Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Our social needs include: achievement, affiliation and intimacy and power. Each individual is different in terms of the types of social needs we need to fulfill more. Just like with many things in life, each need has it’s positive and negative sides. A high need for achievement can be good when you push yourself to accomplish a difficult task and when you have the desire to master something (mastery goal). However, when you simply want to be the best at everything in order to boost your status and look cool (performance goal) a high need for achievement is more of a negative quality. When it comes to affiliation and intimacy it’s important to assess your intent behind the relationships you desire. Do you want to have a ton of friends because at the root of your being you are just terrified of not being accepted and being alone (affiliation)? Or, do you have a genuine desire to build a warm and strong relationship with your close friends (intimacy)? Finally, I see power as both good and bad as well. Although the book mostly focuses on the negative side of it, I think it is important to have individuals who will lead us and who have a desire to advocate for us and to influence the world in a positive forward moving way. Power can be and is often abused and selfish. When power is used to better humanity, however, it is a powerful force and quality. I liked section in the book on the Leadership Motive Pattern. It is a good description of how some people are able to use power appropriately.
In the power section, the book talked about socially acceptable outlets for power and aggression (part of the power need). Alcohol was one of those socially acceptable outlets. Drinking is very socially accepted. With drinking there often comes aggressive behavior. Therefore, aggressive and powerful behavior can be justified via drinking. Very interesting. Also annoying. I also found the concept of entity and incremental effort interesting. Those who have an entity effort mindset will think they can never achieve a certain task even if they try at it because they have an idea that their abilities are set in stone and unable to get better. On the other hand, those with an incremental effort mindset believe that their natural ability is not set in stone at all and that they can accomplish anything they put enough effort into. Interesting as well.
Perhaps my ratings of my social needs are not accurate but I think I would rate achievement as the highest and then intimacy followed by power and affiliation. Some of them are fairly close to one another but that is the order I would give them off the top of my head. There are definitely aspects of each need that are important to me. I have a high desire to achieve and better myself (both in mastery and in performance). I get frustrated with myself when I am too concerned about how others think I have performed (i.e. my reputation or status). I love it though when I push myself and try to better myself simply for myself. For instance, when I go rock climbing I really push myself and love to witness achievement. Sometimes I do it for performance reasons, but the most enjoyable times are when I am in a flow state and when I strive to better myself for myself. In regards to intimacy, I have recently discovered my desire to build close and meaningful relationships with people in my life. I think I have developed a little past an affiliation need to an intimacy need. That is not to say that I don’t have times that I have a strong urge to receive the approval of others because I definitely feel that way at times. Gradually, though, I have grown past that. Finally, when it comes to power I can be slightly controlling. In group project situations I feel like I need to be in control. I love voicing my opinion (yet I also find it hard to start a conflict with certain people because of my desire to have affiliation and approval). I want to have a positive impact on the world and not have my impact. Too often, however, I think I build up my opinion and think everyone should believe what I am saying. Sometimes I can be a little self-righteous.
My need for achievement pushes me to do well in school and in athletics. I push myself to do well on tests and to get the best grade in the class at times. I push myself to be able to succeed in the activities that I participate in. Like I said before, sometimes I do these things for myself but all too often I am doing them to impress others and improve my status. I don’t like doing things because of that though so gradually I am starting to focus more and more on doing things for myself.
Terms:achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, mastery goal, performance goal,leadership motive pattern, entity and incremental effort,
Chapter seven further discusses our social needs and how our behavior develops based on those needs. The entire chapter bases the content on the four declared needs including; achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The two basic types of needs are quasi needs and social needs. Quasi being situational needs based on wants. For an example; being a sweatshirt when you are cold. Social needs develop over time based on past experiences and continue to change over time. The needs then further break down into the four groupings stated above.
Achievement is the need to do well on a standard of excellence. Three main influences relate to our need for achievement including; social, cognitive, and developmental. Social influences are created over a period of time based on social experiences. Cognitive influences the way of thinking based on performance and persistence. Developmental influences are prior beliefs, values, emotions and any other prior knowledge that changes the way a person develops. Achievement behavior is consistent with three main factors including; individual need, task, and incentive, and is also driven by three main conditions such as, difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. I found it very interesting how many conditions and areas of development can affect our need for achievement. I would say my need for achievement is very high.
One main item in my life that I am very motivated about is school and I would categorize school under the need for achievement. In the past my motivation for school was low and not driven beyond the means of meeting the grade necessary for passing. Now I find myself striving for dean’s list with the idea of continuing my education. When thinking of the background of my motivation for my origins of achievement, I can develop a sense of understanding. The socialization aspects of my motivation is in relation to my childhood and the parenting styles they interacted with. My childhood was very independent and contained high standards. My childhood was a little rough around the edges if I had to explain it in a short few words. My parents got a divorce at a young age and many aspects of my life were independent. Therefore, all achievements I have set out and met based on my own standard of excellence. The cognitive influences relate to my way of thinking about achievement.My ablity has alway been average or slightly above average. I have never been a student who is the top percentage of the class, however I am above the middle. Therefore, I am optimistic on my outcome of any task I decide to take on. Developmental influences do not play a large role in the way I perceive achievement. I consider myself pride-prone. I have had experience of good evaluation and do not fear failure.
Two other social needs are affiliation and intimacy. These aspects deal with the area of relationship. It is less popular to be in high need for affiliation than low need. It is considered needy to have a high need for affiliation and intimacy. Rejection is one of the main sources for the need of affiliation. Those people with a high need for these needs are constantly looking for approval and reassurance, which undoubtedly creates insecurity. The final need is power, in definition is having control over the way we are perceived. The three aspects of power are impact, control, and influence. Those who contain power are most likely to be leaders, with authority. I personally rate my need for power to be medium. I enjoy being a lead and having control, however, only when I am capable. My need for intimacy is somewhat high. I have strong relationships with those who surround me most.
Key terms: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, quasi needs, social needs. Cognitive, developmental, pattern, relationship, failure, motive,
This chapter discussed both quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are caused by an environmental tension or demand, and disappear when that demand is met. Social needs are more enduring, and “arise from the individual’s personal experiences and unique developmental, cognitive, and socialization histories” (pg. 200). Social needs include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. When we desire to achieve something, we compare ourselves based on a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is defined as “any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success versus failure” (pg. 176). This can include tasks such as writing a paper, getting a personal best in an athletic event, or having the highest GPA in one of your classes. Our need for affiliation is the strongest after rejection, or when we feel lonely. Affiliation can push us toward obtaining intimacy with another person, which means that we have a warm, positive relationship with them. Those who like to have an impact on others and direct their behavior have a strong need for power; the book mentioned that political leaders tend to have a very strong need for it.
The most surprising section for me was the one about prestige possessions. This small section said that college students who have a high need for power tend to possess things such as cars, televisions, stereos, carpet, etc., and “are more likely to put their name on their dormitory room door”. I have worked as a resident assistant for over a year, and I can say that nearly all of the residents in the dorms have most of these possessions, and they also have their names on their doors. Does that mean that they are all power-hungry? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. These possessions just seem so standard to me!
If I had to rate myself on the different social needs, I would rate myself as high on the need for achievement, medium on the need for affiliation, high on the need for intimacy, and low on the need for power. My rating for achievement is high because I generally show approach tendencies toward standards of excellence, and I am highly motivated to succeed in whatever I am doing. This manifests itself in my classes and extracurricular activities that I am involved in. My need for affiliation is medium, because while I enjoy spending time with others, I do not get lonely when I am by myself. I even find that I get cranky if I do not have enough time alone. My need for intimacy is high because my relationships with my family and best friends are emotionally satisfying; I do not feel stifled or entrapped by them, and it is important to me that I maintain my close relationships with them. My need for power is low because I am not very aggressive, and I don’t usually try to make others conform to my plans. I’m a resident assistant, which I guess is a leadership position and something someone with a high power need would want, but I don’t enjoy the part of the job where I have to control others and force my influence on them.
My need for achievement motivates me to study hard in school and maintain a good GPA. Achievement goes hand-in-hand with my need for competence, so if I do not score well on an assignment or exam, my competence becomes threatened and my motivation to achieve strengthens. This is evident because I end up studying for longer periods of time, asking more questions about the material, and putting more effort into my assignments. Not only am I motivated to achieve for present purposes, but I am also motivated to achieve for future purposes. I am not only motivated to get As in my classes for a good undergraduate GPA, but I am also motivated to get As in order to be accepted into a graduate program of my choosing. The book says that “‘Future achievement orientation’ refers to an individual’s psychological distance from a long-term achievement goal” (pg. 180). Since grad school is just around the corner, this means that I have additional achievement motivation that stems from both short-term and long-term goals, which positively affects my performance in the classroom.
Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, prestige possessions, future achievement orientation
Chapter 7 was about social needs. The chapter started off discussing quasi-needs and how these are more situationally induced needs. Next was the discussion of achievement (the first of four social needs) and the authors defined achievement as “the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence.” The influences of the need for achievement were discussed and include socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences.
The idea of Atkinson’s model was talked about in relation to the dynamics-of-action model. Four variables are featured in this model and they include achievement behavior, the need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. Within this model, the tendency to approach success and the tendency to approach failure were also discussed. The dynamics-of-action model was discussed more in depth and the authors said that behavior is determined by instigation, inhibition, and consummation.
Next, the conditions that involve and satisfy the need for achievement were listed as being moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. The authors went on to talk about achievement goals and to answer “why” people show achievement behavior. The ideas of mastery and performance goals (both approach and avoidance) are mentioned in this section. The next section discussed the integration of classical and contemporary approaches to achievement motivation and was followed by the discussion of the influence of avoidance motivation on well-being. The last part of the achievement section discussed implicit theories which include both entity and incremental theorists. Entity theorists are those who believe that our characteristics are unchangeable and enduring. Incremental theorists, on the other hand, believe that our characteristics are malleable and changing.
A rather small portion of the chapter discussed the next two social needs: affiliation and intimacy. The need for affiliation involves maintaining relationships with others to escape from negative circumstances such as being alone. On the other hand, the need for intimacy was described as a social motive for engaging in warm relationships that produce positive emotions. The conditions that involved these two needs are listed as fear and anxiety, establishing interpersonal networks, and maintaining interpersonal networks. The conditions that satisfy these two needs ended this section.
The last need, power, was discussed next. The conditions that satisfy one’s need for power were listed as leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. A discussion of the effectiveness of US presidents ended the chapter. It was found that those presidents who were high in the need of power demonstrated low affiliation and high inhibition.
The most surprising thing I learned was that the need for power can be a very negative thing. The way the book framed it, men who are high on the need for power use relationships as one way to express that need. I also found it interested that women high on the need for power don’t do that. In addition, men high on the need for power are more aggressive than those not. It makes sense of course but it just surprised me because I thought being high on the need for power could be a good thing because I wrongly assumed one would have a larger motive to succeed and achieve.
If I had to rate myself on these social needs I would definitely say I am high on the need for achievement. I think this manifests itself through my schooling for the most part. I also have a job that requires me to work 20-40 hours a week in addition to being a full time student. I also live on my own and pay my own bills. I believe I am high on the need for affiliation and intimacy as well. This manifests itself through the close relationships I have with my family and friends and also through my engagement. With power, however, I believe I am low on that need. At times I can be a leader (specifically in group projects) but for the most part, I tend to shy away from leadership positions because I don’t want that kind of responsibility. I also am not a very aggressive person nor do I own “prestige possessions.”
Because I’m high on the need for achievement, some of the specific behaviors this motivates are why I do my homework, why I show up for work, why I attend class, etc. The need for achievement is very prevalent in my everyday life. Because I have the need to achieve and receive my BA in psychology, my motivation is broken down into daily activities that help me achieve that future goal. These specific behaviors are things like homework, class attendance, etc. I also have the need to be out on my own and the specific behaviors that go alone with this are having a job, paying bills, etc.
Terms: social needs, power, affiliation and intimacy, achievement, dynamics-of-action model, Atkinson’s model, quasi-needs, mastery goals, performance goals, implicit theories, entity theorists, incremental theorists, prestige possessions
The chapter starts out by talking about a familiar term which is needs. It discusses acquired needs which are essential needs that we acquire over time. When we start off in life we go by our need to eat when we are hungry and drink when we are thirsty. The acquired needs are the needs we pick up as we grow, such as making a lot of money, getting a job, etc. There are two categories within acquired psychological needs; social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs pertain to us wanting to be part of a particular group and quasi needs pertain to things that relieve tension at a particular time. An example of this is having a gas can full of gas in your car when your car runs out of gas. The chapter discusses how our achievement and strivings start to develop when parents teach independence and self concepts. When you have a high need for achievement you respond to events with an emotional approach such as hope. People with a low need for achievement respond with fear. Some individuals only do tasks in which they feel they have a high percentage in succeeding (Atkinson’s Classical Model of Achievement). Individuals use performance avoidance goals when they feel they can’t succeed. Performance- approach goals are used when the individual feels they can achieve the task and mastery is accomplished when you tell yourself you will master any task given to you. The chapter then talks about implicit theorists, which predict the type of tasks people pursue, entity theorists that adopt performance goals, and incremental theorists who adopt learning goals. The end of the chapter deals with power. Some people experience high power need at which they try to be the head of any group they’re in. They also seem to have low affiliation and high inhibition.
The most interesting thing I found in this chapter was the discussion on power and how managers, presidents, and other leaders not only have a need for power but have a low need for affiliation and high need for inhibition. You usually just think people are leaders because that’s their job not because they have a high need for it.
I would rate myself as having a high need for intimacy. I like to love and be loved and have a tight group of friends. I have a medium need for power. I don’t have to be in control but don’t like to be helpless in the matter. I have a high need for achievement. Every task I enter I go for the mastery approach. Lastly I have a medium need for affiliation. It is fun and comforting to hang out with friends every once in awhile but I also enjoy being alone every now and then.
My need for achievement motivates me to give my all at work, no matter what the outcome may be. It motivates me to continue in my education despite the rough patches. It also motivates me to accomplish the many goals I have such as saving money, working out, and achieve running a marathon.
Terms: achievement, motivate, Atkinson’s Classical Model of Achievement, power, quasi-needs, social needs, intimacy, entity theorists, implicit theorists, incremental theorists, goals
Chapter 7 was all about social needs that a person has in their life. Social needs and quasi needs were the focal points at the beginning of the chapter. Social needs are an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. We develop these needs through experience, development and socialization. Quasi needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that physiological, psychological, and social needs are. Quasi needs develop from situational demands or pressures. An example of this could be when a bill arrives and we need money to pay it. Social needs can be broken down even further by looking at people with high and low needs of achievement. Achievement is something we do for personal competence. For example if someone wants to do well on a quiz or test they usually study. People with high achievement have goal oriented emotions that drive them to be successful for hope, pride and gratification of doing well on the test. Low achievers will generally respond with avoidance oriented emotions such as the fear of failure. Avoidance oriented people won’t try to study so if they do badly they won’t have to feel bad about it. People usually develop theses orientations at a young age from their parents. Parents who set standards and push their children usually have high achieving children and vice versa.
Affiliation is another social aspect. Affiliation is establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons. People with a high need for affiliation interact with others to avoid negative emotions such as fear of disapproval and loneliness and typically experience much anxiety in their relationship. People high in the need for affiliation come across not as extraverted, friendly or sociable but instead needy. People need to feel affiliated to avoid the feeling of loneliness, rejection, and separation. Relationships that form out of affiliation can lead to intimacy. Intimacy arises from interpersonal caring and concern, warmth and commitment, emotional connectedness, reciprocal dialogue, congeniality, and love. To avoid fear and anxiety in our lives we seek out affliction and intimate relationships. Intimacy relationships develop when a person comes to know more personal information and history about their friends. People with high affiliation tend to strive to maintain those relationships by making more contact to their friends compared to those people with low intimacy relationships.
