Emotion and needs

People can choose their goal and, to a certain extent, they can choose their values too. However, some theorists suggest that well-being depends on the satisfaction of psychological requirements that are universal and genetically determined. The term

‘need’ points to its compulsory nature – when those needs are not satisfied, people cannot develop optimally and experience significant negative consequences (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Needs seem to underlie all appraisal processes and emotional experiences.

Maslow proposed the best-known theory of needs. He claimed that people have psychological needs that are instinctive and have to be satisfied, and argued that individuals act in order to satisfy these diverse needs. He stated that ‘any motivated behaviour ... must be understood to be a channel through which many basic needs may be simultaneously expressed or satisfied’ (Maslow, 1943: 2). Maslow claimed that humans’ different needs were hierarchically organised, and suggested that ‘the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre- potent need ... no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives’ (Maslow, 1943: 3). He stated that lower goals will monopolise consciousness as far as they are not satisfied, but after satisfying the needs of survival, security, affiliation and self-esteem, a person will strive for ‘higher’ needs such as self-actualization and self-transcendence. ‘Higher’ needs are so called because of the position that they occupy in the pyramid of needs – they come at a later stage of development after the satisfaction of ‘lower’ needs – and because the satisfaction of higher needs appears to lead to better subjective experiences than the satisfaction of lower needs.

Maslow argues that the highest pleasures, or happiness, comes from the satisfaction of higher needs, transcendence in particular, that he views as ‘the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness’ (1971: 279). At this highest level of psychological functioning,

…the distinction between self and not-self has broken down (or has been transcended), there is less differentiation between the world and the person because he has incorporated into himself part of the world and defines himself thereby. He becomes an enlarged self, we could say “simple selfishness is transcended here and has to be defined at higher levels” (1971: 301).

In agreement with Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi argues that self-transcendence corresponds to the highest stage of development:

Each person’s goals are to a large extent similar to those of everyone else. Being human we all want, first of all, to survive, to be

comfortable, to be accepted, loved, and respected. After these goals are reasonably satisfied – or blocked beyond hope – we then turn our energy to develop our own unique potential, to achieve what the psychologist Abraham Maslow has called self-actualization. Then some people shift their priorities again, and envision the goal of transcendence. They attempt to move beyond the boundaries of their personal limitations by integrating individual goals with larger ones, such as the welfare of the family, the community, humanity, the planet, or the cosmos. It is these last two stages in the formation of the self that lead to complexity. Individual uniqueness, or self-actualization, represents the differentiation component; transcendence involves a higher level of integration. Both are necessary for the kind of self that leads to a complex and harmonious evolution. If the third millennium is to be an improvement over its predecessor, more of us will have to build selves around transcendent goals (1993: 219).

It is interesting to point out that, according to Csikszentmihalyi, at a higher level of functioning self-transcendent goals do not substitute but rather integrate with or expand self-centred goals, and both kinds of goals coexist. Contrarily, at a lower stage of development, goals seem to be restricted to self-centeredness and to only respond to self-centred needs.

While Maslow’s theory has been extremely influential in many different fields of activities, scientific evidence does not seem to give it full support (see Alderfer, 1969; Hall & Nougaim, 1968; Wahba & Bridwell, 1976). Findings are mixed at best,

sometimes supporting, sometimes contradicting the theory. Maslow’s categories of need appear to be overly vague and difficult to operationalise, they appear to overlap, and the specific order in which needs emerge (e.g. love and esteem) is particularly criticised (Heylighen, 1992). However, Maslow’s theory of needs is important because it suggests that there are universal psychological requirements that are imposed on individuals for optimal functioning and we can hypothesise that, if these psychological needs exist, they should be the concerns to which people respond with the strongest emotions – positively when these needs are satisfied, and negatively when they are threatened or frustrated. Moreover, his theory suggests that while all needs have to be satisfied in order to experience psychological health, the best emotional experiences (those with the highest levels of positive emotions) are promoted by the satisfaction of ‘higher’, self- transcendent needs.

Self-determination theory (SDT) has taken over the concept of needs and argues that individuals have three universal and innate needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2008). The need for competence concerns the sense of efficacy one has with respect to both internal and external environments, the need for autonomy refers to a sense of choice and volition in the regulation of behaviour, and the need for relatedness refers to feeling connected to and cared about by others (Deci & Ryan 2008). Contrary to Maslow’s theory, SDT does not view needs as higher or lower, nor does it consider the satisfaction of certain needs as a precondition for the emergence of further needs. Rather, it argues that the three needs call for satisfaction all through life, that each one plays a role in optimal development, and that none can be thwarted or neglected without significant negative consequences. SDT brings the construct of needs into emotional theory, and makes a significant contribution, as it states that the quality of people’s emotions depends not only on attaining or not attaining goals – as most theories suggest – but also on the extent to which these goals are in line with the individual’s psychological needs.

According to SDT, ‘a critical issue in the effects of goal pursuit and attainment concerns the degree to which people are able to satisfy their basic psychological needs as they pursue and attain their valued outcomes’ (Deci & Ryan, 2000: 227). Kasser & Ryan (1993, 1996) relate goals that satisfy psychological needs to intrinsic aspirations, and show that pursuing and attaining these kinds of goals promotes greater well-being than pursuing and attaining goals that express extrinsic motivation. Several studies have confirmed that the attainment of intrinsic versus extrinsic goals is differentially associated with well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Sheldon & Kasser, 1998).

