Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Chapter 7 Summary:
Both quasi and social needs are not inherent at birth, but instead acquired over a brief or extended time period. Quasi needs arise situationally while social needs arise based off experience, development and socialization. Achievement was the next item discussed. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Those who have a high need for achievement respond with approach-oriented behavior instead of avoidance-oriented emotions like anxiety and defense. Instigation, inhibition, and consummation combine to form the dynamics-of-action model. Atkinson's Model says that behavioral approach versus avoidance is a multiplicative function of the person's need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. In all achievement situations there are thee achievement goals: performance-approach (preferred by entity theorists), performance-avoidance , and mastery (incremental theorists). Implicit theorists predict the types of goals people pursue, but entity and incremental theorists see effort differently. Entity theorists say effort it useless because people are either competent or not. Incremental theorists believe effort will produce increased learning leading to mastery. Affiliation strivings are either the need for affiliation or the need for intimacy. The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships to escape negative emotions while the need for intimacy is a social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships. The need for power is one's desire to make the physical and social world conform to his/her image for it.
Most surprising:
The most surprising thing I learned was the insight into performance approach and performance avoidance. It all makes sense and seems so obvious, but it is fascinating to think that you can lessen your anxiety and fear of a competition by switching your thinking to "I want to demonstrate my high abilities" instead of "I don't want to do worse than others".
Rankings:
1. Achievement: I am highly competitive. I have competed in several intramurals, and a variety of sales competitions. I seek out these opportunities proactively and look forward to executing.
2. Affiliation: Whenever I am around a group of people at a party, in a classroom, or in public I seek out every opportunity I can to make a connection with someone. I speak up in class, approach people at parties I don't know, and long for enduring relationships.
3. Power: I typically assume leadership positions in all groups I join because I believe I can perform better than the rest of the group.
4. Intimacy: I appreciate and enjoy long, meaningful relationships but relative to the others it is not as important.
Achievement: This social need has manifested itself in me by leading me to study well in advance for tests to get superior grades, prepare for sales competitions well in advance to be a finalist, and lift or do cardio on a daily basis to out-perform others in competitive sport games.
ME Terms:quasi and social needs, Achievement, approach-oriented behavior, avoidance-oriented emotion, Instigation, inhibition, and consummation , dynamics-of-action model, Atkinson's Model, performance-approach, entity theorists, performance-avoidance, and mastery, incremental theorists, Implicit theorists, mastery, affiliation, Implicit theorists
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 discusses two types of psychological needs, which are social and quasi-needs. Social needs arise through the individual’s gained experience, socialization, and development. Whereas quasi-needs are more of the situational needs that disappear when the person gets what they want. Social needs have the ability to motivate behavior when potential need-satisfying incentives emerge. They lie dormant within us until an encounter reactivates our attention to the social need.
Striving to do well and hold a standard of excellence is the need for achievement. All types of achievement have the standard of excellence and knowledge that the performance would result in a meaningful evaluation of individual competence. Approach-oriented emotions are present mostly among individuals that are high in the need for achievement. These emotions could be pride, hope, and expectance of gratification. High-need achievers tend to select moderately difficult to difficult tasks rather than ones that are easier, do not procrastinate, and accept personal responsibility for their successes and failures. People low in achievement, on the other hand, typically respond with avoidance-oriented emotions of fear, anxiety, and defense.
Achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior in the dynamics-of-action model. The three forces that determine the stream of behavior are instigation, inhibition, and consummation. The increase in approach tendencies by the occurrence of confronting environmental stimuli from previous reward is instigation. In contrast, inhibition comes from past punishment that raises avoidance tendencies. Consummation is when the act that the person is performing brings about its own cessation.
Atkinson’s classical model of achievement predicts approach compared to avoidance behaviors in situations and in moderately difficult tasks, interpersonal competition, and entrepreneurship. The probability of success is Ts = Ms x Ps x Is, whereas the tendency to avoid failure is Taf = Maf x Pf x If.
There are three types of achievement goals within an achievement situation, which are performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. Mastery and performance-approach are generally considered with achievement and positive outcomes and performance-avoidance goals are not.
People that believe personal qualities are fixed are considered to be “entity theorists” and support implicit theories. These implicit theorists predict the types of goals people choose to attend to. The belief that personal qualities can be increased and adapt to learning goals derives from incremental theorists. In contrast, Entity theorists believe that high effort means the individual has low ability.
Affiliation is the need for approval, acceptance, and security within interpersonal relationships. For a person that is high-need affiliation, it is implanted from the fear of interpersonal rejection rather than from being popular and an extravert. Individuals that are high in the need for affiliation interact with others to avoid perceived negative emotions, such as disapproval and loneliness, but to their peers, they tend to come across as “needy.” When people are afraid, they want to seek emotional support from others and see how they respond to the fear object. Two facets are recognized in the more contemporary view of affiliation—need for approval and need for intimacy. People with a high need for intimacy join social group and find ways to interact with others. If friendships are started, these friendships tend to last longer than people with low need for intimacy. Individuals with high need for intimacy strive to maintain relationships they have developed. High-intimacy-need individuals laugh, smile, and make eye contact during in-person conversations more often than those who are low need for intimacy.
Power is another social need, and it could center on the need for dominance, reputation, status or position. Those who are high in the need for power desire to have impact, control, or influence over others. The aspect that allows the individual to establish power is impact. Control is what helps the power-needing individual maintain that power, and influence is what allows the individual to expand or restore power. There is the chance that aggression could result from one’s need to have power. Goals and outcomes are more readily acquired by persons with high need for power than those low in the need for power.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned was about conditions that satisfy the affiliation and intimacy needs. I assumed that if the need of affiliation was satisfied that the individual would feel happiness rather than relief. During this section, I found that I may be higher in some aspects of affiliation than I previously thought. Talking about others in a negative way, being selfish, and imposing demands on others are behaviors I try to stay away from. Often times when I am being evaluated for class or during an interview, it creates a higher level of nervousness and anxiety because I do not want to be rejected. With a double major in social work and psychology, it is my intent to help and support others. I was caught off guard when I read that helping professionals could be likely to be high-affiliation-need-individuals. I thought they were in these types of professions to help others, not to just satisfy their needs. In addition, I feel like it could become unprofessional if someone in the helping professional is too high in the need for affiliation that they want to become friends with their clients.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself to be medium to high in achievement, medium in affiliation and intimacy, and low to medium in power.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
With achievement, I aim to be competent in all aspects of my life, from work to school to showing horses. I want to do well in these areas of my life and feel happier when I am successful. In showing horses and even in my school work, I tend to be a little competitive and see how I rank compared to others. It produces a feeling of joy when I see that I have the best grade in one of my courses.
With wanting to help others and be a support system in their lives, I would consider myself to be medium in affiliation. I do not need to have the approval and acceptance of my peer groups to an extreme level. Often I attempt to be there for my friends so I do not upset or disappoint them. I try to see them when I can, and listen to the major events that are happening in their life.
For power, I do not like to have control over another individual, but instead I would rather make an influence on their life for the better. If they are participating in dangerous or ignorant events, I would like to show them there is another way. I do not want to do this with force or make them feel obligated to go about their daily lives in the same way that I do.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Power is a social need that I do not have a very strong desire for, although I am very goal and outcome orientated. With some of my everyday tasks, I have to present myself as an individual that has power through being a desk assistant and an active senate member. Usually in Senate and group projects, I try to allow others to have the power to say what they want and how they want it done, but if no one takes initiative, I will step up. I often feel guilty about delegating different components of the task to people, but I always encourage communication, so the group can receive additional assistance if they need it. I believe I that I assume the leadership role because I do not want to fail or have something be unsuccessful. Next year I will be an RA, so I am planning for programs and continuously trying to acknowledge the need for power within myself, since it will be important to demonstrate that I have some authority over my residents, especially when it comes to enforcing conduct. It is a position that will provide me with power, and I will need to develop a more take-charge style for it.
Terms: Psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, dynamics-of-action model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, entity theorist, implicit theory, incremental theorist, affiliation, intimacy, power, impact, control, and influence
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 discusses two types of psychological needs, which are social and quasi-needs. Social needs arise through the individual’s gained experience, socialization, and development. Whereas quasi-needs are more of the situational needs that disappear when the person gets what they want. Social needs have the ability to motivate behavior when potential need-satisfying incentives emerge. They lie dormant within us until an encounter reactivates our attention to the social need.
Striving to do well and hold a standard of excellence is the need for achievement. All types of achievement have the standard of excellence and knowledge that the performance would result in a meaningful evaluation of individual competence. Approach-oriented emotions are present mostly among individuals that are high in the need for achievement. These emotions could be pride, hope, and expectance of gratification. High-need achievers tend to select moderately difficult to difficult tasks rather than ones that are easier, do not procrastinate, and accept personal responsibility for their successes and failures. People low in achievement, on the other hand, typically respond with avoidance-oriented emotions of fear, anxiety, and defense.
Achievement behavior occurs within a stream of ongoing behavior in the dynamics-of-action model. The three forces that determine the stream of behavior are instigation, inhibition, and consummation. The increase in approach tendencies by the occurrence of confronting environmental stimuli from previous reward is instigation. In contrast, inhibition comes from past punishment that raises avoidance tendencies. Consummation is when the act that the person is performing brings about its own cessation.
Atkinson’s classical model of achievement predicts approach compared to avoidance behaviors in situations and in moderately difficult tasks, interpersonal competition, and entrepreneurship. The probability of success is Ts = Ms x Ps x Is, whereas the tendency to avoid failure is Taf = Maf x Pf x If.
There are three types of achievement goals within an achievement situation, which are performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. Mastery and performance-approach are generally considered with achievement and positive outcomes and performance-avoidance goals are not.
People that believe personal qualities are fixed are considered to be “entity theorists” and support implicit theories. These implicit theorists predict the types of goals people choose to attend to. The belief that personal qualities can be increased and adapt to learning goals derives from incremental theorists. In contrast, Entity theorists believe that high effort means the individual has low ability.
Affiliation is the need for approval, acceptance, and security within interpersonal relationships. For a person that is high-need affiliation, it is implanted from the fear of interpersonal rejection rather than from being popular and an extravert. Individuals that are high in the need for affiliation interact with others to avoid perceived negative emotions, such as disapproval and loneliness, but to their peers, they tend to come across as “needy.” When people are afraid, they want to seek emotional support from others and see how they respond to the fear object. Two facets are recognized in the more contemporary view of affiliation—need for approval and need for intimacy. People with a high need for intimacy join social group and find ways to interact with others. If friendships are started, these friendships tend to last longer than people with low need for intimacy. Individuals with high need for intimacy strive to maintain relationships they have developed. High-intimacy-need individuals laugh, smile, and make eye contact during in-person conversations more often than those who are low need for intimacy.
Power is another social need, and it could center on the need for dominance, reputation, status or position. Those who are high in the need for power desire to have impact, control, or influence over others. The aspect that allows the individual to establish power is impact. Control is what helps the power-needing individual maintain that power, and influence is what allows the individual to expand or restore power. There is the chance that aggression could result from one’s need to have power. Goals and outcomes are more readily acquired by persons with high need for power than those low in the need for power.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing I learned was about conditions that satisfy the affiliation and intimacy needs. I assumed that if the need of affiliation was satisfied that the individual would feel happiness rather than relief. During this section, I found that I may be higher in some aspects of affiliation than I previously thought. Talking about others in a negative way, being selfish, and imposing demands on others are behaviors I try to stay away from. Often times when I am being evaluated for class or during an interview, it creates a higher level of nervousness and anxiety because I do not want to be rejected. With a double major in social work and psychology, it is my intent to help and support others. I was caught off guard when I read that helping professionals could be likely to be high-affiliation-need-individuals. I thought they were in these types of professions to help others, not to just satisfy their needs. In addition, I feel like it could become unprofessional if someone in the helping professional is too high in the need for affiliation that they want to become friends with their clients.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself to be medium to high in achievement, medium in affiliation and intimacy, and low to medium in power.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
With achievement, I aim to be competent in all aspects of my life, from work to school to showing horses. I want to do well in these areas of my life and feel happier when I am successful. In showing horses and even in my school work, I tend to be a little competitive and see how I rank compared to others. It produces a feeling of joy when I see that I have the best grade in one of my courses.
With wanting to help others and be a support system in their lives, I would consider myself to be medium in affiliation. I do not need to have the approval and acceptance of my peer groups to an extreme level. Often I attempt to be there for my friends so I do not upset or disappoint them. I try to see them when I can, and listen to the major events that are happening in their life.
For power, I do not like to have control over another individual, but instead I would rather make an influence on their life for the better. If they are participating in dangerous or ignorant events, I would like to show them there is another way. I do not want to do this with force or make them feel obligated to go about their daily lives in the same way that I do.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Power is a social need that I do not have a very strong desire for, although I am very goal and outcome orientated. With some of my everyday tasks, I have to present myself as an individual that has power through being a desk assistant and an active senate member. Usually in Senate and group projects, I try to allow others to have the power to say what they want and how they want it done, but if no one takes initiative, I will step up. I often feel guilty about delegating different components of the task to people, but I always encourage communication, so the group can receive additional assistance if they need it. I believe I that I assume the leadership role because I do not want to fail or have something be unsuccessful. Next year I will be an RA, so I am planning for programs and continuously trying to acknowledge the need for power within myself, since it will be important to demonstrate that I have some authority over my residents, especially when it comes to enforcing conduct. It is a position that will provide me with power, and I will need to develop a more take-charge style for it.
Terms: Psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, dynamics-of-action model, instigation, inhibition, consummation, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, entity theorist, implicit theory, incremental theorist, affiliation, intimacy, power, impact, control, and influence
Psychological needs include both quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that arise out of a psychological context of tension and urgency to meet some specific environmental demand, such as needing a high grade point average or the need for money. Social needs arise from the individuals personal experiences and unique developmental, cognitive, and socialization histories. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. High need achievement individuals generally respond with approach-oriented emotions and behaviors whereas low needs for achievement individuals generally respond with avoidance-oriented emotions and behaviors. 3 types of achievement goals exist: performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. Implicit theories reveal whether people think their personal qualities are fixed and enduring or are malleable and can be increased. Implicit theorists are important because they predict the type of goals people choose to pursue, as entity theorists generally adopt performance goals whereas incremental theorists adopt learning goals. Entity theorists generally believe that high effort means low ability, whereas incremental theorists generally believe that effort is the means by which learning occurs and skills develop.