Power is the essence to make the physical and social world to conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. People with a high need for power desire to have impact, control or influence over another person, group, or the world at large. Impact allows power-needing individuals to establish power, control allows power-needing individuals to maintain power, and influence allows power needing individuals to expand or restore power. High power individuals seek to become and stay leaders and they interact with others with a forceful style. High power people usually seek out people who want to be led as their friends group. This usually leads to many failed relationships.
The most surprising thing I learned in chapter 7 was about people with high affiliation and intimacy. Like the book says, people with high affiliation or intimacy experience much anxiety in their relationships. So they come across very needy in their relationships. I feel like this can statement can be applied to so many of us in a failed relationship. Usually in a relationship that’s doomed, there’s always one person trying a lot harder for the attention of the other. This is because they need the feeling of being wanted. Maybe if people look at this from that point of view they’ll understand that it’s not a normal relationship but I doubt most people look at it this way.
I would rate myself in achievement I would give myself a medium score. I’m a pretty mellow guy so unless I’m very interested in the situation I don’t always apply myself like I should. I obviously need to feel achievement otherwise I wouldn’t be trying to get a degree to get a good job. I would rate myself in affiliation as high. I constantly feel the need to be hanging out with my friends. I get so bored and I always feel like I’m being left out. This isn’t the case so much anymore because I’ve learned to just relax more but it was a serious source of anxiety for me back in high school. I would rate myself as a medium for intimacy. I like to affiliate with people but I don’t always care to know every detail about them. I have few intimate relationships in my life and those belong with my family and best friends. I’m friends with a lot of people but I wouldn’t say they are intimate relationships. I would rate myself as a high in power because deep down I love to be in control. I hate watching other people screw up so I usually take charge in situations. I don’t always like to boss people around but sometimes they just don’t know what they are doing.
One specific need that motivates things in my life is power. Whether it is at work, school or at home I like to be in charge. An example at school would be that I’m usually the person who takes notes and talks in a group when we get assigned to small group activities. It’s not that I don’t think other people can do a good job but I just think I can do it better. This usually applies to things that I know I’m good at rather than everything. At work I’m usually the one to go to for questions or the one who takes charge over a project. It’s just the way people view me and I just take the role.
Terms: Social needs, quasi needs, achievement, high oriented people, low oriented people, affiliation, intimacy, power, relationships, anxiety, fear, impact, control, influence, leadership, aggressiveness
Chapter 7 discusses social needs and quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that psychological, physiological, and social needs are. Social needs are an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. We acquire social needs through experience, development, and socialization. Once we acquire social needs, they act as emotional and behavioral potentials activated by situational incentives. Some social needs are achievement (doing something well to show personal competence), affiliation (opportunity to please others and gain their approval), intimacy (Warm, secure relationships), and power (having impact on others).
The Atkinson’s classical model of achievement predicts approach versus avoidance behaviors rather well in in situations such as moderately difficult tasks, interpersonal competition, and entrepreneurship. According to this model, behavioral approach versus avoidance is a multiplicative function of the individual’s need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success, as well as the individual’s fear of failure, probability of failure, and incentive to avoid failure.
One thing I found really surprising in this chapter was the prestige possessions. Being in college and have had lived in the dorms I have noticed people who have “prestige possessions.” Guys like to have and show off their big stereo systems or gaming systems in their rooms and girls like to have nicer furniture or decorations. The book says college students in need of higher power “are also more likely to put their name on their dormitory room door.” I disagree with that. Everyone is my dorm had their name on the door because it’s a way to get to know people in your hall. I had my name on my door and decorated my door for every holiday and season but I do not think I am in the need for more power.
If I had to rate myself I would give myself a high score for achievement. My high need for achievement manifests itself through my job and my school work. I would rate myself a medium score for power. I do like to be the leader and having a little bit of control in some things but I don’t like to have the control all the time. Sometimes I can be very indecisive and I need other people to help me make decisions. My affiliation need is also medium. I like spending time with others but I do like having time to myself. I don’t feel lonely when I’m without people and I am not always looking for other people’s approval and acceptance. My need for intimacy is high. I like have close, warm relationships with others.
My high need for achievement helps me work 35 hours a week and be a full time student. Being on my own and having to pay for school, rent, groceries, everything, and maintaining my GPA can be very stressful. If I didn’t have this high need for achievement it would be very difficult to keep up with my schooling and to be living on my own.
Terms: Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson model, prestige.
Not only did this chapter discuss social needs (though that was the main theme of the chapter) we were also introduced to quasi needs. I talked about quasi needs in my American Beauty post as well. Quasi needs are situational-inclined psychological needs we think we need, yet it is more of a “strong want”. For example, when we are at the store we think we NEED money, but we really don’t. Another interesting example that the textbook gave was that when you’re standing in the rain, you think you NEED an umbrella, but in all reality we really just WANT the umbrella. Social needs come from personal experiences and our own developmental, cognitive, and socialization histories. There are four main social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement motivates you to do something well to show personal competence. Affiliation is desiring the opportunity to please others and gain their approval. Intimacy I the social need to have warm and secure relationships. And finally, power is wanting to have an impact on others.
The thing I found most surprising about this chapter was the small section on aggressiveness. In the few paragraphs listed here, it talked about how aggression can be a means of involving and satisfying power needs. This is why individuals, especially men, who have a high social need for power tend to be more aggressive. Obviously society offers restrictions to this correlation – you can’t just go around beating everyone in order to exert power. Therefore these aggression outburst are more impulsive rather than premeditated. Although obviously we know that there are individuals out there who do plan aggressive acts in order to gain power. I wonder if there were no laws, law enforcement officials, etc. how many more people would use aggression to gain control and power. I’m afraid to say that I believe there would be many more crimes because of power struggles.
It was a lot harder to rate myself on the social needs than it was for the psychological needs. Perhaps this is because I rated myself highest for the psychological need of relatedness, and that is very similar to social needs. With that being said, it is probably safe to say that my highest social need is intimacy. My next highest need would have to be affiliation. I say this not so much because I strive to gain other’s approval, but I am definitely a people pleaser. My need for achievement is probably somewhere in the middle and then finally my need for power is more than likely my lowest social need.
I rated myself high in intimacy because I crave strong relationships. I do a great job of establishing and maintaining interpersonal networks. I am currently in a very serious relationship with my boyfriend I have had for years. I am also insanely close with my family, for I visit home much more than a college senior should. I also am very blessed to have many close friends that I know would do anything for me, and I the same for them. These relationships all fall in the autobiography and thoughts categories in the Profile of High Intimacy Motivation. I also rated myself high in the affiliation social need. I found this interesting because in the chapter, these two social needs shared a section rather than having their own. So it makes sense that if I were high in one, I would be high in another. Just as I stated above, I tend to be a people pleaser. I’ve had friends or family say to me before, “You need to be meaner! Don’t let them walk all over you! Stop sacrificing for others so much!” I would personally rather other people get the best and I take what is left, because I really just want to help and make others happy.
I rated myself medium in achievement because though I don’t believe it is a high need, I still want others to find my competent. I still exert effort and create goals for myself. An example would be from mid-January to mid-March last year I ate extremely healthy and exercised enough to lose close to 20 pounds. This was a mastery goal for myself (a goal that was personal to me) rather than a performance goal (a goal based on society’s view), because I’m sure I could afford to lose another 10 pounds. However, I was still very proud of myself and felt much more confident on my trip to Mexico that spring!
I rated myself low in the social need for power just because it isn’t important to me. Now obviously we all have these social needs, so even if I don’t rate myself high in this area, I still desire some power over certain situations. Earlier in my post I talked about how sometimes aggressiveness can be related to power. I would definitely not classify myself as an aggressive person, so there is another reason why I believe power is not a high need for me. In the posts last week when we talked about psychological needs, I rated myself lowest in autonomy because I am terrible at making decisions. I believe this goes hand in hand with the need of power, so therefore it makes sense that my power need, just like my need for autonomy, is low.
My need for intimacy motivates me in a lot of ways, it just depends on who it is directed at. This week I am not going home on Thursday, as I often do, because I am celebrating being done with the GRE with my girlfriends. We are going out for margaritas that night as I will have taken the test earlier that day (Tomorrow! Ahh!). However when I do go home on Thursdays, it is so I can see my boyfriend. The opportunity to see him motivates me to leave on Thursday afternoon to travel home.
Terms:
Profile of High Intimacy Motivation, autobiography category, thoughts category, aggression, power, achievement, intimacy, affiliation, motivation, social needs, psychological needs, quasi needs, relatedness, establishing and maintaining interpersonal networks, mastery goal, performance goal, autonomy,
Like everyone else said, chapter 7 examined the four basic social needs of achievement, affiliation and intimacy and power. Quasi-needs were also looked at in which they are are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that physiological, psychological, and social needs are. They are caused by an environmental tension or demand, and disappear when that demand is met. One quasi-need for me would be getting a pedicure or manicure about once a month. Even though I don't need either, I want my nails to look nice and kept clean and once they are, I don't think about it again for another month or so. This is different for other needs.
Social needs are an acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. One social need that I would rate myself very high on would be affiliation. The book defines it as establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons. I love being around people and having relationships with close friends and family is very important to me. One of the main reasons why I chose to go to UNI was actually because of my social need of affiliation. I knew a lot of people who were also going here and it was close to home which meant close to family. Although I enjoy being around people and meeting new people I don't think I have a high need for affiliation. I think it would be a moderate need because I'm fine being on my own, I just perfer being around others and enjoy the company. Affiliation can also lead to intimacy with another person. This has happened to me before. It usually results in a warm and understanding relationship. Even though we're not together anymore, we're still friends because we were even before we became intimate. This is also the need that motivates my behavior in most cases in my life. I do things because I like being around people. It motivates me into wanting to go outside of my comfort zone and it motivates me because it makes me happy. Even in my internship right now, I work with people and am constantly interacting with others.
As for achievement, I would probably rate myself as medium. I'm proud of all the things I've accomplished and I'm very satisfied with where I am at today. I've always had goals to get to where I am but they've never been set high because setting high goals can also lead to failure. I usually set mastery goals. Mastery goals are more attainable; you set a goal for yourself to better yourself and worry about only your standards. I just take things as they come and make the best of what I have. I do strive for a successful future with a great career and family someday.. but to me, I think those come in time and with experience, effort, and my education. I'm honestly not worried about my future at all because I know I will be successful eventually. I also have great friends, family, and people to look up to that I know will help me along the way.
The last social need to rate myself on is power. This is having control over the way we are perceived. The three aspects of power are impact, control, and influence. I would rate myself medium on this as well. The book states that power can be a negative thing and I would definitely agree. Too much power can be a bad thing. People with a lot of power tend to think less of others and more about themselves. I'm not saying everyone who has a lot of power is somewhat selfish but that's mostly the case. I learned about this topic in another psychology class and learned that people usually consider power as being wealthy, taking control, and being able to influence others (maniuplation). The reason I rate myself as medium is because I do like to be in control of certain things. When it comes to planning events or getting groups together, I like to be the one who plans everything (places, time, who is involved). For intramurals, I have been the team captain before and I want to win. I'm not going to lie, I don't like having people on our team who are horrible, so not to be rude, but I won't ask them to play. They have to be at least decent and have played the sport before. Even though this may seem mean, this is a form of power for me. Being able to choose who can and cannot be on the team and letting everyone know our game plan prior to gametime.
Like a couple other people, the thing that most surprises me in this chapter was that people with high need for power are more likely to put their name on their door in their dorm. I somewhat agree with this to a certain extent. In my dorm freshman year, everyone had to put their names on their dorm. But I guess if you were to have a choice it would be interesting to see who would. People who do put their name on their door want others to know who they are. Others though, are just being friendly. This should actually relate to affiliation because maybe they are putting their name on their door to meet other people. Either way, I guess putting your name on your dorm dorm is part of a social need.
Terms: Quasi-needs, social needs, affiliation, intimacy, power, achievement, mastery goals
Chapter 7 discusses two different types of needs: quasi needs and social needs. Quasi needs are situational needs. They affect how we think, feel and act. An example the textbook gave was when you are caught in the rain. You think you need an umbrella but in reality you just want an umbrella. Social needs are learned through experience, development and socialization. Social needs have 4 main components: achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. The need for achievement is the desire to do well. It motivates people to seek success. Affiliation is establishing, maintaining or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons. A person with a high need for intimacy thinks frequently about friends and relationships. Lastly, the need for power is a desire to make the physical and social world confirm to one’s personal image or plan for it. Each person is unique in terms of the amount of social needs we need.
If I had to rate myself I would rate achievement as high. Everything I do I strive for the best. This is present in my school work. I struggle with school and it doesn’t come easy for me. This makes me want try even harder. The reason I show up for class every day or the reason I do my homework is because of my goal of good grades. Every little aspect of my life is affected by my goals and achievements. I set many goals for myself and make checklists to complete them. I think I talked about this in another chapter but RAGBRAI was a huge achievement for me. It was extremely hard and I wanted to quit but the satisfaction and sense of achievement when I finished was totally worth it. I wouldn’t have felt the same way if I had just done a couple of days of the ride. My need for affiliation I would rate medium. I live in my sorority house and I love it. There’s always someone around to talk to or hang out with but sometimes I just need some down time. I like being alone every once in a while and enjoy the piece and quite. It depends on my mood. I would rate myself high for intimacy. My close friends and family are very important to me. I turn to them on a regular basis and don’t know what I would do without any one of them. They are all important to me in their own unique way. Lastly, power I would rate low. I don’t like being in charge but if a crisis or problem arises, I don’t want to be helpless.
I found prestige possessions very surprising!! Prestige possessions are when people are high in the need for power. They tend to accumulate an assortment of power symbols. Individuals in college who are high in the need for power are more likely than others to possess a car, wine glasses, a TV, stereo and wall decorations. This was amazing to me! I feel like this day in age everyone has these possessions. I know I personally have all of these items and have a low need for power.
Terms used: quasi needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, prestige possessions
Chapter 7 is all about social needs. This chapter discusses 2 categories of psychological needs, which are social needs and quasi-needs. According to the text, "Social needs originate from preferences gained through experience, socialization, and development," Quasi-needs on the other hand are needs that arise from situationally induced wants, such as the need for money, or self esteem when you get rejected. The text states that quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full blown needs the way that physiological, psychological, and social needs are. Quasi-needs are things like needing money, a well paying job, and the approval of our parents. These needs are usually urgent to us and really grab our attention. Quasi-needs are what we lack, but need, from our environment.
Social needs arise from our experience, development, and socialization. Social needs are our needs for achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Our need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Our need for achievement is what movtivates us to try our best on a specific task. People that have a high need for achievement usually respond to a situation with approach-oriented emotions like hope and anticipatory gradification. People that have a low need for achievement ususally respond to a situation with avoidant emotions like anxiety, defense, and fear of failure. One approach to understanding achievement motivation is Atkinson's Model. According to the text, "Atkinson argued that the need for achievement only partly predicts achievement behavior. Achievement behavior depends not only on the individual's dispositional need for achievement but also on his or her task specific probabliity of success at a task and the incentive for succeeding at that task." Atkinson states that some activities have a high probabliity for success and that others have a low probability for success. He also says that there are three predictors for achievement behavior, and he shows this with a formula. He shows that achievement behavior is a choice to either approach the standard of excellence or avoid it.
