs.

The first psychological need is autonomy. Autonomy is the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in initation & regulation of one's behavior. When it's self-determined behavior emanates from a choice instead of actions. People who live autonomy-filled lifes, have more positive outcomes and gains in motivation, engagement, development, learning, performance and psychological well-being.

Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. The need for competence generates the motivation to want to develop, improve upon and refine personal skills and talents. When the challenge is high and the skill is high, people experience flow. Flow happens when a person reaches maximal enjoyment and intense concentration.

Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. This is simply the desire to be emotionally and mentally connected with someone. We cannot just relate to anyone though. We have to know that those we are getting close to are both caring and liking and that we can trust them.

I breifly knew everything that was mentioned in this chpater before I read it. Nothing was a real surprise for me, but I found relatedness to be the most intersting. This talked about the basic concept of how we have the natural desire to be close to people. In order to be close, we interact with others by hanging out with them a lot and building a trustworthy relationship. A social bond is also needed; having someone who likes you and cares about your well-being.

I would definitely rate myself as high on the relatedness and competence levels and medium on the autonomy level. I have a lot of friends, and a handful of true friends that I share everything with. These friendships did not just build over night. It took a lot of hanging out, and setting boundaries to create these true friendships. As for competence, when it comes to a new skill, like getting a new job, I will try as hard as I can to complete the task, and positive reinforcers help me do so. I love my job and am pretty good at my job, so going to work isn't a negative thing for me. The reason I rated myself as a medium with autonomy is because I'm the kind of person who will just go along with the flow of the group. I didn't rate myself low on autonomy, because there are some tasks that I want that I will go achieve by myself.

I like to think of myself as a pretty competent person. I enjoy learning new tasks and I'm a social person. I get along well with others, but that doesn't mean I always like working with others, especially group projects! I enjoy drawing and never thought that I was all that good at it. I decided to continue doing it anyways, especially when I'm stressed, and saw that by continuing to draw, I have built my skill and have gotten better.

I believe that the fish is being deprived from relatedness. It's all alone and doesn't have a "friend", which is why it is jumping out of the water. It's psychological desire is so over-powering that the fish isn't even focusing on the fact that it cannot live out of water. Or maybe it knows that, but just doesn't care. He also demonstrates competence because he is testing his own ability to see if he can accomplish getting out of the bowl and all of these desires come from the autonomy. Therefore, the fish demonstrates all three of the psychological needs.

Terms: Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, motivation, flow, social bond, positive reinforcer

Chapter 6 is all about psychological needs. Things that we think of as being enjoyable are typically satisfying our psychological needs. Those needs motivate our interactions with our environment past the base physiological needs. This group of needs is considered organismic, meaning they are constantly adapting and changing based upon the needs of the organism in its environment. The first of three psychological needs is autonomy. We have this need to feel like we control as many decisions as possible in our lives. We want to be the one who picks what to do, how to do it, when to do it, if we do it at all and all sorts of variables. We as humans don’t enjoy others telling us what to do. We typically find the most enjoyment in those things that we choose to do for ourselves with no one else directing us towards it. In autonomy, there are three categories that lead us to feeling the satisfaction of the need, perceived locus of causality (PLOC), volition, and perceived choice. The PLOC is a range of internal to external and measures how much a person feels their behavior is coming from inside ourselves or from environmental sources. Volition is how much freedom one has in doing or not doing an activity, if there is pressure from themselves or other sources, their sense of freedom is threatened. Perceived choice is the ability to pick when given options as opposed to having a sense of strictness about our actions. Some ways of supporting autonomy satisfaction are using informational language, providing explanations, and accepting failure. The satisfaction of the need for autonomy can improve learning, engagement, and overall well-being.

