Read chapter 6. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Chapter 6 discussed the psychological needs that we have. The three psychological needs are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is the need for an individual to experience self-direction and have a choice in their behavior. We all want to have true choice in the things we do, and when we are forced to do something or do not have a choice in a situation, our need for autonomy increases. When an individual experiences freedom in choice or even perceived freedom, then their need for autonomy is more satisfied. Competence is the need for an individual to be challenged in their situation, but to also have the opportunity to apply their skills. When the level of challenge matches the level of skills, then the individual experiences flow and their need for competence is satisfied. Relatedness is the need to be emotionally bonded and closely connected with other individuals in meaningful relationships. Our need for connectedness and relatedness causes us to act in ways to satisfy the need: to engage in quality time with those who care about us and who we care about. When we do not feel connected or related to others then it can have the result of feeling depressed or alone.
All three of these needs are connected and point to one's level of engagement. Engagement is the intensity and emotional quality one gives in a situation and activity they are in. The level to which the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are satisfied directly correlate to the level in which they are engaged emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively in a situation. The more one's psychological needs are satisfied in a day, the more engaged he/she will be, and the more likely they will be able to say that they had a "good day".
The most surprising thing I learned about these needs was in trying to satisfy the need for autonomy, we often try to give others a choice in the decision. But what surprised me was that just merely giving others a choice and options does not necessarily satisfy their need for autonomy, and they may not feel the perceived freedom of choice. When you give people a choice for the decision, the choices need to be unrestricted with no strings attached and they need to reflect their personal values and interests. This type of choice will then satisfy their autonomy need, and can even increase their internal motivation to do a task they may not normally enjoy, but since they had free choice in it, they are more wiling to engage.
In rating myself on the psychological needs I would say that my need for relatedness is high. I have connections and friends who care about me, but I have not been able to see a lot of them recently so my feeling of connection has decreased. My need for competence is medium because I would like to be challenged in more areas of my job and my life, but at the same time would love to increase my skills in other areas because the challenge is too high. My need for autonomy is low because I feel free to make my own decisions and to do what I want most of the time. I generally am interested in the choices I have.
These levels affect my life in many areas, but the main one I notice is in the need for competence. Just like in the idea of Flow, I have experienced too high of a challenge and too low of a skill level recently in some of the tasks and situations I have been in. This has caused me to become frustrated and anxious because I have not been able to successfully do tasks. But at the same time I have wanted to prove that I am competent enough and not admit that I don't know something, so I either avoid tasks that are too challenging, or try to power my way through them without asking for help. This need for competence has made me think about the tasks and situations I have engaged in that give me the flow experience, and I want to increase those situations or make more of the balance of challenge and skill in my life.
Terms: Flow. Autonomy. Competence. Relatedness. Engagement. Choice.
Psychological needs have 3 main categories: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Behaviors motivated by psychological needs are proactive, meaning you do them willingly. Up till this point in the book we have learned motivation that focus on the environment acting, forcing the person to act in response. Psychological needs are all about a person acting first, causing the environment to change. Autonomy is all about the need to decide for ourselves how or when we want to do something. Autonomous behavior is directed by interests, preferences, and wants. Competence is all about feeling some self worth. This can be anything from being a good student, to a good employee, to a good teammate, to a good guitar player. Who knows what people want to be good at, but feeling competent is important in a person’s life. Relatedness need involves a connection to the people someone interacts with. Relatedness involves caring, liking, valuing and accepting. Without those things a person could be lonely in a crowded room.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
One thing I was surprised to learn that giving someone a choice isn’t always considered autonomy, because structuring that choice is still taking away other choices that they may like better. Internalizing is one of the main things in this chapter I found interesting. Relatedness can cause you to internalize other people’s values and make them your own. Everyone wants to fit in and relate to society on some level or another. It would be lonely being a complete outcast. So to fit in, I shower most days, I brush my teeth, and I do not have crazy tattoos and piercings all over my face. But, when I think about why I value these things it’s because I should. If I didn’t it would be hard to have friends, get a job, or just be a functioning member of society.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? If I were to rate competence, relatedness, and autonomy by 1 to 3, one being the highest, this is what it would be.
1-Competence
2-Relatedness
3-Autonomy
Competence is by far my highest rated psychological need. I like when someone is proud of me, I like knowing what I am doing and being good at it. I do not like to disappoint others and get an uneasy feeling when I do. Relatedness is second. I highly value my relationships with my friends and don’t know what I would do with myself if I had no one to talk to about my life. Autonomy comes last because generally I kind of like being told what to do. When I am at work I would prefer my boss actually give me a task instead of letting me decided what I want to do. Too much autonomy is not motivating for me. I end up getting bored and looking for split ends in my hair.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Competence motivates many of my day to day behaviors. I am a graduating senior, with a 3.5 GPA, I have no student loans and I already have a job lined up for May. I really just need to pass my classes and coast to graduation. However, I have a physical need to be effective. I hate feeling as though there is something I could be doing and I am not. Although I could get a C, I can’t help but try for an A. A letter grade is so arbitrary, but an A makes me feel good when I see it. I work 2 jobs totaling about 35 hours a week. I should quit one, but I don’t want my boss to be upset with me. I can do both, it just takes a little more effort. My busy schedule all revolves around feeling competent. When the book talks about failure tolerance however, I can totally relate. If I have a task that is not well explained, and I feel as though I just can’t do it well, then I become very unmotivated. I then would rather not do it at all.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
I would say the fish picture is about the fish’s motivation. What motivated him to jump out of his bowl? Was someone watching so he wanted to show them what he could do for his competence need? Were all the other fish doing it, so he wanted to relate? Or maybe the fish just didn’t like being confined to swimming in a small bowl. He needed the autonomy to swim where he wanted and that motivated him to jump out of his bowl hoping for something better that was his own choice.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Competence, Relatedness, Autonomy, Psychological needs, Internalizing, caring, liking, valuing, accepting
Chapter 6 discussed the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the need of making ones own choices and decisions. Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. People feel a sense of self-worth by proving their competence. Relatedness is the ability to establish close relationships (emotional bonds and attachments) with other people. When all of these needs are put together they form engagement.
The most surprising and interesting section of this chapter to me was the section on autonomy support. I think it is interesting that when the approaches people take to handling certain situations influence the reactions and responses of other people. An environment that is supportive of autonomy has many benefits, and they include: more productive work, enjoyment in the activity or task, stronger engagement, and higher development, to name a few. Autonomy support influences has the ability to strongly influence the performances of others.
If I were to rate the needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as high, medium, or low as they pertain to myself they would be as follows. My need to autonomy is medium. I find myself sometimes unable to make choices and decisions for myself as it relates to my job, specifically my schedule. I often have schedules and appointments made for me, and this can sometimes be very frustrating. My need for competence is low. I feel very competent in my work and in my role as a grad student. I am challenged, but not too much. My need for relatedness is low. I value my friendships and relationships, and I interact with the people in them on a regular basis. Competence is very motivating for me. I enjoy being challenged, and I feel satisfied when I am challenged. For example, when I am working with a new client at my job I often find it challenging to initially develop programming for them because I do not have the best understanding of their wants and needs right away. If I am successfully able to development a wellness program for them I feel a strong sense of competence.
I think the fish picture relates to motivation. As it pertains to this chapter, I think one of the psychological needs were motivating for the fish to jump out of the bowl. It is likely that the fish was lonely and his need for relatedness was not being met. It would then be motivating for him to jump out of the bowl in hopes of finding other fish.
Terms: motivation, engagement, autonomy, competence, relatedness
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter six is about human psychological needs. These needs aren’t like physiological needs, where if they aren’t met, the organism will die. These needs arise out of the psyche, or the will of the human. They include three basic areas: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Most humans don’t actually require these, such as “relatedness”, because humans can still survive without relating to any other human being. It can, however, cause chronic stress and anxiety, which can lead to a host of problems including anti-social disorder, depression, suicidal thoughts, and so forth. These dimensions of human psyche are important for proper and full functioning. To summarize these three, autonomy is the state of self-direction; competence is the ability to interact with the environment; and relatedness is the feeling of belonging.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
There wasn’t much that surprised me in this chapter. If I could highly something that I had never thought of before, it would be the cause of a “good day”. I had never before thought of these psychological needs directly relating, if not defining, whether I had a good day or a bad day. It’s interesting to compare my good days and bad days and realize that there’s a direct correlation between meeting these psychological needs and having a good day.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
In terms of autonomy, I believe I am medium. A can make a lot of my life’s choices, but there are certain characteristics of the environment that limit my autonomy. These include my income, social status, physical abilities, and so forth.
In terms of competence, I am adequate. I think I’d be right in between high and medium. I participate in many things that challenge me, but I often don’t have the time to challenge myself in the way that I would like to.
In terms of relatedness, I am once again at the medium level. I’m often quiet and shy, and I don’t make a lot of friends, but the friendships that I do have typically are quality friendships. I have a small social circle that I enjoy spending time with.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
It’s fairly clear that my psychological needs affect how many events in my life unfold. These needs derive how I may react to people, what I do during the day, and what kind of mood I’m in, as described by the authors (pg. 167). Outside of my physiological needs, my psychological needs are the single most influential needs that currently drive me. They shift and shape my day-to-day psychological experience.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
My ability to relate to other people is an easy example of my motivation toward specific behaviors. My social group features people who like to criticize, blame, and put down others. If I am to socially survive and thrive, I have to act a certain way. I believe it’s typical of the college male, but I am to be masculine in as many ways as possible, yet I have to support my friends. I have to disregard emotions as much as possible, show I don’t care about certain things, turn everything into a joke, and reject any personal traits that are considered feminine. This isn’t terribly hard for me, but there are certain characteristics about me that my friends would rather have different.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
I believe the picture of the fish jumping out of its bowl is a direct idea to connect to relatedness. The fish was all alone in the fish bowl and had no “social” interaction with other fish. Thus, it made the decision (it used its autonomy) to try and find other fish to interact with. Additionally, simply swimming in the bowl didn’t prove enough competence for the fish either.
Terms Used: Autonomy; Competence; Relatedness; Psychological needs; Belonging
This chapter looks at psychological needs and how fulfilling them makes us happy. It looks at how organisms need environment to become better and since environments constantly changing, so are organisms. Organismic theory looks at how environment and people affect each other. It talks about how people like autonomy or they like to make decisions. Autonomy is very helpful in motivating people. Perceived locus of causality is if someone can tell the source of their motivation. Volition is how willing we are to do something. An environment should be supplied with lots of choices. This helps with intrinsic motivation. People can motivate by controlling or by nurturing others. People can try to motivate others by giving them rationales or by speaking to them a certain way. Competence is another big motivating factor since everyone wants to feel competent. Challenge also helps people become motivated but only after they also receive positive feedback. Failure-intolerant environments make it easier for people to take these challenges so they feel competent. People also like to feel relatedness or close to other people which makes us motivated to interact with people. When people do things that satisfy psychological needs, they feel better.
I found it surprising that challenge doesn’t really motivate people until they get feedback. I thought that people like a challenge even if they haven’t had any feedback.
I have high motivation in competence and relatedness. I have a medium motivation and in challenge and autonomy.
Competence motivates me a lot since I like to do things right. I don’t like to make mistakes and I try to do things to my best ability. I have a high rating in relatedness since I like to make connections with people and feel like I belong. I have medium rating in challenge since I like a challenge but it’s not the most motivating thing. I also have a medium rating in autonomy since I like choice in my life but I don’t always like making decisions.
My high level of motivation in competence makes it so I try hard at my job. I try to ask lots of questions and learn everything I can. It also makes it so I try hard in school. I study lots so I get good grades and so I’m competent in school.
The fish picture could be showing how motivation isn’t always physiological. A physiological need for this fish is water but a psychological need makes him want to jump out.
Terms used: Psychological needs, organisms, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, intrinsic motivation, positive feedback, failure-intolerant environments, competence
Chapter 6 was all about the study of three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how they rely on an organismic approach to motivation. An approach to motivation makes two core assumptions. First, people are inherently active. Second, in the person-environment dialectic, the person uses inherent psychological needs to engage in the environment and the environment sometimes supports but at other times neglects and frustrates these inner resources. Autonomy is the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people.
The most interesting thing I learned was that only communal relationships, meaning relationships between people who care about the welfare of the other, like friendships, family, and romantic relationships, satisfy the relatedness need. Exchange relationships like acquaintances or co workers do not satisfy the relatedness need.