In the next part of the chapter affiliation and intimacy are discussed. Affiliation is our need to establish, maintain, or restore a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons. People that have a high need for affiliation are often unpopular and seen as needy. This is because they often have to seek reassurance from others. We all have the needs to be approved and to be intimate with others. Intimacy is engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relations that hold little fear of rejection. Conditions such as loneliness, rejection, and separation raise our need for affiation. The more we feel these ways the more we want to be accepted by others. Seeking out others can help to reduce our anxieties as well. Some people have a high need for affiliation where as others have a low need for intimacy. People with a high need typically form close friendships/relationships. People like this feel that as the relationship progresses, they become closer and closer to that person. People that have a low need for intimacy are the opposite. They feel that as a relationship progresses they feel stifled and trapped.
Finally we have a need for power. Power is our desire to make the physical and social world conform to our personal image or plan for it. People that have a high need for power desire to have an impact and control over others. People with high needs for power are many times in leadership posititons. A high need for power can also lead to aggressive behaviors. People like this will do whatever it takes to get control over their situation. People with a high need for power are also attracted to jobs like, business executives, teachers/professors, psychologists, journalists, clergy, and international diplomats.
I think that my needs for intimacy and achievement are both high. Especially my need for intimacy because I keep my friends very close. I do not feel that continuing a friendship means that I am trapped. The longer I know a person the closer I feel to them. My need for achievement is high because I strive to do well especially when it comes to school. I try my hardest in all my classes. Yes, sometimes I get a little lazy or burnt out, but I hate to fail. I have no one to blame but myself if I haven't tried my hardest and fail because of it. (I actually called into work today so I could study! Shhhhh!) My need to achieve motivates me to work hard in school. I will be the first person in my house to have a college degree, that is something that also really motivates me to do my best. I like to achieve my goals because it makes me feel really good to do so. I have a twin brother and he is actually almost the complete opposite. It agravates me that he doesn't want to try his hardest in school like I do. We don't get along sometimes because our needs for achievement are so different.
Terms: Social needs, quasi-needs, affiliation, achievement, intimacy, power, Atkinson's Theory, standard of excelence.
Chapter 7 discussed Social needs, which are acquired through experience, development, and socialization, and everyone needs different levels of these needs to be satisfied. These needs include the need for achievement, intimacy, power, and affiliation. The need for achievement arises when a person has to demonstrate their competence in a task, the need for intimacy occurs when the person wants a warm, caring relationship, the need for power arises when someone wants to have an impact on others, and the need for affiliation occurs when an individual has to seek the approval of others.
One thing I found surprising about this chapter was the entity vs. the incremental theories of characteristics. Entity theorists believe that individuals are given fixed, enduring characteristics that cannot be changed. For example, an entity theorist would believe that intelligence cannot be increased, and that you are either intelligent or you are not. Incremental theorists on the other hand, believe that individuals have qualities that are malleable and can be changed with a little effort. For example, an incremental theorist would believe that an unintelligent person can become more intelligent through guidance, learning, and experience.
I would rate myself as high on intimacy and achievement, medium on affiliation, and low on power. I strive to make deep, caring relationships with the people I become friends with; I feel that if I do this then the other person will do the same for me, and everyone benefits. I am also high in achievement, because I greatly dislike being incompetent at anything. I strive especially hard in school, since good grades are needed to impress everyone in the outside world. Power is something that I do not care that much about; I hate getting bossed around and told what to do, so when I find myself in a position of power I try to work with others so that they don’t feel like I am trying to exert my power over them. I prefer a democracy to a dictatorship.
I would say that my need for achievement is very important in my life; because of it, I push myself to work hard in my classes so I can get good grades and impress potential empoyers in the outside world. Achievement also pushes me to excel at any job I have because I don’t want my employer to think I’m incompetent at my own job. When I do achieve a goal I’ve set for myself in a setting like that, it makes me feel good about myself, and creates intrinsic motivation to succeed more in the future.
Terms: Social needs, achievement, affiliation, power, intimacy, entity theorist, incremental theorist
Chapter 7 is all about social needs. Before completely diving into the topic of social needs, it first took a little time to focus on what are known as quasi-needs. According to the textbook, quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that physiological, psychological, and social needs are (p.173). It went on to say how quasi-needs originate from situational demands and pressures. Quasi-needs are not essential for life, growth, and well-being. Instead, they are something that has more to do with the pressures of the environment more than it does the needs of the individual.
From there, the book discusses social needs and how they motivate behavior. The first social need it goes into discussion about is the need for achievement, which, according to the textbook, is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence (p.175). It is any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success versus failure, win versus lose, or right versus wrong. It talks about how the origins of the need for achievement stem from socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. After that, two theoretical approaches about the understanding of achievement motivation known as the classical view and the contemporary view come into play. There is an entire section that discusses Atkinson’s model, the tendency to approach success, the tendency to avoid failure, and a combined approach and avoidance tendencies. Moving forward from that, the textbook went into discussing conditions that involve and satisfy the need for achievement. These include: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship.
After the section on the need for achievement comes the section on the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy. What I gathered from the textbook was that the need for affiliation has to do with pleasing others and gaining their approval, whereas the need for intimacy has to do with having warm, secure relationships. The book covered conditions that involve the affiliation and intimacy needs. These conditions are fear and anxiety, establishing interpersonal networks, and maintaining interpersonal networks.
After this section on the need for affiliation and intimacy, the book switched its focus to the need for power. People high in the need for power desire to have impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large (p.195). Conditions that involve and satisfy the need for power include leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. All in all, Chapter 7 did a good and thorough job of covering all aspects of social needs and what they entail.
The most surprising thing that I learned from reading this chapter would definitely have to be that the need for affiliation is something entirely different than what I pictured it to be. I previously thought that the need for affiliation just mean that people wanted to be involved with each other and be connected in terms of having different kinds of relationships and emotional ties with others. What I found out from reading the textbook, though, gave me different insight on what the need for affiliation truly is. I found out that people that are high in the need for affiliation are not necessarily popular and they have fear of interpersonal rejection. These people interact with others to avoid negative emotions, and they generally experience a lot of anxiety in their relationships. These people may come across to others as being needy people. The need for affiliation can be thought of as the need for approval, acceptance, and security in interpersonal relations (p.192). This information kind of blew my mind because I was thinking of the need for affiliation as entirely the wrong thing.
If I had to rate myself as high, medium, or low on the various social needs for achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power, I would definitely say that I am high on the need for achievement, medium on the need for affiliation and intimacy, and medium on the need for power. These various levels definitely manifest themselves in my daily life. For example, my need for achievement is high, especially when it comes to doing well in school. I am someone who needs to be doing better than others, and I often times feel as though I am in competition with myself as well. I am always trying to better myself and get the best possible grades that I can. If I fail or do poorly on something, I do not take it lightly. It is a huge deal for me, and I don’t get over it very easily. My medium need for affiliation and intimacy also manifests itself in my life. I want to please my professors and peers and gain their approval to some extent, and I also want to have warm, secure relationships with my friends, family, and my boyfriend. These needs are very important in my life. My need for power is not as extreme as my need for achievement, but it is definitely still there. I like to be in control of a lot of situations. If I am made to work in a group, I always become the group leader and sort of dominate how we do things. People tend to follow, so I am happy to take over and lead.
I already sort of discussed how the need for achievement motivates some of my specific behaviors, such as working hard at doing well in school. My high need for achievement also plays roles in other areas of my life, including at work and at home. I work at a group home for special needs children, and helping them out helps me feel a sense of personal competence. Working where I work and doing what I do motivates me to be the best that I can be in that area. Every time I show up for work I am ready to put all of my effort into helping my consumers be the best that they can be and accomplish as many different tasks as they possibly can. It truly makes me feel competent when I do my job well. The need for achievement can also be seen at home because I do a bunch of chores and tasks around the house to make my parents see that I am responsible and competent. I am able to do well and become energized by it. I am someone who is high on the need for achievement, and this can be seen in many different aspects of my life.
This chapter on social needs has really taught me a lot. I gained a lot of insight on what the needs for achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power are. I am excited to move forward and learn more in these coming weeks!
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, wants, needs, physiological needs, psychological needs, motivate, behavior, need for achievement, socialization influences, cognitive influences, developmental influences, classical theoretical approach, contemporary theoretical approach, Atkinson’s model, need for affiliation, need for intimacy, need for power
Chapter 7 explains the concepts of social needs and describes each part in detail. The three major parts to social needs are achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power. These three parts combined together are the things that people strive for in their lives in relation to their interactions with others. This chapter starts off by talking about the difference between actual social needs and quasi needs. Social needs are acquire through experience, development and socialization. They are different from quasi needs because quasi needs just induce desire and want, but are not things that are actually needed for a person’s well-being. They just originate from situational pressures and demands unlike social needs that occur from emotions and behaviors within a situation that need to be around for a person’s well-being.
One of the social needs talked about extensively in this chapter is achievement. Achievement is the desire to do well in relation to a standard of excellence. Everyone seeks to accomplish some task in their life and they want to do a good job at it as they accomplish it. Researchers have found that achievement was not only influenced by one aspect in life but by many. It is influenced socially, cognitively and developmentally. Socially it is influenced by parents to their children that it is best to high standards of excellence. Cognitively we think of achievement as a challenge that we optimally seek out and want to put a lot of our best effort into it. Developmentally we set our standards high as children and do not back down from things that are too challenging and once we grow up we start to see things more realistically and set out for the things we can see ourselves achieving. Another aspect of social needs is affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is described as establishing and maintaining a positive an affective relationship with another person, while intimacy is experiencing a warm and close relationship with another person. Each of these things is how we accomplish a positive relationship with others. Affiliation can also come off as being negative if a person is in too high of a need for it. Then a person is just looking to avoid negative emotions in the relationship and can seem needy. They may fear rejection and loneliness. The last form of social need talked about in this chapter is power. Power is described as the need to have control and influence over another person or a group of people. This often is centered on the need for dominance and high status in life. One way that people satisfy this need is by having high aggression. Aggression can be displayed by having arguments and being involved in competitive sports. These three forms of social need are displayed in some form everyday by most everyone in our world.
The part of this chapter that I found surprising was the part on prestige possessions. This part talked about people that have high need for power tend to collect more possessions that show they have power. Such things could be a TV, a car, wine glasses, putting their name on their door. Some older individuals may own things like guns and rifles or a convertible car. I am not sure if I truly agree with this statement because a lot of people just own those things because they enjoy having them, not because they want to show power. I can say that I own most of those things and I am not trying to go around and flaunt that I am “powerful”; they are just ways of me enjoying life a little more. This was why I found the idea of prestige possessions as shocking.
If I had to rate myself on which social needs are high, medium and low in my life, I would rate Achievement as high, Intimacy and affiliation as medium and power as low. These reason I choose achievement as a high need in my life is because it really is what my life is all about right now. I am a college student, that’s my full time job and as a college student I am trying to achieve a high level of education and a degree in psychology. It has been my choice to approach the standard of excellence instead of avoiding it. Every day I do homework so that I can achieve more knowledge and better grades on tests. I want to have a Ph.D. someday and that is one very high achievement for anyone to pursue. It is what my goal has been for a long time, so that is why I rank achievement as a high social need for myself. I secondly ranked affiliation and intimacy because having close relationships is what keeps me going when I feel like I am failing at achieving my goals. I have a wonderful boyfriend in my life that helps me fulfill a warm and close relationship. He is very important to me and means a lot more than having power does. That is why I ranked power as my lowest need. I do not feel the need to show dominance over anyone in my life and I am not an aggressive person. I actually tend to avoid any moments where I may want to be aggressive such as playing in competitive sports or games. I am honestly more of a follower than a leader in most situations. Overall, Achievement and Intimacy are more important than power ever will be.
Looking at my life and seeing how Intimacy motivates some of my specific behaviors is very interesting. I never really put much thought into how one aspect of my social needs can be so important in everyday living. When I was younger I was not a very social girl, I would only talk with my close friends and family and shy away from anyone else. Now that I am older I am not quite as shy, but I do still value my close relationships a lot more. Ever since I started dating my boyfriend my sense of intimacy has changed. I have more frequent conversations with him, I engage in intensive listening and self-disclosure. I had never experienced these needs before I met him. I was not sure if I was ever going to experience these feelings and now that I have I never want them to go away. Intimacy has definitely played a role in how I behave now compared to back when I was a kid.
This chapter overall has explained in detail what social needs are and why they are important for everyone’s well being. I enjoyed reading this chapter because I was not really sure what a social need was other than just interacting with other people. Now that I have read chapter 7, I know the many aspects that each person has in them that makes them want achievement, intimacy and power.
Terms: social needs, quasi needs, achievement, social influence, cognitive influence, developmental influence, affiliation, intimacy, power, aggression, prestige possessions
Chapter 7 on social needs covers acquired needs, achievement, and other theories. Acquired psychological needs include quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi needs are purely situational wants and desires that arise from psychological contexts. Social needs arise from an individual’s personal experiences. Once acquired, social needs act as emotional and behavioral potentials. There are four social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
The need for achievement is the desire to do well and have a standard of excellence. According to Atkinson’s classical model of achievement, behavioral approach rather than avoidance functions for an individual’s need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. It also functions as an individual’s fear of failure, probability of failure, and incentive to avoid failure. Within an achievement situation, there are three types of achievement goals: performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. Needing achievement predicts an individual taking on a performance-approach goal, and fear of failure predicts performance—voidance goals, and high competency expectancies predict mastery goals. Mastery and performance-approach goals are usually associated with positive outcomes, and performance-avoidance goals are not.
Implicit theories reveal whether people think their personal qualities are fixed (entity theorists) or malleable (incremental theorists). Implicit theorists are important because they predict what type of goals people pursue. Entity theorists generally adopt performance goals and incremental theorists adopt learning goals. Entity and incremental theorists also have a different view of effort. Entity theorists think high effort means low ability, and incremental theorists think effort is the means by which learning occurs and skills develop.
Affiliation strivings have two needs: the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy. The need for affiliation means establishing, maintaining and restoring relationships with other people. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in interpersonal relationships.
Finally, the need for power is the desire for making the physical and social world conform to someone’s personal view of it. High-power need individuals strive for leadership in small groups, experience frequent impulses of aggression, and prefer influential occupations.
What most surprised me about this chapter was the section on Atkinson’s model. Atkinson actually put achievement into a formula. The theory has four variables: achievement behavior and its three predictors, need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. The model is expressed in the formula (Ts=Ms X Ps X Is). Ms corresponds to the person’s need for achievement. Ps is the perceived difficulty of the task and perceived ability. Is is equal to 1-Ps.
I would consider myself high on the need for achievement, and medium on the need for affiliation, and medium on the need for power. The need for affiliation is establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person or persons. People who are high in the need for affiliation come across as needy, which I don’t consider myself to be, that’s why I rated myself as medium. I have fulfilling relationships in my life that satisfy my need for affiliation.
Terms: acquired needs, achievement, quasi-need, social need, affiliation, intimacy, power, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, implicit theories, entity theorist, incremental theorist, Atkinson’s model
Chapter 7 discusses human social needs. Those needs that are acquired are social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs are acquired psychological processes that grow out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. Social needs are broken down into four main groups: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. We acquire social needs through development, experience, and socialization. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants that create tense energy to engage in behavior capable of reducing the built-up tension (such as the need for an umbrella when it rains). Quasi-needs are separate from social needs in that they disappear once we get what we want – they are not “full-blown” needs.