Competence is the second psychological need mentioned in the chapter. It is the desire to be effective in our interactions with the world around us. It involves mastering challenges and exercising and developing our skills. Flow state falls into this area and it is the optimal conditions between challenge and skill. Flow is a state of optimum concentration that is brought about by equal levels at medium or higher skill and medium or higher challenge. To prove competence we require some sort of feedback, either from the activity itself or from an outside source. There should also be some structure to guide towards the expected goal. Failure is a big part of being challenged and without some failure tolerance no one would push themselves into challenging positions. With a real challenge, there will always be some occasional failures but they are helpful if in the right environment. By providing the above listed things, feedback, structure, and failure tolerance, the environment should be beneficial to satisfaction of the need for competence.

Relatedness is the third and final psychological need we discuss. This is essentially a desire to belong and have connections with other people. Close bonds are essential to our lives as humans. Relatedness is the need for those bonds to be intimate and caring instead of just acquaintance level. This shows a difference between types of relationships, one satisfies relatedness while the other does not. Communal relationships are those that satisfy relatedness by being intimate and caring and reciprocal. People in communal relationships check up on each other and have genuine liking for one another. Exchange relationships are not satisfying to the need for relatedness, they are simply acquaintance or business relations with no actual care for the others well-being. In communal relationships, not exchange, there can be internalization, or the acceptance of another’s ideas as one’s own.

I personally am fairly well into the medium category for relatedness. I have a few good friends but I don’t feel the need to be surrounded by people all of the time. Competence I would rate myself higher on, and medium again on autonomy. I don’t mind doing tasks others set out for me, so long as I see them as being worthwhile. My personal desire to do well and show competence has always been high, I set fairly high pressure internally to do well and unfortunately the failure tolerance growing up wasn’t there. I had to do well and that caused a lot of lacking in my need satisfaction. That’s one way these needs have manifested in my life. The need for relatedness shows up when my boyfriend is traveling for work. I won’t see him except on the weekends and when I have to work all day Saturday, I’m not a happy person. I don’t enjoy working with customers as I usually do because the exchange relationships they represent mean little to me when my communal relationships are not provided and not satisfying for me. The fish picture is very confusing to me. I suppose he may have gotten bored in his little fishbowl. His need for relatedness wasn’t satisfied as there were no other fish in his bowl. His need for competence wasn’t satisfied as there wasn’t anything difficult about swimming all day for a fish. His autonomy was also not satisfied since he had no choice but to keep swimming around or just sit there. All of those psychological needs were lacking and he may have decided to hop out to see if outside could be better satisfying. Maybe he’s jumping off a ledge into the ocean below and will satisfy all his needs there.

Terms: psychological need, organismic, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, competence, flow, relatedness, communal relationship, exchange relationship, internalization

Chapter Six focuses on psychological needs, focusing specifically on autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy concerns an individuals desire for independence and flexibility when making decisions. Individuals make autonomous decisions focused on pleasing their interests. As the textbook points out, "we want freedom to construct our own goals...the freedom to decide what is important, and what is not worth our time." Autonomy is based on three subjective qualities; internal perceived locus of control, volition, and perceived choice over one's actions. When an individual is pressured or forced into making choices their sense of autonomy is low. However when an individual is offered meaningful choices they experience high autonomy. The textbook continues, stating that when 'external events, environments, social contexts, and relationships' either nurture or hinder an individuals autonomy, increasing their autonomous motivation. When an individual has high autonomy, not only is their psychological need met, but also increase other psychological needs. One of these needs is competence, which refers to the psychological need to effectively interact within ones environment. The textbook discusses the Flow Model and 'flow experience' by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow refers to an individuals deep involvement, concentration, and mental absorption into an activity. According to the flow model, when challenge outweighs skill in an activity, low competence leads to worry. Reversely, when skill is high and challenge is low, the individual feels under challenged, leading to boredom. Thus an individuals interest, competence, and engagement is highest when skill and competence are equal. The final psychological need discussed is relatedness, which is an individuals innate emotional desire for relationships with others and within groups. The textbook points out that "interaction with others is the primary condition that involves the relatedness need, at least to the extent that those interactions promise the possibility of warmth, care and mutual concern." It is important to note that "when it comes to relatedness and relationships, quality is more important that quantity."
To me the most surprising thing about this chapter was that an individuals competence is effected just as much when they feel over competent as when they feel incompetent. I had always realized that when people feel incompetent or over challenged, they are much more likely to give up on the task and suffer a decrease in their psychological needs. I had not realized however, that when the individual is equally overqualified to perform the task their boredom causes an equal decrease in engagement and involvement.
For me, I think I would rate highly on autonomy and relatedness. In both of these categories I feel like I successfully interact with and belong to several groups of people around me. I also have a high sense of autonomy because I think I am able to make decisions based on what I want as opposed to because I feel like I am pressured to. However when it comes to competence I am often challenged, and sometimes struggle in order to complete them
It is because of relatedness that I am involved in the Textile and Apparel (TAPP) Association within my major. I have a psychological need to relate to individuals similar to me (ie individuals interested in the same major as myself).
As far as the picture goes, the fish is trying to escape the fish bowl because his psychological needs are not met. He has no sense of relatedness because there is no one to relate to when he is isolated in the fishbowl. He may be displaying his competence at jumping by jumping out of the bowl, and he obviously wasn't pressured into escaping the fishbowl because there is no external force pushing him out.