Affiliation strivings have two facets: the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships. The need for power is the desires for making the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image for it. A special variant of the need for power is the leadership motive pattern, which consists of the threefold pattern of needs involving high need for power, low need for intimacy and high inhibition.
The most surprising thing I learned is that people with high need for affiliation were often less popular than people low in affiliation strivings. Since people with a high need for affiliation are always trying to avoid negative emotions of loneness, one might think that they would have more friends, but instead it is the opposite.
If I had to rate myself on the various social needs it would be that I’m medium on achievement, low in affiliation but high on intimacy and medium in power. Achievement manifest in my life because I do try and do the best that I can and I try to stay positive and tell myself that I can do it. I do enjoy moderately difficult tasks because then if I am able to complete them, I feel a sense of worth, however I do not enjoy difficult tasks for fear of failure. I also believe that I am medium in affiliation because I feel that making friends is very easy for me and I don’t always have to try super hard or go out of my way per se to try and make friends. However, if I feel lonely, I will go out and search for someone to talk to. I also agree that I am high need for intimacy. By how the book described high intimacy people, I believe that I am the same way. I do know a lot of personal information and history of my friends, information that they haven’t always told other close friends. I also tend to laugh and smile a lot when talking to others and I’ve also been told that I’m down to earth. When it comes to power, I also think I’m in the middle. I don’t like to be too powerful and be the boss per se but I also don’t like to be at the bottom. When I argue however, I do tend to raise my voice and I won’t stop until I get my point across, yet at the same time, I also know when to keep my mouth shut and not say anything.
Achievement motivates my behaviors immensely towards school. As far as goals go, I would say I lean more towards performance-approach goals. I really want to prove to myself and others that I can succeed and do well in school. I wouldn’t say I’m mastery goal because I think that puts too much pressure on myself to do well, and I just want to be happy with myself, I don’t always feel like I need to master everything in that class. I also would not say that I’m performance-avoidance either because to me, that’s a bad mind frame. I wouldn’t say that I have a fear of failure, but I obviously know that I don’t want to fail but I also know that I will push myself enough to where I won’t fail anyway. Basically for me, I just want to achieve something, that in the end, I will be happy with myself and know that I was able to push myself for me to achieve whatever goal I had in place.
Me Terms- Quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, socialization influences, cognitive influences, developmental influences, affiliation and intimacy, power, Atkinson’s Model, Instigation, Inhibition, Consummation, Mastery goal, performance-approach goal, performance-avoidance goal, implicit theories
Chapter 7 begins with the discussion and explanation of two categories of acquired needs: social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs arise from experience, socialization, and development. These needs are activated from situational incentives which include the need for achievement through doing something well to show capability, affiliation through the opportunity to please others and gain their approval, intimacy through a warm, secure relationship, and power through having an impact on others. Quasi-needs appear when a situation provides an urgent response, for example, needing a doctor appointment when ill. Motivation for achievement has two different approaches, which are contemporary and classical. The Atkinson model explains classical, saying that achievement behavior is a choice. The contemporary explanation describes mastery goals and performance goals as the two ways of motivation. Affiliation is the need for approval, acceptance, and security in a close relationship. People that are high-need affiliated, often come off as needy because they want to make sure there is no negative association toward them in the relationship.
I didn’t necessarily find something that really surprised me, however, I did find the topic of mastery goals versus performance goals to be interesting. I found this interesting because I could really relate the definitions to myself regarding mastery goals. The more I progress with my major, the more I find myself intrinsically motivated to do my schoolwork and study because I find it interesting and I want to understand the concepts of Psychology as much as possible.
The social needs include four categories: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. For achievement, I would rate myself as high. Being a college student and in my last two years, I have many situational incentives that are motivating me to perform at my highest level to achieve the goal of graduating and obtaining a career with a high salary. I would rate myself as medium for the need of affiliation, depending on certain relationships though. With my parents and a few best friends, my affiliated need in stronger than with just other friends and acquaintances. Regarding intimacy, I would also say that would be a medium rating, since I strongly value my close relationships with my best friends and parents. My rating for power is low because at this time in my life, I am focusing on the other three social needs and don’t have the ability to express power over people since I am not completely an independent adult yet.
As I discussed before, achievement plays a big role in my life and dominates all other social needs. Achievement dictates my behavior through my studying, research, time spent on homework, and reading in order to reach the goal of getting good grades, receiving a diploma, and obtaining a career that I enjoy and strive in.
Terms: Social Needs, Quasi-Needs, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Atkinson Model, Mastery Goals, Performance Goals
Chapter 7 discusses social needs and quasi-needs—two categories that are acquired psychological needs. Situations are responded to differently by every individual depending on their personal experience, developmental history, and socialization opportunities and demands. These different experiences teach us to expect a more positive emotional experience in some situations than in others. Social needs and quasi-needs do not have innate origins, rather they have social origins. A human has many needs including physiological, psychological, social, and quasi-needs. Physiological needs are biological, psychological needs are innate, social needs are acquired psychological responses, and quasi-needs are situationally induced. Quasi-needs tend to be urgent, have tension and pressure, and may displace other needs because they are so overwhelming. They originate from situational demands and pressures. Development, socialization, and experience create social needs. Personality characteristics function toward social needs. These characteristics include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Incentives activate each of the social needs. For achievement, the incentive is to do something well in order to show personal competence. For affiliation, the incentive is an opportunity to please others and gain their approval. Intimacy’s incentive is to create warm, secure relationships. The incentive for power is made to have an impact on others. Depending on whether one is high or low in achievement, affiliation, intimacy, or power will push an individual to motivation. Achievement motivation is approached by a classical theory and a contemporary theory. Atkinson’s model of achievement behavior is the classical view. This theory has four variables: achievement behavior, need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. The classical view includes the dynamics-of-action model where achievement motivation occurs in a stream of ongoing behavior. The three forces driving it is instigation (rise in approach tendencies), inhibition (rise in avoidance tendencies), and consummation (performing an activity brings about its own cessation). The contemporary view has a cognitive approach that focuses on goals people adopt in achievement situations. Achievement motivation acts as a balance between the approach to success emotions and beliefs versus the avoidance of failure emotions and beliefs. Entity theorists believe their personal qualities are fixed while incremental theorists believe their personal qualities can be changed and increased. Affiliation includes two facets: the need for affiliation/rejection anxiety and the need for intimacy/affiliation interest. People with a high need for power desire to make the physical and social world conform to his/her personal image.
I was surprised to learn about how most U.S. Presidents are all rated the same on their social needs. They have a high need for power and inhibition, but are low in their need for affiliation. This makes them great and effective leaders. They aren’t afraid to get done what needs to be done even if it might make some people dislike him.
If I had to rate myself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, I would be medium on achievement, high on affiliation, high on intimacy, and medium on power. These various levels manifest themselves in my life by leading me down different paths on whether to step up and be extraverted or to sit back and watch by being more introverted. It helps me choose what I am going to decide is more important and what I should focus on and what I can put aside. I am high on medium on achievement. Last semester I was on the Dean’s list with a 3.75 GPA. I was so proud to show my parents and this could increase my affiliation with my family because they are proud of me. Or it could improve my power because my peers and friends will listen to and follow someone who is hard-working and intelligent. Although I love getting good grades, I don’t feel as motivated toward it as I should. If I get a B I won’t be too upset because I know there are plenty of other things in life that disrupt a person from excelling in school. Also, when I made the UNI Cheer Squad last year, I felt very high on achievement; however, I wasn’t striving for enough achievement because it was very time consuming so I did not work on my gymnastics skills and did not go to “tumbling.”
Terms: social need; quasi-need; psychological need; physiological needs; achievement; affiliation; intimacy; power; motivation; achievement motivation; Atkinson’s model of achievement behavior; dynamics-of-action model; instigation; inhibition; consummation
Summarize the chapter.
The further we read through this textbook, the deeper we go into our knowledge and understanding of the various needs that influence our motivations and behaviors. This chapter discusses the social needs of achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power; and how these needs develop and shape themselves throughout one’s life experiences. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. In other words, achievement can also be seen as competency. There are various influences that can shape a person’s need for achievement. However, it has been shown that moderately difficult tasks, competition, and even entrepreneurship help in satisfying this need for achievement. Affiliation and intimacy are somewhat related in that they both deal with positive and meaningful relationships with others, yet in different contexts. Finally, power is the desire to make both the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image and plan for it. Those with a high need for power base this off several other needs, such as dominance, reputation, status and position among others. These needs are very dynamic, and over time a person’s needs can strengthen or weaken based off past experiences.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
What I found to be the most surprising was the difference between affiliation and intimacy. Before reading this chapter, when I saw that affiliation and intimacy were two separate social needs, I thought that did not make much sense. They should be one in the same, right? Well, for the most part, it is obvious that both deal with relationships among others. Affiliation deals with establishing, maintaining or restoring a positive, affective relationship with another person. Intimacy is the experience of a warm, close and communicative exchange with another person. Although both are very positive in nature, their approach to high and low needs are very different. Affiliation takes a deficiency-oriented approach. This means that the higher the need for affiliation a person has, the lower amount of affiliated relationships this person has in their life. On the other hand, intimacy takes a growth-oriented approach in that as a person’s need for intimacy grows, the number of present intimate relationships in their life is also at a high. In other words, a person with a high need for affiliation comes from a point where they are experiencing a social deprivation from others. Whereas a person with a high need for intimacy already experiences a great amount of warmth in their relationships and experience a high level of relatedness with others.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
If I were to rate myself on each of these social needs, I would rate myself as a high need for achievement, a low need for affiliation, a high need for intimacy, and a low need for power. Achievement is high for me because I relate it to competency. I am always challenging myself to perform better and test my skills and capabilities. Also, I absolutely love competing against others; it helps me in performing my best. Affiliation is low for me because I do not feel like I am or ever have been in a place where I felt deprived from social interactions with others. If that were to ever arise, I feel that need would be overtaken by my high need for intimacy. I know that I have a great number of warm and meaningful relationships with others, whether it be my friends, family or boyfriend. Although I am content with the numbers of relationships I have in my life, I am always looking forward to strengthening these relationships. Finally, I would rank myself low on power because I do not like being the sole carrier of responsibility. I also do not think I have need or desire to “dominate” and “control” others. I know the textbook said that seeking a career in the helping profession is a part of the need for power, but I disagree. I think the helping profession caters more towards the needs for intimacy and affiliation rather than a need to have power over others.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
For achievement, I truly feel this high need of mine began at a very young age. I was socialized into having high performance aspirations and formed a self-concept that I could accomplish what I set my mind to. I think this occurred because my parents provided us (my brothers and I) a home environment that was full of stimulation potential. I have always been surrounded by large numbers of people. I grew up in two large cities, come from a large extended family, and have always been involved in a wide range of activities where I meet numerous people. I believe these large numbers of connections I have with others contribute to my low need for affiliation with others; I already know enough people! Like I mentioned before, I think my high need for intimacy lies in the fact that I do have many extremely close and meaningful relationships with others. In my eyes, it never hurts to grow closer to someone you care about. Finally, I never found myself wanting to be in control over others. I think this comes from the fact I don’t possess many necessary qualities it takes for a person to seek power (ex: aggressiveness).
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I suppose I can discuss how my high need for achievement motivates my behaviors. Like I previously mentioned, I have always considered myself to seek achievement in life. In particular, I tend to seek high achievement in my education and academics. I always look forward to challenge my capabilities, to a certain degree, and know that if or when I succeed I feel immensely better than I did when first taking on the challenge. Had I had a low need for achievement, it is likely that I would not be pursing two bachelor’s degrees, looking towards graduate school, or maybe even be in college in the first place.
Terms: social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, deficiency-oriented, growth-oriented, dominate, control
Social needs can feel like the most important needs on a person's mind. These needs can both hinder and help a person become the “best” they can be. They seem to manifest in the forefront of an individual's mind as they try to make decisions on which courses of action to take. The main social needs are achievement, affiliation and intimacy.
The need for achievement can be driven by a large psychological need for competence, but often there is a drive to be impressive to others. Achievement involves many different aspects and therefor has many theories. The Atkinson theory involves the tendency to approach success, avoid failure and therefor combine to explain achievement in the future. The Dynamics of Action Model states that achievement behavior occurs constantly. Instigation causes a rise in the approach tendencies, while Inhibition causes a rise in the avoidance tendencies. Consummation refers to the activity bringing about its own cessation. There are many variables that affect achievement's satisfaction. These variables are the difficulty of the task, the competition between others, their own personal goals, entrepreneurship, and effort. Modern theorists believe that it is an accumulation of many theories that arises the behavior of achievement.
The need for intimacy and affiliation can oftentimes work together. The need to affiliate with others can be related to our psychological need for relatedness. But affiliation is establishing and maintaining a positive and effective relationship with another person or persons, while relatedness is involved they are not exactly the same but do tend to be satisfied with similar interactions. Intimacy is formed from the affiliation with others. Intimacy is stronger than affiliation but affiliation must be reached first to fulfill both social needs. Fear and anxiety tend to increase the desire to affiliate but inhibit the individual's behavior from doing so. Establishing strong interpersonal networks can help one satisfy their need for affiliation. Maintaining these relationships can build intimacy but also strengthen their affiliation with one-another. Power striving people tend to become leaders and have less of a need for affiliations. Impact allows them to establish power, control allows them to maintain power while influence allows them to expand or restore their power. Many leaders have the leadership motive pattern of high power, low affiliation and high inhibition.
I found it to be very interesting that most leaders have a high need for power but have a low need for affiliation. I would have thought they would have wanted lots of positive relationships to build a strong connection with the people they are surrounded with. But instead, their need for people to be around them stems from their need for power and not their need for affiliation. I guess that must be why they do not care how many people they piss off or step on to get to where they want to be. Leaders sound very individualistic in how they see the world and act within it.