The social need of achievement is defined by the text as the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. The need for achievement is drawn from socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. The text continues to describe Atkinson’s model: two theoretical approaches that dominate the understanding of achievement motivation – classical and contemporary. The classical view of the model is called the dynamics-of-action model (achievement behavior occurs w/in stream of ongoing behavior). The contemporary view is a cognitive approach that centers on the goals people adopt in achievement situations. John Atkinson was known for arguing that the need for achievement only partly predicts achievement behavior. His theory features four variables: achievement behavior and its three predictors – need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. Atkinson’s model is constructed into a formula that consists of different variables: tendency to approach success, tendency to avoid failure, approach and avoidance tendencies, and achievement for the future. Conditions that involve and satisfy the need for achievement are: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. In response to achievement goals, Atkinson’s model treats achievement behavior as a choice: approach the standard of excellence or avoid it. Another topic that falls under the social need for achievement is that of implicit theories. Entity theorists believe that people have a fixed amount of intelligence, personality, or motivation – your intelligence is something about you that you cannot change very much. Incremental theorists believe personal qualities are something that people cultivate through effort and learning – you can always greatly change how intelligent you are. In achievement situations, entity theorists focus on performance goals, whereas incremental theorists focus on mastery of goals.
The social need of affiliation is defined as “establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive, effective relationship w/ another person or persons.” It can also be described as the anxious need to establish, maintain, and restore interpersonal relations. The social need of intimacy is defined as the need to engage in warm, close, and positive relations. The need for affiliation expresses itself as a deficiency-oriented motive, whereas the need for intimacy expresses itself as a growth-oriented motive. Conditions that involve affiliation and intimacy are: fear and anxiety, establishing interpersonal networks, and maintaining interpersonal networks.
The social need of power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. Those high in power need desire to have “impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.” Impact allows power-needing individuals to establish power; control allows power-needing individuals to maintain power; influence allows power-need individuals to expand or restore power. The text lists four conditions that involve and satisfy the need for power: leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions. An alternative need for power is defined by the leadership motive pattern. Within this pattern, there is a threefold pattern of needs: high need for power, low need for intimacy/affiliation, and high inhibition. The text states that individuals who desire to exercise influence, are not concerned with being liked, and are well controlled or self-disciplined. To conclude the social need of power, the text lists a few of the strong presidents of the United States and explains that they were powerful and effective due to their high levels of power needs as well as their low levels of affiliation needs.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was in response to the Atkinson model. I found it extremely interesting at how complex his model was. The equations provided in the text seemed intense and confusing at first, but thankfully they were explained further in the chapter. The summary stated that “according to Atkinson’s classical model of achievement, behavioral approach versus avoidance is a multiplicative function of the individual’s need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success (i.e. Ts = Ms × Ps × Is), as well as the individual’s fear of failure, probability of failure, and incentive to avoid failure (i.e. Taf = Maf × Pf × If).” The Atkinson model was definitely the most surprising thing I learned. I found it extremely interesting to attach an equation (or two) to the social need of achievement.
If I had to rate myself as high, medium, or low on the various social needs, I would rate myself as high for achievement need, medium for affiliation need, high for intimacy need, and low for power need. I have a high need for achievement because I have great passion and desire to do well in response to a standard of excellence. I enjoy proving myself and my abilities but I require an atmosphere or situation of which to do so. With a standard of excellence set, my goals and need for achievement increase greatly as I wish to portray my capabilities in the given situation. An example of how this manifests itself in my life is through my academics and extra-curricular activities. My need to succeed in the classroom motivates me to do my best on my homework assignments and study for tests in advance. I have a medium need for affiliation because I enjoy close relationships, but do not need to be constantly surrounded by people. My social need of affiliation manifests itself in my life as it does not interfere in my need to be in a social setting constantly. I have a high need for intimacy because I am constantly on the look-out for warm, close, and communicative relationships. My high intimacy need manifests itself in my life because I love feeling close and connected to people and I feel a sense of belonging when the relationship grows more personal. I have a low need for power because I do not like to be in control or in charge of people. I am definitely a follower and would rather be led by someone else who is better capable of completing the job. I do not have a desire to make the physical and social world conform to my personal image or plan for it. A way that my low need for power manifests itself in my life is that I do not like the notion, if present, of being the person everyone looks to for guidance. My low self-confidence definitely affects my need for power and concludes that the need is most certainly low.
One social need that motivates some of my specific behaviors is the need of intimacy. I am constantly looking for close relationships and will go out of my way to try and connect with others. I try to make conversation with peers around me before class in an attempt to widen my circle of friends or acquaintances. My high level of intimacy also poses problems in my life. I am extremely shy, and thus am not persistent in making friends. If I talk to someone sitting next to me in class, the next class I may not have the “guts” to talk to them in that class. I use my high need for intimacy though, to try and battle my shy personality because I really do love connecting and being close to others.
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, Atkinson’s model, (classical view of model – dynamics-of-action model – and contemporary view of model), entity theorists, incremental theorists, affiliation, intimacy, power, and leadership motive pattern
Chapter 7 discussed the social needs that individuals experience on a daily basis. Social needs fall under the category of acquired needs which are needs that humans are not born with. Quasi needs also fall under the category of needs that are acquired throughout life. They are developed throughout one’s life through life experiences so everyone develops them differently. Acquired needs have social origins instead of innate origins which makes them different than all of the other types of needs we have learned about so far.
Quasi needs are not exactly a necessity but are desires and wants depending on the situation. When a person satisfies a demand in a certain situation, the quasi need goes away. For example, if I see a hat that I really like in a store, I have a quasi-need for it that can dominate my thoughts for the time being. It is obviously not a true need but can resemble characteristics of a true need. This type of need can be very intense depending on the situation it is in. Although you do not absolutely need your debit card, it can be very frustrating and distressing if you lose it.
Social needs develop throughout one’s life experiences and differ depending on how one was raised. This is more evidence that social needs are not innate but learned needs. These needs are activated by situational incentives and effect people differently. One situation might activate hope in one person when it activates fear in another person. These social needs can be reflected in the need for achievement. When one has a high need for achievement, they will approach the behavior in order to achieve a better outcome. Someone who has a low need for achievement will avoid the behavior because they do not need to feel bad when they do not succeed. The other three main social needs include affiliation (desire to gain others approval and make them happy), intimacy (desire for warm and secure relationships), and power (desire to manipulate the world into changing to resemble one’s ideal world).
I don’t know if it necessarily surprised me after I thought about it, but the section about prestige possessions was really intriguing and definitely stuck out to me. It explains how people who have a high need for power like to collect expensive items that may exude status and power. It describes people owning guns and trucks if they are in high need of power. The rest of the items listed seemed a little odd, but after I thought about it and I thought about people I know who own those items, it all made sense.
If I were to rate my desire for the four main social needs, it would look like this: Achievement: High. Affiliation: Medium. Intimacy: Medium. Power: High. I rated myself high for achievement because I am a very competitive person and it really bothers me when I don’t do as well as I expected or I don’t do as well as someone that I think I am better than in the particular situation. I care a lot about my GPA and this definitely motivates a lot of my behavior. I know that I will not be happy if I don’t satisfy my need for achievement so I stay in one night of a weekend if I have a big test or paper. This situation also displays my lower need for affiliation. I like hanging out with my friends and seeing people when I go out, but the need for achievement and power is more intense. I know that working had can lead to achievements I am proud of and eventually a powerful career. My need for achievement also motivated me throughout high school to refrain from drinking until all of my sports were over. I did not want to miss a portion of the season for getting caught drinking even though the rest of my friends were doing it. Again, this represents the importance of achievement in my life.
Achievement, power, prestige possessions, affiliation, quasi-need, social need, acquired need, innate origin, intimacy, fear,
Chapter seven discussed social needs, which are needs that we develop throughout our life. Social needs can be gained through experiences, socializing with our peers, and our development. For example someone may learn that working out and staying in tip-top shape and diet to make others take notice of their figure. That would be an example of a social need, because we developed that throughout life. Social needs are always changing. What may be important to you one day may not necessarily be important to you in a few years. Like for the above example, working out may be important to someone when they are in their younger stages of life, but they might not feel the need to work out as much or at all when they are in the middle of their career with a family of their own. Chapter seven discusses four types of social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
Achievement is “the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence (pg. 175).” People satisfy their need for achievement in many ways. For me, my achievement is satisfied whenever I get a good grade in school, or perform well in a game. Achievement can come from social influences, in particularly at home. Parents surround their children with an achievement-rich environment. At home, there are clear standards that your parents want you to accomplish, aspirations they help you develop. For example, I was put in a at home environment that had clear rules and expectations for school and basketball. Today, I’m still achieving in those areas because those were drilled into my head as a young kid. Everyone is different, and therefore, achievement is not always the same for everyone. Some people need to achieve at the highest level, be better than everyone else and distinguish themselves. These people could be said to have a high need for achievement. People with a high need for achievement seek out certain activities, anticipate, and have pride. There are people who are quite the opposite as high need achievers. People with a low need for achievement tend to be anxious, defensive, and they are afraid of failure. They don’t feel like they have to excel in something and distinguish themselves from others.
Achievement can be broken down into two goals, mastery goals or performance goals. The difference between the two is that with mastery goals, people tend to overcome challenges through a persistent effort, make progress, and improve the self. For example, people that proceed in school and become doctors. We all know this is no easy task, and it takes much effort and persistence to accomplish. Performance goals are would apply to people that have a great ability, are clearly distinguishable, but they don’t have to work hard. The book also focuses on what are called implicit theories. These consist of the incremental theory and the entity theory. The entity theory suggests that people naturally have a certain ability. Consider the ability to graduate college. Entity theorists would suggest that some people would be able to graduate and there are some that wouldn’t. Incremental theorist would suggest that everyone has the ability to graduate college, because everyone can put as much effort into something they want and achieve it, no matter if they were naturally good at something or not.
Affiliation and intimacy are another social need the text covers. Affiliation is ones need for acceptance, security, and approval when it comes to a personal relationship. Having someone that you know you can trust is always a good way of satisfying your need for affiliation. People that lack affiliation and intimacy are generally lonely and get rejected from their peers. This only increases their need for affiliation. Intimacy can be satisfied from long term relationships, such as marriage. The chapter concludes talking about our need for power. Power is defined as the “desire to make one’s physical and psychological world around them meet their vision of it. Powerful people tend to be leaders, partake in aggressive acts, and tend to have a collection of prized possessions (prestige possessions). People that have a high need for power are more likely to succeed and accomplish their goals.
The most interesting thing to me in this chapter was the section on power and aggression. I learned that what prevents people from becoming aggressive on a normal basis is called an social inhibitor. This acts as a restraint from acting out with aggression, but as we consume alcohol, the social inhibitor is removed and allows for aggressive behavior.
If I were to rate myself on my social needs, I would say I am high in all categories. I have a high need for achievement, because I feel it is necessary to do very well in school and in basketball. I have a high affiliation and intimacy need because I’m a people person. I always need to be surrounded by people that love and support me, and that helps me gain accomplish struggles in my life. I have a high need for power because I like to be in control over everything that is going on. The social need that motivates many of my behaviors is achievement. I make a huge effort every day to work out, get plenty of shots up, and go to the library and do my homework. Since I have a high need for achievement, I feel doing these things on a day-to-day basis is necessary in order to achieve what I want.
Terms: social needs, achievement, high need for achievement, low need for achievement, mastery goals, performance goals, persistence, entity theorists, incremental theorists, affiliation, intimacy, power, aggression, prestige possessions, leadership, social inhibition, implicit theories
Chapter seven was a discussion of social needs. The book starts off by talking about how we as humans acquire needs. Needs are defined as any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well being (Reeve 172). As humans we have many different needs including psychological, physiological, quasi, and social needs. In this chapter the author focused on the discussion of our social and quasi needs. Quasi-needs are situational induced wants and desires that are not actually full blown needs in the same sense of psychological, physiological and social needs. These needs form from situational pressures, our environment we are in, and demands. Once the demand or pressure is satisfied, the quasi-need is no longer present. Because these needs fade away they are not considered to be vital to human survival.
Social needs on the other hand are much different than quasi-needs. Social needs are acquired through many different facets, whether it be through experience, socialization or development, these needs activate emotions and behaviors that are activated by particular situational incentives. What this means is that when and incentive is associated with a certain need, a person who is high in that area of need, such as intimacy incentive, will experience emotional and behavioral activation. These need often go un noticed by humans until we encounter a need satisfying incentive that brings that need to the front burner in our minds. There are three main levels of social needs, achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power.
Need for achievement is defined as the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. People with high levels of need for achievement often respond to these situations with hope, pride, and gratification. These people will often choose moderately difficult versions of task rather compared to low need of achievement individuals who will most likely choose the easier version of the task. Need for achievement can be influenced by a multitude of different things including social influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influence. The book discuss different theoretical models as to why humans have the need for achievement. One of the theories discussed was the Atkinson model of achievement. In this model there are four variables to need for achievement including need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success and achievement behavior. The Atkinson model then consists of a formula Ts=Ms x Ps x Is and further breakdown of the achievement formula. People with high levels of need for achievement often prefer moderately difficult task, competition and often have different achievement goals.
Along with need for achievement, another form of social needs are the need for affiliation and intimacy. People with a high level of need for affiliation and intimacy tend to have a fear of interpersonal rejection and interact with others to avoid negative emotions, like fear of loneliness, and often experience anxiety in their relationships. People with high need of intimacy tend to think about friends and relationships frequently, tend to partake in self disclosure, are active intense listening and describe love and dialogue as special life experiences. People with these needs tend to create and join interpersonal networks and maintain such relationships to the best of their ability.
Power is the final aspect of social needs. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it (Reeve 195). People high in need for power have impact, allows for individuals to establish power, control, allows individuals to maintain power, and influence which allows individuals to expand and restore power. This need for power often is centered around the need to be in control of situations, status, or position. These people often hold leadership roles, and the need for power often has an influence on aggression and occupational roles.
The thing that really stood out to me in this chapter was relating the social needs to people in my everyday life. It was also interesting to see how our level of social needs can relate to our daily interactions and simple things such as what people choose to do as a career. Looking at all my friends in business school, they all have need for power and high levels of need for achievement. I just overall felt this was interesting and seeing the relation to real life was really surprising.
When it comes to rating myself in the different levels of social needs I would have to rate myself low in need for achievement, medium in need for power and high in need for intimacy and affiliation. I feel because of my different levels of social need I act in particular ways. For instance, my relationships are something I truly value and when school gets in the way of being able to spend time building those relationships I tend to get upset. I need that feeling of having friends and family. When I don’t have that feeling I often get upset because I have a high need for it. I feel that this need for intimacy and affiliation is part of the reason my grades tend to slip at times. When it comes to hanging out with my friends or my boyfriend versus studying for a test, I put my friends first because that need for achievement when it comes to school is a great deal less prevalent than my need for social affiliation.
Definition: Quasi-need, needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson Model
Chapter 7 introduced the Quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants that arise out of tension and urgency. They are needs that are temporarily and only last in the moment. An example of this would be me worrying about getting good grades this semester. After this semester is over, I won't worry about it, well for these classes anyways. Social needs are from personal experiences that act as emotional and behavioral activated by situational incentives. There are four social needs: for achievement, for affiliation, for intimacy and for power.
Achievement: Simply the need to do well at a task. We tend to set high achievement goals and our moods vary depending on how well we do. If we accomplish it, we feel very well, but if we don't accomplish it, it can make us feel very badly. Within achievement, 3 achievement goals exist: performance-approach, performance-avoidance and mastery. The need for achievement predicts performance-approach, fear of failure predicts performance-avoidance goals and high competency expectancies predict mastery goals.
Affiliation: 2 facets: The need for affiliation (rejection anxiety) and the need for intimacy (affiliation interest). The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining and restoring relationships with others. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships. Participating in these warm, enduring relationships satisfies the need for intimacy.