Terms: Psychological Needs, Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Subjective Qualities of Autonomy, Flow

Chapter six is all about autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This is based on the organismic approach to motivation, in which two things occur. First, that people are inherently active, and second that the person uses the environment for their psychological needs, but sometimes the environment doesn’t support these needs, when in other circumstances, it does. Autonomy is the desire to express direction and personal endorsement in the beginning and continuation of a person’s behavior. Competence is the need to effectively interact with the environment. Relatedness is the desire to establish emotional bonds and attachments to others, and reflects the need to be connected and involved with others in warm, caring relationships. The engagement model of motivations illustrates how social contexts and relationships involve and satisfy our psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
The most surprising thing I learned was that all of our psychological needs can fit into these three categories. At first, I was really surprised, but then I as I read more about how involved autonomy, competence, and relatedness really are, I found that it made more sense that our psychological needs do truly fit into these three categories. I now see how people’s basic psychological needs play out in everyday life, watching people talk to one another, and at work, and even in the classroom.
If I had to rate myself on these three psychological needs, I would rate myself as high for autonomy. I have a pretty good sense of myself and where I want to go in life, and tailor my behaviors quite well to where I want to go. I want to get my doctorate in psychology, and strive to do well in my classes, attend class, as well as try to further my college experiences by being involved in other activities as well as working a job. I would probably rate myself as high in competence as well, as I seek out challenges within my environment that help me grow as a person. I am in the flow with my environment most of the time, as I feel enjoyment, concentration, and full absorption in various tasks at hand when I do them. I do my homework, usually on time, and find it easy to concentrate on it, especially when it’s something I enjoy. I would rate my current state of relatedness as medium to high, as I have many close, emotional attachments to people. A majority of my relationships with others are warm and caring, with a mutual sense of liking. I have communal relationships with others, which is how my relatedness psychological need is met. I have strong emotional bonds with my parents, and several friends here at school as well as back home. Because I have a desire to have relatedness with others, I try new things that are interesting to me, and meet people through those venues, such as UNI Dance Marathon, and Psychology Club. I tend to associate myself with people that have similar interests as me, and therefore we can be more congruent in establishing an emotional bond.
The poor fish’s psychological needs are not being met, because there isn’t another fish to help him with his relatedness! He is competent in his ability to flee from his neglectful and frustrating environment and is hoping to land in a fishbowl with another fish so that he can establish strong emotional bonds with that other goldfish. Hopefully, it’s not a beta bowl he’s jumping in, as they don’t do so well with relatedness!