If I had to rate myself on the various psychological needs, the ratings would probably be that relatedness is high, competence is medium, and autonomy is low, even though I feel like autonomy could be medium as well. These levels manifest themselves in my life on a daily occurrence. As far as relatedness goes, if I feel like I don’t have anyone to talk to, or people don’t relate to me, I get very anxious and depressed. I need friends and family in my life to be happy, without them I get very depressed very easily. Competence relates in my life in ways of school. School is a challenge for me, however it’s not as challenging as it might be for others. I tend to get good grades, but I have to work for them, so sometimes things come very easily for me, while others do not. Autonomy is also important to me because everyone wants to feel like they can make their own decisions without other people telling them what to do. As for me, I almost always do what I want to do and I don’t let others tell me otherwise.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your behaviors. I will choose autonomy; autonomy motivates my behaviors in forms of choices and choosing. One big example was the choice on where to go to school. My family currently lives in Tennessee and I had tried living there and I was either going to go to school there to be near my family, or I had to choose to go to UNI where I knew it was a good school and I had some friends up here. My intermediate family and other relatives were really pushing me to stay in Tennessee and go to school there, however I chose to go to school at UNI and I felt really good that I stuck to my guns and decided to go where I wanted to go, even though I had other people telling me I should stay in Tennessee. That example right there fulfilled my psychological need of autonomy.
If I had to make a guess about the fish, I would say that the fish is lonely and is jumping out of the fishbowl to hopefully find more fish so that he can fulfill his relatedness psychological need.
ME terms- Psychological needs, autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, controlling motivating style, autonomy supportive motivating style, competence, relatedness, flow model, structure, failure tolerance, positive feedback, communal relationships, exchange relationships, internalization, engagement, vitality
This chapter discusses the organismic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. It goes on to discuss each of these needs in detail and how we engage those needs in our everyday lives. Autonomy is a need to have freedom in our lives and freedom in the choices we make. We want to make our own decisions and not have someone directing our behavior. Competence is the need to be effective in our daily lives. We want to display the skills that we have and be effective and masterful in doing so. We are very satisfied when we accomplish something particularly challenging and also as we continue to improve our skills. Lastly, relatedness is the need to belong and have interactions with others. We want friendly relationships with others and we also want them to form those relationships with us.
The part that was very interesting and a little surprising to me was the part about flow, as related to competence. Flow was a concept I had never heard of, and it is used to describe a strong involvement and absorption in an activity. It occurs when there is a specific relationship between skill and task challenge, in other words, a person has to utilize their skills to complete a challenge. Needless to say, flow is greatest when both skill and challenge is high, because a person feels very competent. What I found surprising was that when both skill and challenge are low, flow is at an all-time low. In that situation, all levels of motivation and emotion are the lowest they can be and the person is not even remotely interested in the task at hand.
If I were to rate myself in terms of the three different psychological needs, I would rate relatedness as being high, competence as medium, and autonomy as low-medium. My need for relatedness is high because relationships are probably the most important thing in my life, and I need to have that social interaction to be able to function. Competence is rated next as medium because I strive for perfection in most things that I do, so I enjoy the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing a challenging task. However, I could probably challenge myself even more than I do now and continue to develop my skills. The need for autonomy is also important in my life but just not as much as the other two. Of course, everyone wants to feel in control of their decision and I am very much in control of my life. However, sometimes I feel like I am able to work better in a structured environment where everything isn’t just left up to me to create.
Since my need for relatedness is very high, this need often motivates many of my behaviors on a day-to-day basis. I am always seeking out friendships with others and working to maintain my friendships that I already have. This is very important to me, so I’ll often be the one to suggest or come up with a plan for myself and others to do so we can spend time together. Often if I’m bored, I won’t just sit by myself but I’ll find something that I can do with others.
Looking at the fish picture before I read the chapter, I wasn’t sure how that related to what we were about to read on psychological needs. After reading it, I feel as though the fish is depicting the need of relatedness. Since that was the only fish in the bowl, perhaps the fish is feeling a strong need for relatedness and an urge for companionship. The fish jumping out of the bowl could mean that the fish was leaving its bowl of isolation and searching to find more fish to establish those social interactions.
Terms: organismic psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, engage, flow, motivation, emotion.
Chapter 6’s main objective is to discuss our psychological needs based on the organismic approach. Organismic theories get their name from the term organism, which is an entity that is alive and in active exchange with its environment. The survival of such organisms is highly dependent on its environment, because the environment offers food, water, shelter, social support, and intellectual stimulation. The chapter uses the organismic theories of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of ones behavior and it reflects the desire to have inner resources, rather than environmental events. Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved with others in warm, caring relationships.
The most surprising thing I learned was the subject of optimal challenge and flow. In the book it explains that Csikszentmihalyi did a study where he interviewed different types of people to determine what they thought was fun. He found that the experience of enjoyment could be traced to the “flow experience”. Flow is the state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep involvement in an activity. Flow is such a pleasurable experience that the person often repeats the activity that gave them enjoyment in hopes of experiencing flow experience again. This can occur when a person uses his or her skills to overcome a challenge. If the challenges and skills matches up perfectly then that creates a perfect flow, in other words that skill is high and challenge is low. When skill outweighs challenge, then that just creates a sense of boredom. Being over challenged produces emotional problems and can create issues. The book notes that “the most important practical implication of flow theory is that given the optimal challenge, any activity can be enjoyed.” People that want optimal challenges will set up the need for competence and set up the conditions for flow. With the sense of a very hard challenge, some people see the change to grow their skills and competence. I found this interesting and surprising because I knew that this was something that everyone experiences but I did not know there was neither a specific term nor a specific theory that explains it.
I would say that my need for competence is high. I feel as though I am being challenged but I want to enhance my skills and be challenged at the same time. I think for myself, this is the best way for me to learn. I am going to meet this need soon by going on to graduate school and learn how to become a therapist. My need for relatedness is medium. I have a lot of friendships but I have very close emotional bonds and friendships with only a few people in my life. I would not say that I need to create closer bonds with people, but I think it is also work at keeping friendships and developing friendships and that is where I would need to focus some energy on, especially after I graduate from UNI. Finally, I would say my need for autonomy is low. I feel as though I am pretty self-determined and that I have used this skill quite a bit in the last few months by doing my homework as well as finishing up things for graduate school and making a decision. I think that I have a nice balancing motivational need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I feel like it is important to have a sense of self-direction, as well as be challenged by your environment, and keep friendships and develop close emotional bonds with the people that you really care about in your life.
At first, before reading the chapter, I thought the picture of the fish meant the common phrase “a fish out of water”, meaning that you need to set yourself out of your comfort zone to really experience things in your life and learn. Maybe that is the need for a higher sense of competence. The fish might not feel like it is getting an high need of challenge so therefore it wants to go somewhere else that it can feel more challenged and develop its skills?
TERMS: competence, autonomy, relatedness, optimal challenge, flow,
Chapter 6 examines the motivational importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness—three psychological needs. Environments with support and nurture create positive emotions, healthy development, and optimal experience. When an activity involves and satisfies our psychological needs, we feel interest and enjoyment. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness are often referred to as organismic psychological needs because organisms initiate interactions with the environment. Organisms adapt, change, and grow due to environmental transactions. Both the person and the environment are constantly changing and they act on one another. Because the environment fulfills or frustrates a person’s needs, it produces new forms of motivation in a person. The person-environment dialect assumes that the environmental events affect the individual by offering challenges and interesting things to do, provide feedback, imposes goals, contains relationships that support/frustrate the psychological needs, and features a community/cultural context for the person’s ongoing development. Natural motivation for learning, growing, and developing is provided by the organismic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When behavior is autonomous, opposed to being controlled by others, people show positive outcomes, such as gains in motivation, engagement, learning, performance, and psychological well-being. In competence, a person is able to exercise their capacities and skills. The need for competence generates the motivation to want to develop, improve upon, and refine personal skills and talents. Flow, a psychological state characterized by maximal enjoyment, intense concentration, and full absorption in the task, occurs when personal challenge and environmental skill are both relatively high. Relatedness is the need for close emotional bonds and attachments to other people. Relatedness is satisfied when the emerging social bonds with others involve both caring and liking. Internalization comes out of relatedness which is the process through which one person takes in and accepts as his or her own another person’s belief, value, or way of behaving. When psychological need is satisfied, people experience the psychological nutriments necessary for active engagement, having “a good day,” and experiences of vitality and well-being.
I was the most surprised by what makes “a good day.” I always wondered why some days were crappier than other for really no apparent reason. A person really doesn’t think about autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they just “do” it.
If I had to rate myself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, I would rate myself medium on autonomy, high on competence, and medium on relatedness. These various levels manifest themselves in my life. For autonomy, I like to have my freedom but yet I like to work under others at times so I know exactly what has to be done and that I feel good when I accomplish what others need. I am high on competence because I love to be the best or very good at almost everything so I enjoy practicing and improving my skills. I am medium on relatedness because I enjoy being with others and laughing and relating to others but sometimes I like to keep myself company and be in my own thoughts. Competence motivates me to practice playing piano and singing songs. I love to write songs and show others what I accomplished.
If I had to make a guess, the fish in the picture wants to fulfill its need for relatedness. It’s lonely in the bowl by itself. Maybe it wants to feel autonomy from the small space it has to live in. Or it may want to feel competent that it can leave and not stay trapped in the small bowl. It relates to this chapter by showing it has motivation in order to fulfill its psychological needs.
Terms: autonomy; competence; relatedness; psychological needs; organismic psychological needs; person-environment dialect; motivation; flow; internalization
Summary of Chapter 5
This chapter discusses the psychological needs that a person has. These needs are important when analyzing motivated behavior. Psychological needs promote willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment that we expect will be able to nurture our needs. There are three psychological needs. They are referred to as organism needs because they are alive and are active. The first psychological need is Autonomy. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement. When deciding what to do, we desire choice and making our own decisions. We want our behavior to arise out of and express our preferences. There are three qualities that work together to define the experience. Perceived Locus of Causality, volition, and Perceived Choice. Competence is the second and is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment. Striving to be competent and interact effectively with their surroundings. This creates a willingness for challenges and engage in a task
Relatedness is the third psychological need. This is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. This is a desire to be emotionally connected and interpersonally involved. Interaction is the primary condition that involves the relatedness we need. Starting a new relationship seems to be an especially easy way to involve relatedness.
One thing that I thought was interesting in the chapter was the section of autonomy. I never realized how important it was to us. In this autonomy section of the chapter I was particularly interested in providing explanatory rules. An example they used was when a parent would tell a child to do something like clean their room or do the dishes. When the child asks why some parents will simply say because I told you to or just do it. By giving them an explanation it can motivate people to do uninteresting tasks. By using ‘because’ and explaining why you are asking can give the person some value. Communicating this to someone who is not motivated to do the task in the first place may internalize and accept the reasons why.
When it comes to my life and I had to rate the different needs I would say my relatedness is medium. I am very close with my family and have a few very close friends. I have plenty of good friends and acquaintances. I am mostly a private person and enjoy staying home and having a small bonfire or few friends over instead of going out and meeting new people all the time. I would be very stressed or have anxiety if I wasn’t able to connect with them. I would have a low to medium rate for autonomy. I love being able to do what I want, but sometimes I don’t know what to do without some direction. I am very indecisive when it comes to decisions. I would have a medium rate for competency. I am in college and will be graduating within the year so I obviously strive for knowledge.
I think that the fish could have been jumping out of his bowl for two reasons. One may have been autonomy. He wanted to decide where he was and when he was there. He wanted to make his own decisions. He may have experienced volition. He was in an unpressured willingness to engage in an escaping activity. Or the fish may have been trying to fulfill a need for relatedness. His fish family may have been close by and he wanted to connect with them, Or he may have wanted to meet a new fish.
Organism Autonomy Perceived Locus of Causality volition and Perceived Choice Competence Relatedness explanatory rules
Chapter 6 discussed the psychological needs of humans, more specifically, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Relatedness refers to the need to be bonded emotionally and to feel closely connected with others. Relatedness is about having meaningful relationships. Competence involves being challenged by situations and applying a person's skills. A key component of competence is flow which occurs when an individuals level of skill matches the situation's challenge. Autonomy is about experiencing self direction--having a choice in your behavior.
Something I found interesting about this chapter is that relatedness cannot be satisfied through co-workers or acquaintances. Only relationships that involve people whose welfare concerns us satisfy this need. So people like friends, family, and partners.
If I had to rate myself on the psychological needs I would probably say that I am medium on autonomy, and high in both relatedness and competence. My medium autonomy can be seen in the fact that I am perfectly happy with letting my boyfriend plan our day and to let my friends make decisions on what we do. However, I tend to find myself taking charge of situations and I like the idea of being my own boss. This also shows my high need for competence. I love a good challenge, as long as I've had enough sleep. I like being in positions where I am in charge of getting something accomplished and making a good end product. For example, in high school I was always the assistant director for theater productions. I had the duties of running lines, calling up actors, running practices, standing in for missing actors, keeping track of blocking and scenic changes, and running the show during performances. Leadership comes naturally to me in most cases and I believe it is because I like developing my skills and learning new ones from other people. My high need for competence can be seen in the fact that I have quite a few close friends and I cherish them like they are family, because to me they are. I love spending time with my friends and my boyfriend and, while there are days that I don't want to talk to anyone, it is weird if I don't communicate with them on a daily basis.