Power: The desire for making the physical and social world conform to one's personal image. A special variant of the need for power is the leadership motive pattern, which consists of the threefold pattern of needs involving high need for power, low need for intimacy and high inhibition.
The most surprising thing to me was the implicit theories of if intelligence is fixed, or if it can change over time. In my opinion, I have always believed that you can change your intelligence by applying yourself more to become more intelligent, or to apply yourself less if you want to decrease your intelligence, but I don't know why anyone would want to do such a thing. Entity theorists believe that our intelligence, motivation and personality are fixed. Incremental therists believe that they can change through effort and learning. Implicit theories are important for achievement because that means that in the task we are performing, we want to do well. The doig well, is the implicit theory part of the situation.
If I were to rate myself on the four social needs, I would rate myself a high for achievement and affiliation, medium for intimacy and low for power. I have a high need for achievement because I am constantly worried about my grades and working hard to improve them. I also am always early at work and making sure to do work efficiently so that I don't do anything wrong. High for affiliation because nobody wants to be alone and I love having a close group of friends. I have lost a lot of close friends, but instead of withdrawaling and being sad, it made me realize how important friendship can be and to try harder. Medium for intimacy because I do like having friends and people around me, but I only have a couple people who know what's really going on with me and know when I'm not okay. I don't fear the rejection of those people, but I fear the rejection of my other friends if I were to be completely open. I have no desire to be in control of anything. I don't like making the decision of where to go to eat, going first into a haunted house, being the leader of a group project, or any other situations. I enjoy helping the leaders, but not being the leader. Achievement is definitely the social need that affects my daily life and empowers my decisions. I would love to hang out with friends and eat at good restaurants when they get together. However, I always put school first and I try to do my best at eating the food I bought instead of going out to eat all the time.
Terms: Quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, competency, expectancies, implicit theories, entity theorists, incremental theorists, fixed
Chapter 7 covers social needs. Humans acquire social needs through experience, development, and socialization. The four main social needs covered in this chapter are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a person’s sense of competence resulting in success or failure. The need for affiliation is rooted in a fear of interpersonal rejection. The need for intimacy is the positive side of affiliation. Intimacy encourages individuals to engage in warm, close, positive relationships rather than desperately trying to become or remain affiliated with likes of some person or group. The need for power is a desire to have impact, control, or influence over another person or group. These power strivings often center on the needs for dominance, reputation, status, or position.
One topic that I thought was surprising was power in relation to pursuing goals. The text states that individuals high in the need for power more readily acquire the goals and outcomes they seek when compared to individuals with a low need for power. This was surprising to me because I have always associated accomplishing goals with the need for achievement, not power. However, after reading this section I better understand the relationship between power and goals and am able to see how they relate.
I would rate myself as having a high need for achievement, a low need for affiliation, a high need for intimacy, and a medium need for power. I rate my need for achievement high because like everyone else, I also have the desire to be successful. I strive to do well in the classroom as well as outside of it. I have a desire to be the best I can be, therefore, my need for achievement must remain high. I rate my need for affiliation as low because I don’t need to be affiliated with a certain person or group to feel better about myself. I am content with the relationships I already have. I rate my need for intimacy as high because I desire having close, positive relationships in my life. For instance, having a strong, positive relationship with my family has done nothing but benefit my life. It has taught me the importance of surrounding myself with people who genuinely care about me and my personal goals and want to see me succeed as much as I do. I rank my need for power as medium because I consider myself outgoing, but not overly aggressive. For instance, I don’t always take charge in group projects but I would consider myself to be a primary contributor. Also, I’m not afraid to voice my opinion but I prefer to avoid conflict or drama.
All of these needs motivate my behaviors in some way or another, but the most relevant in this aspect is achievement. Achievement motivates me to not only do well for myself, but also those who truly believe in me and want to see me succeed. It seems as my college career has progressed, so has my need for achievement. It has motivated me to throughout my college career to study more and more and to continue doing well each semester. For instance, staying in on weekends to finish homework or study while all my friends go out is something achievement has motivated me to do. It has also motivated me to want to continue my education, which is something I wasn’t even considering my freshmen or sophomore years. All in all, my need for achievement has motivated my behaviors to make me become the best I can be, whether it’s within the classroom or in my day to day life.
Terms: social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, standard of excellence
This chapter began by talking about quasi and social needs. Quasi-needs are wants and desires that come about by the context of the urgency to meet an environmental demand. Such a demand could include needing a high grade in a class or the basic need of money. Social needs, however, come about because of a person’s own experiences. These could be experiences from development, socialization, or different cognitive experiences overall. There are incentives for the needs to take places as well. For example, the incentive for achievement is doing something well or correctly. This increases internal competence. For intimacy, a warm, secure relationship would be the incentive, and so on. The need for achievement is defined as the desire to do well in relation to a certain standard. People who have a high need for achievement use approach-orientated responses when seeing different standards. For example, they may have hope for meeting the standard of excellence when approaching a situation whereas people with a low need for achievement might find themselves using avoidance techniques such as anxiety. The dynamics-of-action model also indicates that achievement behavior is brought about by need for achievement as just discussed which is also called instigation, and it’s also brought about by that fear of failure which is called inhibition. This dynamics-of-actions model also indicates that the behavior is determined by the achievement behavior itself, which is also called consummation. Atkinson’s classical model of achievement predicts approach vs. avoidance behaviors in various situations by using a formula of behaviors, incentives, and probability of success. Also, there are three types of achievement goals. These include performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. These are pretty self explanatory.
A lot of these same facets are involved in affiliation aspects of psychological needs. Affiliation includes rejection anxiety as well as affiliation interest. People cannot function correctly if they are deprived of the opportunity for social interaction. People enjoy close, intimate relationships as well as social engagement. Lastly, the need for power is the desire to make the world conform to a person’s personal image. Leadership and recognition are characteristics of a high-power need individual and the opposite occurs for a low need individual.
One of the most interesting things I learned was the process of finding out the effectiveness of U.S. Presidents. Five variables can describe the effectiveness of a president. These include actions, perceived greatness, performance on social issues, performance on economic issues, and international relations. I thought this fit well with the presidential debate I am watching at the moment, and I could really see how this fits in! I just didn’t realize how leadership was assessed and how a president could be predicted so efficiently.
I would rate myself high on a need for achievement because I tend to take on a lot of challenging tasks and love to have that feeling of accomplishment when I’m done. These tasks can range from school work to sports. I would probably say I have a high need for affiliation and intimacy as well. I can’t stand sitting at home by myself. I live alone so I’m always trying to get out or have people come over. I just get really anxious about being alone and afraid I’ll be alone in the future! I love to have people around me. With the need for power, however, I have a very low need. I don’t care to be a leader or be in control. In fact, the friends I have pretty much pick what I’m doing all the time. I am very much a follower and have no desire to be a leader. As bad as that sounds!
My achievement need affects every aspect of my school and work life. I am very adamant about doing all of my school work to the best of my ability and getting good grades. I’m not a perfectionist, but I try to do the best I can in every aspect of my life. In my work life I do communications for a church, so I spend a lot of my time creating web pages, newsletters, etc. I take a great amount of pride in my work and spend a lot of time trying to make it as close to perfect as I can get it. This gives me a great sense of achievement.
Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, incentives, achievement, approach and avoidance techniques, instigation, inhibition, dynamics of actions model, Atkinson’s classical model, affiliation, power, presidential effectiveness
Chapter seven focuses on the different social needs of humans which are: Acquired needs, achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power. Of the acquired needs, the two different categories are social needs and quasi-needs. Quasi-are not necessarily “needs,” but more like wants. They are more like desires that form from a situation that happens in their surrounding environment. Quasi-needs do resemble our actual needs though because they show how we feel, think, and act. These wants are things in our life to sustain our happiness or way of life. When we wake up, we want to have a paycheck, a well-running car, and/or a clean car. These things do not affect our health or lives in a way that is life or death, but these things show what we want, feel, and think about. The next is social needs which are the things that we learn and acquire from our environment and the people around us. These social needs influence our behavior because they turn on our behavior potential when they have something come before them that will satisfy their needs. I would say that I rank medium in both of these.
The next point in this chapter is our need for achievement. This is our desire to be successful and to have a standard of excellence which is a challenge to our competence that can be either a win or a loss. We are influenced to have achievement in three different categories which are social, cognitive, and developmental. As much as we desire success, we also want to avoid failure because we do not want our self-esteem, self-image, and self-respect to be lowered. I would say that I rank high on achievement because I am can get really discouraged when I fail at something.
I am extremely motivated to be successful in my part-time job. I understand that it is a job that I will only have during my time in college, but I still want to do well while I am working this job. If I feel I did a poor job on a shift, it will be something that I will take with me when I go home. I usually don’t stop thinking about it until I fall asleep that night. Even though I’ve been told that I am a good worker, I can get really discouraged if I feel I didn’t do well personally. I feel that I am my biggest critic when it comes to my job performance.
The next social need is affiliation and intimacy. These deal with our needs in the relationships that we have in our everyday lives. Having a high need for affiliation does not mean that the person is popular, though. People with low needs for affiliation usually have that aspect of their lives filled which means they have many friends. Someone with a high need of intimacy usually thinks about their relationships constantly. I would say that I am a medium-low on affiliation and a medium on intimacy.
The last social need is power. The first part of power is impact. This allows the person needing power to establish the power. Next, control, allows the person in power to maintain power. Last, influence, allows the person to expand or restore power. People that are high in power wish to remain leaders and they deal with others in a forceful way. I would say that I am medium in power because I like being in leadership positions, but I have no problem listening to someone that is in power.
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, environment, behavior potential, acquired needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, standard of excellence, competence, impact, control influence
Chapter Seven is all about social needs and quasi-needs. Individuals are not born with either of these needs, but rather develop and acquire them as they progress through life and society. Quasi-needs are very brief and sudden immediate and artificial needs based on situational stimulus. The example the book uses when discussing quasi-needs is the instant desire for an umbrella when it begins to rain; the individual does not HAVE to have the umbrella in order to survive, and once the rain stops, the individual will no longer desire the umbrella. Social needs on the other hand are "gained through experience, socialization, and development" according to the textbook. The examples of social needs discussed in the textbook are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
Achievement is the desire to succeed and thrive within ones environment, seeking a competitive standard of excellence. Being good at something makes individuals feel good about themselves, causing them to seek those activities and feelings of success. This idea of seeking out successful opportunities is part of Atkinson's Model. The model describes the "portrayal of achievement motivation as an inherent struggle of approach versus avoidance." Individuals seek out to accomplish tasks in which they will succeed, and avoid those tasks they will fail. Additionally, people seek to succeed in order to please or impress others, such as a child striving to impress their parents by doing well in school.
Affiliation is the ability and desire to establish and cultivate positive relationships with another person or persons. It goes hand in hand with intimacy, or the desire to "experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person" according to the textbook. The idea is that individuals need the support, warmth, and dependence of others to satisfy these needs. When an individual becomes socially isolated or afraid these needs become exceptionally prominent. Individuals high need for affiliation maintain and enhance relationships with others, while those with a high need for intimacy frequently touch others and work to "cultivate deeper and more meaningful relationships."
Power, or the desire to change and control the world to ones personal desire and model, was the final characteristic of social needs discussed in the chapter. Individuals with high need for power seek to "impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large." (Winter, 1973) The individual is driven by a need for dominance, reputation, status, or position. When discussing the need for power it is important to note four things; 1) recognition within a group is essential to an individual with a high need for power, they seek out ways to make themselves visible and influential. 2) Individuals with a high need for power also have high aggression, and thus a tendency to be exceptionally impulsive. 3) Individuals with a high need for power "seek power symbols, or 'prestige possessions,' things that show their status. 4) Finally, individuals with a high need for power are more likely to acquire their goals.
I would rate myself as high on affiliation and intimacy, and medium on power and achievement. I work hard to have a positive impact on the people around me, helping me to create and maintain positive and supportive relationships. I feel close to those around me, and have satisfying and healthy relationships. I work hard to do well in school and hope to one day be successful in a career.
Throughout my school career, including through today, I strive to do well in my classes. Getting As in class is not something that comes exceptionally easily to me, I have to study for tests and keep up on readings in order to do well in classes, but I do all of this work to ensure I get the good grades I want. My desire to get good grades is driven by my need to feel competent and achieve in school.
Terms: Social Needs, Quasi-Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Atkinson's Model, Social Isolation
Well let’s begin; this chapter is about sociological needs. We are not born with social needs; rather we acquire them through “positive emotional experiences.” With these experiences we begin to socially structure our lives around further positive activities. And we begin to acquire preferences to our choices around these positive activities. Social needs come from these preferences, and through our development and also acquired through our personality.
Quasi needs are situation induced needs that arise because they resemble “true needs.” A situational need could arise from anything but the goal and the drive of the quasi need is to satisfy that need; the need comes from environmental pressures that set off obligations, like paying the bills, and when it is paid of the need subsides. I like this definition a lot “situationally induced psychological context of tension, pressure, and urgency that supplies the motivation for the quasi-need!”
Social need is incentive based and reminds me a lot of relatedness. When social situations appear we begin to associate behavior with corresponding social needs. Like quasi needs, social needs lie dormant until a potential need satisfying incentive arises. There are four different kind of social needs: Achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. Achievement is our drive to win and to compete in a certain fashion of standard. By a certain standard I mean that we have objective planned outcomes of success and it either happens or it doesn’t. (like competing against oneself ie golf) A good example used in the book is a two sided sword as these standards may excite us and motivate us, while on the other hand they could bring us anxiety and make us hesitate and avoid the situation. John Atkinson said that achievement behavior depends on positional need for achievement with task probability of success and incentive for succeeding in task. Ts = Ms x Ps x Is (Ts is the tendency to approach success, Ms the motive to succeed, Ps probability of success, Is Incentive to success) Affiliation is having a positive or affective relationship with another person or persons. The need for affiliation is not an extrinsic motivation or a motivation to be popular rather it is the fear of interpersonal rejection. A good way to explain this is to identify “needy” as personal characteristic and how it drives people for reassurance of approval or disapproval. Intimacy is social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships. Identifies as love as especially meaningful life experiences. Power is control of the people and the situation around them and conforming them to said persons ideas. Impact, control and influence are three primary qualities and steps to gaining power and taking over the situation.
The most surprising thing I read about was actually oriented towards power as it explains a lot about specific people. It makes sense and it helps me as a person better understand what these people are going through, and why. It also helps me be able to see the light and become power oriented as well. While still living a healthy life but using this social condition to better help me and the people around me.
I feel that my social needs are all essential at a medium to high level, as I acquired the ability to socially understand people. I also thrived through it making friends and also having intimate relationships as well. I would call myself a leader only in situations that cause me to be a leader, but I handle them well. My worst quality I would say as I am done with high school athletics now is achievement as it gets harder and harder to accomplish my goals as they become deeper and tougher, but when they are achieved it is like nirvana. I would say that one of the biggest social needs affecting my life right now is the intimate one, as I am engaged to get married which comes with very intimate situations you could say. As I explore the ideas of love I become more intuned self-confident and approachable by anyone as I feel that my life is based through this, thrives through this and will always prosper through love!
Terms: Social needs, quasi needs, Achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, atkinsons model
Chapter seven was about a person’s social needs. The chapter discussed two psychological needs, social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs are needs we learn from society, experience, and development. Social needs are different for everyone and help create our personality. Quasi-needs are more ephemeral, and include our wants as a person not necessarily a need to survive. The chapter also talks about Atkinson’s model and how the need for achievement only partly predicts goal based behaviors. The chapter talks about instigation and how we tend to be drawn to behaviors that have given us a reward in the past. Inhibition was also discussed in the chapter and how a person will avoid certain environmental stimulus that has caused punishment in the past. Consummation refers to the fact that many behaviors will bring about their own response. The chapter also talks about a person’s goal and why they are important. It talks about why we might achieve or avoid a goal. The chapter talks about affiliation and how it may bring out relief rather than joy. It talked about the different levels of affiliation in people and how they might act. The chapter talked about power and how having power and wanting power can impact a person’s personality and behavior.