If I were to rate myself, I would say that I have a high need for achievement but not for social gain. I have just always been able to achieve high and intrinsically enjoy being able to master tasks efficiently, but I enjoy helping others achieve to my level nearly as much. I think I have a lower need for affiliation but I like having a couple of very strong friendships as opposed to multiple mid-strength ones which I have had most of my life due to our constant moving from town to town. I have a lower need for intimacy in that I can be satisfied with just one or two relationships with others which have the characteristics of being intimate. I just need a couple of people to be that for me, not many or anyone who has to “wow” me with their abilities of being there. I can take care of myself. But I do enjoy the company of others and I do enjoy being though of positively, but I don't risk my own thoughts and beliefs to make others change their minds. If they don't like who I am, then they are not worth my time, usually.
The assignment says to discuss one specific need but I felt that what really interested me was trying to understand these needs in relation to my sister. She has social anxiety and it can really take control of her life. She wants desperately to have just one friend who understands her and is there for her, like our family always has been. But she is also extremely shy. She is smart and very attractive which causes a lot of problems for her because she tends to be intimidating, or that is what my friends have said about meeting her. She is a high-achiever and that need is nearly always satisfied but her need for affiliation is extremely high but she is paralyzed by the fear of rejection to a point where oftentimes she cannot even leave her room. I wonder how things will continue for her and how they can help her brain recognize that the fear must dissipate so that she can fulfill her social needs. It is hard for me to understand how someone so friendly could be so lonely inside, because I know her on that intimate level and find it hard that other people have not been able to do so. I really hope that someone comes along and can help ease that pain which comes from the lack of fulfillment in that aspect of her life. Learning about these needs makes me thankful for my ability to fulfill my own needs but makes me feel very sorry for those who are unable to fulfill their needs due to hindrances beyond their own abilities to change.
Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter.
Chapter seven is about acquired psychological needs which include quasi needs and social needs. Quasi needs are wants and desires, quasi needs control how we a person think feels, acts and etc. examples of quasi needs in my life are my job at olive garden, working less and still making a lot of money is a need and gain as a college student. Quasi needs are usually based off on situational demands and pressures.
The second psychological need in chapter seven was social needs; many humans acquire social needs through experiences, development and socialization. Once social needs are acquired we begin to experiences social needs as emotional and or behavioral that contributes to a particular incentive. Social needs are known to be mostly reactive in nature. There are four different social needs, the first one which is achievement, is to do something well which will than show personal competence. Achievement also has three types of achievement goals, which are
The second social need is affiliation which is an opportunity to please others and or gain their approval and the third is intimacy which is having a meaningful relationship and power which is the last one is the need to have impact on others.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I think the most surprising thing I learned in chapter seven was about affiliation and how its stimulated by fear and rejection I just thought personal relationships were rooted because of the importance of the individual
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I rate myself high in achievement because I want to do well in school as well have a good life. I know that I have to work hard to fulfill my goals. I would rate affiliation as medium because I have a lot of important and secure relationships in my life and I work hard to keep my relationships because of how important each person is in my life. I rate power low because I don’t always need to be in power or feel powerful, I can follow the lead as well as be in charge of something, I also think power depends on the situation you are in as well or how bad you want something.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I think the levels will change based on the different periods in your life. I stated earlier I think each level can change depending on where you are or what you want in your life. For example I think power will be higher when I get into the work force because I am going to want to move up and be successful in whatever I decide to do and therefore power will manifest to be a higher priority than it is right now.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I choose achievement as my social behavior because right now school and my education are high in priority. I work hard in school so I can get good grades as well as graduate. I plan on going to graduate school to further my educational success. I think education is important I value that one day I will have a degree. I didn’t think any of those three goals fit my personality I am determined to success but not where I want to master everything or too push where I will fail. I just want to succeed and I do things to make sure my educational goals are ensured.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Acquired needs, quasi needs, social needs, psychological, achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power.
In chapter 7 we learn about our social needs. These social needs are broken down into two categories; quasi needs and social needs. Quasi needs are socially induced needs and desires that arise out of psychological context from the environment. Social needs are needs that are more enduring. A need for achievement is the response to heed approach oriented emotions and behaviors. Within achievement goals there are three types; performance approach, performance avoidance, and mastery. Implicit theories are things that reveal if people think that their personal qualities are fixed and enduring or if they are able to be formed and increased. Affiliation strivings have two facets to them; the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy. Finally the need for power is the desire to make the physical and social world to conform to one’s specific image for it.
One of the most surprising things that I learned was Atkinson’s model. I didn’t know that there was a theory that spelled out how motivation is achieved through the Atkinson Theory. This theory states that it needs four variables; achivevment behavior and three predictors which are need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. Through this theory, achievement behavior is the tendency to approach success. Ts (achievement behavior) = Ms(motive to succeed) x Ps( probability of success) x Is( incentive value of success).
If I had to rate myself on the different aspects of social needs I would say that I am high on achievement because if it is something that I really care about I am going to work really hard to achieve my goal and put forth the necessary effort to do so. I am medium on power, I have taken leadership roles before and have used my power for the greater good and using towards goals and in issues that I feel are going to benefit everyone and not just myself, but, I also like to sometimes let someone else take the reins for a bit and see how things play out. I would say that I am high on affiliation because I like to be a part of things and not just brushed to the side. I also enjoy being affiliated with groups or people that have common interests as me. I would say that I am low on intimacy right now. I have a great group of friends that I can be close with and comfortable telling them things or seeking advice, but right now I am trying to focus on my future and not on my love life.
In the last few months I would say that achievement has been a really important aspect in my life. The high need of achievement to get all my graduate school applications done as well as completing a resume, CV, personal statement, and gaining letters of recommendation, my drive to get these things done in order to achieve a goal which would be to get into graduate school, has taken quite a dominant role in my life thus far in these last few months. Now that I have been accepted to grad school, my high need for achievement in my final semester of undergraduate study has become my main focus as well as enjoying myself as much as possible for this last semester.
TERMS: achievement, social needs, quasi needs, performance approach, performance avoidance, mastery, Atkinson’s model, Atkinson’s theory, power, intimacy, affiliation, motive to succeed, probability of success, incentive value of success.
Summary of the chapter: This chapter talks about the acquired psychological needs of social needs and quasi-needs. These needs are learned through experience. Quasi-needs are wants and needs at a particular moment (i.e. a need for self-esteem when rejected) and give us a sense of tension, pressure and urgency. These needs affect the way we think, feel and how we act. Once we get what we want or need the desire for the need goes away. Social needs are learned through experience, socialization and during development and once these social needs are acquired, emotions and behaviors are activated during specific situations. There are four social needs that activate emotional and behavioral potential when incentives activate these needs. These consist of achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. Achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. The need for achievement originates from socialization, cognitive and developmental influences. The Atkinson’s model looks at the tendency to approach success, the tendency to avoid failure, combined approach and avoidance tendencies and achievement for the future. The dynamics-of-action model is the classical view of the Atkinson’s model and that behavior is determined by instigation, inhibition and consummation. Affiliation and intimacy are looked at in a contemporary view striving for the need for approval and the need for intimacy. Intimacy looks at a willingness to experience a positive relationship with another person. Conditions that are associated with affiliation and intimacy are fear and anxiety which increases the person’s ability to affiliate with others, establishing interpersonal networks and maintaining interpersonal networks. Power is the desire to impact, control and influence individuals. Power gives individuals a sense of dominance, position or reputation. There are many conditions that satisfy the need for power, these consist of leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influential occupations and possessiveness.
What was the most surprising thing you learned? I feel that this chapter overall was surprising and interesting to me. I knew that experiences and through development assisted in your social needs and how you develop relationships, etc. but it is a more extensive in-depth process that is very interesting. In the need for achievement, it is interesting to see in the developmental influences how children think and grow to develop achievement.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? I would have to rate achievement and intimacy as high, affiliation as medium and power as low. I have strived for positive achievements since I was younger. I have strived to achieve for the best for myself and to make those around me proud of what I have accomplished and done. Intimacy is important in developing relationships. It is important to me with the few close relationships I have. I feel that affiliation is not as important but important when pleasing the ones you are closest to and gaining their approval because their approvals are important to me. Power has never been high on my rating. I have grown up around some that take power too far to gain control over others and try to be “better” than others.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors. Achievement motivates me to work and try harder towards my goals. As a graduate student, I strive to perform well and work towards my goal of graduating. I want to achieve a master’s degree and show those around me that I am and was able to complete school.
List of Terms: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson’s model, dynamics-of-action model, instigation, inhibition and consummation.
Chapter 7 is about social and quasi-needs. Social needs are needs that arise through socialization, development, and gained experience. These needs lie dormant within people until an encounter awakens them. Social needs include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The latter is situational needs that leave once the need is satisfied. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Three types of achievement goals exist: mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance. Implicit theories are used to predict the type of goal achievement people will pursue. Intimacy is engaging in a close, positive, interpersonal relationship. Affiliation involves wanting to please others and gain their approval. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to one's personal image and plans.
I was surprised by the fact that most people in leadership positions have a high need for power and a low need for affiliation. The high need for power makes sense but I would assume that people in power would want to gain approval from the people they are surrounded by.
If I were to rate myself I would say I have a high need for achievement, a high need for intimacy, a moderate need for affiliation, and a moderate to high level of power. I am always striving to have excellent work and my career goals require a lot of work. I want to achieve my dreams and I'll do almost anything to achieve those dreams. My high need for intimacy can be seen in my determination to stay with my boyfriend of over 5 years. Also, I have friends that I consider family and I thrive on those relationships. I would say I have a moderate need for affiliation because I care about how I make others feel but at the same time I don't. I say what is on my mind and I usually don't care if I hurt feelings. But sometimes I hold my tongue because I don't want to hurt feelings. It usually depends on the context, person, and my mood. My moderate to high need for power can be seen in the fact that I am often placed in leadership roles. If the opportunity comes up at work or class projects. I thrive of being in positions with a lot of pressure on them and where entire projects rely on me, such as being an assistant director for a play. Not only does this tap into my high need for achievement but I like being in charge of others.
Terms:Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, implicit theory, mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance
This chapter focused on two types of acquired needs: social needs and quasi-needs. The difference between the two is that social needs come from preferences gained through experience, socialization, and development. Quasi-needs include situationally-induced wants. Some of the examples given for these types of needs are needing money to buy things, a bandage after hurting yourself, and an umbrella when it is raining. These needs affect how we think, feel, and act. Once we get what we want, quasi-needs disappear: we get a bill in the mail so we need money to pay that bill, after it is paid, that need for money disappears. The first social need is achievement. This is the desire to do well when we are challenged. It can also affect our competence on certain tasks. When people are high in their need for achievement, they respond to events with approach-oriented emotions. They typically chose tasks that are moderately difficult or difficult. It gives them satisfaction to complete hard tasks. On the other hand, those people with a low needs for achievement respond with avoidant-oriented emotions. They often prefer tasks that are less difficult. They do not get the same satisfaction as the high achievers and don't really care to be challenged. The chapter discussed three different situations that satisfy the need for achievement: moderately difficult tasks, competition, and entrepreneurship. One thing that I found interesting and kind of surprising was the little section on entrepreneurship. McClelland did a study where he assessed college students need for achievement and then waited 14 years and looked at the career they went in to. Most of the entrepreneurs he later observed were high achievers in college. Entrepreneurship allows the individual to take risks and take on the responsibility of the company. These are traits that are associated with people who are high on achievement. The second and third social needs are affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is rooted in people’s fear of interpersonal rejection. People high in affiliation often come across as needy. They do not want to be rejected by their peers and often avoid negative interactions. They constantly seek reassurance from the people around them. The final social need is power. According to the book, power is “a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it.” These people desire to have impact, control, and influence. Impact gives the people power. Control then lets the person maintain that power, and influence allows the person to expand their power.
As I stated earlier, I found the section on entrepreneurship to be interesting. I also thought the part on the effectiveness of Presidents to be interesting as well. The presidents that were listed were all shown to have scored high on power needs and relatively low on affiliation needs. This really isn’t that surprising. Someone is not going to become president if they score low on power. Power is what the job requires. In order for researchers to assess the President’s social needs, they looked at their inaugural speeches, letters, and other speeches. They looked for five different variables; direct presidential actions, perceived greatness, performance on social issues, performance on economic issues and international relations. Each President measured was similar in being high in power, low in affiliation, and high inhibition.
If I had to rate myself, I would say that I am high in achievement. I have always tried hard in school because I understand the importance of working hard to get where you want to be in life. I am competitive in sports and games, but not to the point where it becomes a problem. I played many sports throughout high school and we weren’t very good. However, I still wanted to be good so I kept working at it. I was just accepted into a graduate program and I am very motivated to do well. It is a lot more serious that undergrad and will really impact my future career in the field. For affiliation, I would say that I am a medium. I have some relationships that I consider secure and positive relationships. I do tend to avoid negative situations with people but I don’t consider it a problem. Lastly, I would rate myself as low-medium. There are some situations where I like to be in control, but for the most part, I do not care to be in a lead role. I work better when I am given direction instead of being the one giving the direction.
Terms: social need, quasi-need, achievement, competence, affiliation, intimacy, power, impact, control, influence
This chapter looks at social needs and quasi-needs. Quasi needs are things you need right away which are based on situation and disappear when we get what we want. Social needs include things like achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement looks at how people want to reach and compete with a standard of excellence. This has to do with the need of competence. People face these standards of excellence in different ways. It makes some people nervous and others excited. Atkinson’s model of achievement looks at people’s level of achievement, their incentives, and probability of success. It looks at how people also want to avoid failure which plays into their need for achievement. Competition also adds to people’s want for achievement. People want affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation is a person’s want to form relationships with others. This affiliation is because the person doesn’t want to be rejected. A person with a high need of affiliation and intimacy is often someone who is less popular because of this fear. When people are isolated, they feel the need to affiliate more. People who want to affiliate and feel intimacy tend to become more involved so they can meet more people. Power is another social need. People who have high levels of this need put themselves in situations and activities where they can be powerful. People how have power use leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions.
I found it surprising that people who are high in affiliation are not friendly and outgoing but instead are not very popular. It makes sense though that they care what people think so it causes anxiety for them in social situations.
In achievement, I would rate myself as high. I like to achieve things and reach a standard of excellence. I like to put effort into things I do. This causes me to try hard on the things I do. I try and achieve the most I can in the things I do.
In affiliation, I would rate myself as medium. I like to feel connected with people. I also like having time to my own though too. I spend lots of time with others and am close to people but I also sometimes like to spend time on my own in my room.