Competence motivates my behaviors in what I want to do with my life. I want to go to graduate school to get my PhD in Clinical Psychology and become a licensed psychologist. This means a minimum of 6 more years of school and thousands of dollars spent on education and tests. The challenge level is extremely high but I am also highly motivated to conquer this challenge and do what I want to do for a career.
If I had to guess I would say that the fish picture is related to this chapter because it illustrates all three of the psychological needs of this chapter. Autonomy is shown by the fish wanting to swim where he wants to, not in the stupid bowl that some stupid human put him in. Competence is shown in that there was a challenge--getting out of the bowl--and the fish completed it. Relatedness is shown in the fact that the fish is jumping out of the bowl to meet his friends, or find some, because he was lonely by himself in the bowl.
Terms: Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, flow
Psychological needs motivate behaviors intrinsically. Some needs are caused by biological factors and other are more tied to emotion or feelings. There are two main theories of psychological needs, one that the environment acts on the person, mechanical . The other theory is that the person acts on the environment, Person-Environment Dialectic or Organismic Psychological needs . Children are able to develop and support their psychological needs through imaginary play, it is up to the environment to either support or frustrate the child in expressing those needs.
When developing or experiencing Autonomy there are three main subjective qualities. The first is the Perceived Locus of Causality (PLOC). This refers to the origin of the motivation and understanding whether it had an intrinsic or extrinsic basis. The second quality is Volition which is the willingness to engage in an activity without pressure. This refers to whether the individual feels that they “need” to engage in the activity or whether they pursue it out of free-will. This goes hand-in-hand with the PLOC as a person who is motivated due to pressure would have a low volition to pursue the activity. The third quality is the Perceived Choice which means that the environment does not dictate our actions. This is not about a human pressure, but that the individual feels that they have many options in any given situation.
Competence: This is hard for me to rate, as I tend to be very competent with minimal effort. This fact makes it hard for me to discern whether or not it brings me any psychological satisfaction. I do enjoy being challenged, partly because I do have to then try which engages my brain more than normal. However, I highly dislike it when I am unable to do something effortlessly, and am called out on it. For example, once I forgot to tighten my horse's saddle and I ended up on the ground. Every time that situation is brought up in public, I cannot stand it! I feel embarrassed because I am very much capable of staying on my horse AND saddling properly. I would say that I have a High psychological need for competence, along with me being fairly good at picking up on new skills and activities. I just have to watch out for being bored once I have mastered the skill.
Relatedness: I have a relatively low psychological need for relatedness. I like to feel like I am part of the group but not integral to its existence. We moved around a lot, and I have learned to let go, and I am used to being on the outside of the group. You cannot be the core of a group of friends when you are missing in most of their memories together. Due to this, I consider less of a relationship to mean more to me, than others who have had longer more meaningful friendships. However, when it comes to long-term friendships and relationships, I have a high need for relatedness. My family has always been an integral part of my life and we have a much closer bond than most families because of our constant moving. Thus, if anyone wishes to become part of that in my life, they must be in the innermost circle of relatedness and trust. If I have my family, nothing matters as much to me.
Autonomy: I rank this as Medium, because I like to be able to structure my own rules to benefit my activities. I am a fairly rational person, making decisions based on fairness and safety. It bothers me when I am given “free-rein” but expected to abide by someone else's rules, especially when they don't follow them. HOWEVER, I enjoy following rules and refuse to break them, unless absolutely necessary. For example, I still cannot J-Walk without feeling an immense amount of guilt.
My need for competency has the most control in my life. When I am faced with a challenge that I have the most trouble overcoming or mastering, I can get very frustrated. For example, it was my goal to go to state for soccer in High School and I desperately hoped that I would be a good enough player to play in college. However, my freshman year I partially tore (75%) of my two ligaments in my knee and was done with contact sports for the rest of my life. Yes, if I had surgery, this would not have been the case. But with outside circumstances, surgery was not an option. Due to this, I became extremely angry with myself. I was unable to play soccer and could not even walk without a slight limp. Now, 7 years later I am finally running again. I barely have any pain in my knees due to a very good lifting program a friend designed to ease the pressure on my knees. I am able to run my first 5k in June, and everyday I am motivated to become healthier because of it. I wish that the incompetence of an injury had not set me back so far. I have to admit, running a mile time almost 3 minutes slower than what I had been at when I was 13 breaks my heart. But, every time I run, it has improved which brings me great intrinsic satisfaction.
Now as for your little fish jumping out of the fishbowl... I think this is the metaphor “fish out of water”. It refers to being eccentric or what we think of as being genius, having intellectual giftedness, or creativity. The most eccentric ideas come from unfathomable ideas because they stem straight from a mind so original, that it no longer fits our own societal norms. I think of this picture as saying “Be brilliant, be bold, and go somewhere no fish has been before... even if you suffocate. Hey, Darwin at its best!” No, really, I think it is about having your ideas stem straight from your own mind, which is what psychological needs are all about.
Psychological needs. Mechanical. Person-Environment Dialectic. Organismic. Autonomy. Perceived Locus of Causality. Volition. Perceived Choice. Eccentric
Most surprising thing learned: I was most surprised by those with low skills and competencies experiencing the least amount of flow when facing situations with a lower opportunity for challenge. Put another way I was surprised that flow is best produced when both skill and opportunity for challenge are high or moderately high and not simply when the level of opportunity for challenge matches skill/competency level.
Self-ratings:
Autonomy: Low, while I don’t feel as happy in situations where I have little control I feel I can cope with lack of genuine choice or controlling others well.
Competence: High, I enjoy challenging myself in many ways. Academically I enjoy doing this by pushing myself to study and get A’s, read research articles to learn more about topics I’m interested in and sometimes practice a language I’ve already learned. In the past I would do this physically as well by trying to run a longer distance than I normally ran.
Relatedness: Moderate, I feel I’m moderate in this area because I feel I need the types of relationships the book describes such as having the “authentic self” be revealed/validated, but if I feel the situation warrants a strong reaction I will sometimes quickly and easily end a relationship with little remorse even though the book says we are very reluctant to end our relationships once we have one.
The psychological need for competence has a large influence on my behavior. While working at my part time job I desire a feeling for competence and will sometimes ask to learn how to perform new job related tasks because it makes me feel skilled at my job. In turn I also receive positive appraisal for having a good work ethic and being punctual and it helps me to feel both competent and encouraged to keep working hard, being punctual etc...
In the picture there is a fish jumping out of the water. There does not appear to be another bowl of water the fish is jumping to, or an immediate danger to the fishes’ survival in the bowl and because fish need water to live it may not be appropriate to assume there’s a physiological reason the fish is jumping out of the bowl. Instead, the picture may be intended to make us as students think about what psychological needs are encouraging the fish to decide to jump out of the water as well as why humans may engage in behaviors that don’t appear to benefit physiological survival. In that way the picture may be intended to give us an oppurtunity to apply concepts such as competency, autonomy and relatedness.
Terms: Psychological needs, flow, autonomy, competency, relatedness, positive appraisal, physiological need.
Ch.6 discusses how our psychological needs generate motivation toward personal growth. The three psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The need for autonomy is met when a person is able to make his or her own choice to engage or not engage in some specified activity. Although, the choice must be meaningful to his or her life in order to experience autonomy. The competence need is met when a person engages in a challenge appropriate for his or her skill level and succeeds in developing new or additional skills. The perfect storm for enhancing a person’s competence includes a clear structure of the challenge, a high failure tolerance from others, positive feedback, and a personal perception of progress. The relatedness need is met when a person forms close emotional bonds with others. To meet this need the relationship must be one where both people are openly able to share their true thoughts and feelings. When these psychological needs are met people experience interest and enjoyment, leading to “good days” and positive well-being.
I was surprised by how much patience it takes to be an autonomy-supportive motivator. Anyone who has an autonomy-supportive boss/manager is lucky.
If I were to rate my need for autonomy I would say it is low. I like rules, guidelines, templates, etc. I tend to just go with the flow most of the time and don’t mind being assigned specific tasks to accomplish. I think my need for competence is high. I am always trying to read more and learn more. I also get really down on myself if I am not meeting my own expectations and often struggle with perfectionism. My need for relatedness is medium. I grew up with friends and family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all nearby and talk to them regularly. I still am very close with my girlfriends from high school, the one’s as the book said, I feel know me “authentically”.
I see my need for competence manifest itself the most in my life. I am always trying to do better than I already am in school and in my job. I feel like there is so much to learn and so little time to learn everything. I often find myself trying to write the best workout for my fitness classes and never wanting to repeat something we’ve already done. Also with my research paper I never feel ready to turn in a draft. I always think there is more to read and add before I submit it to my professor. Sometimes I think this need it too great and it is causing me too much stress.
I think the fish in the picture has to do with psychological needs motivating exploration and desires for new challenges for personal growth. The fish was bored with sitting in the little bowl of water and is jumping out to find something new to stimulate him.
Psychological needs, growth, autonomy, competence, relatedness, failure tolerance, positive feedback, interest, enjoyment, “good days”, positive well-being, autonomy-supportive
Chapter 6 is all about Psychological Needs in how they correlate and impact our everyday tasks of carrying on throughout our lives. We are introduced to three psychological needs in the chapter: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one's behavior. (146) Hence, our behavior is self-determined when our interests, preferences, and wants guide our decision making process to engage or not to engage in a particular activity. Further if i were to rate myself in regards to Autonomy, I would give my self a rating of 'high.' I have a strong understanding of the source of my motivated actions and fully acknowledge my deviations in behavior given different environmental or personal triggers. Further in working out I feel 'Volition' in that the behavior is motivated and not pressured. I have been fortunate to have insight that given a vast amount of choices via personal needs is healthy in that the options being open-ended enhances my sense of autonomy and intrinsic motivation.Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, reflecting the desire to exercise one's capacities and skills to further seek out optimal challenges. I would rate myself as 'Medium' in progression to 'High.' I do desire to interact effectively with my surroundings whether it be school, work, or relationships. I am 'medium' because i got a grasp for what it takes to improve upon these skills and potential, but often catch myself in the mud having to remind myself that this exercise is beneficial. Hence, I lack some intrinsic motivation here. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. I will also rate myself 'high' here for I believe that through my life experiences i have discovered the importance here at any early age. I ask no sympathy, but having lost my father and friend at a young age, my relatedness desire motivates my behaviors unconsciously in an abundance in that my relationship with my mother, sister, other family, and friends has only prospered since then for I now place overwhelming value in attachment and bond. Further, what we learn from the chapter is that experiences that involve and satisfy all of these psychological needs generate positive emotion and psychological well-being. Further, "Psychological need satisfaction predicts and explains when we do and do not have a good day." (167)
Something that I found interesting was the actual effect the satisfaction of these psychological needs really does have on how we perceive our daily lives as being 'good' or 'bad.' We to often accredit a certain occurrence as a day-breaker, yet must understand that we still have a chance to reverse that deficit and still meet our 'need' and in turn meet our potential for a 'good day.'
If i were to guess, I would say the fish is acting in regards to autonomy with 'perceived choice.' In that his/her sense of choice to jump out of the bowl was due to an experience he/she found themselves in that the environment garnered a reasonable possibility of 'freedom,' the decision-making process was not a dead-end, it was flexible. Had it been a tank with a lid then i may have to reevaluate my answer.
What was the most surprising or interesting thing you learned?
I found the section on Internalization the most interesting. According to our text the definition of internalization it the process in which someone transforms a formerly externally prescribed regulation or value into an internally endorsed one (Ryan et al., 1993, Pg. 164) The process in which we internalize things it very complex and it’s something that we don’t really consciously think about when we do it. The example in the book that talked about the value we place on someone with regards to relatedness is something that everyone can relate to. When you have a trusting relationship you assume that that person has your best interests at heart.
How do you rate yourself on psychological needs?
Autonomy=Medium
Competence=Medium
Relatedness= High
When it comes to autonomy I do like to make my own decisions and do things for myself. I also ask for advice from others a lot and am often cautious when making decisions. When it comes to competence I like to fit into my environment and show the skills I process but again at times I can be very cautious when in a new environment. The reason relatedness is high is because it is the most important to me. If I couldn’t relate well with other people I would not be able to function well as a human being. Talking and getting to know people is what makes me happy and makes me feel like I have a place on this planet.