I think the most surprising thing is how much people let wants mold their personality and behavior rather than needs. Look at America, yes we need food and water as a biological need but we let our social influences and environments make it more of a want rather than a need. Like discussed in chapter one, I don’t think there is anyone in our class that has let hunger take over our motivation and behavior enough to where we would eat anything available like a raw fish. We may have eaten and many people will still turn around and go eat with their friends if they called and said “hey you want to go to BDubs for some wings”. We let our social needs and needs for affiliation. This is something I am guilty of. I think I have a medium-affiliation-need. I always try to avoid conflict with others, I always want acceptance from other, even if the person I want acceptance from I may only have for a short period of time in my life. For example, waitressing, my goal was to always make my customer happy and catered to their need in a timely manner and I always wanted them to accept me as good server so they might ask for me again, even though they may have just been passing through town and I may never see them again. When I am in a situation, like a 90 day job follow up or a yearly review, and I know that I will get picked apart on just about everything, (my work ethic, time management, how well I get along with others, etc) I feel sick. Even today we had to do the Christmas video and I felt sick before doing it and all I had to do was say one sentence. I think this strongly influences by behavior and personality as a person and even though I sometime think this is a flaw in my personality I am happy with it most of the time. Sometimes I wish I didn’t care about pleasing everyone or worrying so much what other think but then again there is time when I’m happy with it especially when I see someone be rude or have no disregard for others and how it affects the person being disrespected.
Terms: Social needs, psychological needs, quasi-needs, personality, Atkinson’s model, reward, punishment, goals, instigation, inhibition, stimulus, consummation, affiliation, powers, needs, and wants.
Chapter 7 dealt with social needs. Both social needs and quasi-needs make up acquired psychological needs. Quasi-needs are situationally-induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that psychological, physiological, and social needs are. They affect cognition, emotion, and behavior and originate from situational demands and pressures. Social needs arise and activate emotional and behavioral potential when need-satisfying incentives appear. The four social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence; it is made up of social, cognitive, and developmental influences. John Atkinson came up with a model of achievement behavior to understand the classical view of achievement motivation (Atkinson's Model). Three situations involve and satisfy the need for achievement: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. Implicit theories are important to achievement strivings because they guide the type of goals people pursue. The need for affiliation is rooted in a fear of interpersonal rejection. People with high-need affiliation interact with others to avoid negative emotions, such as fear of disapproval and loneliness, and typically experience much anxiety in their relationships. The intimacy motive reflects a willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. The positive aspects of affiliation striving make up the intimacy need, and the negative aspects make up the affiliation need. When the need for affiliation is satisfied, it brings out emotions like relief rather than joy. The need for power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one's personal image or plan for it. People high in the need for power seek impact, control, or influence. They strive for leadership and recognition. The most effective leaders have a high need for power, low need for affiliation, and high inhibition.
The most surprising thing I learned was about the Atkinson Model. The fact that he could come up with an equation theory to predict the achievement behavior (tendency to approach success) is crazy to me. Then, he created the dynamics-of-action model, which compares the stream of behavior with instigation, inhibition, and consummation. Both of these are so interesting because they make so much logical sense, but I never would have thought to put the ideas together like that. If I had to rate myself on each social need, I would say that I have a high need for achievement. I would not say that competition is was necessarily drives me to need to achieve, it is more the cognitive influences for me. I expect a lot from myself and I value success. These are the leading factors that lead me to strive to achieve in life. I would say I have a medium need for affiliation. I am definitely not overly needy, but I do have moments where I do interact with others to avoid negative emotions. I wish my need for affiliation was a little bit lower, but it is not high! My need for intimacy is a little bit higher. I like to be on personal levels with my close friends. My need for a relationship would be higher if I didn't have such close friendships. Finally, my need for power is medium. I like to know what is going on, and make my voice heard when I am passionate about something, but leadership is intimidating to me and the feeling of power is a little overwhelming for me. My need to achieve motivates me the most out of my social needs. I try a lot harder in school, I set high goals for myself, I plan ahead for my future, etc. all because of this strong need to achieve.
Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, acquired psychological needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson's Model, dynamics-of-action model
When chapter 7 is introduced, it begins discussing about acquired needs which are social needs and quasi-needs. A social need originated from preferences gained through experience, socialization and development. Quasi-needs are more ephemeral and include situational induced wants, such as an immediate need for money. Quasi-needs are basically our wants and desires; these are things that were pressured by the environment. However social needs are acquired through experience, development, and socialization. The chapter then emphasizes on social needs that function as personality characteristics, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. According to the chapter, achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. People with a high need of achievement feel hope, pride, and anticipatory gratification. Affiliation is the need for approval acceptance and security. People with a high need of affiliation, interact with others to avoid negative emotions, such as fear of disapproval and loneliness. Intimacy is the willingness to experience a warm, close and communicative exchange with another person. A person with a high need of intimacy join social groups, spend time interacting with others, and a person with a low need, are less and less satisfied with their developing friendships. Power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image. People with a high need for power desire to have impact (established power), control (maintained power), and influence (expand or restore power). If I had to rate these social needs for highest to lowest and how they apparent in my life I would rate it as the following. Achievement would be first because I am always looking to accomplish new things. Whether it would be with school, trying to thrive for the best, trying to go back home as someone who accomplished what she was sent out to Iowa to do. I guess my achievement need also goes with pleasing people. I am a people pleaser so if someone has a task for me to finish I will do it and give a hundred and ten percent. Making people happy is what I strive for, knowing someone had faith in me and I accomplished it, I have just achieved my goal. With that said I think affiliation would be next, because I am always looking for that approval for my parents of how proud they are of me. I know they are proud of me but they do not express it, growing up they were always fighting, and I am also one of eight children, so I felt like I was on the back burner with them. I tried so much to get the attention for a little bit. Even when I was come a thousand miles away I was asked how my parents felt and all I could answer was I do not know, one is busy living their own life, and the other is busy with his other children. Power would be next, I feel like power is a good thing to have to become a leader but to me it’s not essential. I am the type of person who does their own thing and really does not want to lead anymore. I believe we should all be in charge of our own lives. We should set examples for younger generations but I’m not the type of person who would find ways to making themselves visible to others. Last I rated intimacy, it is very difficult for me to open up and trust people. I would hang out with people and be friendly with them but it takes a special kind of person for me to trust my inner thoughts with. I have come across two people in my life who have been in an intimate relationship with and they both let me down so I feel like it just made it harder for people to be trusted into my life. I can see that I am on the low need for intimacy.
Key Terms: Social Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, High need, Low need
Chapter 7 is about quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires. They come up when there is a sense of tension and urgency to meet an environmental demand. E.g. the need for money or umbrella when it rains. Social needs act as emotional and behavioral potentials determined by situational cues. There are four social needs: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
The need for achievement is the desire to do well compared to a standard of excellence. It's like doing something well to show personal competence. People with a high need for achievement usually take on more difficult tasks and engage in achievement-related tasks more quickly. There are three types of achievement goal: performance-approach, performance avoidance, and mastery.
There are two sides to affiliation. They are the need for affiliation (rejection anxiety) and the need for intimacy (affiliation interest). The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships with other. Also mostly to escape from and to avoid negative emotions such as disapproval and loneliness. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships that produce positive emotions and hold little threat of rejection. People with high need for intimacy are likely to join social groups, spend time with other, and form stable, long-lasting relationships. Depriving people the opportunity for social interaction is the principal condition that involves the need for affiliation.
The need for power is the desire for making the physical and social world conform to one's personal image of it. People with a high need of power look for leadership and recognition in small groups. They experience impulses of aggression and like to influence other people.
I would rate myself with a high need for achievement. I like taking on challenges, especially in sports. I am very competitive. I also get enjoy myself when I do good at those challenges. I would say I have a low need for affiliation and a medium-high need for intimacy. I don't have bad anxiety over many things at all. But my need for intimacy is there because I enjoy being around people. I like hanging out with my friends and I'd rather be with friends or someone than be alone. I have a medium need for power. My friends usually look at me for what to do and what the plan is. I usually bring up ideas for many things. But I also know when to play my role and sit back. I also enjoy taking the lead role sometimes, but that also comes with a bit of responsibility.
Achievement drives most of my behaviors. In both school, sports and life. I like to challenge myself in school and take on classes and get myself involved in things i enjoy. I have talked about the sport aspect already. I enjoy a challenge and love rising to the moment. And in general life, I like learning new things, trying out different things and try to get well at them.
Chapter seven is about the needs we learn from the society around us, and how, despite whatever society we might find ourselves in there are certain social strivings that manifest in some shape or form.
Achievement is pretty high as far my needs go. There are a lot of fields in which I strive for excellence. One of my goals from highschool onwards was to become a Renaissance man, or in modern terms a Polymath. I work toward that regularly, woodworking is the latest art I've taken up. The point isn't to be a jack of all trades but to be excellent in many fields. Most of my actions are a means to that end, even though there's no real purpose other than self satisfaction. I have little fear of failure, because as far as training goes, failure is the desired result. Find your limits and exceed them, and I tend not to feel fulfilled if I don't feel as if I'm making some progress.
My affiliation tend towards low. I don't do much in the way of seeking approval. I drift between being a loner and being social but never am I particularly looking for approval in my interactions. I expect to be disapproved of, and I've grown to somewhat relish it, depending on the source. That being said, I still seek approval from my friends. I would rather they approve of me than not. The same with my parents, their disapproval definitely cuts sharper than any other.
Intimacy tends toward high for me. I tend to have a large number of acquaintances that I am on friendly terms with and consider friends while only truly having one or two people who I would consider close intimate friends. The kinds of close personal relationships that enable me to, at the time, share basically everything. The worst part is when this intimate relationship shifts. Time changes all things and I've moved through a number of very close personal friends over the years and I always long to be that close to those individuals again but the time and the place doesn't line up like it did back then.
I have a low need forPower. I don't need the world to fit me, in fact, the world would probably be less fun if it did. I like struggle, I like having to work hard and try for things. While I'm sure I could amuse myself with more power, having less power doesn't mean that I can't amuse myself anyways. The one area that I actually care about having Power in is my opinions. Like everyone, I like to be heard, and I like for my words to have impact. I like to make people think, that makes me feel mightier than anything else.
My desire to have my opinion matter is one reason that, when I don't know the answer to a question I look it up. It ties in deeply with my achievement-striving. Any question could be the start of a good foothold into a topic that I might want to work on. I've found brilliance in many things, many of them starting at small innocuous questions that snowball wildly out of control.
Terms
Achievement- The social need to succeed at behaviors one cares about.
Affiliation- The social need to be approved of by others.
Intimacy- The social need to have fulfilling close relationships with other individuals.
Power- The social need to have the capability to exert influence.
In Chapter 7 quasi-needs and social needs are discussed. Quasi-needs can resemble true needs in some way. They affect our cognition, emotion, and behavior. They originate from demands and pressures that are situational. An example would be the need we have for more money. Social needs deal with achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. In achievement we strive to do well so we can have a good standard of excellence. Basically an example of that would be what’s right vs. what’s wrong or you have a winner vs. a loser. These standards of excellence can bring us happiness through approach emotion and behavior or anxiety where we act with avoidance. Affiliation and intimacy can go together, because it makes you want to be with others, so they can have a warm positive relationship with people. Power can be defined as “impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.” Now that is some pretty powerful words. We see that a lot with people who run for the government positions. One always wants to get a good grounding on the people they are up against, to show they have control of the situation.
The most surprising thing I learned about would have to be the prestige possessions section. I never knew this existed and it was interesting for me to find out about how some people can be very possessive of their things. They give the example of how if someone was high in this, they’d be more willing to put their name on their dormitory room door. But to me that’s silly, because for the most part everyone (when I lived in the dorms) had their names up, so we could get to know one another, not because we were being possessive of our room. It also shocks me that people who are on the elderly side tend to own a rifle or a truck, because a lot of my Uncles own both, but it’s not because they are possessive, they are farmers, so trucks come in handy and the rifles or guns are used to hunt. So a few of these examples I’d like to argue that they aren’t or shouldn’t really be considered prestige possessions, but for now I’ll agree to disagree with how it’s defined.
If I rated myself on the social needs, my achievement would be high, affiliation would be medium, intimacy would be high, and power would be low. My achievement level is high, because I am very competitive when it comes to doing well in everything I come across. I’m usually a good sport, but I’m definitely no fan of losing. My affiliation is medium, because I like to be around people, but at the same time I’m a big fan of having “me time” as well. I don’t have to have this high satisfaction of being near people 24/7, if I did, I’d probably go a little nutty, because people can drive me just a little crazy. My intimacy is high, because I am satisfied with my family and friends whom are in my life. My friendships that I have now, are with people I’ve known for a long time and trust whole-heartedly that what’s said will remain between us. My power is low, because I’m not aggressive by any means. Most people would say I’m shy at first and then once you get to know me very outgoing. I usually try to get everyone involved, if we have to do a group project or something along that line, never trying to take it over.
My need for intimacy motivates me in many ways. Usually I try to get together with friends who live around here as much as we can fit it into our schedules, while my other friends and family members who live in other towns, I try to text a few times a week to keep up to date with how they are doing. Having facebook to be connected with everyone is very helpful in letting me know what they are up to, when I can’t talk to them on a daily basis. I call up my Mom every night to catch up on our day. I’m especially motivated to leave as early as I can on Fridays when I want to get out of town to visit my Mom, Dad, family & friends, an example would be going to a wedding. Last week I just went to one of my cousins’ wedding, so I left early on Friday, so I could spend more time with my Mom after she got off from work, and then we were able to travel together to the wedding.
Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, prestige possessions, competitive, aggressive
This chapter was about social needs. It also included a brief section on quasi-needs. A quasi-need is not a real need; it is situationally induced and disappears when satisfied. These seem like needs due to the similarities in how they make us think, feel, and act. However, social needs are more a part of personality; they are acquired through experience and growth. There are four social needs; achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the need to do well compared to some standard. Competition can be with the self, a task, or another individual. To satisfy the need for achievement, there are three main tasks are mentioned. Moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship are the things that give those who are highly achievement oriented the most satisfaction in comparison to low achievement oriented people. Affiliation and intimacy are related needs, though they have a specific difference. Affiliation is a fear of rejection, the interaction with others is motivated by avoidance of negative emotions. Those high in affiliation seek reassurance and acceptance. The need for intimacy is characterized by warm, caring relationships. It is a measure of quality of relationship, close relationships that are growth oriented with little fear of rejection. Power is the last social need listed in the book. This need is based upon the desire to form the world into a mold of personal plans. High power need individuals have a large desire for influence. This power need can be shown through aggression as well as materialism. That materialism is based upon the idea of prestige possessions, items in the high power need individual’s collection. As simple as clothing or home furnishings, it can also include things such as cars and firearms.
The most surprising/interesting thing I read about was the part that was mentioned briefly on page 173 about other social needs not yet accepted. The last two, closure and structure, struck me as particularly important and I could see how they might be needs if the four accepted social needs are. I would have liked to read more information about those needs and perhaps the arguments for why they should be considered social needs. Another surprising part was the table on page 193 with a profile for high intimacy actions. The story theme one was particularly interesting to me as I’m in a fiction writing class. It makes a lot of sense that those high in intimacy would make more pleasant intimate experiences in their stories though I don’t think that would be very rigid or necessarily typical of all of a high intimacy author’s writings.
