Does Psychological Need Satisfaction Matter When Environmental or Financial Safety are at Risk?

Abstract

Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, the present study addressed the question whether the relation between satisfaction of the psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy and well-being would be constrained by satisfaction of the need for safety. In Study 1, we investigated environmental safety in a sample of young adults (N = 224) in South Africa, a country known for its low public safety. In Study 2, we focused on financial safety within a socio-economically deprived adult Chinese sample (N = 357). Although safety satisfaction yielded a positive relation to well-being in both studies, satisfaction of the psychological needs contributed to well-being above and beyond safety satisfaction and its contribution was not dependent upon the level of safety satisfaction. Further, across both studies, individuals high in safety satisfaction desired less psychological need satisfaction.Supplementary analyses in Study 2 indicated that whereas financial safety yielded a positive relation to well-being, materialism yielded a negative association. Together, these results point to the important role of basic psychological need satisfaction beyond safety satisfaction in the prediction of well-being.Key terms: Safety, Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction, Need Desire, Well-being, SelfDetermination Theory *AbstractSafety and Psychological Need Satisfaction 3 Does Psychological Need Satisfaction Matter when Environmental or Financial Safety is at Risk?Do human beings need certain basic psychological nutrients to be mentally healthy, just like plants need air, water, and sunshine to grow? Psychologists have intensively discussed and investigated the number and type of needs critical for human well-being (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995;Maslow, 1954;McClelland, 1965;. During the last decade, the concept of psychological needs has received increasing attention, mainly due to accumulating empirical evidence for Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT), one of the five mini-theories of Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Vansteenkiste, Niemiec, & Soenens, 2010). BPNT specifies three fundamental psychological needs -relatedness, competence, and autonomy -that, when satisfied, would promote wellbeing and psychological growth. Dozens of studies in a variety of life domains, cultural contexts and among diverse age groups and populations have provided evidence for this claim, suggesting that the satisfaction of these three needs is indeed essential for human growth .Nevertheless, there could be other needs that matter on top of the psychological needs articulated in SDT. For instance, some scholars have posited a need for self-esteem (e.g., Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2004), a need for popularity-influence (Derber, 1979), or a need for safety or security (e.g., Kasser, 2002;Maslow, 1943). The present study focused on the interplay between SDT's psychological needs and the need for safety, which can be broadly defined as the need to feel safe from environmental threats and to perceive oneself as having sufficie...

Are the benefits of autonomy satisfaction and the costs of autonomy frustration dependent on individuals' autonomy strength?

“…Previous studies concerning the moderating role of need strength are relatively scarce and have produced mixed results (e.g., Chen, Van Assche, et al, ; Schüler & Brandstäter, ; Schüler, Brandstäter, & Sheldon, ). Additionally, most of these studies focused on relatedness or competence and less on autonomy (e.g., Schüler & Kuster, ) and assessed need valuation rather than need desire (but see Chen, Van Assche, et al, , for an exception).…”

Exploring the Antecedents of Happiness: Reconceptualization of Human Needs with Glasser's Choice Theory

“…Millions of people around the world are still trying to combat catastrophes such as epidemic diseases or wars and terrorist atacks. Although the research results support the validity of psychological needs satisfaction beyond physiological needs for ataining happiness [29,56], and also the psychology currents try to describe and understand the human-speciic psychological needs, it would be wrong to ignore that the we live in such a world where even the basic physiological needs are not fulilled adequately yet. Thus, although Glasser emphasized the equality of the importance on ive basic needs theoretically and also accepted the physiological and psychological needs as the basic needs as a whole, satisfaction of the survival need can be considered as a control variable for investigating the role of psychological needs in prediction of happiness.…”

Intergroup Reconciliation between Flemings and Walloons: The Predictive Value of Cognitive Style, Authoritarian Ideology, and Intergroup Emotions

“…To obtain reliable translations, two bilinguals independently back-translated each other’s translation of each measure from Flemish to French or vice versa. Afterwards, all authors compared the original and back-translated version to inspect their equivalence in order to arrive at consensual agreement on the final wording (for a similar procedure, see e.g., Chen, Van Assche, Vansteenkiste, Soenens, & Beyers, 2015). …”