Choose one psychological need/discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors…
I choose relatedness. I have been told that I seem like a very confident person. That may be true but only if I feel comfortable with the people around me. The best way I know how to do that it simply to get to know them. One example from my everyday life is my job. I currently work for the WRC as a group fitness instructor. I not only have to get to know my participants but I have to gain their trust. The way that I do that is by giving them examples from my own life in order to relate to them. (Ex: I couldn’t always hit a punching bag for twenty minutes at a time, I wasn’t always in physical shape, I have struggled too and then I would give an example.)
Fish Picture?
If I were to guess I would say that the fish is lonely. He is probably tired of being the only one in the bowl and wants to find some other fish to hang out with. He figured that he has to leave the bowl to do that.
Terms: Psychological Need, Internalization, Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness
~Summary of chapter six
Chapter six is about the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness which are more in depth explanations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This chapter goes further into how these three needs are present in our daily lives. Autonomy involves the need to experience things that one personally likes to do. Much of our behavior is not autonomous because it is designated by others. When behavior is autonomous people will show greater levels of motivation. In competence is a person being able to apply their skills and determinations toward a task. When trying to fulfill the need for competence one will improve their skills to deal with situations from a task. Flow was the main thing discussed in the description of competence as having equal levels for the task at hand and skill level. Relatedness was the third and final psychological need presented in the chapter. Relatedness is the involvement of one person implying themselves to obtain relationships and to find common ground to build those relationships.
~What was the most surprising thing you learned?
What I believed was the most surprising to me was the description of flow for competence. When a task at hand has some difficulty and the skills needed to do that task match the level of the task then that is when flow is optimal and vice versa when task difficulty is low and skills needed for the task is low than there is no flow since the person does not care. The thing I was most interested about flow was when it explained if something is too difficult with little skills or low difficulty but high skills this will cause emotional or behavioral distress
~If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
High-Competence
Medium-Autonomy
Low-Relatedness
I chose high for competence due to the fact that I can see it in myself constantly even doing this assignment it is mainly because I am doing it to help improve my skills in psychology so that way someday I can go into the field of work I would really like to do.
I chose medium for autonomy because much of what I do may start out as an autonomy need but will turn to a competence need very quickly since I may like the activity at first which I put much effort in it, but just maintaining the activity then turns into a competence need because I’m doing it to improve myself and since I want to improve myself I kind of force it upon myself.
Last but not least I chose relatedness as being my lowest level for a psychological need because I do not really have much time to build a lot of relationships with people plus if I do build a relationship its due to work or school being the big factor on who I get closer to.
~Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Since competence was my highest rated psychological need I will discuss a little bit about why I chose that as my highest need. Since I want to become a mental health counselor I need to have a large knowledge base for ways to help someone with their mental health so going to school, completing my assignments, reading the textbook, etc. are all necessary to help my skills in dealing with a person’s behavior so no matter how much I dislike some of these aspects I need to learn them or improve them. Another thing would be I have always been interested in being in a boxing match so what I did was join a boxing club recently. I would really like to just box in the ring whether amateur or pro, which I would prefer, but both would be perfectly fine with me but to compete in a boxing match I would have to do intense physical and mental training which almost no one really likes, but just like schooling I need to do it to improve my skills to become a better boxer.
Terms: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, flow, psychological needs, competence, autonomy, relatedness, mental health counseling, and psychology
The focus in chapter 6 is on our psychological needs. Where physiological needs help the body physically, psychological needs help us to maintain mental stability. The chapter realizes three psychological needs being autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The need to want to do things by ourselves and on our own time is an example of our need for autonomy. Autonomy support is used to motivate and encourage one to become more autonomous. The second psychological need is competence. Competence describes our need to be successful in our interactions with the environment, and shows our desire to achieve certain tasks. Using structure can help motivate in the area of competence. The final need is the obvious need for relatedness. We don’t like to feel left out and therefore will try to establish close attachments with other people. Relatedness is best achieved through the act of involvement, which allows bonds and relationships to form. The last section in chapter 6 talks about what it is to have a “good day.” The finding is that when we fulfill our psychological needs, we are provided psychological nutriments that can lead to a positive well-being.
The section I found to be the most surprising was the section on what makes for a “good day”. I had never really thought about how when you’re having a bad day that you tend to notice the negative things more and make your day that much worse. Also when you’re having a good day that you notice the positive things and nothing can really bring you down.
Rating my own self in terms of autonomy is rather difficult. I believe I have a strong need to be independent, but there are also times were I feel I could use some direction or guidance. I have a fairly high need for competence and am constantly striving to better myself and reach my full potential. Relatedness rates lower to me than autonomy and competence. I like to surround myself with people like me, but I also prefer working, thinking, and keeping thoughts to myself. My behaviors are strongly influenced through my need for competence. I am highly motivated to do well in all my classes and thoroughly enjoy learning. Even at work I am constantly finding ways to improve my skills and become a better communicator.
The picture of the fish jumping out of the bowl of water seems to me as a behavior related to a need of autonomy. The fish is tired of being inside a small confined area and most likely wants to explore. The fish knows not of the consequences of leaving his bowl, but does so in hopes of fulfilling its psychological need.
Terms used: psychological, physiological, autonomy, competence, relatedness, autonomy support, structure, involvement, psychological nutriments.
This chapter focused on the three main psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. It began by talking about the organismic and mechanistic approaches to motivation. The organismic approach says organisms initiate interactions with their environment while the mechanistic approach says the environment acts on the organism. The person-environment dialect is a mix of the two approaches and says the interactions between organisms and their environment is a two-way process. Autonomy is the need of having control over one’s life and has three sublevels: an internal perceived locus of causality, volition, and perceived choice. Perceived locus of causality refers to a person understanding the cause of their actions. Volition refers to how free a person feels they are when they are performing a task. The sense of choice a person has over decision-making is referred to as perceived choice. One way to enhance a person’s internal motivation and autonomy is to provide them with a choice. Competence refers to a person’s need to feel like they effectively and efficiently interact with the environment they are placed in. People have a greater sense of competency when they overcome challenges they are faced with and receive positive feedback. Relatedness is a person’s sense of belonging in the environment and relationships they are in. Internalization is an aspect of relatedness that refers to when a person accepts their beliefs, morals, and behavior. When all psychological needs are met a person has optimal well-being.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was that people feel happier when they are given complete control over what they do. This was surprising because I prefer when I have a this-or-that situation and feel overwhelmed when faced with complete autonomy.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be? My rating for autonomy would be relatively low. My rating for relatedness and competence would both be quite high though.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
Autonomy comes up all the time every day most notably when my friends and I go to the dining center. I refuse to pick where we sit because I get overwhelmed with all the choices. I also don’t like making big decisions or decisions that affect a group by myself. Competence is important in all of my classes, especially chemistry. The majority of the time I am completely lost and have no idea what’s going on and it is not a pleasant feeling. I do study a lot for it though so when it gets to be test time and I don’t fail the challenge of the test I feel better. Relatedness is also very important. I don’t know what I would do without my friends and the relationship we have with each other is one where we all know we can be just who we are because everyone else feels similarly.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
As I previously stated, I don’t have a high psychological need for autonomy. I actually prefer having others make decisions for me. Having infinite options and decisions to make overwhelms me and I don’t like it. That motivates me to let others pick what we do, where we sit, what I should wear, etc.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
I’m guessing both the fish and this question are presented so each student can formulate their own opinion and make their own choice as to what that fish means which directly relates to the autonomy discussed in this chapter.
Terms: Autonomy, relatedness, competence, organismic and mechanistic approaches to motivation, person-environment dialect, internal perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, internalization
There are three categories outlined for psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The definition of autonomy focuses on the concept of independence or self-government. In fact an autonomous region is a defined as a self-governing area. Autonomy is often thought of in terms of our jobs and work life. Often employees talk of wishing for more autonomy within their job duties and responsibilities. Competence is described as one’s ability to do something correctly, in other words, how capable they are or their level of ability. Basically, we can think of it as how well someone does something. The psychological need for relatedness has to do with a feeling of connectivity. We see this psychological need in many ways and different relationships: A mother and infant connecting during nursing due to the release of oxytocin, human sexual endeavors, and the desire for friendship and companionship. Often those who do not feel a connection may feel sad, depressed, or alone.
I was very surprised to learn that all three of the pieces of psychological need really need to work together in order for an individual to feel good about themselves and be motivated. Autonomy is clearly important but without that feeling of interconnectedness or competence, we may not feel that we deserve autonomy. If we have autonomy but are not competent that could create difficulties in our social connections, messing up relatedness. Individuals must possess a certain level of all three in order to feel good about their situation and themselves.
As I am searching for a full time job upon graduation right now, all of those are highly important to me and I feel as I’d rate myself as high in all of them. I have the great opportunity to coach a local sports team but in order to do that I need to find a job that will allow me to be done at 3 PM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so I will require a certain level of autonomy in order to do that. I feel that due to my high levels of competence and ability to relate to others (relatedness) that this should be a reasonable requirement in my job search. I feel as if my psychological needs change levels in conjunction with each other. If I don’t feel competent, my desire for autonomy will go down, and it will make it harder for me to relate to someone who is competent in this area. For example, I have two dogs and whenever one of them is sick or throws up, I can’t handle it. My poor husband has to clean up all of that because I am not competent enough to do it. This causes me to rely on him, thus lowering my autonomy. When my dogs are sick, I get nervous that they are going to throw up so they spend more time in their kennels than they normally would if they weren’t sick thus lowering my connectivity or relatedness to them.
As mentioned above, coaching this high school team is really important to me, to the point where it is a deal breaker if a company is not willing to let me coach and work full time. Due to this high need for autonomy I have turned down a few job offers because they would not allow me to pursue a passion, rather they felt that my presence at work from 8AM-5PM was more important than giving back to my community and the quality of the work I might be able to produce. Some may not understand the idea of turning down a well-paying job in this economy but the autonomy and being allowed to pursue a passion is more important to me than a paycheck quite honestly.
I’m not sure what the fish jumping out of the fishbowl could be referring to. My gut reaction is that the fish is demonstrating the three psychological needs to get out of his fish bowl, control his environment (autonomy), he feels as if he can survive outside the water even though he can’t (competence), and maybe he just wants to play with the little girl or boy who taps on his fish bowl just like the dog does (relatedness). Either way despite the basic survival need of staying in the water, the picture in this context suggests that sometimes psychological needs may outweigh our basic motivations.
Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, oxytocin
I thought this chapter on psychological needs was very interesting. There are 3 core elements that make up a person’s psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These needs are also considered “organismic.” Organismic theories of motivation originate from different organisms. They take into account the environment and how it is ever changing. They also need resources from the environment in order to grow. This is the same with people: our environments are always changing and we need to use the different resources we have available to help us grow. Autonomy refers to the amount of choices and our flexibility in making those choices. Whenever I get confused about autonomy, I always think of the job as a professor. They have a great deal of autonomy because they rarely have to talk to the supervisor about what they want to do. They are free to make the choice if they want to have class on a certain day, what material to talk about, and what to include on the test. For some people this is very motivating. Others who do not like very much autonomy probably would not like the job of being a professor. They prefer to have very little flexibility in what they do and have everything planned out for them. That is motivating to them. There are 3 qualities that make up autonomy. The first is the perceived locus of causality. This refers to the individual’s understanding of what caused their motivated action. The second aspect is volition. This is the unpressured willingness to engage in an activity. Generally, people do not like being pressured to do something; it is not motivating. An example I think of is reading for a class versus reading for enjoyment. I love reading just because I can, but I hate reading assigned readings. I think that if they were optional I would read more of them because I am not being pressured to do so. The third component of autonomy is perceived choice. This refers to that sense of choice we get when our environment gives us different choices to choose from. Along with autonomy, competence is another aspect of psychological needs. This is the need to be effective in interactions with the environment. Everyone wants to be competent in certain aspects of their life. Our environments and interactions help to determine a person’s level of competence. The key environmental elements that we look for and involve competence are our need for competence and optimal challenge, clear and helpful structures, and high failure tolerance from others. In order to satisfy our competence need, we seek positive feedback and a perception of progress. The final part of psychological needs is relatedness. Every person wants and needs to belong in some way. The primary condition of relatedness is interaction with others.
There really wasn't anything I found to be particularly surprising, but I did find the section on "the conundrum of choice" to be interesting. There is a difference between a person's true choice to do something and the environmental event of being offered a choice. When someone offers you a choice (say of coffee, tea, or water), you really are not making a true choice. You could really want juice, but that was not one of your options. You were still considered to be making your own choice and being autonomous, but it wasn't your true choice.
