The Importance of Needs and Motives

• Needs and motives are behind people’s thoughts and actions. For example, “I need to go to the grocery store.” But needs extend to deeper personal levels and more serious desires. For example, “I need to become the person I want to be.”

• Need is an internal state that is less satisfactorily, a lack of something that is necessary for one’s well-being.

• An influential psychology figure that influenced the needs and motives portion of psychology is Henry Murray.

• Primary needs are rooted in biology (food, water, pain, etc.)

• Secondary needs either derive from biological needs or are just rooted in our psychological makeup (need for power, need for achievement.)

• Needs are directive and they determine how we sort the importance of behaviors to satisfy that need. They are intentional and one would need to have a need for something in particular for example, needing water.

• Needs are directive also in a physical sense in that they direct you towards or away from that object.

• Motives are clusters of cognitions with affective overtones, organized around preferred experiences and goals. (McClelland 1984) Motives take the need towards a behavior.

• Biological/primary need to eat motivates you to eat and a biological press might be someone offering you a better food option than what you have for lunch.

• Secondary/ “social” describes the need to perform better after a peer is recognized.

• System of Needs are a series of needs describe how people have their own personal makeup of needs, and some needs are more important over others and are interrelated in some ways.

• Fuse is a term that describes how two needs can clash with each other. For example, the need to dominate and the need to nurture can “fuse” and express themselves in the same act of parenting.

• Work in service is a term describing how one feels the need to order their life in order to be successful.

• Conflict is a term describing how two needs are opposite and how people can struggle to navigate which need to go after. For example, needing independence but also needing support.

• Need for achievement describes how the desire to do things well, to feel pleasure in overcoming obstacles. There are several differences in how people perceive and act on achievement-related tasks. For example, semester course planning.

Observations on People That Have Need for Achievement

• People that have a low need for achievement select tasks that are easy to achieve because they do not have to try as hard. If they do select task that are hard to achieve, then they could form their own reasoning as to why they could not complete or start the task.

• People with a high need for achievement select tasks that are moderately challenging.

• Need for achievement relates to persistence in the face of failure, tasks performances, grades in school, and motivation which is reflected in imagery and correlates with economic production.

• Need for achievement can be a problem in many ways if taken too far and has its pros and cons depending on context. There is a high need for power, people can be less likely to want to compromise, and can manage other better by fostering more active responses to problems. When people tend to do too much by themselves because of high-level achievement motivations.

• There is a high concern about controlling images of themselves presented to others and can tend to be narcissistic. People with the need for achievement learn from victories and learn less form failures.

• Women with high achievement needs pursue achievement in ways that fit their views of themselves, career or family pursuits. Heterosexual men with high power motivation tend to prefer women who are dependent whereas independent women can be perceived as a threat. Women high in this need tend to have more power-related job satisfaction but also have more dissatisfaction in making more career-related strides. (Jenkins)

• Students tend to debate more in class and try to persuade others in their positions and can take assertive, active, and controlling interactions in peer interactions.

• Need for affiliation describes the motive to spend time with others and forming friendly social ties. Social means are not a means to an end, but the goals itself. People who have a need for affiliation tend to be seen as agreeable and possibly cave in to peer pressure. they have a strong preference for partners who are warm. But need for affiliation can go beyond favorable perception from others… People with a high need for affiliation tend to be seen as leaders in group activities because the spend more times engaged in social activities. [Sorrentino and Field, 1986)

• Need for intimacy describes the desire to experience warm, close, and communicative exchanges with another person, to feel close to another person.

Observations on People Who Have Need for Intimacy

• People with higher intimacy motivation have more one-on-one exchanges with other people but not in large-group interactions. [McAdams et al., 1984)

• They tend to share more and listen more than people wither low intimacy needs. Thye do not seek to dominate a social scene and view group moments as a chance for members to be more communally involved.

• Inhibited power motive describes the combination of multiple needs. It brings together low affiliation and a nigh need for power combined with the tendency to inhibit the expression of the latter. There is a need to influence people and be a leader, but the low affiliation allows for tough decision-making. High in self-control (inhibiting power motivation) person will likely stay within an ordained framework of acceptable behavior. This relates to managerial success. For example, those who excel in executive roles in business.