In intimacy, I would rate myself as high. The friends I have, I like to become very close to. It’s important for me to form close relationships.
In power, I would rate myself as low. I don’t put myself in lots of leadership roles. I tend to be a follower and am fine with another person taking the lead.
Terms used: Quasi needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, standard of excellence, leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, prestige possessions
Chapter 7 discusses acquired psychological needs including quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs are learned needs, and they are situational. They are wants and desires that are urgent during a specific time. The book gives a couple of examples such as: wanting money and wanting a high grade point average. Social needs, on the other hand, are learned from someone's experiences in life. There are four categories of social needs including: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the desire to want to do well, or to meet a certain standard/criteria. The chapter spent some time explaining the Atkins classical model of achievement. This model gives a formula that predicts approach versus avoidance behaviors in certain situations. Affiliation is the need to gain others approval, or not be rejected. Intimacy is the need to engage in close relationships. Power is the need or want to lead and conform to one’s personal vision or image.
The most surprising thing I learned was the fact that in general social needs are acquired. This seems obvious, but it was something that I had never really put a lot of thought into before. I think it is interesting that social needs are different for every person based on their personal experiences in life. One person may have a high need for intimacy whereas another has a very low need for that. The same goes for achievement, affiliation, and power. I also think it is interesting that the desire to satisfy these needs and the actually level of the need have the ability to change throughout one’s life, again based on their experiences.
If I had to rate myself for the various needs, I would rate myself as follows: I have a high need for achievement, a high need for affiliation, a high need for intimacy, and a moderate need for power. I am a very social person. I set high standards for myself, and I feel competent when I achieve at high levels, especially if the task challenges me. I do not like to be rejected. I am somewhat of a people pleaser, and I try my best to avoid conflict or rejection. I also have a high need for intimacy. I value my close relationships, and I put a lot of effort into them. I enjoy being in a power role/leadership role, specifically at my job. However, this does not interest me in all aspects of my life; therefore I would consider this need to be moderate.
Achievement is a very motivating social need for me. I enjoy doing well at school and in my job. If I am not performing to my best ability then I often feel disappointed in myself. I try to avoid this feeling by always striving to do my best at whatever it is I am doing. I feel competent with myself when I know I have done my best, but it is also motivating for me to know when others know I have done my best. For example, when my boss praises me on a seminar or a successful wellness program then I feel I have satisfied my need for achievement.
Terms: quasi-needs, social needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, competent, Atkins classical model of achievement.
Chapter seven discusses two types of psychological needs which are social needs and quasi needs. Stemming from the social needs are needs that we develop for achievement, affiliation/intimacy and power. Models for thinking about how a need for achievement manifests itself and functions in a person are described as well as the consequences of different types of achievement related motivations such as mastery goals and achievement goals. The chapter then discusses the need for affiliation and intimacy. The distinction between the need for affiliation and the need for intimacy is provided and there is discussion about differences in behaviors between those that have a high need for intimacy or affiliation. The need for Power is also covered in this chapter and what this need to have influence on the physical and social world motivates us to do. It also discusses our perceptions for those with a high need for power.
Most surprising thing I learned: The most surprising thing I learned was that the definition for affiliation was characterized by a sort of neediness and need to avoid rejection. I had anticipated that the need for affiliation would be a need or desire to have many social relationships but not a need for them to be intimate or especially deep.
Self Ratings and Manifestations in my life:
Need for Achievement: I would rate my need for achievement as high since I often view work/school related tasks as opportunities to reveal whether I can master a task or expand my knowledge and in turn feel motivated by that opportunity to do what I believe will make me successful at school/work.
Need for Affiliation: I feel my need for affiliation is medium. I do enjoy assurance/acceptance from others that I am friends with. However I do not feel this need is so high that I can not stand letting a friend go or that I would be unable to handle well recieving negative feedback from others. My concerns with the approval of others would also not prevent me from doing something if I was sure it was necessary or that it was the right thing to do.
Need for Intimacy: I feel I have a high need for intimacy. With the few friendships I do have I want to be able to and consequently do end up sharing things about myself or past I feel are important and very much want to and do listen to my friends when they share those same types of things with me.
Need for Power: I would rate my need for power as low. It is not normal for me to seek out things that make me visible or known to others and in most cases prefer anonymity. I also do not feel I am aggressive or that when in leadership positions I have enjoyed the ability to punish others.
With my need for intimacy it motivates me to continue a friendship with someone I have known for about two years and I have felt more satisfied and happy to have the friendship the longer I’ve had it. It also tends to motivate me to try to not think negatively of strangers before I have met them.
Terms: psychological need, social need, quasi need, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, mastery goal, achievement goal, aggression, leadership relationship, self disclosure, intense listening
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter discussed the various social needs that we as humans experience in everyday life. Unlike other types of needs, social needs are not innately present within us, but are rather learned and picked up from society. Accompanying social needs are quasi-needs, which are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs. They originate from situational demands, and can involve incentives like money or a secure job. Social needs are acquired through experience, development, and socialization. Examples of a social needs include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I found the difference between affiliation and intimacy interesting. While they both involve social interactions the way that they are defined spots the difference. Intimacy is the need that involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring a positive and affective relationship. Affiliation is actually the opposite; it involves fearing interpersonal rejection. While I understood what both terms meant, I thought it was interesting that intimacy involves the positive feelings coming from relationships, while affiliation is the fear of not having the same relationship.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself fairly high on achievement. Doing things to the best of my ability is something I enjoy, and I see no point in putting effort in something if it is not my best. I am confident in myself and for my future, and I believe that accomplishing the goals that I have set for myself will fulfill my need for achievement. I consider myself rating very high in intimacy, and a medium level in affiliation. I love having a close relationship with my family and friends, and I treasure the events that enable me to spend time with them. As such, I do have a moderate fear of rejection, as having close relationships are very important to me. However, I am perfectly capable of functioning on my own, and a lack of affiliation does not often stress me out. For power, I would consider myself a low level. As a college student, I do not truly have a lot of power. I can control where I live (to some extent) and where I work, but it does not change the fact that there are limited options at this point in my life. I can control what classes I can take, but not the ones that I need to graduate. I believe that power will become more important to me later in life, when I have full control and more options to exercise.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I utilize my achievement needs through school and my hobbies. I enjoy getting good grades on tests and assignments, and I also feel a sense of accomplishment when I learn a new song on guitar. With intimacy and affiliation, these needs drive me to create and maintain meaningful relationships in my life. Without them, I would most likely be a shut in. My need of power rarely surfaces, as I do not have a high amount of control in my current life situation.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
My need for achievement motivates me to do well in everything I do. While some things obviously receive more attention than others, my grades are very important to me. The prospect of doing well at the end of the semester motivates me to do well in classes now, so that I can utilize the benefits later. It also motivates me to engage in activities that I enjoy (such as playing guitar), and the sense of accomplishment I get from doing something well (like learning a new song) motivates me to continue engaging in this behavior.
Terms:Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power
Summarize the Chapter
This chapter dives into the social needs that every person desires at some degree. These needs include Achievement, Affiliation and Intimacy and Power. Everyone has different levels of need for each of these subjects. The need for these traits comes from a person’s background, environment and past experiences.
What was the most surprising or interesting thing in the chapter?
There is a section about how to reduce anxiety when it comes to achievement. I personally do have to cope with different kinds of anxiety all the time. For example I do have very high test anxiety. The interesting part about this section was how anxiety can be broken up into different parts of anxiety. (Cognitive worry and physiological upset.) It also talks about the fact that the main cause of worry is when one is avoiding an achievement goal or making a mistake. As long as the worry is physiological upset and not cognitive worry then the anxiety will not delay or ruin chances of achievement.
How would you rate yourself on social needs?
Achievement=High
Affiliation and Intimacy= Medium
Power=Low
These needs show themselves in many places within my life. An example of achievement would be my ability to show my intelligence. Not necessarily in school but I find an achievement in being seen as an intelligent person by others. An example of affiliation and intimacy would be the way I treat others. I like to be someone that others feel that they can relate to and get along with. The reason that the rating for this need is not high is because for me there is a fine line between feeling accepted and just plain sucking up to others. (I won’t do it.) An example of power would be when I know I have the skills to prove to others that I have more experience and I know what I’m talking about. (My fitness job.) I like the people that are taking an exercise class from me to see me as a strong and more than capable person.
Choose one social need and how it motivates some of you specific behaviors…
The definition that the text gives achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence, pg. 175. I am not someone who wishes to receive the highest achievement for everything I do. In fact the only things that I strive to achieve are the things that I’m really good at or that I am motivated to achieve. (Ex: Getting a good job after college, making my parents proud and finding my place in society.) To me the ultimate achievement is not near the need for power (needing to be on top of the world) but to feel fulfilled with yourself.
TERMS:
Social Needs, Achievement, Affilitation and Intimacy, Power, Anxiety
The focus of Chapter 7 was mostly social needs, with some discussion on quasi-needs. A quasi-need can be distinguished as a need that disappears once we get what we want. The social needs focused upon are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. A significant amount of the chapter is devoted toward the need for achievement, which is a desire to do well based on decided standards. Two theoretical models are used to understand achievement motivation. The Atkinson’s model, and the contemporary, or achievement goals, model. They operate under the notion that achievement motivation is a struggle between approach behavior and avoidance behavior, approach success and avoid failure. The contemporary model is more interested in why a person chooses one type of achievement goal over another. The two main goals are mastery goals and performance goals. The models can be integrated to create three types of achievement goals; mastery goals, performance-approach goals, and performance-avoidance goals. The way people think about their personal qualities, as an entity theorist or an incremental theorist, affects the type of achievement goal they may pursue. The next two social needs discussed are affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation and intimacy relate to a person’s needs in relationships with others. Affiliation needs can be met by creating and maintaining relationships with others and intimacy needs can be met by generating deep and meaningful connections with others. The final social need discussed is power. Those with a high need for power desire to have an influence over their environment and those in it. They are often successful in leadership positions.
I was surprised when learning about the leadership motive pattern that an individual with this need pattern has a low need for affiliation, or in other words is not concerned with being liked. I thought that is what any campaign is really about, getting people to like you. I suppose that is what all the campaign managers are there for, since the person running for the leadership position probably doesn’t care what others think.
If I were to rate my need for achievement I think it would be high. I look forward to a challenge and could relate to a lot of the statements in the book about the thoughts and actions of high-need achievers. My needs for affiliation and for intimacy are medium. I do like to feel like I ‘belong’ and tend to nurture relationships but have never felt anxious or needy about my relationships with others. I would rate my need for power as low. I tend to be relaxed about other’s ideas and decisions and have no desire to make people do something my way.
The specific behaviors I see in my own life in regards to being a high-need achiever are always wanting to learn more and gain more successes. As a fitness instructor I am always wanting to do more continuing education courses, and get excited and anxious for participant evaluations because I want to see what I can work on to get better. In school if I hear a course is hard but a great learning experience I am always more into that one than taking something for an easy grade. In my own personal fitness goals I am always trying to find the next thing to challenge me; a 5k, 10k, 20k, half-marathon, and now all the mud runs and tough mudder. In my professional life I am trying to do more public speaking, and face other similar challenges in order to move forward in my career.
Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson’s model, contemporary model, achievement goals, approach success, avoid failure, mastery goals, performance goals, entity theorist, incremental theorist, leadership motive pattern
Chapter seven is about the evolutionary adaptive social needs of humans. First, quasi-needs are simply situational desires and interests that we have, rather than actual physiological, psychological, and social needs; they may include joining a certain social group to thrive in the social ladder. Actual social needs are needs acquired through experience, development, and socialization (pg. 174). Achievement is also one major social need humans have developed. We want to have accomplishments and success in comparison to other human beings. This competition has been driven into social status and is more beneficial to us than non-status. It has been documented (pp. 187-188) that the need for achievement and obtaining that achievement leads to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors and a healthy well-being. Lastly, the textbook ends the chapter by discuss power that people have in various contexts, whether it’d be in the workforce, social setting, and so forth.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I was probably most surprised by John Atkinson’s theory for achievement motivation. This surprised me because I hadn’t thought of a formula for motivational achievement. It’s beautifully done, featuring the following factors: the tendency to approach success is equal to the strength of the person’s need to achieve times the perceived probability of success times the incentive value of success.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
Achievement – I believe I am high in the achievement aspect of my social needs. I have always been relatively successful in academics, athletics, and many other things I participate in. From track to chemistry, I don’t like seeing other people better than me, so I work my hardest to beat them!
Affiliation – Medium. I seem to have trouble relating to certain types of people in the social realm, but I am successful relating to other types of people. As for my close friends, I often enjoy a close affiliation both socially and emotionally.
Power – I believe I am low on the continuum for power. I classify myself as a “nice guy”, so I often get put down by other more socially dominant people. As a result, I don’t mind given up personal power in order to benefit other people.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
These levels help with reputation. As I am high in achievement and low in power, I am often viewed as a successful yet humble person. Since people like successful people and since people like humble people, it helps in developing relationships. Since I can develop these relationships with others, I develop greater affiliation and intimacy with others relatively easily.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Competition is a clear social need that I have. Competition drives me in almost every interaction that I have, particularly with other males. I participated in three sports in high school, and I did not stop for anybody to be the best in these sports. In academics, I was also highly competitive. A lot of my friends were “nerds”, or excelled academically, so I had a great deal of competition academically too. About everything I do, I try to beat people in; I’ve even bought a Rubik’s cube for the sole purpose of solving it faster than my friend (unfortunately, I cannot solve it faster than him, although I can solve it).
Terms used: quasi-needs; social needs; power; affiliation; achievement; socialization; intrinsic motivation; extrinsic motivation
Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter.
