Social Needs: Conquest, Power And Membership

What are the elements that regulate behavior? There are many theorists who have talked about the motivations of human beings in relation to social needs, as well as scholars who have tried to determine why we behave in a certain way when we have many alternatives.

At the base of any behavior are motivational factors. That is, certain elements that favor the behavior to occur in a certain way or not to follow a specific direction. Among these motivational factors are social needs.

Motivational factors are not just goals that people want to achieve. In fact, in the study of motivation there are two different approaches :

• Motivation understood as objectives, goals and values.
• Motivation understood as instincts, needs or drives.

From the second approach, several authors studied which instincts and needs human beings “hide” behind the execution of a behavior.

Needs: primary motivational factors

Needs fall within the group of primary motivational factors. This means that satisfying needs (also social needs) is a condition of survival.

Murray (1938) understood needs as the propensity to act in a certain way. For him, needs are internal (both biological and psychological). In his scheme, those pressures from the environment for us to behave in a certain way at a certain moment are not included at this point.

Needs, furthermore, include cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes that are part of true lines of action for the subject. Thus, the needs would mark what the person does.

Murray devoted much of his theoretical work to the study of needs. From his work we inherited the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), in which the personal needs of each individual are evaluated. At the same time, he also developed the Personality Research Form (PRF), in which Murray tried to assess personality from his needs model.

McClelland’s Social Needs (1987)

McClelland, an American psychologist who works at Harvard and Boston University, proposes three primary needs that, for him, would be at the base of our thinking, feeling and acting : social needs.

McClelland defines the three most important needs of the human being, those to which the adjective “social” is added. These needs arise from the very nature of man, who is a social animal and needs a socialization process to develop his skills.

The social needs that McClelland identifies are:

• The need for conquest.
• The need for power.
• The need for motivation.

These needs are not universal, as they are the result of the historical nature of human beings, but also of their social and cultural context. Therefore, the list of needs can be relatively changeable, yet consistent.

The need for conquest: feeling good and better

McClelland identifies the need for achievement on the basis of human behavior. Because of it, people usually want to optimize their income, not so much for the material benefits that this can bring, but for the satisfaction of having already done it and having done it well.

From a task, the person can increase their feelings of self-efficacy by feeling better, by feeling competent.

Therefore, the need for achievement is related to the achievement of something well done simply by satisfying the result obtained and the improvement and development of personal skills.

The need for power: to feel dominant

The second need that McClelland identifies at the basis of some people’s behavior is the need for power. This need for power or prestige influences certain people to want control of situations and people, as well as their capacity for action.

This need encompasses the pursuit of status and positions of institutional, social and group control. Therefore, the characteristics of these people are related to power, control and domination.

At the same time, people who have a very high need for power are also individuals who do not know how to accept failure, frustration and defeat. This need for power, taken to an extreme, can be related to arterial problems, stress and illness.

Therefore, when the need for power is high, it is important to work on the person’s sense of responsibility.

The need for affiliation: feeling wanted

The last of the social needs McClelland studies is the need for affiliation. It seems to be the clearest need and probably the one most people would have in common.

Based on the need for affiliation, the person would seek to maintain affective and social relationships with a person or a group of people.

Although this seems obvious, it is not excessive to make clear that socialization is a motivation for the development of important skills or abilities, from language to empathy.

Therefore, based on this need, people are concerned about showing themselves attractive to the rest. They want to be accepted and included in the group. The need for affiliation illustrates how people prefer relationships with a wide group of people, where they can feel valued.

From the need for affiliation can derive the need for intimacy, more specifically for affective and loving relationships. McAdams defines the need for intimacy as the search for a warm and intimate interaction with one another. This need was found to be higher in women than in men.

Are social needs the only motivating factors?

The exposed social needs are not the only ones that underlie human behavior. In fact, there are many other elements, such as control motivation .

From the perspective of RW White (1959), it was studied how man sought, at all costs, to be able to control his environment and balance the existing transactions between organism and context.

Deci (2008), on the other hand, understands that the most important intrinsic motivation of human beings is to exercise their own abilities and achieve mastery in different environments (without this resulting in external rewards).

Finally, the theory of self-determination understands that man’s need lies in learning and obtaining sufficient resources to be independent. This means that men seek challenges to practice, become skilled and feel competent in the face of the tasks that are proposed to them.

In any case, and depriving them of any meaning, it seems clear that among our most important needs as motivators of behavior would be the need to feel competent, the need to feel in a group and the need for control within that group.

On the other hand, knowing its motivating facet allows us to explain, understand and intervene in dysfunctional behaviors.