Accordingly, SDT argues that ‘autonomy’ occupies a unique position in relation to the two other needs (relatedness and competence): ‘Only when people’s feelings of

relatedness and competence result from behaviors that are autonomous – behaviors that emanate from the self – will the people display optimal engagement and psychological well-being’ (Deci & Ryan, 2000: 243). Thus, the mere fact of attaining one’s goals does not determine the quality of the resulting emotional experience – the extent to which these goals relate to a person’s psychological needs, and are consequently intrinsic and meaningful, needs to be taken into account. SDT argues that the best experiences are

those in which the individuals’ need for competence, autonomy and relatedness are simultaneously satisfied.

Emmons’ findings (1991, 2003, 2005) shed additional light onto the factors that

promote the best subjective experiences, because they show that this is not as much the fact of attaining meaningful goals, but the fact of striving for these goals (independently of the outcome of the process) that associates with well-being. In addition, they show that even when individuals pursue goals they view as meaningful, not all meaningful goals are equal in eliciting positive emotions and well-being. When studying the kinds of goals people set for themselves in order to make their lives meaningful, Emmons identified four major categories of goals: achievements/work, relationships/intimacy, religion/spirituality, and self-transcendence/generativity. This is how he explains the content of each goal category:

Achievement/work includes being committed to one’s work, believing in its worth, and liking challenge. Relationships/intimacy includes relating well to others, trusting others, and being altruistic and helpful. Religion/ spirituality includes having a personal relationship with God, believing in an afterlife, and contributing to a faith

community. Transcendence/generativity encompasses contributing to society, leaving a legacy, and transcending self-interests (2003: 108).

Emmons’s ‘achievement’ goals can be linked to the SDT need for ‘competence’, and the three other categories of goals, to the need for ‘relatedness’. Notably, in human beings, the need to relate, or to transcend self, may include what Schnell calls ‘vertical self-transcendence’ (Schnell, 2011), or the need to relate with a higher power.

Emmons studied the link between strivings and subjective well-being among community and college students samples, and found that in both populations, the presence of intimacy strivings, generativity strivings, and spiritual strivings within a person’s goal hierarchy predict greater subjective well-being (SWB) and, in particular, higher positive effect, and conversely, achievement strivings – which he relates to agency and power – tend to be associated with lower levels of SWB and, in particular, with higher levels of negative affect (Emmons 1991; 2003). Emmons claims that ‘Intimacy, generativity, and spirituality are intrinsically rewarding domains of goal activity that render lives meaningful and purposeful, particularly compared to power

strivings or strivings for self-sufficiency’ (2003: 113). These findings suggest that, despite the fact that the pursuit of achievement is essential for optimal functioning – because it satisfies our innate need for competence – an exclusive focus on achievement without a concern for relatedness may be detrimental for an individual’s well-being and his or her subjective experience of life.

Emmons’ findings are in line with SDT, which suggests that none of the pillars of intrinsic motivation should be missing for the best subjective experiences to take place, namely competence, autonomy and – the one that is arguably the most often disregarded in contemporary industrialised Western society – relatedness. These findings are also in line with Bakan (1966), who claim that humans are driven by both a need for agency (i.e. separate, assert, expand, master and create) and for communion (i.e. to contact, attach, connect, and unite), and that both are necessary for well-being. They may also suggest that Maslow’s and Csikszentmihalyi’s theories are right, namely that there are ‘higher’ kinds of goals that correspond to ‘higher’ needs and promote more positive kinds of experiences.

We should, however, keep in mind that, in Maslow and Csikszentmihalyi’s views, striving for higher goals such as self-transcendence does not exclude, but rather

embraces, the lower goals such as achievement. Consequently, individuals may choose to report the goals that are highest in their hierarchy of values or goals, but this does not mean that they are not concerned with other kinds of aspirations (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003; Schwartz, 1996). Regardless if we interpret the findings in terms of ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ needs, or just in term of needs, it is noticeable that the presence of self-

transcendent strivings is common to these different theories, and it is widely held that self-transcendent pursuits promote more rewarding experiences than an exclusive focus on egocentric concerns (I use the term self-transcendence because it seems to embrace Emmons’ categories of intimacy, generativity and spiritual strivings, as well as the SDT construct of relatedness).

To summarise, Frijda’s claims that ‘emotions arise from the interaction of situational meanings and concerns’ (1988: 351). The two concepts are difficult to dissociate, as the meanings people confer on situations depend on what they value, need and strive for (Emmons, 2003). At the same time, individuals’ goals can be more or less aligned with

their psychological needs, are thus experienced as more or less intrinsic and meaningful, and therefore promote different qualities of emotional experiences. It appears that striving exclusively to satisfy some kind of need (e.g. competence) while neglecting others (e.g. relatedness) may prevent the best subjective experiences.

In order to understand performance experiences, therefore, we need to identify the goals performers are striving for and determine whether those goals that are aligned with and encompass all humans’ psychological needs (including self-transcendence) do promote more positive performance experiences than goals that are exclusively self-centred.