Terms: Psychological needs, relatedness, autonomy, competence, flow, engagement model of motivation, organismic approach

Chapter 6 discusses the psychological needs of motivation from an organismic approach. The three psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In the organismic approach to motivation, it is assumed that people are inherently active and that the person uses it to engage in the environment.
Autonomy is to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in one's behavior. It is like being able to make your own decisions for what you want and having control. The extent of satisfaction of one's need of autonomy depends on how supportive the relationships and environment are perceived to be. People who are autonomous show positive things in motivation, development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being.
Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. Its being able to show your abilities and testing your limits. The need of competence come when you want to extend your limits further and seek out thrills. The more the environment satisfies need of competence, the more willing one is going to seek out challenges that will allow them the grow and develop their skill.
Relatedness is the need to create close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. It's the desire to be emotionally connected and involved in warm, caring relationships. Satisfaction of relatedness comes when a person confirms that the bonds with other people are both caring and liking. A communal relationship is a good example of satisfying the need for relatedness.
I would rate myself medium for autonomy. I like to make my own choices and I feel better when I have more of an influence in a decision, but I will listen to other when it comes to making a decision. Competence would be medium. I am pretty content the way I am, but I really enjoy challenging myself, whether it be in sports or school. It also feels good to have my competence acknowledged. Relatedness would be medium also. I enjoy being around my friends and those close to me. I would rather hang out with my friends than be alone a majority of the time. But I do enjoy being alone and having time to myself sometimes.
I would say competence is what motivates me the most. I am always up for a challenge and something to better develop my skill. I also enjoy simple things that are helping increase my skill. For example, I enjoy shooting my bow with my friends (relatedness), but at the same time, I am practicing and getting better at shooting my bow.
In the picture, I think the fish is trying to escape because its psychological needs are not met. There are no other fish in the bowl that he can satisfy the need of relatedness. Maybe he doesn't want to be in that bowl, so he is not satisfied with the need of autonomy. Or maybe he enjoys jumping out of fish bowls that he want to keep jumping higher and higher to test his skill, thus satisfying his need for competence.
Terms: psychological need, autonomy, competence, relatedness, communal relationship, organismic approach

Chapter six was all about the psychological needs of motivation. There are three main psychological needs we all possess: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is feeling like we can make our own choices, the feeling of control, and the sense that we have a say in our decisions. Competence is making sure you’re performing at a desire level and feeling like you are good and adequate at certain tasks and skills. Finally, relatedness is being able to relate to others and having healthy relationships with those around us. Looking at motivation with an organismic approach, we understand how our psychological needs provide a drive to emit certain behaviors in order to fulfill these needs. Then when people’s psychological needs are satiated, it helps with their overall happiness and well-being.

The most surprising thing I read was the last little blip that explained how the three psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) are what it means to feel vital. Vital, in a sense, means alive. So initially when I think of the word vital, my mind goes to a biological sense. I think of things like “Am I feeling healthy today?” or “Am I sleep deprived? Hungry?” I didn’t think about how feeling vital could relate to your psychological sense and needs until reading this chapter. Studies show that when we satiate our psychological needs, we then have psychological nutrients. These nutrients provide us with the feeling of vitality.

I found it kind of difficult to rate myself on how high my psychological needs are. I would say the lowest of my needs is autonomy. Though everyone needs some control over their lives, as we’ve all just learned form reading our text book, I am okay with others making decisions for me. I’m a very indecisive person, as a lot of women are, and so I sometimes enjoy it when someone else makes a decision for me so I don’t have to go through the difficult task of making it for myself. An example would be of deciding where my boyfriend and I should go out to eat. I really rather him make the decision, even if that means we go someplace that isn’t my favorite. Next I’d probably say competent. Right now I’m in the process of applying to grad school and I am definitely stressing out and afraid of my incompetence’s. Finally, I would say that my highest need would be relatedness. I am a very social creature and like to interact with others rather on a frequent basis. One example of how it is obvious how my relatedness need is very high is when I’m in a car, I either want to be on the phone or talking to the others in the car. I rather talk with my passengers than listen to the radio, and I love music! I will turn down the radio, or even turn it completely off, so I can hold a conversation with the others in the car. Sometimes they don’t like that so much. So there is an example of how a psychological need motivates my behavior.