I would rate myself as a low-medium level for autonomy. There are certain things that I like to chose for myself, but on the whole, I like when options are provided for me or I am told what to do. In class for example, I like when I am given exactly what to do for an assignment. If there are really no directions on what to do, I feel stressed and worry about it. I really enjoy knowing exactly what to do. I think that my level for competence is somewhat high. I like to better myself and do so by challenging myself. I think back to high school for this topic. I loved to play volleyball and really wanted to improve. So, in order to do that, I did whatever I could to improve and really pushed myself. I would say that I am medium-high on relatedness. I am typically a shy person and interacting with a lot of people is not something I enjoy on a daily basis. The situation has a lot to do with it. If it is on a weekend and I want to go to the bar (autonomy) then generally, I enjoy interacting with people more.
If you get creative with the picture of the fish, it can represent the three components of psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. It is possible that the fish just decided it was a good idea to jump out of the bowl (autonomy). He didn't have to, but he made that choice on his own. Maybe the fish was never that good at jumping out of bowls before and he has been practicing (competence). He wanted to push himself so he could be the best fish-jumper there was. And finally, he could have friends in a bowl right next to his and he wanted to jump in theirs so he could interact with his friends (relatedness). I think there are a lot of different ways of looking at the meaning of this picture, but I do think that it fits in with this chapter in that every organism has psychological needs.
Terms: psychological needs, organismic theory of motivation, autonomy, competence, relatedness, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, conundrum of choice
Summary
When studying psychological needs, one must assume people are inherently active and the person-environment dialectic; the environment enriches the person and the person seeks enriching environments. Three psychological needs are further explained in this chapter: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is important for self-direction and regulating the behavior. As alive and active organisms we purge to make our own decisions from our individual preferences. Competence is a need to be interactive at effective levels with the environment. Through competence one may be challenged to stay engaged with their environmental interactions. People strive to maintain competence in many aspects of their life, especially when in school. Relatedness holds the need to be emotionally connected to others and the environment. Creating relationships is a great way we become related to one another and even at birth we have this sense of relatedness (if you were breastfed).
Surprising
I was surprised to find that when all three psychological needs are in order and people are given control, they are happy. It seems like some people just do not like the excess amounts of control in their life and they relate to a laissez-faire system.
Ratings
I would definitely rate myself as high for all three psychological needs; autonomy, competence and relatedness. I really enjoy researching, finding literature, compiling a review, creating an experiment and then hammering out statistics from the experiment. I just spent nine hours in the lab today and a great portion of that time was me, by myself. Most of this work is based off of autonomy and competence. Those two psychological needs are very necessary in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle when alone in the lab for hours at a time. Being competent in anything I am a part of is important to me. I love to learn new things, and I will seek new and interesting things for me to learn if I get bored. My competence level must be high if I wish to conduct serious research “when I grow up”. As for relatedness, I would rate myself as high for that as well because my education/work life must be different from my work life. I am a huge people person and I love making new connections and relationships. I am very outgoing and I love the new interactions. As stated above, I would love to research, but I would also love to be a professor later in life. I like to relate to students and help them find who they want to become—relatedness and competence both resonate in this occupation.
The Picture
The fish is experiencing autonomy in its fishbowl, but it wants to get out! The fish is trying to regain (if it ever had) control over its life. The fish is experiencing competence because it knows how to get out and it is (evidently) succeeding in the escape. Not sure how it is experiencing relatedness- perhaps the fish misses its mother-fish and father-fish (or school of fish it grew up with) and the fish wishes to return to its fishy family.
Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness
This chapter discussed the psychological side of needs. Though "needs" are typically thought of as biological phenomena (as discussed in the last chapter), there are also psychological needs that must be met for our well being. These needs serve to provide us interest and enjoyment, and also help explain our motivation to act. The three main psychological needs in question include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These are also known as organismic psychological needs, and based on the readings in the book, it seems like the most basic of these needs is Autonomy-- competence is linked to autonomy, as people usually do not feel competent unless they are autonomous. However, all three are important, and meeting these needs are important for an individual's psychological well being and overall health.
Our environment and the person act together to create the experience of motivation based on our organismic needs. The person acts out of an intrinsic motivation, and the environment provides feedback. These organismic psychological needs give us motivation to progress, learn, grow, and develop. But the environment can either support or oppose these needs with its feedback. Different methods of teaching channel these needs separately, providing different feedback for those agents acting in the environment. More controlling teachers, for example, devalue autonomy, which leads to lesser competence. Autonomy-supporting environments are better at upholding these psychological needs.
I think the most surprising part of this chapter was the "Conundrum of Choice". I know that, generally speaking, that having more options increases autonomy and overall satisfaction. However, I know there have been psychological studies that show that more choices doesn't necessarily equate to better overall happiness. In fact, with more choices, we are apt to question our decisions in retrospect and regret them. When we are not given a choice (or fewer options), we tend to rate our overall experience as higher-- we go through a process of rationalization to avoid cognitive dissonance. I would be interested to know about the optimum number of choices. How many options is too many? How many is not enough?
As for my own personal needs, I know that I have a high need for autonomy. I am not likely to do something unless I feel as though I have options and that it was my own choice. For example, I love my parents, but we have a much better relationship now that I am away and not under their strict (and honestly, irrational) rules. When I am not under their constant supervision, I am happier and have more success, so it increases my competence as well. I am not as high on relatedness, though it is certainly important to me. It's more important that I am happy with myself and my own abilities before I get others' approval, though when I do seek it from others, it is from those who I care about.
I would guess that the image of the fish has to do with the three main psychological needs. Perhaps the fish came up with the idea to jump out (Autonomy), actually succeeded in jumping out (Competence). It's hard to talk about its relatedness, as there are no other fish around. Perhaps there are others outside the bowl watching and the jumping fish seeks its approval? Either way, I think this would be more pertinent if it were a human being accomplishing a feat versus a fish, since fish probably don't have psychological needs.
Terms used: psychological need, biological need, autonomy, competence, relatedness, organismic psychological needs, environment, feedback, conundrum of choice, controlling, autonomy-supporting
Chapter 6 covered just one of the three types of categories of need we have in our lives: psychological needs. How we go about motivating ourselves for the three types of psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness leave us with two assumptions. The first, people are naturally active and the second being that we use each of the three psychological needs to involve ourselves in the environment naturally. Autonomy is the need to experience our own direction and approval in the beginning and regulation of our behavior and how it shows what our inner self has to offer. Competence is the need to connect with the environment and explore our full potential by taking on challenging tasks. Competence sparks our intrinsic motivation of seeking challenges and wanting to use our personal skills and talents. Relatedness is the need to create close, emotional bonds and attachments with people. It provides a social connection and gives us the desire to let people in and develop meaningful, caring relationships.
The thing I found most surprising was the paragraph on ‘what makes a good day’. I realize that if something puts me in a good mood right away during the day I don’t really weigh much on the negative things that cross my path during that day. I also realize that if I’m having a bad day, things I would normally find positive are still seen as negative due to the events taken place to put me in bad mood.
I’d rate myself as medium on both autonomy and competence, but high on relatedness. I work at a hotel by myself and I develop my own way of doing things and being a routine and regulating my behavior there. Autonomy definitely plays a role with that because I’m the only one during my shift most days and I learn a lot more about what I can/can’t do when I’m there. Competence is at a medium because I feel like I don’t challenge myself and I don’t always explore my full potential, but instead do what is average or just enough to get by. I think my relatedness is high because I’ve had a close knit friend group with some starting in elementary all through high school and it’s something my dad, brother, and sister have in common when creating and developing friendships throughout life. I always thought having a few really great friends was better than having a lot of so-so or okay friends.
I would like to become higher on the competence level because I don’t push myself to my full potential. I was lucky enough to have parents who didn’t care if I got A’s in school, but they just wanted me to try my hardest and put in my full 100% effort. This past semester I joined another student organization, CATS, to become more involved and be challenged with meeting new people and committing to another organization on top of school and work. I wanted to challenge myself because deep down I know I can do it and it intrinsically motivates me because I don’t seek anything out of it, but the experience and if I make a few friends along the way I guess that’ll be the extrinsic motivational incentive.
I don’t really understand what the fish is doing in this picture, but I’ll take a guess. I think the fish wants to challenge itself (competence) and take on the life outside the fishbowl to see where it would lead (autonomy). I also think the fish is tired of being alone and is seeking a relationship (relatedness) maybe trying to escape to the ocean with all the other fish. Clearly, the fish is in need of something and maybe it has to do with all three psychological needs being met due to the fish being naturally active in engaging in the outer environment.
In discussing three psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, the author assumed 2 things: that all people are naturally active and that people respond to their environment while the environment either enriches or frustrates the person’s psychological needs. The author further discussed each of the three psychological needs listed. Autonomy is the feeling of personal control in a situation; a person must feel that they can direct and their own behavior. Important in autonomy is the perceived locus of causality (PLOC) which is where the person thinks their motivation has come from. Autonomy is increased if a person believes the motivation to act came from within themselves. Competence is the need to do things well and be effective in one’s environment. In order to increase competence, people seek out challenges, practice, and master them. From competence, a person experiences flow. This is an intense enjoyment for something one is very good at. In creates high concentration and deep involvement in the activity. Competence is also dependent on structure and failure tolerance. The last need discussed in this chapter was relatedness, or the need for belonging. People desire positive interactions with others.
What I found most surprising in this chapter was the conundrum of choice. While providing choices generally enhances autonomy, this depends greatly on what the choices are. The choices may be too restricting, and in fact reduce autonomy because so many possibilities were left out. This is especially true when one person gives another two choices to choose from. The chooser may not like either one.
I would say that I have a high need for competence, medium to high for autonomy, and a low need for relatedness. I am always striving to do something better, and I am always looking for new challenges. If I do not have a project or task to work and improve upon, I feel bored and lost, like I don’t know what I am living for. I spend a lot of time and energy seeking out new information and a challenge is very exciting to me. I know I have experienced flow when I “get into the groove” in working on a challenge where I am succeeding.
The fish in the picture has let his or her psychological needs take over the physiological needs. That poor fish has lost all sense of autonomy being stuck inside the small bowl with nothing else in it. The fish is also lacking in competence because there is nothing in the bowl to challenge it. There were no other friends in the bowl either, so relatedness is low as well. The fish has accepted the challenge and has finally jumped out of the bowl (possibly increasing its competence if it has been trying for a while or thought it couldn’t be done) to seek out a new and better life where these psychological needs will be satisfied.
Terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, perceived locus of causality, flow, structure, failure tolerance, conundrum of choice
Chapter six focused on the three psychological needs, autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Autonomy is the need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior, and it reflects the desire to have inner resources, rather than environmental events, determines one’s actions. Competence is the need to interact effectively with the environment. It reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved with others in warm, caring relationships. The engagement model of activation illustrates how relationships and social contexts successfully involve and satisfy the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Even though this seems like common sense, I thought it was interesting to read that there are many benefits from autonomy support. For instance, it enhances various aspects of engagement such as higher effort, and more positive emotion. Also, it enhances important aspects of development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being. There are so many positive outcomes that arise because of autonomy support.
Back in the day, I would have rated my relatedness level as high, but since I’m getting older I would say I am a medium. I enjoy my alone time, but still need a social life to feel like I belong to a group. My autonomy level is also medium. I believe that I’m very independent, but sometimes I need guidance and directions. My competence level would be low. I am not really challenged in school or work, and don’t really set out to give myself challenges. These needs affect my daily life. For instance, since I am medium-high on relatedness, I feel the need to make contact with friends more often than none. Also, if the task at hand is too much work for me, then I easily get frustrated(competence).
My relatedness level is medium-high for me. But as I get older, this level drops. However, I am still the social butterfly. I have a large group of friends, and a ton of acquaintances. I have worked at three very different style bars in the Cedar Valley, so I know a lot of people. That being said, I feel the need to always be surrounded by people. For instance, just yesterday I was planning on staying in and doing homework, but the need for human interaction drove me to get out of my house to see friends in Cedar Rapids.
I guess the first thing that comes to mind, is “fish out of water.” Maybe the fish’s need for relatedness drove it to jump out to find friends.
ME TERMS: Psychological needs, relatedness, competence, autonomy, engagement model of activation.
Summary:
Three psychological needs are discussed in great detail throughout this chapter.
The first is autonomy. The main two forms of motivating styles regarding autonomy are supportive and controlling. An autonomy-supportive motivating style fosters greater productivity, creativeness, thoughtfulness, and better results over a controlling style. The next one is competence. It is not until personal challenge and environmental skill are both relatively high that people can experience what is called flow. This leads to the optimal level of satisfaction and enjoyment in the activity. The third is relatedness or the need to have close, meaningful relationships with others. These three psychological needs roll into the organismic approach to motivation that states people and the environment both act on each other to grow, develop, and mature.
