The Faces of Motivation For Personal Success – Part VI

Welcome back to this series on motivation.  Over the past few weeks we’ve been looking at motivation and how it applies to reaching your personal goals and personal success.

We left off with Part V – How to Motivate Others To Help Them Achieve Their Personal Goals

In this final segment we’ll discuss:

What Do People Really Need?

In this final post we’ll ask “What are the ultimate motivators?” That is, what do people really need and depend on in their lives?

According to SDT, the answer is fairly simple, we need to feel:

• Autonomous
• Competent
• Related

Actually, the presence or absence of these three feelings explains, in part, all the earlier patterns and findings we’ve discussed in the previous posts.

In research, studies have tried to answer the question “What really are the fundamental psychological needs?” That is, what experiences seem to be necessary to produce happiness and well-being among everyone around the world?

One study from the American Psychological Association received international attention contrasted ten “candidate needs,” to see which really were the most important.

Participants of the study wrote about the “most satisfying events” in their lives, then rated the presence of the ten candidate needs, and then rated their emotional state during those events.

The ten candidate needs included Maslow’s five of health, security, relatedness, self-esteem, and self-actualization/meaning, and also included SDT’s competence and autonomy needs (SDT’s relatedness need was already included in Maslow’s set), and also included the further candidates of popularity/fame, money/luxury, and stimulation/pleasure.

The results were consistent – autonomy, competence, relatedness, and also self-esteem, emerged in the top group as “what’s satisfying about satisfying events.” These four predictors both had the highest mean level of presence within participants’ ratings, and also, each uniquely predicted participants’ positive emotional state during the satisfying event.

In other words, when people thought about satisfying events, they tended to bring to mind experiences containing lots of autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem; also, the more of these the experience contained, the happier they were during the experience. By the criteria we established, then, physical health, money/luxury, popularity/fame, pleasure/stimulation, self-actualization/meaning, and security were not basic psychological needs. Notably, these were college student samples; it is possible that if we had used other samples (i.e. geriatric), then other needs (such as health) would have emerged as important.

Let’s start first with a look at self-esteem, because it doesn’t fall into SDT “model.”  Self-esteem is fine and good if you have it. However, it seems to be particularly problematic if you don’t have it, especially if you are focused on getting it. By striving for self-esteem, people become entity-oriented and ego-focused, and deprive themselves of the deeper resources that might help them reach lasting happiness.  Perhaps the significant event help product the self-esteem.

Autonomy

Now let’s look at autonomy.  Autonomy should be very familiar; we have seen that “intrinsic motivations” are considered to have autonomous motivations, because they are felt to express the Self.

Basically, they need to feel ownership of what they do; to feel that they endorse, choose, and value the behavior in which they are engaged. This is why autonomy-supportive motivational practices are so essential.  By helping to satisfy people’s need for autonomy within the situation, this motivational style helps produce optimal performance and persistence in the person being motivated.

Autonomy can be seen as the most controversial of SDT’s three needs theory.  This is because people often confuse autonomy with independence (not relying on others), or with self-centeredness (not caring about others).

Autonomy is neither of these things. Some researchers also question whether autonomy is really universal as it appears.  Others speculate that it’s not so important within collectivist cultures, where people are trained to subordinate their self-concerns.

In fact, there are now lots of cross-cultural data showing that autonomy, measured as choice and self-ownership rather than as independence or self-centeredness, is important for all humans. See http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT for more information

Competence

What about competence? Competence ties back to the concepts of high expectancy and high self-efficacy that looked at in Part III.  Once again, the research suggests that people need to feel self-efficacious and confident that they can do well.

Competence also ties back to performance goal and mastery concepts. Again, the evidence suggests that competence needs are better met when one pursues mastery (of self) rather than performance goals (against someone else), especially if the performance goals involve avoiding incompetence.

Competence is associated with intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations. So, in addition to supporting others’ autonomy, motivators should also support the person they are motivating, by offering encouragement, providing hints and resources, and conveying confidence in their ability to succeed.

Relatedness

Finally, let’s consider relatedness. Actually, we’ve haven’t discussed this need much so far.  Instead, we’ve really focused on autonomy and competence. Relatedness is certainly essential for peoples’ well-being and even physical health — lonely and isolated people get sicker and die younger.

Indirectly, relatedness is also essential for people’s positive motivation. When we’re supporting others’ autonomy, we are implicitly supporting their relatedness needs, because we are showing we care about them as equals, and respect them enough to want them to be able to make their own choice.

Of course, there are other ways we can support people’s relatedness – by encouraging them to develop friendships or partnership with others in the situation, and by being sensitive to their relatedness needs outside of the situation.

Notice something interesting and important here: autonomy and relatedness go together. People typically assume that these two are in conflict, and that you can’t have both.

They think that by relating to and accommodating others, we necessarily have to sacrifice some autonomy, and vice versa. But this only makes sense if autonomy equals independence, and if social life is a zero-sum game, such that our own happiness must come at the expense of others.

It’s not…and it doesn’t.

In reality, when we feel truly related to others, we are also likely to be feeling that our unique selves are being given full expression, and vice versa. There is no conflict, and in fact, it can sometimes be hard to separate autonomy and relatedness.

When people feel a conflict, it is usually because the other person they are trying to have relatedness with is being controlling, not allowing the first person to fully exist within the relationship.

Well, we’ve come a long way! Hopefully these series has been insightful and helpful in going after your personal goals and personal success.

One thing I would like to leave you with is this: Motivation theory is practical. Motivation theories can help us to understand how to get the best out of ourselves, to achieve our personal goals and personal success and to help others do the same!

I challenge you to make a life-discipline out of applying these lessons in whatever way you can – I think you will find that the applications are limitless!

References

• Dweck, C. S. (1999) Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. New York: Psychology Press.
• Sheldon, K. M., Elliot, A. J., Kim, Y., & Kasser, T. (2001). What’s satisfying about satisfying events? Comparing ten candidate psychological needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 325-339.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227- 268.
• White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66, 297-333.
• Sheldon, K. M. & Krieger, L. K. (2007). Understanding the negative effects of legal education on law students: A longitudinal test and extension of self-determination theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 883-897.

So, what do you think?  Have these posts helped you?  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below

Related articles

• The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part III (warriormindcoach.com)
• The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part I (warriormindcoach.com)
• The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part II (warriormindcoach.com)
• The Faces of Motivation For Personal Success – Part V (warriormindcoach.com)