As far as my own need ratings, I have a pretty varied set. Both affiliation and intimacy would probably be medium for me. I dislike that I have affiliation need at all but it happens. Achievement need is probably medium though I’d say it varies quite a bit. Personally, and probably obviously, I think I have a high power need. As far as my life goes, I like to be in control. I have specific ideas for how I want things to go and I try to keep that from influencing my relationships though I’m sure it’s not perfect. I don’t necessarily put much stock into personal possessions though sometimes I have to step back from that. I have high standards for all the aspects of my life and I do my best to control what I can.
Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, prestige possession
The chapter first talks about the acquired psychological needs, including social needs and quasi-needs. Among the social needs the author included achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power in the chapter. There is a disproportionate amount of information on the need for achievement, followed by few pages explaining the rest needs. The text says that affiliation is negative and deficiency-oriented, while intimacy is positive and growth-oriented. Finally in the section about power the author described the leadership motive pattern.
In the long section of achievement, we can see the achievement behavior model by John Atkinson. This model was improved to include the dynamics of three forces. They are instigation, inhibition, and consummation. Instigation means the tendency to approach success here. Inhibition refers to the tendency to avoid failure. Consummation is the effect of fatigue after a period of time. A newer model suggests that people set either mastery goals or performance goals for achievement. Different goals then lead to different behavior. In the final part of the section, the author described the effects of entity and incremental theories on behavior.
The most surprising aspect to me is the very existence of the social need category. Personally I do not believe that social need is only learned, though I am unable to make a good argument against empirical evidence yet. I think there is also evidence in animal behavior showing that intimacy and power have their biological roots. I think these needs are more like instincts than something you learn from others. I guess I need to find more evidence to support these hypotheses.
I think I have a medium need for achievement and a low need for power. The difference between affiliation and intimacy is still fuzzy to me, but if I have to guess I would choose medium for affiliation and low for intimacy. I wish there are specific measures for these two items.
I am concerned about achievement only when something affects my potential wealth in the future. I guess this is because there is not much I can achieve in the current environment. The setting of classrooms is not as exciting as I expected, and I still do not see how I can change the situation. I am not in any intimate relationship right now, and I am not very social or good at making friends. I guess I am not very motivated to expand my social circle. Maybe I keep social ties only to the extent that I would not get myself into trouble. I am really not interested in influencing other people, so the word power only means electricity to me.
My need for achievement is mostly demonstrated in my school work. Right now I try to keep my grades high so I can increase the chance of getting into graduate school. I spend time studying for tests, and I try to get homework done on time. I also talk to professors and learn about possible topics for future research. Yet I admit that I still need more involvement in organizations on and off campus, and possibly some leadership skills as well.
Terms: social need, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, instigation, inhibition, consummation, mastery goal, performance goal, entity theory, incremental theory
Chapter 7 examined social needs. We have two types that are listed in this chapter; social needs, which is the desire for intimacy, affiliation, achievement, and power. Then we have Quasi-needs, which are situation based wants and desires but aren’t actual needs. These are caused by the environment, but go away once that demand is met. For example, plastic surgery most often is not an actual need, but people get it because the environment in which they are in makes them feel that plastic surgery is something they should have in order to better their lives. Intimacy is the need for close, interpersonal relationships with positive outcomes while having little fear of rejection. Affiliation is the need to establish, maintain, and restore relationships with others to limit loneliness and disapproval. Achievement is the need to succeed and do well in regards to some standard. And power is the need to make your world fit your image of it.
One thing that I learned that surprised me was the two different theories of achievement, and how these two conflicting theories seem to both be right to some degree. I’m talking about implicit theories, or if someone believes that their personal qualities are changeable or fixed. Entity Theorists believe that personal qualities are fixed and enduring, while Incremental (this word looks like excrement to me) Theorists think that they are changeable and can be increased. I think I subscribe a bit to both, and that some personal qualities can’t be fixed, while others can be. The surprising thing in all of this is that based on how a person thinks, either incremental or entity, their whole way of learning and how they do things is altered. They also have different viewpoints on effort.
I would say that I’m probably medium when it comes to affiliation and intimacy. I’m just fine being by myself, but I’m equally as fine being with others, I have an awesome group of friends, and enjoy doing things with others and meeting new people. But, at the same time, sometimes I just need some time (a bit every day, usually) to be alone for a bit. I think the reason I’m not as concerned with affiliation as others might be is because growing up, I was always sort of the odd one out, and being that person actually helped me develop the confidence and self-assuredness I have now. I’ve experienced intimacy as well, and although I currently don’t have someone that I’m intimate with, I am content in where I’m at right now. I’ve been a warm, caring, understanding relationship with little fear of rejection, and it was wonderful. He and I are still on great terms, and remain friends. I think of intimacy also in a non-physical way, and because I’m really close with my mom (I can tell her anything!), I feel that my desire for another intimate relationship with a partner isn’t as profound as it could be if I didn’t have such a solid relationship with my mom.
I would probably rate myself as upper medium in achievement. I set mastery goals for myself, as well as high goals, and don’t really fear failing, because I know that with enough confidence and determination, I will get there eventually. Mastery goals are goals that you set to improve something or better yourself in some way, without any regard to others goals. I’m not concerned with how long it will take, but one day I will have a PhD in this outstretched palm . I’m happy with everything I’ve accomplished, and continue to strive for more. Because I want to achieve, I do things out of my comfort zone to better my chances of success, and work hard and excessively to get to a point I feel comfortable with. However, I do have my lazy days, when I don’t want to do anything!
Power. Hmm, this is one that’s tough for me, because I do like to be in control of things, but I suppose if I had to rate myself, and really think about it, I’d probably be upper medium here as well. I feel like power is something that most everyone wants to some degree. In past relationships, I have been the more dominant one, making decisions, planning things… I definitely wore the pants. In group projects, I tend to take the lead and delegate things. I like to know what’s going on, and always keep them guessing. Power, however, can be a negative thing. Power can also be stressful. Recently, I’ve started relinquishing power to others, and going more with the flow, in some things. This has since released me from some pressure, and I’ve been grateful. I just want to clarify, I’ve never been a control freak or anything, I just really dislike indecisiveness when it comes to simple things (where should we eat, what movie should we watch) and so for me, it’s easier to just take control when someone else seems to be lacking in the ability to choose something so simple and not really important in the scheme of things. Given my set of personality characteristics, I think I do have the ability to impact, control, and influence my power, I just don’t always choose to.
Terms: Power, achievement, quasi-needs, affiliation, intimacy, mastery goals, implicit theories, incremental, entity
Chapter 7 is all about our social needs. These needs originate from experience, socialization, and development; we are not born with them. The main social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Quasi-needs are situational and immediate wants and desires. Once satisfied, they typically don’t return as a need again. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. When we are challenged, there is an objective outcome of success or failure. We define success as the standard of excellence, and are motivated to meet it. The need for affiliation is rooted in the fear of interpersonal rejection. People are motivated to satisfy this need in order to avoid disproval, rejection, and loneliness. The need for intimacy is met by experiencing warm, close, and communicative exchanges with other people. The need for power is desiring to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it.
One thing that surprised me was the negative side of the need for power. Men with a high need for power fare make poor dating partners and husbands. However, women with a high need for power do not suffer the same poor outcomes that men do. This tells me that it’s not just the high need for power that has the negative influence on relationships, but rather the manifested behaviors of the need – and how men and women differ in their behaviors. An experiment looking at how the need for power influences leadership showed more negative effects of a high need for power. Power-seeking individuals talked more and seemed to have more influence on the group. However, people did not vote them to be the most liked and did not see them as having contributed to getting the job done or coming to the conclusion. The experiment also showed that groups that had these power seeking individuals came up with the worse decisions. This shows that although power-seeking individuals are good at gaining leadership, their assertiveness ends up hurting the group’s functioning and overall conclusions.
I would rate my need for achievement as medium. When it comes to competitions with a task, I can become very energized and motivated to meet the standard of excellence. The same goes for competitions with myself; I can easily be motivated to beat my personal best at something. However, when it comes to competition against others, I tend to shy away. I would rate myself as high for the need of affiliation and very high for the need of intimacy. Lastly, my need for power is low.
How these levels manifest themselves in my life… I see my medium need for achievement in a few different areas of my life. I’ll choose this one as an example to discuss how it motivates specific behaviors. Like I said, I am very approach-oriented to competitions with a task and with myself. For example, I played basketball in high school. I was very dedicated to practice, and always striving to beat my personal best at something. I felt pride and anticipatory gratification while shooting hoops, and was very persistent to improve my skills. I was especially adamant about doing well on free-throws. I would spend hours practicing this stand still shot, and once made 62 free-throws in a row! On the other hand, my behavior is totally different with competition against others. When in the actual game or in practice, I felt anxiety and the fear of failure. I knew I had great skills that were often better than my opponent, but that confidence was diminished while competing with others as I tried desperately to avoid failure and embarrassment.
My high need for affiliation shows up when I meet new people. I tend to experience anxiety when being around people that do not know me very well, and constantly monitor whether those people approve and accept me or not. However, when I’m around people that are very close to me and know me well, my high need for intimacy shows itself. I am very motivated to engage in these familiar, warm, positive relationships that hold little fear of rejection. In these situations, I put forth lots of effort to constantly be improving these relationships. I am an active listener; I seek for positive affect, and seek to be thought of as sincere and loving. My low need for power is very evident in group situations. I have very low needs for dominance, status, or position. Even though I do like recognition and for those to look up to me, the anxiety outweighs it. I avoid being the leader for fear of leading the group in the wrong direction. Of course it would be awesome to be recognized for leading a group to success, but the risk of failure is too great to me.
Terms: social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, quasi-needs, anticipatory gratification, approach-oriented
In chapter 7, the authors discuss the topic of acquired needs. Acquired needs are those needs that are socially based rather than innate. Acquired needs include social needs, those needs that are gained through experience, and quasi-needs, the needs that are more situational wants and desires. The chapter geared its focus to social needs, which include the need for achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. It briefly touched on quasi-needs, explaining that they are not full-blown needs, but may resemble true needs. They are deficiency-oriented meaning that when we are lacking something, we fill a psychological sense of tension and urgency until we fulfill that need. Examples of these quasi-needs are the need for money, security, self-esteem, etc.
The chapter discussed a great deal about the social need of achievement. According to the chapter, the need for achievement is “the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence.” A standard of excellence is anything that challenges an individual’s sense of competence that ends in either success or failure. The need for achievement has several influences. The way in which an individual is socialized (the people they are around, the environment they live in, they importance of achievement as a family value) contributes to the development of this need. Cognitive influences include perceptions of high quality, mastery orientation, high expectations for success, strong valuing of achievement, and an optimistic attributional style. Developmental influences are based on a person’s developmental history, which can also include the way they were socialized. Experiencing success within your developmental history leads to a feeling of pride and facilitates mastery orientation, while experiencing failure within your developmental history leads to a feeling of shame and facilitates ridicule. The two main approaches for understanding achievement motivation that this chapter discussed are the classical (Atkinson’s Model) and contemporary (cognitive/achievement goals) approaches. These two approaches have also been combined to form the integrated model, which suggests that mastery goals, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance are components that can help explain achievement motivation.
The next two needs the chapter discussed were the needs of affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is based in the fear of rejection by others. Those who have a high affiliation need are often times considered “needy.” Intimacy, on the other hand, is more positive. This is the need to “engage in warm, close, and positive relations.” Social acceptance and approval satisfy the need for affiliation, while relatedness in warm, close relationships satisfies the need for intimacy.
Lastly, the need for power is to hold superiority over others and the desire to have control, impact, and influence over others, making the social world conform to their own ideas. Ways in which this need is satisfied include taking on leadership roles, displaying aggressiveness (typically, in our society, only impulses), placing oneself in influential occupations, and owning prestige possessions or power symbols. People with a high need for power are more likely to set and acquire goals than those with a low need for power. They are more approach-oriented; they take action. The need for power has a leadership motive pattern, which consists of a high need for power (control), a low need for intimacy and affiliation (do not care about being liked), and high inhibition (well-disciplined). The combination of these three are ingredients for a high need power individual to be successful in obtaining that power.
A surprising thing that I learned from the chapter was that achievement can actually be a negative attribute at times. This is because, according to the chapter, individuals who are very driven to achieve oftentimes have to the motive of outperforming others, rather than just performing at one’s best. I found it interesting that theorists have divided the different motives up to essentially mastery goals, goals that challenge oneself in an effort to test one’s competence and learn from one’s experiences, and performance goals, goals that are not challenging for an individual and allow he/she to basically “show others up” and outperform them. I found this interesting because I have never thought about achievement in that way.
In my own life, I would say that I have a high need for achievement, a medium need for affiliation, a high need for intimacy, and a medium need for power. These needs can be seen in my everyday life, from my relationships with others to the way I interact with strangers to the activities I am involved in to how I perform tasks. I believe that the need for achievement is especially instrumental in my life right now and has been throughout my life. I can see that I have possessed both mastery goal as well as performance goals in order to achieve. I am a very goal-oriented person and I typically enjoy challenging myself. Even if I fail, I am persistent; I do not give up easily. I am always looking to better myself and go for more. I set high goals and standards to reach, whether they are within my academics, my leadership positions, my relationships, etc. I always want to achieve my personal best. On the other hand, I am a very competitive individual and I do not like to lose. I have a desire to be more and do more than others, but not necessarily to be better than them, but to show that I am capable of all of these things. When I get a test back or when I receive an evaluation, I want to know how I did compared to others. Yes, I want to know whether or not I outperformed them, but I also want to know what it is I need to do to improve to receive the better grade or the high marks the next time around. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, but I will admit that I have the desire to be the best at all I do. But at the same time, I recognize those things that I am not so good at and focus my energy to improve upon the things I am good at. I am a striver and I always like to achieve any goals or challenges that are placed before me.
Acquired need, social need, quasi-need, deficiency-oriented, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, classical approach (Atkinson’s Model), contemporary approach (cognitive model), integrated approach.
Social needs are broken up into achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. And more broadly as acquired needs and quisi-needs. We all have different social needs based on how we grew up. The way we were raised directly relates to what we think we need in our social settings, these are acquired needs. Quasi-needs are situational needs such as money when we need to pay bills, they come and go with the situations we are put in. The four social needs that I said earlier are usually dormant before something happens in the environment to "awaken" them. Doing something well like wining a race will show achievement, any opportunity to please others and gain their approval would be affiliation, a health relationship you have with you boyfriend or girlfriend would be intimacy, and lastly, when one is put in a situation that allows them power, our social need for this arises.
Something that surprised me in this chapter, yet also made sense once I read it and thought about it was the study on children and how they acquired their social needs. It turned out that adults who have a high need for achievement generally had parents who had high standards for them growing up. Also, adults who have grown up with high needs for power, their parents were generally permissive about sex and aggression. It's fascinating to me that Karl Marx and his "blank slate" idea (every child is born with a blank slate) was partially right! Adults are more a part of how their children end up socially than I really thought.
Personally, I have a very high achievement need. I have used this example before, but I play the cello, and I am very hard on myself when it comes to playing well. I must play well to show personal competence. I score my self with a medium rating of affiliation. It definitely depends on the situation whether or not I feel the need to gain the approval of someone. If it is a professor, yes, I have a high need for affiliation. (so, for example, all of my elders). Other wise, I am kind of a "if you like me that's, great, if you don't, that's nice too", kind of a person. I score myself a low intimacy rating. I do need a few warm relationships in my life, I enjoy the few that I have with my family and close friends. But I do not seek in an abundant amount. I rate myself a high power social need. I enjoy influencing others to do the right thing and setting the example (this goes back to achievement as well). I enjoy having an impact on others.