Most Surprising:
The most surprising thing I learned in this chapter was about optimal challenge and flow. Everything makes sense regarding the premise of the concept: The higher your skill in an activity coupled with higher challenge results in optimal enjoyment. I have never really stepped back to think of it like this. When I become "good" at something I constantly look for something more challenging, but I never conscientiously think about it.
I can very easily rank my psychological needs especially after reading them in depth throughout the chapter. My undisputed number one need is relatedness. I have a constant urge to not only be around people, but to engage them in the hopes of being more than simply acquaintances. I would say I have a medium need for autonomy. I hate being told what to do and given ultimatums. I can take orders or direction from a boss or teacher, but I want to be given some freedom in decision to utilize my skills and creativity. My lowest need (but not by much from autonomy) is competence. I actively seek out challenging tasks such as self improvement books, competitions, and more skills. Relative to the first two needs, this is still my lowest need.
Relatedness motivates many of my specific behaviors. Once again, I don't conscientiously think about this on a day-to-day basis. However, reading this chapter made the picture clear why I make certain decisions I do. For example, instead of studying in the library I will always choose the Union so that I may run into and be able to talk to friends. Instead of staying in on a Thursday night when I have a lot to do, I will go out to be with friends and make new ones. I'll even get up at 6:00 AM the next morning to finish homework I could have done the night before. My burning need for relatedness drives nearly every decision I make to maintain, enhance, and seek out new relationships with a solid foundation.
By jumping out of his/her water bowl, the fish is exercising all three of his psychological needs. The need for autonomy is satisfied by exercising his ability to make the tough decision to leave his natural habitat. The need for competence is satisfied by trusting in his ability to make the leap and find an environment that suits his physiological needs. The need for relatedness is in the process of being met because he was alone in the bowl. There may be other fish in a nearby environment that he is seeking out.
ME Terms: Autonomy, competence, relatedness, supportive and controlling, autonomy-supportive motivating style, organismic approach to motivation, flow
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter six was about psychological needs, and when a person engages in an activity that involves these needs, they are more likely to feel interest and enjoyment. Willingness is exerted to engage in an environment that the person believes will nurture their psychological needs. Since psychological needs motivation the person to explore, they are considered growth needs.
Sometimes psychological needs can be referred to as organismic psychological needs. This name comes from the term “organism,” which is an entity that is alive and active within its environment. The organismic theory of motivation recognizes that environments constantly change and organisms need to adjust and be flexible to those changes. In contrast to the organismic psychological needs is the mechanistic one. This is where the environment acts on the person and the person reacts in response. When both the environment acts on the person and the person acts on the environment it is known as Person-Environment Dialectic, and in this both the person and environment are constantly changing.
Individuals value autonomy, which is when they can determine their own actions, rather than have another person or environmental factor force them into the particular action. For example, if I was forced into living on campus again, I would most likely dislike it more than if I made the decision to live there myself. Having the ability to make important decisions in a person’s life enables them to feel as though they have a say in their self-direction. The three qualities that work together in autonomy are the internal perceived locus of causality, volition, and perceived choice. The perceived locus of causality (PLOC) is the person’s understanding of the source in which his or her motivational actions come from. The willingness to engage in an activity derives from volition. Having volition that is high is when an individual can say “I want to this,” rather than “I have to do this.” Lastly, the sense of choice in terms to decision-making is known as perceived choice. Although, if a person was given a choice, it does not mean that it would enhance their sense of autonomy or intrinsic motivation. If the person is told to between something that is “either-or,” it will not totally reflect their personal values, goals, or interests. In other words, they no longer feel that sense of need-satisfying autonomy.
Competence is another psychological need that people strive for to develop skills and improve capacities. Feedback is the environmental condition that satisfies our need for competence and our perception of progress. When a person is overchallenged, it threatens their perceived competence. Flow emerges in situations where challenge and skill are high.
Relatedness is the psychological need to have close bonds with people emotionally. It is the desire to belong, have social interaction, and to have others acknowledge and be responsive to our needs. If an individual has relatedness, they are able to function better, have fewer psychological difficulties, and are more resilient towards stress.
Engagement captures the intensity and emotional quality people display when they begin and carry out activities. Emotional engagement involves the individual having interest or enjoying what they are doing. Behavioral engagement is the effort and persistence an individual puts towards a task. Cognitive engagement is the challenge the person would like and self-regulation that they do when performing that task. Lastly, there is voice, which is the expression of the person’s preferences and interests.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned was about positive feedback. Feedback comes from the task itself, comparison of one’s current performance with one’s own past performance, the person’s current performance with the performance of others, and the evaluation of others. Rather than being right-verses-wrong outcome, like in many circumstances, the performance evaluations are more ambiguous. When we are able to perform better than our peers, it signals competence.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself to be at a high on autonomy and about a medium on the competence scale. For relatedness, I used to be at more of a lower level, but throughout my college education, it has increased to a high or medium level.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
With autonomy, I like that I can make my own decisions about my life. I was the one that selected my major and the times I go to class, and I also allow others to make their own choices. I do not want to force anyone into anything they do not want to do. I love to feel like I am competent, but there are times I believe that I cause myself too much stress to be high in this psychological need (which I discuss in the following question). For relatedness, the book said that quality is more important than quantity, and I agree with this. The people that I have become really close to throughout the years will probably most likely always be in my life, even through distance. Being a desk assistant, as well, I strive for the interaction I can make with the residents in the building. I want to be able to give them my time, attention, energy, and support.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Often times when taking a test or writing a paper, I spend extra time preparing for it, in which I put a great deal of stress on myself to achieve a positive outcome. After I receive my scores, I often feel competent, and wish that I would not have stressed myself out so much over the grade I would receive. My goal of wanting to be competent motivates me to study more and longer than is really necessary.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
Throughout the chapter, I can see little bits of where the fish picture could relate. The fish could want autonomy, and have the decision to leave the fish bowl, rather than have some environmental constraint force it into staying there. If he had a choice, it would not be where he would want to live and the goals he may have in his life. For competence, the fish may want to develop skills and seek out optimal challenges. He could possibly find living in a fish bowl to be too easy and boring, so he wants to increase the difficulty. Finally for relatedness, maybe the fish wants to make friends and be acknowledged. He recognizes that he has so much more potential than what is bottled up in his underwater home.
Terms: Psychological needs, Organismic Approach, Mechanistic Theory, Person-Environment Dialectic, Autonomy, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice, Competence, Flow, Relatedness, Engagement
Three main psychological needs we have are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is the need to feel as though we have individual power and choices in our behavior. Comptence is the need to feel as though we are mentally challenged, but also that we are up to the challenge. Relatedness is the need to feel connected to people that we care about and know that they care about us as well.
An interesting thing from the chapter was to look at and realize that even if one has a choice over their behavior or a decision, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is autonomy. Sometimes we are given an ultimatum and our choice is structured, so we do not feel true autonomy.
If I had to rank myself on high or low for these things, I would say that I am high autonomy. I enjoy making my own rules and decisions. When it comes to work I don’t like having a boss over my shoulder telling me what I should be doing every minute of every day. I would much rather know on my own and get it done. Also, I’m high on competence. I love being challenged. If a job isn’t challenging, I decide to make it. Sometimes tasks are pretty mindless, so I always try to find a way to improve the way the task is done, or see how fast I can go. I am also pretty high on relatedness. I love people, and talking to people. I have a very close relationship with my family, my 5 friends I live with, as well as my boyfriend. That still doesn’t always seem like enough though! Right now I work at a bar/grill, and I definitely have noticed the types of conversations I have with my tables are much more of real conversations than what many of the other servers have. The need for relatedness motivates how I act at work, and it also helps to motivate who I want to become. As a counselor, I will develop many relationships with people and I will be there to listen and genuinely care about them as well!
It appears as if the fish is getting the heck out of that glass bowl! In relation to the chapter, this poor fish may feel as though his autonomy has been taken away. He has absolutely no choice in where to go, or what to look at! He also is lacking relatedness. There are no other fishies in there for him to play with!
Terms:
psychological needs, autonomy, comptence, relatedness, motivation
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter discussed our various psychological needs, and how they affect us in our everyday lives. It involves taking an organismic approach to motivation; that is, the acknowledgement that environments change, and organisms need flexibility in order to survive. Organismic psychological needs emerge through opportunities in the environment, and these needs involve autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Involving and fulfilling these needs offers us the psychological nutrients we need to feel vital and well.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
To be honest, I did not find a lot of information that particularly surprised me this chapter. However, I did find it interesting that these psychological needs must be met for us to feel good about ourselves and our life, as they release “feel-good” nutrients into the brain.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would definitely rate highest on relatedness. I have a strong desire to be around and relate to others, and I value the friendships of those that are close to me. On the psychological need of competence, I would say that I am at a medium level. I enjoy being tested on class material and seeing the benefits that come from it after I have worked hard in a class, as it helps me to feel like I am building my knowledge base. I also love playing guitar, as it is part of learning a new skill. At this point in my life, I do not have a large need for autonomy, as much of what I do is still controlled by outside forces. I work at the job I do so I can afford rent and tuition, although it certainly is not my dream job. Many of the classes I take are taken because they are the ones I need to complete my undergraduate degree, not because I am innately interested in them. In the future, I know that autonomy will become more important when I am looking for a career, a place to live, and raising a family.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I am motivated every day by relatedness. It is what drives me to hang out with friends, go to work (to some extent), and also to go out and meet new people. If I had no need for relatedness, I find that my life would be particularly empty in the social department. I would most likely spend much of my time alone in my apartment, instead of going out and engaging in social activities. I enjoy having a need to be around others, as doing so fulfills my psychological need of relatedness.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
If we are to assume that this fish possesses psychological needs, we can come to different conclusions on why it is jumping out of the bowl. Perhaps it has finally realized that it is completely alone within its home, and it needs to find other fish to help satisfy its need for relatedness. Or perhaps it desires to practice its jumping skill to feel accomplished and to enforce its own capacities and skills, which would increase its competence. Maybe the fish is sick of being told where to live and wants to make that decision for itself, thereby increasing autonomy. Or maybe it’s just a fish.
Terms: Organismic approach, autonomy, competence, relatedness.
Chapter six basically discussed the three main psychological needs we have. Those three are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the need for an individual to feel as if they are making the choices in their actions. An individual wants to feel as if they are experiencing self-direction. When we are told what to do, or do not have a choice in a situation, our need for autonomy increases dramatically! But when we are not told what to do and we have a choice in a situation, then our autonomy is better satisfied. Competence is basically the need to apply the skills they have and then also try to find more challenges. When an individual meets an equilibrium between their skill level and the level of challenge, they can experience flow. But before that can happen they have motivation to improve all of their skills to reach flow. Two things that can satisfy the need for competence are positive feedback and the image of progress. Relatedness refers to the need to have close intimate relationships with other people. Just interacting with other people can satisfy our need for relatedness. The more you are bonding with a person, the more connected you feel with that person, and the more your need for relatedness is satisfied.
One interesting thing I learned or realized in the chapter is how much these three needs affect life satisfaction as well. If you are having a bad day, it is probably because one of these three criteria are not being met. I had never thought about that in this context before.
In terms of autonomy I would probably rate myself at medium. I do make a lot of my own decisions but there are also other choices that I can’t necessarily choose. For example, I definitely can’t pick my salary, choose my work schedule, or even choose the gas prices. But, I can decide what car I want to buy and where I want to work! Competence I would rate myself at medium as well. I do like to challenge myself but it’s hard to challenge myself the way I would like to, especially being so busy with work, school, and volunteer time. Relatedness I would rate myself as high. I have very good relationships with a lot of friends, I could definitely just hang out with one of them and instantly satisfy my need for relatedness. They also help me confirm my beliefs and way of thinking.
Autonomy is something that I know I am constantly striving for. It has always been in my state of mind. I hate when someone tells me what to do, even if I already know I have to do it. I had never really understood why it would irritate me so much, but it makes perfect sense now. I love making my own choices because it makes me feel as if I am in control of my life. I know that I can choose where I want to live, where I want to visit, and when I want to go shopping. They may not seem like huge decisions, which they’re not, but they really just add to my feeling of autonomy.
I believe that the fish was just lonely in his bowl, he had no friends in there, but there were some in the bowl next to him. His need for relatedness motivated him to just out of the bowl to the other bowl to interact with other fish!
Terms- psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, flow, motivated, satisfied,
Chapter six discusses the three psychological needs, which are autonomy, competence and relatedness. Organismic approach is determined by two different motivational approaches, the first is that people are inherently motivated and the second is that the persons environmental dialect.