Terms:
Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, organismic approach, satiated, drive, vitality, psychological nutrients

People are draw to activities that they enjoy and be around people that care about them. Chapter 6 is about Psychological needs. The three main topics it discusses are autonomy, competence and relatedness. People’s lives are always changing and we are growing and learning every day. Chapter 6 starts with telling the reader about how our environment effects what we do. What is around us affects what we can do, our opportunities, and our goals. This is called person-environment dialect. Where we are and the environment around us is always changing and yet we have a drive to meet and conquer the things around us. We want to learn and explore.
The first main concept is Autonomy. This is when a person get to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it and how they do it. We want this freedom to feel in control of our own lives, not the environment telling is what to do. The feeling of freedom is called volition. In autonomy we decide what activity to do, or not to do, no one is telling us we have to or we can’t.
Competence is the next main point Chapter 6 makes. Competence is the act of getting to know their environment and being able to interact effectively with it. As said, the environment around us is always changing. Rather it is home, work, or school, we need to understand what is around us and be able to adapt and be able to fit in with our surrounding. One of the most important ideas with competence is flow. Csikszentmihalyi theory of flow is all about finding the tasks that are not too easy or too hard. If you are doing an activity that is really easy for you, you will be bored. If the activity is to hard then you are nervous and anxious. A person needs to find an activity that they enjoy and can complete without stress but is still a challenge to get the full effect of competence.
People need people. That is a plan and simple fact. All humans need to be able to interact with other humans. It is not just interacting it is also about having close relationships and social bonds. A social bond is when someone cares for us and looks out for us. They like us for who we are. A person can have people around but without social bonds they do not have as much relatedness as they need. Relatedness is the last topic in Chapter 6. Relatedness is simply the need to belong and have friends. As we will see in the movie American Beauty, just having people around is not enough. We need personal connections and love and respect from the people around us to feel truly happy. We just want someone to love us for whom we are.
The most surprising thing about chapter 6 to me was how easy it can be to stop someone’s autonomy need. We all want to make our own choices sometimes the environment stops us but lots of time it is other people. If someone enjoys something but we give them a negative reinforcement we just stopped them from doing what they want and hurt their competence level. The book talks about choices. With little children I work with I usually give them two choices. I did do realize that I am hurting their Autonomy need. I thought I was helping them by giving them options but by limiting what they can do to only two activities really stops that freedom. Also if neither activity is something they want to do then they are forced to do something they do not want to do. This whole idea bout choice is called, “The conundrum of choice”. Still there has to be some structure with children so it is a little difficult to figure out where to draw the line.
I feel that at this point in my life I am about medium in autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In college my days are set on what I was to do most of the time Get up go to class, eat, sleep, homework, and work. There is some free time though. I feel like those hours I am very in control of what I do but the rest is just set. I feel like I have mastered competency pretty well. Having been at UNI for more than a year I have figured a lot out about college life and the campus. I can navigate around school, work, and my dorm well. For relatedness I feel like I need to work on this. At my old college I was surrounded by lots of friends and close friends and my parents were only a half hour away. Here at UNI I feel alone most of the time. I can count my friends on one hand. Yet I do have two really close friends that I can go to and the rest are only a phone call away.
I feel relatedness does drive what I do a lot. Since I have so many friends at different colleges, I find myself going to visit a lot. I feel like I cannot live without my phone to connect me with all of them. One of the biggest way relatedness dictates my life is I will plan to do home work or go running, yet someone will ask me to play volleyball or racquet ball. I want to be around people not just by myself so I say yes. Doing things by yourself is alright, but I would much rather be around people.
Words: Autonomy, person-environment dialect, volition, Competence, relatedness, Csikszentmihalyi theory of flow, relationships, social bond, the conundrum of choice.