My high need for power comes up when I am faced with people who are in need for a healthy change in their life. If I see someone struggling because of their weight, or stressed because of other weight related health issues, I feel the need to step in and let them know that I can help. I am trained and have an amazing program that can change their lives if they want to make a life change that will ultimately save them. I like taking that power role and impacting others lives for the better, if they make the decision that they want to get healthy.
Terms: social need, quasi-need, acquired need, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power
Needs are defined as any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well being (Reeve 172). Needs dive people and determine what we do and do not do. Chapter 7 added in a few more needs. Social needs and quasi are the two new ones that were focused on in this chapter. Social is the need to be around people and to be able to develop lasting relationships. Quasi needs are ones dictated by situations. The book talked about money a lot. This is a good example because people need money to live and when a bill comes in the mail, people need money. It becomes what they are focused on and what drives their decisions and behavior. They can often called wants and desires people may not need money sometimes but think they need it. After the need is met, it disappears meaning it is not persisting like most other needs, like food for example. Both of these needs, social and quasi are Acquired needs. We are not born with them but learn them, they grow and develop over time. There are three main parts to social needs, achievement, affiliation & intimacy, and power.
Achievement is doing well to what you believe is excellence. There are people who are high in this need. They are called people who respond to approach-oriented emotions. This means they will respond to hope, prided, and praise more than people who are avoidance-oriented. Avoidance people respond to disappointment, fear, and nervousness. There are many different factors influencing which type of attitude a person will have. The first main one is social influences. Parents and friends greatly influence what we think and feel. Parents need to teach their children about a standard of excellence, expectations, independence, and potential. If a parents gives encouragement and sets a good example the person will have more realistic goals and an idea of excellence. The next is about what you think you are capable of. This is cognitive influences. They are having high expectations of yourself, being positive, and want to achieve. The third is development influences, which is knowing realistic goals. Atkinson’s Model tells us there are three ways a person approaches achievement. The first is Tendency to approach success. The person has a need for achievement. The next is the tendency to avoid failure. The person works to do well so they do not get embarrassed or fail. The last is a combination of the two. A person needs to know there is risk and work not to fail but they need to also want to do well. This is combined approach and avoidance tendencies. So how does a person get the feeling of achievement? A person must master a goal. They must get better at a task and be able to do it well. This can include beating other people, improving self esteem, or even just improving yourself. The goal must include a task that is at least a little difficult, there needs to be completion, and entrepreneurship.
The next topic is Affection and intimacy. This is finding people that you trust and making a relationship with them. A good relationship must have trust, respect, communication, listening, love, etc. A person needs to have others around. When frightened a child will run to their parents and get comfort. They also watch to see how their parents react. Humans need to feel close to others for emotional support.
The last topic is power. People who are more approach-oriented will often want to be leaders. People want power so they can control the people and world around them. They need to be able to influence others and have others listen to them. The need to first impact people, get control and establish power. Then they need to control and maintain power. They also need to have influence so they can keep their power. To be a leader they need people to see them as a leader.
I was surprised by how much influences achievement. I never took the time to realize how much goes into it. I enjoyed that topic the most hence why I wrote so much about it. A lot has to do with what people taught you about potential and what you are capable of. If your parents had lots of encouragement you will often try harder and believe you can do better. Yet everyone is different, do they try because they are afraid of failing and letting people down or are they more driven by getting the goal completed?
When it comes to me I think I am about medium in all three social needs. I feel like I have a very high standard of excellence. I want to do well and achieve my full potential, the question becomes what is the best I can do? I believe that a person can always improve, yet I also know there is no such thing as perfect. For Affiliation and intimacy, I feel like I have a group of friends I can talk to. Many of them are far away though. I am also a private person so I do not want to share everything with people so I do not fully self disclose myself. When it comes to power, I would rather follow. I do not make it a priority to step up and take over. Yet when a situation calls for it I will become a leader.
Since I like the achievement need the most I will focus on it as a social need that motivates me. I feel like as I said I am very driven to do well. My parents always told me I can do anything, to dream big, and to always try my best, give 100%. I feel like maybe I have set to high of goals for myself. I want to understand all my classes so I can get all A’s. I want to master lots of tasks so I can be the best I can be. I don’t want to do things half heartedly. I got to thinking do I work to hard at everything because I want to succeed so badly, or because I am afraid of letting my parents and myself down? I think it is a combination, which it is for mist people, but I can’t help but think that I am so afraid of let letting them down that I’m doing lots of stuff for them and not me.
Terms: Needs, drive, acquired needs, quasi needs, social needs, achievement, social influences, cognitive influences, developmental influences, Atkinson’s Model, Affection & intimacy, Power.
Chapter 7 talked about both quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are situational that come up thru ones environment and driven by desires or needs that crop up according to the situation. On the other hand, social needs come from development and the many situations across time. Once they are created they tend to stick around for a long time and influence the emotions, behaviors and actions of the individual. Social needs are very important. They can be separated out in to achievement, affiliation, and power and whether an individual is high or low in the different social needs influences their behavior and the way they interact in their environment differently. The social need for achievement is the need to push ourselves to do well dependent on a particular standard and includes different competitions: with oneself, with others, and with the task itself. Those high in achievement are very competitive. Affiliation is a social need involving establishing and maintaining relationships. Those high in affiliation think about the different relationships in their lives and can be sensitive to the changing and moods of those they interact with. This is different, however, then the five factor model of personality characteristic of conscientiousness. The social need of power is just what it sounds like. It has to do with making the environment and those around them to conform in a way they want it to. It has a lot to do with control (maintaining power), impact (establishing power) and influence (expanding or restoring power). Those high in power tend to find themselves in leadership roles.
I would say that I have a very high level of achievement. I didn’t always have this need but it cropped up from my past experiences, particularly when my son was born. I was more of a free spirit kind of person and didn’t ever have that much ambition to do much other than to just make sure I am happy in life. It’s not like I was just sitting on the couch wasting away. It’s just that my life goal and ambition included some day retiring in a trailer on the beach and teaching surfing lessons. Once my son was born, however, that all changed. I decided that I wanted to give him things that I didn’t have when I was growing up. So, I went back to school and my social need of achievement has led me thru community college for my AA, thru UNI for my double major bachelors degree, thru becoming an honors student at UNI and doing an Honors Thesis and pushed me to strive to get accepted in to a graduate school program to earn my PhD. It is far from a quasi-need, as it has stayed with me for the last 4 years and influenced my life drastically. Not only has it pushed me to excel academically but it also has pushed me in other ways…namely to mature as a person. I was living with my three best friends in a large apartment that can only be described as the ultimate bachelor pad. This one social need has influenced the decision to move out and back home to save money for a year and now I live in a nice 2 bedroom apartment off campus alone with my son. It boggles my mind to even try and think about how my life was just 4 short years ago. I have always been high in the social need of affiliation. However, the strength of achievement has started to lower my need for affiliation. Relationships and friends were incredibly important to me, and they still are. Because I don’t have much family, my friends have taken on that role of my family. I think about them often, however, because my need of achievement has become so strong and has made me incredibly busy (of course, a lot of that also is time with my son – which in theory is a type of affiliation) I don’t have as much time for them. I still keep in touch and I still talk and actively take part in their lives, just not in a physical way – as in, I do a lot of facebook, text, phone calls, skype, xbox live, etc. but don’t have as much time to be there personally and hang with them. I suppose, since my level of affiliation is high, it has influenced me to evolve to stay in contact with them in other ways since I can’t be there personally. The social need for power is not very high. I like to be a leader and be in charge, however, it is not something that is that important to me. It’s funny that I say that as I am a coach for gymnastics and LOVE my role it brings. It is definitely a leadership role and I love everything about it, however, I suppose I view myself as a sort of equal with more knowledge about the sport then my gymnasts in which I must pass to them. I by no way rule with an iron fist but joke and have fun…however, that isn’t to say that I can’t and don’t assert myself if I need to, it is definitely not my favorite part of coaching when I do that. However, this lack of pressing iron fist power on to my gymnasts isn’t just power…my enjoyment of a power position I suppose increases my level of power. I would say my need for competency is much higher than my need for power (I realize how those two are related).
TERMS: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, approval, power, control, impact, influence
Chapter 7 began by looking at acquired psychological needs, which are social and quasi-needs. Social needs function as personality characteristics and this chapter discusses four in particular; achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. While quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full blown needs in the same sense that psychological, physiological, and social needs are. Quasi needs have urgency to them, for example a college student graduating and needing to find a job. Our social needs are developed through experience and socialization and they are constantly over time as we develop. For example we are not as independent and we rely on our parents a lot when we are younger, as we get older we begin to become more independent. These two concepts are the basis of this chapter and I found the four social needs to be very interesting in particular.
The first of the four social needs is achievement; which is doing something well to show personal competence. As expressed in previous chapters we all strive to become competent because we gain a sense of achievement and thus feel good about ourselves. We become energized when completing a task that we know is personally rewarding to us which causes us to master and achieve more future goals. For example when I get a good grade on a test or assignment I feel good about myself thus causing me to work hard and to get good grades on my future exams and assignments. The next concept is affiliation, which is the opportunity to please others and to gain their approval. We want to please others and get their approval because it is rewarding for us to be accepted by our peers. The need for affiliation is based on the idea that we do not want to be rejected. For example if I wanted to make a new friend I would want them to accept me and not reject, basically looking for positive aspects rather than negative ones. The next concept is intimacy which is thought as a warm and secure relationship. Intimacy deals with the willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another individual. There are different levels of intimacy based on our relationships. The last concept is power, which is thought as having an impact on others. Power is the need or desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. We all want to have a sense of power for different reasons and in different situations. For example I want to have a sense of power at work, I want individuals to follow or conform to my ideas. There are three forms of power; impact, control, and influence. Impact is allowing power needing individuals to establish power. Control is allowing power needing individuals to maintain power. And influence is allowing power needing individuals to expand or restore power. All three of these are impacted and used by different individuals.
I found it interesting that social needs lie dormant in us until they are needed to satisfy a incentive which impacts our attention in terms of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It’s like we use them as a defense mechanism when something occurs that we may find beneficial, we seek positive outcomes. If I were to rank myself in terms of high, medium, or low in terms of social needs I would have different ranks for sure. For achievement I rank myself as high because I want to do well on tasks because they are rewarding to me. As for affiliation I would rank myself as medium because I want others to accept me however it is not the end of the world if they do not. For intimacy I would rank myself as medium again because I like to have close relationships with individuals. I think it is important to have people that are close to you because they provide support. And as for power I would rank myself as low because I do not try extremely hard to impact people partly because I am not in the position to do so very often, in terms of larger concepts. The rankings I gave myself are impacted by several aspects of my life and they will constantly be changing as I change and grow. Achievement strongly influences my grades, as I strive to do well on exams and homework so I get good grades, thus making me feel like I have achieved something good. Achieving good grades makes me feel positively about doing my homework because I am usually reinforced by a good grade. Overall this chapter was very interesting because it looked more at social influences in terms of motivation.
Terms: Psychological, Physiological, Quasi-Needs, Social-Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, Reinforcement.
Chapter seven discusses our social needs and how our behaviors are developed based on the required needs. The main focus of the chapter, as well as, the four social needs is: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. All of us are our own individual, therefore the way we fulfill these needs differ greatly. Achievement is the need to do well on a standard of excellence. Affiliation is the state of being associated with something or someone. Intimacy is a close familiarity or friendship. Affiliation and Intimacy can go hand-in-hand with each other. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image. All in all, these social needs arise from the individual’s personal experiences and histories. They can act as emotional or behavioral potentials that are triggered by situational experiences.
The most surprising thing about I enjoyed reading about was the topic of aggressiveness. The aspect of aggressiveness is very intriguing to me because it is an act you commonly see an individual do and you just ask yourself, “Why do they act that way?” It was interesting to read that males and females with high needs for power report significantly more impulses to act aggressively. This makes sense. A person that does have a lot of power does seem to have the more aggressive traits in them. On the other side of aggressiveness, it was entertaining to read about aggressiveness and alcohol. One of my roommates gets aggressive when consuming alcohol so it was easy for me to relate to the book on this concept.
If I had to rate myself on the different social needs, I would rate myself as the following: 1) Achievement-high…because I have grown up in a family and been groomed to always to your best and give it your all. I do not want to disappoint and with that being said, I consider myself a high achievement person. 2) Affiliation-Medium…because I feel it is beneficial for me to feel like I am part of something with people, but I do not get lonely if I am by myself either. 3) Intimacy-high…because I would say my relationship with my family is above average. I am very close with my parents and my friends as well. With that, it satisfies me. 4) Power-Medium/Low…because I am not that aggressive of a guy. I am more of a softy if anything, but I do have that competitive side of me where I do not want to lose, but in all reality it is not the end of the world either if I happen to lose. I have grown more mature about the whole “losing” over the course of high school and college.
The way these four social needs contribute in my life are part of what makes me who I am today. As I just mentioned above, I told you how and why I am the way
I am with these aspects toward social needs. Each one of them is an important part of me. My need for achievement is part of my daily life. I stated before that I had high achievement. Every day, the things I accomplish during the day are to achieve some sort of goal in my life. This may include doing academic school work so that I can excel in the classroom and receive passing grades or go practice my golf game because someday I hope to be a professional golfer. This is just one portion of my life. I could describe why each social need has a positive facet on my life. So in essence, the four social needs (achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power) all have a very meaningful part of my life.
Key Terms: social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, emotional, behavior
My goal for four years now has been to graduate with a psychology
degree, that’s it. Until this point I hadn’t put a lot of thought into
anything further, I had said I would be going to graduates school
after I get my undergrads, but that’s where all the planning stopped.
Until now obviously when I actually made myself sit here and think
about what I really want to do.
So now I am making the long term goal of going to graduate school for
counseling psychology, and even more in-depth on that my focus is
going to be on children. After reading Chapter 8 I realized I had a
lot of planning to do, I have all these mental pictures of where I
want my life to be, in a year I want to be graduated from UNI, I want
to have been accepted into a graduate program ( hopefully in a big
city). Im actually really good at planning, and according to the text
planning out your goals can motivate my behavior to accomplish these
goals. I have always had this feeling that the state I’m in now is not
the ideal state that I personally want to be in, I understand that
this is more of a transition and growth period in my life, but it
still pisses me off at times. From chapter 8 I realized that this
“feeling” is called discrepancy.
I have always been a goal setter, but unless I could actually picture
exactly what I wanted it’s been hard for me to stick to a goal and
actually accomplish it. Being in college I’ve set goals, but I have
purposely made them more of an open-ended goal in which I didn’t
really care if I accomplished it or not because then if I didn’t it
isn’t technically failing. The next “step” is considered to be
actually setting a specific and difficult goal, this one was tricky
for me because I really don’t want to grow up and figuring out a
career path kind of gives me anxiety. But according to the book
research proves that people who don’t set goals for themselves don’t
perform as well in life as people who do set goals. So I decided to
set the difficult goal of becoming a youth counselor, chapter eight
states that the more difficult a goal is the better you perform at
reaching that goal. I also realized that so far I haven’t done much in
the way of setting myself up to meet this goal, I have kind of just
trying to avoid it and obviously if I want to be successful in life I
need to stop doing that
I really enjoyed this chapter because it really kind of slapped me in
the face with the reality that I wasn’t trying to face. I haven’t made
advancements with my long term goals, and I really need to start
doing so if I want all those mental future plans to actually happen.
Terms: Goal, Plan, Discrepency, goal setting, long-term, motivation, difficulty,