Autonomy is the need and flexibility to make your own choices. We want to be able to make decisions about who we spend our time with as well as on what to do and how to it and or how to stop doing it. Being able to make ones own goals and decide what is important and or not important. Autonomy is the psychological need to have self-direction and self-regulation of ones behavior.
Competence is the psychological need to be effective with the environment as well as have skills and capacity to seek optimal challenge.
Relatedness is the desire to want to belong and interacting socially, having friends; family and other relationships are valued and needed. The need to establish bonds such as emotion and attachment, because we need social bonds friendships and other relations come easy.
The most surprising thing I learned throughout this chapter was about the Csiksentmihalyi optimal flow challenge and flow. Csiksentmihalyi researched and interviewed hundreds of different people, he learned that flow was a pleasurable experience and it happens when people enjoy doing something over and over because its fun and their good at it, using a particular set of skills to do well in a particular task.
If I had to rate myself high, medium or low on various psychological needs I would rate myself high in competence due to the fact I am highly motivated to go to school, get good grades and finish the semester strong. Relatedness is the need to establish close relationships and attachments to people. I have a lot of close relationships and friendships and other relationships is key in my life. The last one, which I would rate, low would be autonomy, which is the need to experience self and personal. I think that the order can be changed depending on your goals and or the different stages in your life.
The fish picture demonstrates how the fish is motivated to jump out of the fish tank. This picture made me question the different reasoning the fish could be motivated to get out of the water. Autonomy came to mind because I thought the fish just wanted to get out of the fish tank which was a desire or flexibility in the current situation he was in which was the fish tank.
Terms: Optimal flow challenge, autonomy competence, Relatedness and organismic approach.
This chapter discusses the psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy discusses that we are the ones who decide what to do when they want to do it. Competence discusses our effectiveness to interact with the environment. Relatedness discusses our ability to establish close relationships. All three of these concepts come together to form engagement.
I think the most interesting concept of this chapter was internalization. According to the text, internalization reflects the individual’s tendency to voluntarily adopt and integrate into the self the values and regulations of other people (pg 164). This concept is very complex in its relation to relationships and satisfaction and the benefits of others on one’s self.
If I were to rate these concepts, I would rate autonomy as medium. There are times when I have a hard time making decisions. I like to ask for others opinions. I also have a hard time making decisions when it comes to my scheduling as it pertains to work and school. When it comes to relatedness, I feel that I rate it as a medium. I do tend to hold back when it comes to establishing relationships. The close relationships that I do have established at this time I would rate relatedness at a high. When it comes to competence, I would rate that as a high. I enjoy challenges and I enjoy the challenge because I feel that it helps me in succeeding and bettering myself.
I feel that the fish picture relates to all three concepts of psychological needs. I feel that the fish is chose to jump out of the water and is motivated to explore new challenges begin new relationships and explore the environment around him.
Me Terms: Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness, psychological needs, motivation, explore, environment.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I thought the Person-Environment Dialectic was an interesting topic to talk about. As it even references in the book, “the environment acts on the person and the person acts on the environment”. Just that statement alone was enough to get me intrigued into the topic. A person is intrinsically motivated to the environment when they seek out and affect changes of it. The environment offers opportunities, makes structure, provides basic needs of living, makes demands and offers an ecological context for those who much always adapt to it.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would have to say that my psychological needs are very high because I am always motivated and well active. Organismic needs, autonomy, and personal choice all are big factors in my life as a whole. I always want to control my own destinies and not let anything affect that drive and motivation.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
Choice is manifested into my life because every day I am making some kind of choice about the environment around me. Weather my environment is allowing me to make that choice on my own personal accord or its making it for me and I have to choose to accept that notation or not. All around person all choice is a big psychological need for me to control. If I don’t have a good decent hand over the way my life goes, then I will changed something in my environment to make it such. If I don’t like my current living conditions, I have made it always so that I have the option to move somewhere else that I am going to like. To motivate myself to change a certain behavior of mine or to change an aspect of my own environment I will be driven to do so by using motivational resources.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
The conundrum of Choice motivates me to be driven and longing to make my own individual choices on life. I am a firm believer of freedom of choice in our society and personal choice is a huge psychological need of mine. I will never be satisfied unless I know I have it and then I can make peace with myself. The autonomy of it makes me strive to keep that kind of balanced life style.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
I think of the fish in the bowl as a fish trying to get out of a prison. The autonomy of it makes him strive to be set free from his prison walls. The sense of freedom and spatial surrounding makes us all want to have some kind of motivating need. We all have our own area in the environment at some time or another where we feel trap and our psychological needs are being threatened.
Me words: Intrinsic Motivation, Autonomy, Conundrum Of Choice, Motivation, Resources, Organismic Needs, Person-Environment Dialectic
Summarize the chapter
The basis of this chapter was to go further in depth on what sources drive and motivate behavior. Specifically, this chapter focused on the psychological needs in motivation. Such needs include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In order to fully understand how these needs influence one’s behavior, we must first acknowledge that environments change and that organisms need some sort of flexibility in order to survive. This approach is known as an organismic approach to motivation.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I suppose that something I found surprising was the psychological needs overall. I just assumed that these “needs” (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) were just natural desires that humans seek. Looking further into autonomy, I found it interesting how this need is broken down into three large components. Perceived locus of causality (PLOC), which in other courses I learned to be called locus of control, is a person’s understanding of the source of his or her motivation. This source can either be internal or external. The second component, volition, is the unpressured willingness to engage in an activity. I believe the word “unpressured” is key to this component; some people may find themselves forced or pressured to take on certain activities but this conflicts with their own autonomy. The final component, perceived choice, is one’s sense of having a choice when the environment provides decision making flexibility and affords many opportunities to choose from.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself high in both competence and relatedness. I believe my competence is high because I am constantly seeking and fulfilling the need to exercise my skills and capabilities in the environment. For example, I feel that I can clearly see positive feedback and some sense of progress in a majority of my classes. These two components are just a couple that feed into my high competence. I would also rate myself high in relatedness because I feel I have many close emotional bonds and attachments with others. These types of bonds and attachments have formed within my family, my close friends, and my boyfriend. These are the people in my life that I can turn to in times of duress and find comfort in each of these individuals. As far as autonomy goes, I would rate myself at a medium on this scale. I do feel as though I make many decisions on my own and that I have a sense of self-direction in my life. However, I sometimes feel as though my volition is violated, and that some of the choices I make are tied to the expectations others have for me. Therefore, my volition is not entirely “unpressured.”
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one psychological need an discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I suppose if I were to discuss one of these needs, I would say relatedness has a large impact in my life on a day to day basis. I know my attachment to my parents’ impacts the way I approach certain situations. They raised me so I know certain behaviors as right and wrong; also I know that no matter what decisions I make in life, they will be behind me one hundred percent. My bond with my friends is amazing. Like I mentioned previously, if I feel like I’m stuck I know I can go to them in these times of need. Finally, I feel that my boyfriend and I have such an incredible bond with one another. I feel our relationship alone fulfills all the psychological needs this book describes. We give ourselves the abilities to form our own goals and choices in life (autonomy). We support one another’s decisions and encourage one another to perform to their greatest potential (competence) whether it is in school, work or extracurricular activities. Finally, I know I feel I can turn to him with any problem I have, any comfort I need, and he will welcome me with open arms (relatedness).
If you had to make a guess, what’s the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
If I were to make a quick guess on how the fish picture relates to this chapter, I suppose one could say that the fish is attempting to satisfy one or all of its psychological needs. It may be trying to perfect its jumping skills to better perform for its owner, an example of competence. It may also be searching for a friend since he is all alone in the fishbowl, an example of relatedness. Another thing it may also be trying to do is find his fish food. It wants to eat now, and not when its owner decides it’s time to eat. This could be an example of it exercising its autonomy.
Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, organismic approach to motivation, perceived locus of causality, volition, perceived choice
Summary of Chapter 6:
Chapter 6 deals with the psychological needs we all have, and how our brains work to satisfy them. The three main psychological needs we humans have are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These terms have been noted before in previous chapters, but have been dissected in more detail throughout this chapter. Autonomy is our inherent need to have self-direction of our lives. It relates to having the power to make a decision that is for our own personal reasons, and is not coerced by some extra-organismic feature. Competence is our need to be able to comprehend and complete a task that requires training or skill. There are four stages of competence, they are: Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence. As we move along these stages we become happier and our needs are satisfied. Relatedness is a person’s need to have connection with other people, not just conversations but a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship. A person could have crazy amounts of money and still not be happy if they had no one to talk to.
Most Surprising:
Maybe not surprising but very interesting to me was the “good day” “bad day” example, and how these three factors pretty much determine the outcome of the day in our minds. This was interesting to me because I was having a bad morning recently and was able to think back on it and reflect. Right off the bat my day was “bad” because I woke up late for a test and couldn’t study like I had planned, I felt my only choice was to quickly get to class without looking over the material. My autonomy was threatened and as a result I was already off to a bad start. Nobody likes taking a test, and nobody especially likes the feeling after we take a test that we maybe didn’t do so well on. This was the case for me, I didn’t feel prepared for the test, and there for my competence was threatened. Lastly, I had no one to ‘vent’ to because it was still rather early in the morning and my roommates were sleeping, thus completing the trifecta.
High, Medium, Low:
I think my high is relatedness, I can be having a horrible day, but if I have someone I’m close with to talk about it or to join in my misery, it doesn’t even bother me. Medium I would rate my competence, I work hard to reach goals I set for myself, and I want that hard work to pay off, if I work hard and am not happy with the final result, that affects my mood. Lastly, I would rate my autonomy as low. I do feel the need for control in my life, but I pride myself on being very flexible and able to ‘go with the flow’. While I would rather make most of my own decisions, I find that I have a fairly easy time adapting to just about any situation I’m faced with.
Manifestation in Life:
Like I said in the previous portion of the assignment, these needs are present every single day, often they are overlooked and taken for granted, and sometimes they are very noticeable and can affect our entire day. The psychological need that is most present in my life currently is relatedness. I do fine by myself in situations and am able to occupy my time if I’m alone, but I prefer being around my roommates and friends. Relatedness has to do with the relationships we have developed and the meaning those relationships have to us and our peers. I have formed strong relationships over many years with the people I live with and would feel a psychological void if that wasn’t present.
Competence:
Similar to most students, when I study and work hard, I expect good things. This is what motivates my efforts in life, I am a results driven person and I want to work hard at something until I am comfortable with my skill level and am confident my work will result in something I am proud of. On the other hand, the fear of not being competent in something is just as motivating, if not more. I often work hard at something for the mere purpose of not being embarrassed or feeling crappy about myself.
Fish:
I think the fish relates to the chapter because of his desire to exit the bowl. We have learned in previous chapters of our physiological needs, and how they trump other needs. I think this picture is an example of how our psychological needs could even trump our physiological needs. If that fish (assuming he can comprehend) sees people walking by and talking to one another every day, yet he’s stuck there alone, eventually he is going to be fed up, and do whatever it takes to take some control over his life.
ME Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-direction, mood, adaptation, needs, psychological void
Summarize the chapter
This chapter is about the psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Psychological needs for water, food, and sex come from biological deficits. Psychological needs promote a willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment that we expect will be able to nurture our psychological needs. Because psychological needs motivate exploration and challenge-seeking, they are understood as growth rather than as deficit needs.
The three psychological needs are sometimes referred to as organismic psychological needs. They rely on an organismic approach to motivation, an approach to motivation that makes two core assumptions. First people are inherently active. Second, in the person environment dialectic, the person uses inherent psychological needs to engage in the environment and the environment sometimes supports but other times neglects and frustrates these inner resources. Organismic theories get their name from the term organism, an entity that is alive and in active exchange with its environment. The survival of any organism depends on its environment because the environment offers resources like food, water, social support, and intellectual stimulation. Organisms theories of acknowledge that environments constantly change and, hence, organisms need flexibility to adjust to and accommodate those changes.
Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior. Behavior is self-determined when our interests, preferences, and wants guide our decision-making process to engage or not to engage in a particular activity. Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one’s capacities and skill, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges. Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. Because we need relatedness, we gravitate toward people who we trust to care for our well-being, and we drift away from those who we do not trust to look out for our well-being.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The section entitled, What Makes for A Good Day, is the most interesting and most surprising thing I read about in chapter six. I learned that experiences that involve and satisfy psychological needs generate positive emotion and psychological well-being. When people experience a good day, the events in our lives work to involve and satisfy our psychological needs. When people experience a bad day, the events in our lives work to neglect and frustrate these needs. With this said, our psychological need satisfaction predicts and explains when we do and do not have a “good day.” It is refreshing to know that if I am having a good or bad day it is likely because my psychological need are correlated with mood.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
Autonomy- high
Competence- high
Relatedness – high
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
When deciding what to do, I desire choice and decision-making flexibility. I want to be the one who decides, what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to stop doing it, and whether or not to do it at all. I want freedom to construct my own goals; I want the freedom to decide what is important and what is and is not worth our time. In other words, I find myself having a high need for autonomy.