Chapter 6 talks about psychological needs. Psychological needs are what motivates and engages us in an environment that we expect will be able to nurture our psychological needs. The three needs this chapter talks about are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Autonomy is the need to express independence and freedom. Competence is the need to be effective in interactions with others. You need to possess a required skill and knowledge about interactions. Relatedness deals with everyone wanting to belong. Everyone needs social interactions to some extent. Many of us go out of our way to maintain relationships with others. We want to be acknowledged by others.

I thought the flow model was most interesting. I have learned about this model in my leisure youth and human service classes and thought it was interesting how my classes are all tying together. The flow model occurs whenever a person uses his or her skills to overcome some challenge. When doing an activity you need to make sure the activity isn’t too easy or too hard. You want it to be somewhere in the middle. If the activity is too easy you will become bored and uninterested. If the activity is too hard you may become anxious or frightened. Flow is the state in which we feel competence and feel as if we can succeed in certain tasks. When we enter a state of flow we are highly concentrated. An example of flow that I have experienced is riding my bike on RAGBRAI. Riding my bike for that long of distance for seven days straight is the hardest thing I have ever done but once I had completed the ride, it was the best feeling in the world! There were many days I wanted to just quit but I somehow stayed motivated and at times was so concentrated on finishing I forgot about the pain and pushed through.

One thing that surprised me was communal and exchange relationships. I didn’t know there were actual names for different types of relationships. Exchange relationships are those between acquaintances. You know the individual but you aren’t close with them. In communal relationships you are involved with an individual. You care about the person and make sure there doing alright. You want this relationship to last. This works both ways; you need support from everyone involved in the relationship.

To rate myself in the various needs I would rate autonomy as low. I feel like I know how to act and how not to act in certain situations. There is a time and a place for certain behaviors. Competence I would rate myself a medium. When my friends come up to me and are emotional I am not very good at knowing how to handle the situation but in all other aspects of interaction I would say I’m good. Lastly relatedness I would rate myself high. I don’t deal with being alone well. I need social interactions. I often get homesick and need to be around other people.

I think the picture relates to this chapter because this fish is trying to escape from the fish bowl because its needs aren’t being met. The fish is jumping out of the bowl which is expressing its need of freedom which is autonomy. It’s using competence to get out of the bowl and relatedness because its social needs aren’t being met and it’s lonely.