This chapter is all about needs we were not born with, and are not human nature. These needs are social and quasi, and will differ based on the social contexts you grow up in. Social needs originate through experiences, socialization and development. Quasi-needs are more short-lived, and include situational induced wants through demand and pressure. When the demand is satisfied the quasi-need fades away. Social needs include achievement, Affiliation, intimacy, and power. Need for achievement is the desire to do well, relative to a standard. What is considered well to one person may be different to another. Need for affiliation and intimacy are very closely related. Affiliation refers to establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships to avoid negative feelings, while intimacy refers to engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships that produce positive emotion. The need for power is a desire when the physical and social worlds meet. Persons in high-power positions strive for leadership on a group of people.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most interesting thing I learned was that the meaning of effort to entity theorists is, “the more you try, the dumber you therefore must be.” I have never thought of it that way. I am more on the side of the incremental theorists where effort is a tool for people to take advantage of their skills and ability. I do not personally see effort as being dumb, because to me effort just shows you care about something enough to put your time into it. However, I can see were entity theorists are coming from. I care about my math class, but I know how to do the problems, so it takes me way less effort to complete that than it does for me to complete this blog on the chapter. I care about them equally, but this one takes more effort because I know more about math than I do motivation & emotion.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I would rate my-self high in the need for achievement. I like to do well and be recognized for it. I would say through high school I had a high need for affiliation and intimacy, but towards the end of my college career I would bump that down to a low medium. I am used to having less friends, being more independent, and am not so worried about keeping everyone happy. My need for power is very low. Like I said in my blog last week, I have a very low need for autonomy, which correlates to my low need for power. Having a lot of power means you have to make decisions and I do not care for that. I also do not like having to take the responsibility if what I do with my power doesn’t work.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
My high need for achievement is the reason I am even trying in this Motivation and emotions class. It is just an elective for me and all I need to do is pass, as talked about as implicit theories in the book, but I find myself taking up a lot of my time to read the chapter, watch the movies, and keep up with the blogs. This class has the most homework of any of my classes and is the lease important. However, I do what is expected of me, because I have a need to do well. I have a lot of negative feelings when I get a bad grade, so I try for no other reason to achieve the best grade I can.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, power, affiliation, intimacy, implicit theories, effort, Incremental theorists, entity theorists
Social needs and quasi-needs are a part of our psychological needs. Quasi-needs are about immediate wants and desires like needing a good GPA to get into college or wanting money to buy things. Social needs are more about what a person experiences and have benefits. Achievement being the first facet of social needs is the want to strive for excellence. Second, affiliation is a chance to win over others and gain their stamp of approval. Intimacy is the third which means developing a secure relationship and lastly is power which is making an impact on others. Approaching a need of achievement on a high level gives us emotions like hope, but approaching on a low level gives us the feeling of fear of failure leading to avoidance type behaviors like anxiety. There are three types of achievement goals. Performance-approach and mastery being two of them are usually associated with positive results and achievement. Performance-avoidance goals are the opposite. Affiliation has two types being the need for affiliation like rejection or anxiety and the need for intimacy. The need for affiliation deals with reconnecting with people and relationships to keep a positive outlook and stay away from disapproval or loneliness. The need for intimacy is more on the social side taking on the role of securing positive close relationships. People with high intimacy needs are commonly found to be a part of social groups, interacting with others, and keep long-lasting relationships. The need for power is the last facet of social needs. Those with high-power need have a drive for leadership and recognition in smaller groups and prefer jobs with importance.
Surprising
The most surprising thing for me in chapter 7 was about maintaining interpersonal networks. I guess it wasn’t surprising, but they left out texting or emailing as a form of communication though in our generation, those are very popular ways we talk to our friends or family. It said those with a high need of intimacy spend more time on the telephone and it put it into perspective that I don’t have a high need of intimacy though I thought I did.
For achievement I’d rate myself between high and medium because although I want to do well in school and work, I find myself doing just average or the bare minimum (at least at work) and I know I could be doing better I just lack the motivation. Since we just talked about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation I know reading about achievement is both of those things because I feel good when I take on a course load and being in two groups on campus because I like the challenge. I also am extrinsically motivated because the more effort I put in the likelihood I’ll get better grades and a high GPA.
For affiliation I think I would rate myself as low. I always have a fear of rejection especially with having to think about grad school after next year and it makes me anxious. I also haven’t had a relationship in a while because I don’t want that attachment though I’ve had a tight knit group of friends for years which is the maintaining aspect of the need for affiliation.
For power I guess I would say I’m medium because I do like taking on things and leading, but only in certain settings. I know I’ve found myself to be the point person on group assignments in class, but I don’t always jump at the opportunity to do so. I also find myself to be in the leadership role at work when I have to train someone and I experience some occurrences of aggression though they are minor.
Intimacy I would give myself a medium because I do try to get involved especially now that I’m in college and try to interact with people, but it takes some getting used to. We just did an event for the group I’m in, CATS, and we had to socialize with alumni and I found it intimidating, but once I did it, I found it effortless.
I think the need that sticks with me is the need of affiliation. I think being young and in the dating scene always leaves me with the fear of rejection and putting myself out there. In the chapter I read about those with high need of affiliation avoid conflict whereas I approach conflict head on and try to release any tension rather than tip-toeing around an uncomfortable situation. Though having a high affiliation means wanting a job with positive relationships and support of others is also associated with how I am, I guess I am caught in between high and low for this need which I think is okay.
Terms: Social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, affiliation, intimacy, mastery, performance-avoidance, performance-approach, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation
Chapter 7 discusses two types of psychological needs: social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs come from our preferences that we gain through experiences and development. Quasi-needs include wants and needs that are situational. Those needs are not the same as physiological, psychological, or social needs because they are needs or wants that are necessary in the situation. Quasi-needs come from situational demands and pressures. The chapter then discusses achievement and why we have a need for achievement. We look at Atkinson’s model of achievement to understand achievement motivation, and also the dynamics-of-action model. Then the chapter discussed the social needs of affiliation and intimacy, and power.
I didn’t find anything too surprising, but I was very interested to read the section of affiliation and intimacy. I didn’t know much about affiliation, and I learned that it in fact has two different facets: the need for approval and the need for intimacy. I realized that I can apply a lot of my learning of these concepts to myself. I learned that to reduce anxiety and fear, people often seek out others and want to affiliate for support with others. Also, if someone is high in affiliation, they will go out of their way to avoid conflict with others. This makes sense because I can relate that to my own life, but it was interesting to learn more about how those work.
If I were to rate myself on the various social needs of achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power, this is what my ratings would be: I would rate myself has having a high need for achievement, a medium need for affiliation, a high need for intimacy, and a low need for power.
I would say that I have a high need for achievement because I consider myself to be a perfectionist in most things that I do. Achievement is about having a desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. Basically, I realize that whenever I do something, I am constantly striving for it to be near perfect, and to do the best I can do. I would rate my need for affiliation as medium because I have a high need to interact with others, but not necessarily to avoid negative emotions such as fear and anxiety. I would rate myself as having a high need for intimacy because I have a high need to create and maintain positive, close relationships with others. Finally, my low need for power would be because I am generally not a person who likes to have power over others, tell others what to do, and be in charge. Obviously having some power is essential for healthy relationships, but I do not strive to be dominant over others.
I will look at achievement as the need that motivates many specific behaviors because right now, it is a need that is very important to me. I work hard in my schoolwork and at work right now so I can accomplish my goals for the future. In this way, achievement influences my behaviors to work hard and study, do my homework, and go to class and work on time. By doing these things, I am fulfilling my need for achievement.
Terms: psychological needs, social needs, quasi-needs, physiological needs, Atkinson’s model, dynamics-of-action model, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power.
Chapter 7 deals with the two different types of psychological needs we as human individuals desire. Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full scale needs in the same sense that other or social needs are in this case. These types of needs are based upon a certain instance in that if a want is desired, the creation of a tense energy to engage in behavior is then sought after to reduce that built-up tension. For instance, an umbrella in the rain, money at the store, or a cast after falling and breaking your arm. These examples of Quasi needs originate from situational demands and pressures. Hence, whenever the person meets that demand, the quasi-need fades away. On the contrary we have social needs. They unlike the quasi-needs, are more enduring. They arise from the individual's personal experiences and unique developmental, cognitive, and socialization histories (200). Further they are acquired via a psychological process that spawns from one's socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive such as: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
Further the chapter summarizes numerous theories and approaches to each of the previous terms, however, i will only highlight the one that i found most interesting to learn. In regards to Affiliation (an opportunity to please others and gain their approval)we notice there are two facets: the need for affiliation (rejection anxiety) and the need for intimacy (affiliation interest). Overall we can conclude that the striving for affiliation in respect to the 'rejection anxiety' we involve ourselves in establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships with others (avoiding loneliness) for we psychologically feel like we must be apart of something or else we fail and undermine our potential in disapproval. The need for intimacy on the other hand is a bit different in that, it is a social motive for engaging in warm positive interpersonal relationships in order to fuel our positive emotions, further burrying the possibility of rejection. I found this so interesting because I never previously thought in depth as to why we seek the close relations that we do, and if they begin to get 'shaky,' we always find a way to patch them up, for unconciously we are only striving to fulfill our demands to avoid disapproval and loneliness and maintain our sense of acceptance and intimacy.
If I had to rate myself on the different social needs i would rate them in the following fashion: power-medium, affiliation-high, achievement-high, intimacy-high. Personally I rated the later three as high for affiliation or pleasing others is and has always been a high concern of mine for if others are happy,then i am happy. In achievement, i rank myself high because life is short and following dreams is the best treasure in life, therefore achievement monitors ones progress. Intimacy, is also high for being a part of a close compassionate relationship is a great source of positive emotion to help cope with the other stresses of life. and lastly power i have as medium because, i don't deem it as necessary as first being happy myself, let alone controlling others.
Achievement for me is a social need that I personally know has a big effect on influencing my behavior for there are certain goals that i have set at a very young age, and continually making progress and seeing the achievements along the way towards my ultimate goal is rather enlightening and motivational. Achievement is a true measure as to how one is doing in life, it grants a signal to alert one that they are headed in the right direction and given that, i would say i see the biggest relevance of this social need on my behavior in my day-to-day life.
ME TERMS: affiliation, intimacy, power, achievement, rejection anxiety, quasi-needs, social needs, socialization
Summary
This chapter is about social needs. It discusses two categories of psychological needs. Social needs and Quasi needs. No one is born with these needs but they are acquired over an extended period of time. Personal experience, socialization, opportunities, and unique developmental history teach us. Quasi needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full blown needs. These are day to day circumstances that remind us of our needs for money. A job, and approval. These are wants in the fore front of our attention. They have a sense of urgency about them and can dominate our consciousness perhaps overwhelm other needs. These originate from situational events. People acquire social needs through experience, development and socialization. Social needs are mostly reactive in nature. These lie dormant until we encounter a need satisfying incentive that brings the need to the front of our attention. Social needs include Achievement which is the desire to do well to a standard of excellence. When facing standards of excellence peoples emotional reactions vary. Sometimes the standards excite us and we react with emotion and behavior. Other times these standards can bring us anxiety and we hesitate and react with avoidance. Intimacy and affiliation are establishing, maintaining or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons. Social isolation and fear arousing conditions are two situations that increase a person’s desire to affiliate with others. Power is the desire to make the physical and social world conform to ones image or plan. There three parts for the need of power. Impact allows power-needing individuals to establish power. Control allows power-needing individuals to maintain power. Influence allows power-needing individuals to expand or restore power.
Interesting/Surprising
One thing that I thought was really interesting that I didn’t have a lot of knowledge in before is the fear and anxiety coming from social isolation. Under conditions of isolations and fear people report being jittery and tense. They are suffering and are in pain and see themselves as going into pieces. When people are afraid, they desire to affiliate with others for emotional support and to see how others handle the emotions they feel from the same object. Having other people around while anxious is comforting, but they can also be practical allies. They can help us clarify the situation and provide coping strategies.
Needs in life
Achievement manifests in my life especially by being in school. I enjoy doing well and enjoy being challenged in some aspects. If I do well on a test I am relieved and happy, but I also want to challenge myself and see how much of a better score I can get on the next test. This manifests in my life in my school being an undergrad. I want to work and get to a graduate level so I am able to get the degree and the job that I want. I have high standards of myself. I really hate when something goes wrong or I mess up. I especially hate this at my work. I know that it was my mistake and have to fix it. When I do something good and someone tells me good job or they are impressed with my work I know that my achievement need is satisfied.
Summarize the chapter.
Chapter 7 discusses two types of psychological needs, quasi-needs and social needs. Quasi-needs arise when a certain environmental demand is present and disappear once the demand is satiated. An example from the text was that of needing to get married; once a person has been proposed to that quasi-need disappears. Social needs are more complex though. The four main social needs discussed were achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement is the desire to live up to a certain standard. It is often fulfilled through a competition of some sort. Achievement needs can arise from socialization influences, cognitive influences, and developmental influences. The book then went on to describe Atkinson’s model of achievement which factors in need of achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. The dynamics of action model was also listed and uses instigation, inhibition, and consummation as variables in the equation. Next the text covered affiliation and intimacy. Affiliation occurs when a person seeks relationships in order to keep from feeling negative feelings such as loneliness and rejection. Intimacy is characterized by close, warm, and nurturing relationships with others where self-disclosure is encouraged. The chapter closed by talking about power. Power is the need for a person to have control over the environment and situations they are in. Power is characterized by impact, control, and influence over another entity. People in leadership positions have a high need for power and are often, but not always, aggressive. They also have low need of affiliation and high inhibition.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising thing for me was when the book talked about the US presidents. It said some of the traits great presidents possessed include high need for power, low need for intimacy, and high inhibition. To me this just made them seem like robots who only care about power and not about the relationships they have with their loved ones. It kind of makes sense, though, because I think in order to be in those positions of power a person puts their career over family in many cases.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
1. Achievement: I would rank need for achievement moderate. I am a hopeful person and I set high goals for myself. I always feel a great sense of accomplishment when I meet those goals but sometimes I choose not to work hard toward each goal. Whether I am succeeding or failing, I always take responsibility for myself which is also a characteristic for someone with a high need for achievement.
2. Affiliation: I would rank myself medium in need of affiliation. I love being around my friends and family. When I seek relationships though, there’s always a fear rejection in the back of my mind. I also try incredibly hard to avoid confrontation or other things that could cause my relationships to deteriorate and result in me being lonely.
3. Intimacy: I have a high need for the intimacy. I really value warm, close, supportive relationships and I always love having heart-to-hearts with my best friends. I also really like being in a romantic relationship. It’s a special, more intimate bond than that of just a friendship.