I want and strive to be competent. I desire to interact effectively with their surroundings and this desire extends into all aspects of our lives: in school, at work, in relationships, and during recreation and sports. I all want to develop skills and improve our capacities, talents, and potential. When given the chance to grow our skills and talents, I want to make progress. When I do so, I feel satisfied, even happy. In other words, because of this I have a high need for competence.
I have a high need to belong. I desire social interaction. I go out of my way a lot of times to form and maintain warm, close, affectionate relationships with others. I want my friends to understand me for who I am as individuals, and want to be accepted. I want relationships with others who honestly care for my well-being. In other words, I have a high need for relatedness because of this.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
The key environmental condition that satisfies my need for competence is positive feedback and it helps with my progression. I play rugby for UNI and I think that my need for competence makes me try as hard as possible during practice and during a game. The need for competence generates the motivation that makes me want to develop, improve upon, and refine my overall skills. I am challenged every day. I have to show up to every practice and give 110% of my effort. I feel that when I receive positive feedback from my teammates, it makes me feel good and want to try harder. Performance feedback in its various forms supplies the information individuals need to formulate a cognitive evaluation of their perceived level of competence. When these sources of information converge on an interpretation of job well done, we experience positive feedback that is capable of satisfying the psychological need for competence.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
To me the fish looks like it jumped out of the bowl because of relatedness. The fish could be lonely in the fish bowl all by himself, so the fish figures might as well try and get back to the ocean with all his other fish pals. I also think that the fish jumping out the bowl also shows competence. The owner of the fish is like, “fish you can’t get out of this fish bowl, you’re going to be my pet forever” and the fish is like, “So that is what you think? Challenge accepted! I’m getting out of here.” So the fish jumps out of the bowl to prove to the owner that he can do it. I know it sounds silly but this is what I think when I look at the picture. It is related to the chapter because the fish shows examples of psychological needs.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, positive feedback, Organismic theories, Performance feedback
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter covered psychological needs. Psychological needs can be broken down into three parts: autonomy, competence and relatedness. The behaviors in this chapter are proactive, done willing, with the person acting first and the environment reacting.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I think the most surprising thing that I learn was that you can take on someone’s values through relating to them via internalization. Relatedness seemed to me just relationships with people. I’ve always known that people can “rub off” on one another. I also thought that the idea of engagement supporting autonomy was quite interesting, as I think of autonomy not involving much else besides control. Engagement can actually support autonomy by involving and supporting autonomy.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would say that I am high on autonomy and competence, with relatedness being somewhere from medium to low. I am a stubborn person, I am going to do things the way I want and when I want. I like the control over things in my life, whether its brushing my teeth or being at work. I do think relatedness is an important thing to have, but given the choice between the three, relatedness is the first to go.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I find that my need for autonomy manifests itself in my recently rehired position. I had previously worked at a one of the company’s flower shops in cedar falls and started at one in Cedar Rapids. I was in charge of filling all the deliveries for the major holidays. Which takes a high level of organization, you have to make sure they all get the correct flowers, the correct card message, the right packaging, written correctly for the drivers and put in the correct spot. Now try doing that times about 300 to 400 times with the phone-ringing non-stop. I am awesome at coordinating deliveries, I only messed up one delivery last valentines day. At the new job in Cedar Rapids, I was not pleased to be asked to do deliveries and then to do them in a significantly more inefficient way. The manager had me spread all the deliveries around between about six people, I wanted it to be between myself and one other person. The fewer hands and less broken down the job the fewer opportunities for the job to be miss communicated. I chose to have no part in deliveries this season; I had no control and no ability to ensure the deliveries. I was a little smug when my old manager called the new manager to ask her how deliveries went, she replied that she only got 120 some done. My old manager laughed at her. I have a high sense of autonomy and possibly narcissism, or possibly just a high competence level as well.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I think my need for competence motivates me to learn things and know the correct way to implement/understand them. For example I do place weight in grades for school, but overall I could care less what a multiple choice test says about my learning. I want to be able to understand and communicate the material at a high level of understanding. (its occurred to me after writing this, that it may play more into my need for autonomy as well)
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
My guess as to the fish jumping out of his bowl is that person-environment dialect. Perhaps the fish’s environment is neglecting its needs so it is in search of a new environment that would stimulate and meet its needs more fully.
Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, engagement, internalization, person-environment dialect.
Summarize the chapter:
The chapter talks about the psychological needs people have. In the psychological needs, there are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the ability to make our own choices. Competence is being able to be effective in the things we do. Relatedness is the connections we form with others. The chapter also talks about engagement. This is the way people carry about activities that they take part in. To finish the chapter, it talks about having a good day. One would have a good day if all areas of the psychological needs were met.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing to me was reading about flow. I had never heard of flow before so this was something new to me. It was interesting to learn about how skill and challenge influence flow and can effect a situation.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, or low on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself as high in relatedness. I consider myself an outgoing person and enjoy meeting new people. I'm involved in many different things and enjoy being involved. It gives me new people to be surrounded with and new people to meet. Knowing people could also help me later in life. As for autonomy, I would rate myself as medium. I like having the ability to make my own choices. This has grown since I moved to college. I always enjoyed in high school being able to have my own thoughts and ideas and choosing the things I wanted to do and be involved with. My parents never pushed me to do things and always gave me options. I like being able to think and decide for myself. Finally, I would rate myself as medium as well for competence. I enjoy being faced with things that will be more difficult for me and to test my ability in. Because of this, it would help to make me a better person and help expand my skills.
How do these various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I can see two of these levels in my life with a new situation that I just took on. I just started volunteering at ASPIRE Therapeutic Riding Program. Within this program, I can see relatedness and competence in it. Relatedness comes into play with the new people I am meeting, not only the staff of ASPIRE but also the other volunteers that I work with. I'm able to create bonds with these people by working with them regularly. Once classes start, I will be working with the children that are taking the classes as well. I also so competence. Working with horses is something I've never really done. I've rode horses before when I was very little but never really worked with them. I love animals so I like that this is an opportunity for me to be able to do something I like but also testing myself with something new.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors:
I would say that relatedness would be a need that motivates a lot of my behaviors. I try to stay in good contact with all the people that are important in my life. Whether this is by face to face interaction, phone, or e-mail, I make an effort to stay in contact with people. This way they know that they are important to me and I think of them in the things I do or in daily routine. I feel that having connections with people is healthy for people as well as helps to form strong relationships that might help in the future. For example, I work with the track and field team. I've spent a lot of time with the coaches. For an application for volunteering with Big Brothers Big Sisters, I was able to use one of the coaches as a recommendation on the application. Having the interaction and relationship I had with the coach helped me with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
What's the deal with the fish in the picture? How does it relate to the chapter?
I think that the fish is showing autonomy in this picture. Being cooped up in a bowl all the time isn't fun at all. We wouldn't want to be stuck in a room all day! I think that it lead the fish to the choice of staying in the bowl or jumping out which in this case the fish had the motivation and decided to jump out. It could also show competence to show if the fish actually could jump out of the bowl or not.
Motivation and emotion terms: psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, engagement, flow, skill, challenge, motivation
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 6 talked about psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness when it came to motivation. Broke it into how people are active as well as how the environment affects the persons motivation. Examples can be how the environment say winter time in Iowa, well runners are motivated to run however due to the cold weather have make the decision to run inside or just stop, which can frustrate them or drive them harder to run since it will be a different place.
Autonomy is self guided learning and motivation, where it focuses more on internal affairs than external. This is preferred because in doing so a person can find FLOW much quicker and easier.
Competence is wanting to interact with the environment affectively. An example would be a dancer on Dancing With The Stars, wishes to perfect their dance so as to stay on the show and continue in the competition. Where say a football player would normally master catching the ball and running routes, they must now master footwork and body control in order to accomplish said goal.
Relatedness to be human. We as humans enjoy the emotional attachment of other people so as to feel closer to them. The football team, each year losses and gains players, so each year somebodies emotions are jarred. It may only be that the person they disliked is gone or it may be loosing a close friend. We strive for this connection as another way to motivate ourselves.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
How to tell autonomy supportive people from controlling, an example is someone who wants to help you be you would ask what you wanted, where as controllers would tell you what they think you want or what they want. I didn’t realize how close but different those things are, even if someone had said earlier they wanted to go to the grocery store and I wanted to support that, by the time I came back to them a true autonomic supported would ask again rather than say lets go.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?
Autonomic Medium
Competence High
Relatedness High
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
For me the competence is the want to perfect my job skills as well as cheerleading. I want to be able to perform a task in the quickest most effective way when it comes to work. Cheerleading is similar but I want clean crisp motions. No bobbles, my standing tuck should go up, I tuck, and land where I started.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
A fish out of water, it could be the fish does not want to be in the water anymore, or that it is cold so it jumped out change its scenery. Autonomy.
Terms
Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Autonomic Support, Psychological Needs
Chapter six focuses on psychological needs and in particular, 3 needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these needs are met and satisfied, we experience intrinsic motivation that provides growth. Autonomy is a need for self-direction. This means that a person has true choice of their actions. Competence involves feeling a strong interest in seeking out and accomplishing challenges that satisfy us. Relatedness is the need to have and maintain close, emotional relationships with other people. These three needs all intertwine together and work toward engagement. Engagement involves behavior, emotional, cognitive engagement and voice.
The most surprising thing I learned about was the experience of flow. I found this to be incredibly interesting because I realized that I love that experience also, but never knew it was a specific behavior experience. Flow involves being so absorbed in what activity you are doing that nothing or no one can distract you because you are so mentally involved in what you are doing.
Personally rating myself for these psychological needs, my highest rating is autonomy. I constantly feel pressure to stick to my weekly schedule of class, homework, workouts, and babysitting. I start to dread the next day and long for a break when I can do whatever I want, when I want. My competence and relatedness needs are low because I feel as if both needs are being met within my life at the moment. I think my need for autonomy helps with my relatedness because when I feel pressured to do homework, I will sometimes procrastinate by visiting with my friends.
Terms: Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Intrinsic Motivation, Engagement, Flow
Summarize the chapter:
This chapter is all about psychological needs. When something involves our psychological needs, we find it interesting. When we fulfill our psychological needs, we feel happy and we get a sense of enjoyment. There are three main psychological needs. The first is autonomy. Autonomy is the fact that we can make our own decisions. We can decide for ourselves on anything we want. That makes us feel good that we have choices and we also have the power to choose on our own. The second need is competence. Competence is the psychological need to seek out and master challenges. It is the need to have effective interactions with one’s surroundings. The third psychological need is relatedness. Relatedness is a feeling of belonging. People want to feel related to other people. Everyone wants to feel involved and important.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?:
I think the most interesting thing I learned about was flow. I have never heard of this concept until I read this chapter and I found it very surprising. The book talks about flow as a “pleasurable experience”. Flow is when you get deeply involved in a certain activity. It has to be something you are good at. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced flow. I can’t really recall a time that I have, but maybe it’s because I was never aware that such a concept existed.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various psychological needs, what would those ratings be?:
Autonomy: medium
Competence: low
Relatedness: high
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?:
Autonomy is really easy for me to see what level I am at. Last year I would have put myself at a very low level of autonomy. It was my first year away from home and I hated being alone. I called my mom all the time and was always looking for someone to spend time with. This year I have gotten so much better. Sometimes I like to go off and do things on my own just for fun. I have grown, but I also know I have a long ways to go until I rate myself higher. My competence I would rate low because I am kind of bad at setting goals for myself and meeting them. I have always been one to just take things as they are thrown at me. I don’t really challenge myself and I know it’s something I need to work at. Relatedness I rated high because I feel I have very strong connections with the people around me. I am very pleased with the friendships I have built over the years.
Choose one psychological need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.:
I think that competence influences my behaviors the most because I know it’s something that I need to work on. I think that I need a higher level of competence because I never push myself. I need to set more challenges for myself so I can feel accomplished. Since I know that I have low levels of competence, I usually force myself to sit down and do things (like homework). The action of forcing myself to do that, makes me more likely to get it done on time in the future.
If you had to make a guess, what's the deal with the fish picture? How does it relate to this chapter?
I think the fish has to do all with autonomy. He is jumping out of the bowl because he is doing his own thing. It was his choice to leave the bowl and he’s being independent. He is choosing his own behavior and acting on it.
Terms: Psychological Needs, Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Flow