All of us – infants, children, adolescents and adults – are needy! Needy for food, needy for rest, needy for attention, needy for appreciation, needy for love … and so on and on.
When our need is fulfilled, we feel happy and we spread happiness around. Just think of an infant that has been breastfed – the blissful face (and sleep) of satiation and contentment that follows. And how that bliss becomes infectious, bringing happiness to the mother and the others around.
Our happiness depends, among other important contributors, to need fulfilment. A fundamental principle in psychology is that “All behaviour is need-driven!” In other words, we behave in a particular way – whether that behaviour is good, bad, beautiful or ugly – because we have a need that we want to satisfy.
The various theories of development that we have explored in the previous columns – Eriksonian, Self Psychology, and Attachment and others describe the healthy ways to fulfil these needs and what happens when we are able or not able to fulfil them.
Basic Emotional Needs
Those of us who have done B. Ed, and many others as well, would certainly be familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs – the famous triangle at the wide base of which is survival needs for food, shelter and clothing and at the narrow top the self-actualization needs. Maslow refers to all human needs.
In this column we shall focus only on our emotional or psychological needs. Psychologists have been trying to short list the basic psychological needs. The most accepted short list of basic psychological needs is the one proposed by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, who formulated what is known as “Self-Determination Theory.” This theory proposes how satisfaction or non-satisfaction of certain basic emotional needs determines whether our self-structure develops as healthy or unhealthy.
According to Ryan and Deci there are three basic emotional needs. When these are satisfied we grow up healthy, are driven by intrinsic motivation, and experience a sense of well-being. When these are not realized our emotional development is stunted, motivation diminished and our happiness compromised.
Which are these basic emotional needs?
These three basic psychological needs considered crucial for emotional development are: 1) Relatedness: the need for belongingness and connectedness, to feel accepted and loved; 2) Competence: the need to feel that we are capable achieving desired results, having the self-confidence that we can be successful and effective in what we set out to do; and 3) Autonomy: the freedom to give direction to our lives, to make choices or have a say in regard to matters that affect our lives .These basic needs must be satisfied, not only in childhood, but across the life span for us to experience an ongoing sense well-being
Basic Needs and Intrinsic Motivation
One major dynamics that we need to keep in mind in understanding emotional maturation is motivation. Success in life as well as satisfaction in life is built on what is called intrinsic motivation which refers to doing an activity for the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself, that is, when we are motivated by the value of an activity or abiding personal interest in it. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is at work when an activity is undertaken to attain some expected or promised external rewards contingent on compliance or task performance.
Thus, in the religious formation setting, intrinsic motivation is involved when a candidate spends time in prayer because she or he really loves praying or finds a value in prayer. Extrinsic motivation is involved when he or she goes to pray because it is expected of them or because of the fear of consequence of not being seen as praying. In the school setting, intrinsic motivation is involved when one studies because one is really interested in the subject. Extrinsic motivation is involved when one studies because of the benefits it may bring.
The basic needs of relatedness, competence and autonomy are all involved in fostering intrinsic motivation.
A secure, supportive relational base is essential for developing intrinsic motivation. For example, when children engaged in a task are ignored by their caretakers (when there is no mirroring) they are observed to have low intrinsic motivation and their achievement level is lowered. When students experience their teachers as cold and uncaring, intrinsic motivation is reduced. Thus, high quality performance seems to require the presence of appreciative and encouraging mirroring figures.
Opportunities for choice, initiative, creativity and experimentation, so very necessary to build competence, also enhance intrinsic motivation because these provide people a greater feeling of autonomy. Thus, when, both children and adults are given freedom to organize their activities the way they would like to, they are more intrinsically motivated and show greater interest and creativity.
For example, research has shown that teachers who support autonomy generate in their students greater intrinsic motivation, curiosity, and desire to face and overcome challenges. On the contrary, students who are taught with a more controlling approach not only lose initiative, but learn less effectively. Parents who support autonomy, compared to more controlling parents, have children who are more intrinsically motivated.
In regard to adults, autonomy basically means the capacity to make one’s own decisions without undue pressure or fear. It supposes a setting where thinking and personal responsibility are not stifled or just tolerated, but encouraged. Otherwise, we can fall into absurd situations like the following that a colleague of mine described to me.
Some years ago, Sister Regina, who co-taught a class with Paolo Freire at Boston College, shared with the class an experience of hers as a young sister. “It was the practice in our community,” she said, “that if one of us made a mistake, we knelt down in public before the superior and apologized. I had made a minor mistake. I knelt down before Sister Superior, and began, ‘Mother, I thought…’ She curtly cut me short with the words, ‘Who gave you permission to think?’”…. Sister Regina needed permission to even think. Not much autonomy here!
A Facilitative Environment
An important point to note here is that what matters more than someone helping us to meet these basic needs is whether the environment in which we find ourselves is one that facilitates or thwarts the fulfilment of these needs. An environment that encourages relatedness, competence and autonomy facilitates healthy emotional development. On the other hand, an environment characterized by lack of connectedness, excessive control, non-optimal challenges, disrupt our inherent growth potentials, curb our initiative and lead to distress and psychopathology.
Those involved in motivating others, such as formation personnel, teachers and parents, need to heed the conclusions arrived at by Ryan and Deci after years of research on human well-being and motivation. They wrote:
Contexts supportive of autonomy, competence, and relatedness were found to foster greater internalization and integration than contexts that thwart satisfaction of these needs. This latter finding, we argue, is of great significance for individuals who wish to motivate others in a way that engenders commitment, effort, and high quality performance.
Questions for Reflection and Action
- Are our children at home, students in our schools and candidates in our formation houses, generally able to meet these basic needs? Are they encouraged or discouraged? How?
- Is the environment at home, school and formation house one that fosters or thwarts fulfilment of these needs?
- What is the role I personally play in my capacity as a parent, teacher, formator or professional in promoting or thwarting the fulfilment of these needs?
- What can I personally do to create or enhance such developmentally healthy environment? What would I like to try out?
– Rev. Dr. Jose Parappully, SDB, is the Founder-Director of Sumedha Centre, which runs courses and retreats in psycho-spiritual integration. He also does individual and group therapy.
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