4. Power: When I was younger I think I had a strong need for power. However now I have a very low need for power. I don’t like being the leader in groups anymore whereas before I really did. I’m also not an aggressive person. One way my low need of power is evident is in the jobs I like to do. I prefer jobs where I take the orders rather than give them.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
My moderate need for achievement is very present in my life. I always dream big and set high goals but don’t necessarily work diligently to achieve them. I always make lists and schedules of all the work I need to get done and I rarely stick to them. Tonight for example I was supposed to have this assignment done an hour ago so I could be at the WRC right now but that did not happen. Instead I went on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter and wasted time. All the goals I set for myself are all ones that still seem so far away. None of them really can happen until I graduate college so for now they’re still just big dreams. Who knows if I’ll stick to a path to get me there or if I’ll continue being lazy.
Terms: Quasi-needs, social needs, impact, control, influence, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, need of achievement, probability of success, incentive for success, Atkinson’s model of achievement
This chapter delves into social needs, which include achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Social needs are those that are not innate, but acquired through the process of socialization, opportunities, personal history, and development -- our environment dictates how much achievement, affiliation, intimacy, or power is needed to satisfy an individuals needs and are based on their respective incentives. For the most part, these needs are dormant until they are activated by our environments. These needs differ in that some people have greater needs than others, but they are more or less universal needs that all humans strive to acquire. This chapter also aims to distinguish between true social needs and quasi needs. While quasi needs may act like true needs because they seem potent and urgent, they go away as soon as the needs are met. These needs are situationally-based because they differ from time to time and are completely forgotten once these deficiency-based needs are met. Atkinson's Model helps explain our tendency to approach success and avoid failure.
The thing I found most interesting about this chapter is the discussion of how our social needs are influenced by our parents. The relationships between a need for achievement and high standards, as well as the need for affiliation and sociability didn't shock me. However I found it interesting that adults with high needs for power usually had parents who were permissive about sex and aggression. I think this is because I don't necessarily see the distinct connection between the two ideas. I thought that those who had high needs for power may have had parents who were also power-seeking, perhaps they were CEOs or some kind of boss, or maybe just had a very controlling parenting style. While I can maybe see a correlation between a need for power and aggression, I don't necessarily see the relationship between power and sex. But either way, sex and aggression seem like they may just be other variables in the same nomological network, though not the primary correlative factor.
My social needs have wavered throughout the course of my life, and they vary from time to time (though this is probably just another example of a quasi-need). At this point, I think I have the highest need for achievement. It's absolutely true that my parents have high standards, and growing up in a household of siblings who always seemed to outdo me, the pressure became more and more to bear. When hashed out, this factor almost seems like a problem of affiliation, though I typically don't go out of my way to seek approval from others. I wonder if maybe my need for affiliation has only manifested itself in a larger need for achievement? Either way, I give myself a really hard time when things don't go as best as they could. I even stress out about things that I couldn't necessarily avoid. I have high standards for myself in all areas of my life- especially in academics. I make sure that my professors know how much I care about my classes and I relay my true desire to learn. When I make connections with my professors, get a good grade on a test or assignment, or gain opportunities for further academic development, my social need for achievement is met.
Terms: social need, quasi need, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, socialization, personal history, development, deficiency-based need, Atkinson's Model, Tendency to approach success, tendency to avoid failure.
Summarize the chapter: Social needs and quasi-needs both fall under the category of acquired psychological needs. Quasi-needs are needs that are wanted and desired but not needed to the extent that the basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) are. Social needs are created and change over time through experience, development, and socialization. Social needs include achievement (wanting to do well at something), affiliation and intimacy (creating and maintaining positive relationships with others), and power (wanting to change physical and social world to one's own views for it). Affiliation has two facets, one being the need for approval and the other as the need for intimacy. Power involves impact (establishing), control (maintaining), and influence (expanding or restoring).
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
It wasn't necessarily the most surprising, but I enjoyed reading about Atkinson's Model the most. I completely agree with it in that the level of achievement is different for each task. I can see this in many different areas of my life.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, and/or low on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
In rating myself on these social needs, I would rate myself as high in achievement, medium in affiliation and intimacy, and low in power.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I rated myself high in achievement because it's always nice to be good at the things you do. I like to know that I've been successful in something that I've done. It makes me feel that I am competent and able to do those things. For affiliation and intimacy, I rated myself as medium because while I think it is good to form positive relationships with others, I'm perfectly okay having the strong relationships with a few people than having relationships with a lot of people. It's nice to have the connections with others but not always needed to have close relationships with a large amount of people. In power, I rated myself as low because I don't view myself as someone who wants to change things. While being able to control something is nice in certain situations, it's not something that I strive for.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors:
Achievement motivates a lot of my behaviors. To be able to complete something and do well at it is a good feeling to have. It lets me know that I was successful at something. An example of this is getting good feedback from a customer about my service at work. Another example is getting a good grade on homework that I spent a lot of time and work on as well as. After completing a project and getting a good grade, it's reassuring that my hard work paid off.
ME terms: social needs, quasi-needs, acquired psychological needs, autonomy, competence, relatedness, achievement, affiliation and intimacy, power, impact, control, influence, Atkinson's Model
Summary
There are two kinds of acquired psychological needs, social and quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are based on situations from wants and desires from tension and urgency. An environmental example of a quasi-need is getting good grades to succeed. These quasi-needs are not too time consuming, while social needs take more effort. Social needs arise from various aspects of one’s life and personal history. Social needs act as incentives in four ways: achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power. People may be high or low in these incentive areas in various ways.
Achievement is induced by the incentive to do well, or be excellent according to certain standards. High-need achievers seek out difficult activities. The dynamics of action model gives explanation to where this achievement motivation comes from. Instigation (need to achieve), inhibition (fear to fail) and consummation (achievement behavior) are three factors within achievement. There are three types of achievement: performance-approach (need to achieve), performance-avoidance (fear to fail) and mastery (achievement behavior). Affiliation arises from a need to affiliate with others (rejection anxiety) and the need to have intimacy (affiliation interest). Relationship establishment, maintenance and restoration is important in succeeding in the proper affiliation level. The need for power is situational dependant. Those who are in effective leadership roles tend to have high power, low affiliation and high inhibition needs.
Surprising
I found the Atkinson classical model of achievement to be most surprising. I have never heard of this model before and when I first saw the equation format—I stared at it for a while. It caught me off guard; I was not expecting a mathematical formula to achievement.
Ratings
I would rate myself high on achievement, low on affiliation, high on intimacy and a fair high on power. I am very intrinsically motivated to achieve in school, and always have been. While my younger and older sisters were paid for good grades, my parents never gave money to me for them. When I threatened to get poor grades just to be paid, it backfired; as a middle schooler I was mortified at getting my first “C”—I know, priorities. Affiliation is low because I have never really been in a situation where I felt a need to socially interact with everyone. I enjoy my intimate, close relationships which I cherish. Of course I love to meet new people, but I do not feel the need to personally connect with everyone. I would definitely rate myself as high on intimacy, the relationships I do have are dear to me and I am very happy with how many friends I have. I think quality is better than quantity when it comes to friendships. I would also say I rank high on the power-need scale. I am a control freak and I know it, I enjoy things to go smoothly and be correct. I seek out demanding roles in academia to fulfill my power desire.
One social need & how it motivated my behavior
I think my high need for power has definitely guided my behavior. I am psychology club president, last year I was treasurer. Those roles allowed me to have an outlet for my need of power. I am able to control what will be discussed at future meetings (pending acceptance of the other officers). I am also very interested in becoming a researcher some day, but not just any researcher-of course I would like to work on my own projects rather than others. This need for power and success has pushed me to apply for grad school and have control over my career. This need for power is highly intertwined with my high need for achievement as well.
Terms: psychological needs, Quasi-needs, Social needs, Achievement, dynamics of action model, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, Affiliation, intimacy, power, Atkinson classical model of achievement
Summary
Ch. 7 is focused on the two types of psychological needs – social and quasi. The book says that our social needs are derived from our experiences, how we are socialized, and our development in general. In contrast, quasi needs can be thought of more as needs that arise when we need something and then go away when we no longer need it. We’ve talked about achievement in past blogs and it’s a common term, especially among college students. Achievement is truly oriented towards excellence. Achievement is highly motivating to humans and is often rewarded when we feel that we have achieved something. Achievement strives for pride and recognition. Those who are achievers are more likely to go after difficult tasks rather than the easy ones. Although if you are low in achievement you might be fearful of going after the goals that you feel are outside your scope of ability. Instigation, inhibition, and consummation all effect achievement. Instigation is focused on rewards while inhibition comes from a punishment perspective. Consummation is the idea that that simply achieving will offer its own reward. Within achievement, there are three types of goals, performance-approach, performance avoidance, mastery. It seems to be common knowledge that performance approach and mastery would be associated with achievement while performance-avoidance usually isn’t. The chapter also discusses affiliation. Affiliation is shown as the need for approval and acceptance within one’s relationships. Someone who has this as a high need, will constantly need reassurance, acceptance, and approval of those they interact with. Social rejection is very scary for someone who has a high need for affiliation. The last social need discussed is the need for power. Power is the need for reputation, status, or simply stated holding power. If you have a high need for power, then you will feel a great need to influence others in some way. Power can be shown by how you impact, expand your power, and hold control of a situation. Those who are high in power are very motivated by goals.
What was the most surprising thing you learned
I was surprised to learn about the concept of performance-avoidance as a piece of achievement. Usually we only think of achievement as doing well but sometimes if there is a low need for achievement perhaps we try to avoid the performance. This is not something that is intuitively associated with the concept of achievement.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I would rate myself as high in achievement, medium to high in affiliation, and high in power. I tried to give myself these ratings if I was looking at myself through the eyes of another student.
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I am a much better employee than a student. It is very hard for me in classes because I am not extremely motivated by grades. This was especially true for me in K-12 as I just didn’t care, like at all. As I’ve come to college my grades have obviously improved but that is more due to the fact that I am studying things I am interested in. Busy work is very frustrating for me and when it was graded in k-12, I often would skip it all together and just copy someone else’s, this did not allow me to actually learn the material and hurt me later on tests. As an employee and student organization leader I am much more motivated to excel in those areas because it gives me a greater sense of achievement and I am much more willing to stay up until 2 AM for those activities.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I currently hold leadership positions in two student organizations. I am the Co-Executive director for UNI Dance Marathon and the Psi Chi Liaison for UNI Psychology Club. I also coach the Cedar Falls Dance Team, which has 40-50 boys and girls involved each year. I have never been happy being one of the group, rather I prefer to lead and be in charge of the group. This is why I rated myself as high in the power category. I think that power and achievement also go hand in hand because a part of my satisfaction in being the leader of these groups is the feelings of achievement that I feel during that time. In order to get these types of positions I have to have a high ability for affiliation but I don’t necessarily feel like it’s the most important factor to me personally, despite its importance to the other two aspects. I went after those positions with the specific intention of impacting the organizations and the people who are involved with them.
Terms: psychological needs, social, quasi, achievement, instigation, inhibition, consummation, reward, punishment, goals, performance-approach, performance avoidance, mastery, affiliation, social rejection, power, impact, power, control
Read chapter 7. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Chapter 7 discusses the needs we all have in relation to social influences. These social influences are broken up into 4 categories: Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Power. Achievement deals with one wanting to be successful was dependent on how they reached the bar of excellence. There are both high and low-level achievers, and each one has a different level of difficulty in the tasks that they engage in, and in the pride that motivates them. These motivations for achievement strivings come from social influences such as parents, cognitive influences such as perceptions of ability and high expectations for success, and developmental influences. Within the influence of the society, research has been found and 2 models have been formed: the classical and the contemporary. Atkinson's classical model focuses on achievement behavior and the need for success and the three specific factors of this model are: the strength of a person's need for achievement, the perceived probability of success, and the incentive value of success. These combined factors result in the tendency to approach success by the individual. There is also the tendency to avoid failure which mimics the tendency to approach success equation, just with negative/failure rather than success. When combined, the two equations form into one and result in the tendency to achieve. From the tendency to achieve you can then conclude how motivated one is to achieve something and if they fall more towards the need for achievement and success or to avoid failure.
There is another model called the Dynamics-in-Action Model. This model shows that behavior happens in an ongoing process through instigation (cultivates an increase hope for success), inhibition (cultivates an increase fear of failure), and consummation (performing an activity produces its on cessation). From this model there were three conclusions: that latency to begin achievement and the persistence on an achievement task depend on motive strength, and that switching to an non-achievement task occurs with rising consumption.
High need achievers satisfy their need by moderate-to-difficult tasks, interpersonal competition, and entrepreneurship.
The contemporary rather than classical researcher are more concerned with the why behind the need for achievement, not so much about whether it happens. The contemporary perspective has two main achievement goals: mastery goals or performance goals. When taking on a mastery goal, the individual wants to develop their own competence, make progress, improve the self, and overcome difficulties with effort and persistence. When one takes on a performance goal, they want to prove one's competence, display high ability, outperform others, and succeed with little apparent effort. The ultimate goal is to strive for and achieve mastery goals instead of performance goals. With these classical and contemporary models, the other social influences of affiliation, intimacy, and power all feed off of one's need for achievement.
The most surprising thing I learned was the difference of the need for success or the fear of failure for motivation. I can see that very well in my own life of times that I wanted to succeed and other times where the motivation was more focused on not failing. My levels for each of the social needs would be high for achievement, low affiliation, medium intimacy, and low power. My high need for achievement causes me to act in different ways and I have been on both sides of wanting to succeed and just fearing failure. Specifically, my need for success comes more in the times that I am intrinsically motivated and when I am passionate about what I am trying to achieve. When I am more afraid of failure, I am doing tasks and goals that others are more passionate about and that I am more concerned with their approval, than with accomplishing the task well.
Quasi and Social needs are acquired needs. This means they are not innate needs, but that they arise in us situationally or through experience, respectively. Quasi needs are not true needs, as they do not necessarily support life, growth, and well-being. They can at times “overwhelm and displace” true needs. For example, one might not sleep and not eat for a couple days or even a couple months or years trying to fill a quasi need such as the need for money, if their job takes up too much time. Social needs are acquired through development, socialization, and experience. It was once thought that a person’s social needs in life were a product of parenting practices. It is now known that your social needs also change over time, and only a few childrearing practices seem to affect people’s needs long term. Each person’s social needs cause them to act uniquely to life events.