Key terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, flow

Chapter 6 discusses the role that three psychological needs play in motivation. These psychological needs are known as organismic psychological needs, organismic coming from the term organism meaning “an entity that is alive and in active exchange with its environment.” The main premise of organismic theories is that the person-environment is reciprocal, they exchange with one another. The three psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
The first psychological need discussed was that of autonomy. Autonomy is the psychological need associated with personal freedom and choice, the choice to initiate behaviors and actions. Perceived locus of causality (PLOC), volition, and perceived choice are three factors that contribute to an individual’s feeling of autonomy. An individual’s PLOC is determined by their understanding of whether the causal source of their motivated action is internal (personal) or external (environmental). Individuals who participate in a task willingly, without pressure, are working on high volition. Lastly, perceived choice is high when an individual encounters and environment that allow decision-making flexibility and many options and opportunities to choose from. To maintain an internal PLOC, high degree of volition and perceived choice, we need autonomy support. People who show autonomy support provide a wide range of choices for individuals and the freedom to choose as well as use informational language and explain the purpose of tasks.
Competence, put simply, is the feeling that you are capable of completing a task and feeling effective. The drive to fulfill the psychological need of competence is what motivates us to seek out optimal challenges. The chapter discussed the experience of “flow” as part of the psychological need of competence. We experience flow when we are completely absorbed in the activity and it produces a pleasurable feeling. It occurs when our personal skill and the challenge are either moderately high or high. If challenge is too high, we can experience worry or anxiety. If challenge is too low, we can experience boredom. In order to feel competent, we evaluate the positive feedback we receive from the task itself, current performance compared to past performance, current performance compared to others’ current performance, and the evaluation of others.
According to the textbook, relatedness is “the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships.” To fulfill the psychological need of relatedness, we must interact with the people around us at the very least. But, we need more than just interaction to satisfy the need. We need to create social bonds, which are characterized by mutual care for the welfare of each individual and liking, each other. We are only satisfied in communal relationships. That is, relationships that exchange care and love, rather than just material items or thoughts.
My ratings for each of these three areas would vary depending on the task. Overall though, I would say that I feel medium autonomy, high competence, and high relatedness. I feel medium autonomy because I feel like I do have the freedom to choose different courses of action, but I also feel limited by societal and family pressures at times. I feel high competence because while performing and completing a task, I receive positive feedback acknowledging my capabilities. I also feel like the opportunities for challenge are comparable to my skill level, although, as I previously mentioned, this may not apply to all tasks and activities. Lastly, I feel high relatedness because I engage in many active communal relationships in which I share social bonds with others.
Competence is the psychological need that motivates me to participate in a wide variety of activities. It has motivated me to seek out leadership roles in organizations to challenge myself in terms of how effectively I can lead a group of individuals or organize an event. Succeeding in my various leadership endeavors motivates me to seek out more challenging leadership opportunities. I receive positive feedback from completed the term of my position, comparing my performance to previous positions held, comparing my performance to previous individuals who held the position, and receiving evaluation from others who give me high marks for my contributions and skills. It is also very rewarding to participate in a wide variety of organizations that do so much for the community around me.
I see the fish jumping out of the bowl as a representation of the psychological needs discussed in this chapter. More specifically, the psychological needs of autonomy and competence. The fish is trying to fulfill the need for autonomy by releasing itself from the limitations and boundaries of the fish bowl. The fish is freely choosing whether or not to remain in the bowl. It also represents satisfying the need of competence by showing that it is capable of taking that challenging jump out of the water and even out of the bowl. It could even be receiving positive feedback from its comparison of its current performance with its past performance, which may have been the inability to jump out of the bowl. I believe it is actually a good representation, demonstrating out empowering and satisfying it can be when all three psychological needs are fulfilled allowing us to feel a sense of freedom, like a fish taking a leap out of water.

Terms: Organismic psychological needs, organism, autonomy, perceived locus of control, volition, perceived choice, competence, flow, positive feedback, relatedness, social bonds, communal relationships.

Chapter six focuses heavily on the three psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Autonomy is need to experience self-direction and focuses more on wanting the inner resources of oneself to help them and not environmental ones. Relatedness is the need to build close relationship with others around you, whether it is one person or an entire community. Humans feel the need to want to be part of the group. Competence is the need to interact effectively with you environment. The higher the challenge that is reached, the more enjoyment a person feels reaching something called flow. The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was that when we have good days and bad days these days are based on whether or not our psychological needs have been met. Although this makes complete sense it is funny to look at it that way. If you are going through a bad break up, most of your days after will not be good days because your psychological needs are not being met, for example, competence. I think with autonomy I would rate myself as medium, and that would be the same with competence. With competence I think it manifests in that I am constantly going back and forth between work and school and the ultimate goal with those needs is to be successful. I wouldn’t put in the time and effort to fail and either of those things. I think that I would rank high on the relatedness scale because I am always looking for ways to relate to people when making new friends or thinking about whether someone would be a good significant other for me. I tend to be very picky on the relatedness scale because sometimes I find myself even just looking at a person and thinking “it won’t work”. Unfortunately, that probably causes me to miss out on meeting a lot of nice and interesting people in my life, but I still like just having a small and close group of friends. I think that this picture with the fish has to do with relatedness and competence. The fish wants to get out and be with more people like him rather than being isolated to an empty bowl. I think that this picture also related to competence because he wants to interact effectively within his environment, but in this bowl there is hardly an environment to interact with and he feels the need to get out into a more challenging experience.
Terms: competence, autonomy, flow, relatedness