Achievement needs are the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. People who are high need achievers will react to a slightly challenging situation with approach behaviors and positive emotions such as hope and pride. They will begin an achievement task quickly and show high effort and persistence. They will happily take responsibilities for their own successes and failures. People with low need for achievement will react to the same situation with avoidance behaviors and negative emotions such as anxiety, defense, and fear of failure. They will procrastinate the task and give up easily, likely to ask for help. Situations that are moderately difficult or competitive bring out the best in high need achievers and hinder the performance of low need achievers.
There are three types of achievement needs: Performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery. Performance-approach and mastery are associated with high need achievers and better performance outcomes. A person high in performance approach needs seeks to show everyone else how good they are and to be the best. A person high in mastery needs seeks to improve themselves, develop competence, and overcome challenges.
There are two types of affiliation needs: the need for affiliatioin and the need for intimacy. The need for affiliation is the need to establish, maintain, and restore relationships with others, generally to avoid feeling lonely or unliked. The need for intimacy is the need to form a close, warm, and very personal relationship with another where there is little fear of rejection.
The need for power is the desire to change and affect what others do. High power need individuals usually emerge as the leaders in group work, prefer jobs where they feel they are “changing the world”, but often experience aggressive impulses.
The leadership motive pattern describes an individual with a high need for power, low need for intimacy, and high inhibition. People who exhibit this pattern of motivation are generally seen as strong and effective leaders by others.
I was most surprised to learn that most U.S. presidents rate nearly the same in their social needs, showing the leader motive pattern shown above. This surprised me because we have been taught all of our lives that anyone can grow up to be anything, including president, but it takes just the perfect mix of social needs, and probably other needs as well to be an effective commander in chief.
If I had to rate myself in these social needs, I would say I am extremely high in achievement needs, moderate to low in affiliation needs, and moderate to high in power needs. I love my job and it is very conducive to both power and achievement needs. When I work, I am in charge of a group of people the whole time. Basically, I tell them what to do, and they do it. I like it this way! I like that we can all have a good time while I am the leader of the situation. The environment is also very competitive. I am a coach and I want my athletes to do better than all of the others. More importantly to me, I want them to gain new skills. This would be mastery achievement needs. I only have this job because of my own mastery and performance needs in the sport. If I had not been one to strive to improve myself and understand each skill and technique in the sport, I would not be where I am today.
Terms: acquired needs, quasi needs, social needs, achievement needs, standard of excellence, approach behaviors, postitive emotion, avoidance behaviors, negative emotion, persormance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery, affiliation, intimacy, power, leadership motive pattern
This chapter focuses on quasi and social needs. Quasi needs are situationally induced wants and desires that arise out a psychological context of tension to meet a specific demand. Once this is fulfilled, social needs act as emotional and behavioral potentials that are activated by particular situational incentives. Humans acquire social needs through experience, development, and socialization. There categories of social needs: achievement, power, intimacy, affiliation. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence( any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success versus failure). Affiliation is the need to for approval, acceptance, and the need for intimacy. Intimacy is the willingness to experience a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. Power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. Atkinson’s classical model of achievement, behavioral approach versus avoidance is a multiple function of the individuals need for achievement , probability of success, probability of failure, and incentive to avoid failure. His formula predicts approach versus avoidance behaviors rather well.
I thought it was interesting that the evaluation of the strongest presidents proved them to be high on power needs and low on affiliation needs. When you think about it, it makes sense. Powerful people such as these usually don’t seem to have the need to seek out personal relationships, because they are too busy getting to the top. The people obviously want a person high on power needs to lead a country.
I would rate myself as medium for achievement. It seems to be a lot lower this year since I’m a senior. But normally I am very worried about getting good grades, etc. I would rate myself as high on intimacy and affiliation. I need to be accepted by everybody, I want everyone to like me. I would rate myself high on power. I have a desire to impact, control, and influence other people or a group of people. I am always trying to convince people that I am right, and am very good at persuading.
An example of this would be myself at work. If I am waiting tables or bartending, I am typically making friends and socializing. I am also doing my work, it’s just not as important to me, because I would rather establish a friendship with my customers, I want them to like me. When I am in a group, I like to influence them. I have some pretty crazy ideas about life, and by the end of the conversation, I have everybody convinced that I am right.
Intimacy&Affiliation. This need motivates my behavior in a way that makes me seek out personal relationships over anything else. I would choose to go out instead of staying in to do my homework. I have the need to be around people all the time, whether it be at work, or just hanging out. I like to befriend anyone that comes in contact with me.
ME TERMS: Quasi needs. Social Needs. Power. Intimacy/affiliation, achievement. Atkinsons Model.
Chapter 7 discusses social needs, the needs we need every day in our lives to help motivate us to our goals. They talk about two right off the bat Social needs and Quasi-Needs. Social is where you acquire the need for money, power, grade point average, that new car over the course of time. Mainly through Experience, socialized opportunities, and demands make us motivated to have certain Social needs. Quasi-needs is where you develop motivation because of situational moments. Like the need to live if you were cast away on an Island just like the movie Cast Away.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I think the most interesting part for me was, “Origins of the Need for Achievement”. Cognitive Influences, Socialization and Developmental all talk tail about the origin of needing Achievement. Socialization was first attempted to be understood decades ago by Psychologist by finding out what motivates children to want achievement. They found that parents played a major role on the development of that process, they would use independence training, high performance aspirations and realistic standards of excellence.
Cognitive ways of thinking can influence our sense of achievement rather than just being a psychical tool that makes us breathe and function. Certain abilities we have that they termed in the book are; Perceptions of High ability, Mastery Orientation, High Expectations for Success, Strong valuing of Achievement. All of these come from our cognition and help us develop the need for being successful.
Developmental influences on children’s success help them to understand who they really are, because a lot of kids have a very unrealistic view on achievement and what they can actually achieve. School teachers, Parents, and other social entities help influences kids to understand their limits on what they can and cannot achieve.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I would put myself at a Medium for social needs. I would say that the levels manifest themselves into my life based on my childhood. Biggest reason, because a lot of what I am doing right now was because of what I experienced in my childhood. Even though I didn’t have any parents around to offer me any guidance, I got plenty of it from my teachers and others I came across when I was younger. Really to be honest I have no social needs for achievement before I started high school. But at the end of it, I started realizing that I have great potential and can achieve almost anything that I set my mind to.
One social need that motivates me to strive for success “Socialization Influences” played a big role into where I am at today. When I hit high school I didn’t have a clue to life, but when I was influenced by my teachers about being successful and living a happy life it triggered good positive thoughts inside me. Positive thoughts that motivated me to strive for success based on all the things my high school teachers taught me about how to be successful. They gave me real standards and high performance aspirations to strive for.
Me words: Socialization, Developmental Influences, Cognitive Influences, Social needs, Quasi-needs, Perceptions of High ability, Mastery Orientation, High Expectations for Success, Strong valuing of Achievement.
Chapter 7 transitions from psychological needs to social needs and how they motivate behavior. This chapter discusses the source of our need for achievement and the different factors that influence it. The chapter takes a look at John Atkinson’s classical model of achievement behavior, and how it differs from the contemporary model. The chapter summarizes the ways we seek achievement and the ways we avoid failure of achievement, and how those behaviors make us feel and react. Lastly, chapter 7 focuses on power and our need to ensure that things go as we ‘plan’.
In my opinion the most surprising thing in chapter 7 was the “achievement for the future” section. The reason I found this so interesting is because it relates very closely to where I am in my life. I have a vision of where I want my future to go, or at least a general direction of what type of thing I want to be doing upon graduation. It was interesting how my motivation to reach that goal in the future, can affect how I perceive things going on in my current situation. For example, I am part of an internship that isn’t really ‘clicking’ with me, so I have little motivation to put 100% into it. However, the fact that having an internship is a big decider of getting a job upon graduation makes me extremely motivated to complete it and give it an honest effort.
Affiliation-1
Achievement-2
Power-3
I think affiliation is number one for me because I often seek other peoples approval for my work, I also notice having anxiety in some relationships, constantly wondering the status of certain things. I am a marketing major and that’s another way for me to determine I have high need for affiliation; I really enjoy talking to people and feel better about everything when I’m with people. This manifests in my life constantly, I am affiliated with different groups through work, school, groups, and internship. Having those groups to draw from really boosts my motivation.
Achievement is mediumon my list because I often take on challenging tasks because I enjoy the feeling of completing and excelling in them. Granted, I don’t always excel with difficult objectives but I enjoy bettering myself during the process. I place a lot of value on achieving goals I set for myself and constantly improving myself so that future goals come more naturally. This manifests itself in my life mainly with my internship right now. We have to set goals each week for the next 7 days and I constantly try to better my numbers and improve my techniques.
Power is low on my list. I don’t really feel the need to make things go the way I ‘want’ or ‘plan’ for them to. When I was a kid I had a high need to plan things and make sure things went the way they were planned, but I learned over and over again that things rarely happen the way we plan, and accepting that early on was the key to where I am at now. I pride myself on not needing to be in control of the situation at all times, and I think it has really allowed me to be more flexible and open-minded. This has manifested in my life in so many ways, being a bartender I have almost no control of when I will leave work, I am almost always the last one to leave the restaurant and if patrons decide to come in five seconds before close, there isn’t much I can do. It used to bother me but I take solace in the fact that there is one constant in life, things are going to change.
Fear and anxiety are the two feelings I want to discuss, mainly because my views are changing on these things right now. Fear and anxiety used to control a big part of my life, and after reading the chapter I remember having that feeling of “falling apart” and needing affiliation with anyone. I’ve recently adopted a new outlook on fear and anxiety, and that is if we focus all of our thoughts and emotions on what were afraid of, that’s where we are going to end up. It is useful to look at fear as a tool for improvement, rather than something we want to avoid at all costs.
ME Terms: Social needs, Quasi-needs, achievement, influences, development, avoidance, Atkinson’s Model, affiliation, intimacy, fear, anxiety, power, need.
Motivation and Emotion post # 12
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter was mostly about social needs, which is psychological one would acquire though their past socialization and emotional responses to those situations according to need relevant situations. Some examples of these are; Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy and Power. Achievement helps show personal competence to those around them. Those who rate high in need for achievement will usually pick more challenging tasks than those with low need for achievement. Affiliation is the need to please others to gain their approval. This need is very much anchored in fear and personal rejection and being ostracized. When a person is isolated and afraid, this can cause them to “go to pieces” and fall apart psychologically as they experience psychological pain. To reduce this pain and fear we tend to seek out other people to relate and converse with. Where affiliation is all about “deprivation love,” Intimacy revolves around “being-love.” Intimacy is the need for a warm, secure, close and communicative exchange in a relationship with a partner or partners. Those with a high need of intimacy would find a tight bond of friendship desirable where as someone with low need for intimacy would find it aversive. Power is simply the need for having an impact upon others, influencing those around them physically and socially to match their own personal image of a situation. Those with high need for power seek to become leaders (and usually stay) as they interact with others with a “take-charge style.” There are also four sub categories of Power; Leadership, aggressiveness, inflectional occupations, and prestige possessions. Leadership is when people seek out recognition in a group to establish and influence over that group. Aggressiveness is the desire to impact, control, and influence those around them. Influential occupations are where a person seeks out an occupation or job where they directly influence and direct the behavior of individuals around them. The last one is prestige possessions. This is where a person with a high need for power tends to gather (in extreme cases by any means necessary) a collection of status and power symbols such as expensive vehicles or a large house. However there is another category of needs called Quasi-needs. These needs are situationally induced desires that aren't fully needs, even though they act exactly like needs as they influence how we think and act in order to reduce the drive for a particular action. This could possibly be a reason why people engage in risky sex opportunities where it might be damaging to themselves or another person. This might be induced from a situation with very high sexual tension and low will power.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
One of the most interesting things that I learned from this chapter is how we as a people rate the effectiveness of our presidents (or chief leaders). Although these five categories are often most pronounced in history texts and conversation, I was not fully aware of them. The five variables that define an effective president are: Direct presidential actions. These would be how a president deals with stressful and world changing evens such as diplomacy and entering or choosing not to enter wars. The next one is Perceived Greatness. This might be more related to media coverage of the president himself if it is shown in a positive or negative light. An example of a president with low perceived greatness is George W. Bush where as a president with a high perceived greatness might be Barrack Obama. The third is how well they perform on social issues. This would be how well they make the people happy and what social issues they support, such as homosexual marriage or marijuana legalization. The fourth is Performance on economic issues. This can be related to how well a president would deal with economic crisis and how their policies would influence the country’s economic growth or decline. The last one is International issues. This is how well a president is able to relate with other chief leaders around the world in other countries. A well known example of one who is high in this would be former president Jimmy Carter.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be? How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I would rank myself medium on need for achievement, as I feel that I must do well but also I do not feel very motivated to surpass my peers and be the best student. But all of this would also depend on the setting as well. When it comes to something that I am intrinsically motivated for I tend to feel a high need to be the best at it. Even though I mostly think that I am not the best in any respect as I am just learning.
As for Affiliation, I would rank myself High. This would be due to me wanting to gain peoples trust, confidence and acceptance. Even though they may not have been a close friend I do tend to care what people think about me. It bothers me when I do not get along with the other person; they dislike, or ignore me openly.
When it comes to Intimacy I would have to rate myself Medium-low. This I primarily due to me feeling slightly uncomfortable when some people get too close to me, I will often push them away from me emotionally and physically. To one such persona I have done this several times with, and she was hard headed enough to keep coming back and I back to her. I still cared for her, it was and possibly still is difficult for me to get emotionally close with another person. This often hurts my relationship with them as they either struggle to stay with me or just plain exit my life loudly and suddenly.
Alternatively I would rank myself medium-high on the need for Power. I say this because I often find myself taking charge when there is confusion in the room and give those around me a sense of purpose, direction and usually motivate them to do specific tasks, or even assure them it will be taken care of. This would tap into my high need for power in leadership. As for aggressiveness I would think that I am quite low on that one as I have been in few physical altercations, as well as not gone out for much of any sporting activates. This is not typical for the average male of my age. As for Influential occupations I would also say that is medium due to me not necessarily striving for any big CEO position however I do enjoy working with people in influencing their behavior. As for the possessions part of power I would have to rank myself low. I don’t really care much if I have the latest technology (ie I phone, smart phone, fancy car, ect.)
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
Please reference the Intimacy section of the previous section.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Social needs ,Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, Power, desirable, aversive, Quasi-needs, Drive reduction
-AJB
Summarize the chapter
Chapter 7 discusses two categories of acquired psychological needs: social needs and quasi-needs. Social needs are acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialization history that activates emotional responses to a particular need-relevant incentive. Examples of social needs are achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. The emphasis in this chapter is on those social needs that function as personality characteristics: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. This chapter traces the social origins of each of these needs and discusses how each need, once acquired, manifests itself in thought, emotion, action, and lifestyle.
Humans acquire social needs though experience, development, and socialization. Once acquired, we experience social needs as emotional and behavioral potentials that are activated by particular situational incentives. Experience teaches us to expect positive emotional reactions in response to some incentives rather than others. The need-activating incentives for each of the four social needs are as follows: For achievement, doing something to show personal competence; for affiliation, an opportunity to please others and gain their approval; for intimacy, a warm, secure relationship; and for power, having impact on others.
The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. It motivates people to seek “success in competition with a standard of excellence.” Individuals high in need for achievement generally respond with approach-oriented emotions such as hope, pride, and anticipatory gratification. Individuals low in the need for achievement, however, generally responds with avoidance-oriented emotions such as anxiety, defense and the fear of failure.
Affiliation strivings have two aspects: the need for affiliation (rejection anxiety) and the need for intimacy (affiliation interest). The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships with others, mostly to escape from and to avoid negative emotions such as disapproval or loneliness. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, positive interpersonal relationships that produce positive emotions and hold little threat of rejection. The principal condition that involves the need for affiliation is the deprivation from social interaction. Conditions such as loneliness, rejection, and separation raise people’s desire, or social need, to be with others. Hence, the need for affiliation expresses itself as a deficiency-oriented motive. In contrast, the desire, or social need, for intimacy arises from interpersonal caring and concern, warmth and commitment, emotional connectedness, reciprocal dialogue, congeniality, and love. The need for intimacy expresses itself as a growth-oriented motive.
The essence of the need for power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it. People high in the need for power desire to have “impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.” High-power-need individuals seek to become and stay leaders, and they interact with others with a forceful, take-charge style. Four conditions are noteworthy in their capacity for involving and satisfying the need for power: leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, and prestige possessions.
Quasi-needs are situationally induced wants and desires that are not actually full-blown needs in the same sense that physiological, psychological, and social needs are. Quasi-needs are so called because they resemble true needs in some ways. Quasi-needs originate from situational demands and pressures. Whenever a person satisfies a situational demand or pressure, the quasi-need faded away. The fact that quasi-needs disappear once we get what we want, however, is the telltale sign that the need is not a full-blown need. It is not a condition that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being. Rather, it is something we introject from the environment for a time and something that has more to do with the pressures in the environment than it does the needs of the individual.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most surprising/interesting thing I learned in chapter 7 was the implicit theories. I found out that implicit theories are important to achievement strivings because they guide the type of goals people pursue. In achievement situations, entity theorists generally adopt performance goals. People who adopt performance goals are concerned with looking smart and with not looking dumb. The goal is therefore to use performance as the means to prove that one has much of a desirable characteristic (i.e. intelligence). In contrast, incremental theorists generally adopt mastery goals in achievement situations. People who adopt mastery goals are concerned with mastering something new or different and with learning or understanding something new. The goal is therefore to use task engagements to improve, to get smarter by learning something new or important.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
Achievement- High
Affiliation- High
Intimacy- High
Power- High
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
I would rate my need for achievement as high because I am constantly trying to achieve a standard of excellence. I give my best effort to performance to the best of my abilities on every task I come across. For example, my GPA is something I am really determined to maintain above a 3.500. I would rate my need for affiliation and intimacy as high. Affiliation is the opportunity to please others and gain their approval and intimacy is the need for warm and secure relationship. I believe that it is important that we get approval from people such as family, close friends, and professor, but some people you should not try so hard to gain approval. Intimacy is a social need that I view as really important. Individuals with high intimacy needs are more likely to join social groups, spend time interacting with others, and form stable, long lasting relationships that are characterized by self-disclosure and positive affect expressed through looking, laughing, and smiling. High-power-need individuals strive for leadership and recognition in small groups, experience frequent impulses of aggression, prefer influential occupations, and amass prestige possessions. Individuals high in the need for power more readily acquire the goals and outcomes they seek than do individuals low in the power. Power increases approach tendencies and decreases inhibitory tendencies. High power and taking action go together.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I have a high social need for achievement. Therefore it motivates me in many different situations. The reason why I am at UNI is because of my social need for achievement. I get up every morning at 6:30am to go to class, study for excess amounts of hours every day, and work diligently on my homework assignments because I want to achieve a standard of excellences. Another way I try to strive for achievement is in sports. I play on the men’s rugby team and play on an intramural basketball team. Every time I play, I play to win. Losing is not an option for me so I try everything in my capability to make sure my team is ends up with the victory. These are some of the situation in which my social need for achievement motivates my specific behavior.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
psychological need, social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, leadership, aggressiveness, influential occupations, prestige possessions, implicit theories, entity theorists, , incremental theorists.
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter focused on socials needs as well as quasi-needs. Quasi- needs come from situational wants and desires in meeting environmental demands. Socials needs can be broken down into different parts: achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
I thought one of the most interesting things was that social needs are not inherent when we are born. To some sense I would have thought something more would underlie them evolutionary. Though this does explain why perhaps some people do not crave or even avoid social interaction. Another thing I thought was interesting was that affiliation and intimacy where to different things. Affiliation is the chance to please others and gain approval while intimacy is having a secure relationship.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
I would say my ratings would be as follows.
Achievement: medium
Affiliation: medium
Intimacy: high
Power: low
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life? Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
I think my need for intimacy is high, because of the way I have been in my past relationships. Not just in the sense with a significant other, but with friends as well. I crave to be surround by people who care for me and will always be there for me. I do not consider myself to be rich in the quantity of friends I have but the quality of them. I keep friends that I know through whatever comes they will be there – whether its 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning. I see my relationships as the most important thing in my life; given the need to achieve at a job or miss a class – I would if someone I cared about truly needed me.
In respect to my boyfriend’s I have always had the standard that I should be able to talk to them about anything and tell anything. I expect the feeling to be mutual in relationships. Though I suspect this is why I tend to take longer to develop relationships and have a record of no relationship being less than 4 years long.
terms: social needs, quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power
~Summary
Achievement has many different aspects that have a cause and effect to achieve so there are several different theories. The Atkinson Theory shows people wanting success. The Dynamics of Action Model highly emphasizes that achievement behaviors are very consistent. Instigation is the rise in approach and on the other hand Inhibition is the rise of avoidance. Some things can influence achievements which are the difficulty, competition, and entrepreneurship of an activity. Affiliation has high correlation with the want/need to be liked or to have intimacy which is a closer touchy feely type of relationship. Those who strive for high affiliation are more likely to be less liked because they are just too nice it appears or possibly even to clingy. These needs are highly detrimental on a person due to the fact affiliation and intimacy is fear and anxiety based. The last social need presented was power. The book states that those who strive for power try to combine their social life with the physical world. Power is the need to make oneself known or remembered. There are four common ways a person strives to satisfy the need of power through leadership and relationships, aggressiveness, influence, and prestige.
~Most Interesting
The section on affiliation because from my previous knowledge I thought that affiliation was just another name for social ability, and the book mentions this as well. I had no idea that affiliation was so focused on fear and anxiety.
~Ratings And How They Fit In My Life
Affiliation-High
Power-Medium
Achievement- Low
When thinking about this and reading the explanations of the different social needs I did not know that I was highly affiliated until looking at the explanation of it. How I am affiliated in my life is almost exactly the same as stated in the book which I do not really like to get into quarrels with others, I try to keep a very positive atmosphere, and so on. Power is medium for me even though I am quite affiliated I do seek power through my experience in being a leader from several in my life that I had to step up and lead. Also I try to be influential to others by giving them advice quite often. Achievement for me I believe is actually quite high for what I strive for but to compare to the other to it just seems a bit less important. I actually have set several goals in my life to obtain whether experience or knowledge of things. Though I set goals quite often or try to achieve something its actually quite easy for me to be swayed out of doing them.
~Need And Influence On My Behavior
Since affiliation is my highest social need I express I will discuss more in detail this subject. I believe affiliation is a very big part of my life after doing this assignment. There are several reasons which some are similar to what was mentioned in the book. I am highly against arguing with friends or even someone I just met I do not know why, but that is the way I am so most often if someone is talking smack about another person, and telling me I will never agree or disagree with them I will always try to equal it out is the best way I can put it. I also never really try to give people orders as well unless I am required to through a job or sport activity because I would probably always go overboard I fear if it is just an everyday activity or chore.
Terms: Achievement, Atkinson Theory, Dynamics of Action Model, affiliation, intimacy, needs, wants, power, influence, aggressiveness, entrepreneurship, and social ability
Chapter 7 gives us an in-depth look at the two types of acquired psychological needs. The first is quasi-needs. Quasi-needs are our wants and desires that arise from situational measures and are trying to meet the environments demand. The other type of acquired psychological need is social needs. Social needs are those that are acquired through experience and socialization. Once we acquire these needs we experience emotional and behavioral activation in particular situations. There are four types of social needs and these are activated through situational incentives. The social needs discussed in this chapter were achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Achievement motivation is classified by a classical theory and a contemporary theory. Atkinson’s model of achievement behavior is the classical view. Atkinson’s model has four variables: achievement behavior, need for achievement, probability of success, and incentive for success. There are also 3 goals that exist in achievement. They are performance-approach, performance –avoidance, and mastery. Affiliation has two different sides. There is the need for affiliation and need for intimacy. There are others that have a higher need for power. These people have feelings of aggression and tend to be leaders in the workplace.
The most surprising and interesting thing I read was the section on the leadership motive pattern and its effectiveness in determining how our president will do in office. There are 5 variables that define effectiveness: direct actions, perceived greatness, performance on social, economic, and international issues. I found it fascinating that this pattern could predict when leaders will engage in war and when they will pursue peace.
Achievement- I feel as though this is my strongest social need and reflects how I am on a daily basis.
Affiliation- I would rate my need for affiliation as rather low, because I tend to be an independent person.
Intimacy- I realize I have a medium-high need for intimacy since I have a partner that I enjoy being around as much as I can.
Power- I would rate my need for power as relatively high and second most important of the social needs in my life. I enjoy taking initiative to get things done and don’t like to be told what to do.
To me, the most important social need is striving for achievement. I wake up every day trying to better myself from the day before. Whether that be reading, cleaning, exercising, studying, or becoming a more well-mannered person. I don’t take failure very well, which only helps me to keep myself motivated to achieve the goals that I want.
Terms used: psychological needs, quasi-needs, social needs, Atkinson’s model, situational incentives, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery.
Chapter 7 discusses social needs. This chapter focuses on acquired needs, achievement, affiliation and intimacy, and power. There are two different types of needs including social needs and quasi needs. Social needs are very different than psychological and physiological needs because social needs originate from preferences. We gain these preferences through how we have developed and experiences we have had throughout our night. These types of needs exist within us as learned needs that are part of our personality. Quasi-needs are more situationally induced needs. For example, when someone gets made fun of by there peers that have a quasi need to gain some self-confidence. Quasi-needs are not full blown needs like psychological and physiological needs. Quasi-needs are more of day to day reminders of what we think we need. This would include a secure job, money, a nice place to live, etc. A sign that a quasi need is not a full blown need is that it is satisfied right when we have it. We lack quasi needs, but when the environment presents them we urgently need them.
Social needs are acquired through experience, development, and socialization. Social needs are not all set when we are children, they develop and changed over time. Out social needs are associated with our emotions and behaviors. When the environment offers us an incentive that may be associated with a need we experience activation in our emotions and our behavior
Summarize the chapter.
This chapter is all about social needs and quasi needs. Social needs are needs that people acquire through experience, development, and socialization. People acquire social needs when they go through life. They get them from the people they meet, the conversations they have, the things that they go through, and much more. Quasi needs are needs that come from a demand or pressure. The example the book uses is when someone needs to pay rent, they need money. Once someone gets money to pay rent, the need is satisfied. This chapter is also all about how to satisfy these moods and the different things that come along with these moods.
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
The most interesting thing to me in this chapter is that social needs are not something we are born with. Social needs are something that we get through experience, development, and socialization. I would have assumed that when you are born, you need to have different types of social relationships. I guess that as a child you don’t know that, so in part, it makes sense. If you are raised without those close relationships, then you will most likely grow up to be socially inept. That was still very surprising to me though, that people are not born needing those needs.
If you had to rate yourself as high, medium, low, on the various social needs, what would those ratings be?
Achievement: Medium
Affiliation: High
Intimacy: High
Power: Low
How do those various levels manifest themselves in your life?
The first mood I rated was achievement and I rated it as medium. I don’t think I have a high need for this or a low need for this, I feel it’s at a good spot. Achievement for me is what I make it. If I feel that I have achieved a lot, I think that’s all that matters. But there is still something in the back of my mind that tells me I could always achieve more. Affiliation is a high need for me. There are days were I like to just be by myself and do my own thing, but most of the time, I like to be around people and be with people. Intimacy is also a high need for me because I always want my relationships with people to be well. I want all of my relationships to be warm and close. If they are not like that, I will find a way to make it better. If I cannot make it better, I don’t think that it’s worth that relationship. I hate tension and I don’t want it in any of my relationships. I have a very low need for power. I don’t really like being in charge and I don’t really like having authority over others. I have always been more of a follower than a leader.
Choose one social need and discuss how it motivates some of your specific behaviors.
My need for intimacy really motivates me to have good relationships with people. If one of my close friends and I get into a fight, I will do my best to fix it or let go of it as fast as I can. I don’t like to hold grudges because I would really rather have intimate relationships. I don’t like tension either. If there is any tension in the room (even if it doesn’t involve me), I will try to get rid of it. Some people might call me nosey, but I hate tension! I would rather have close, healthy, warm relationships with everyone than bad relationships.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Social Needs, Quasi Needs, Experience, Development, Socialization, Affiliation, Achievement, Intimacy, Power