Belonging and Other Psychological Needs Are The Bedrock Of Thriving
Adolescents in the Breakthrough Years Study tell us adults don’t fully understand this unique stage between childhood and adulthood. They also tell us that while they are trying to understand themselves, they are nonetheless pretty clear about what they need.
They write of needing to belong and that it can be hard:
It’s difficult to fit in.
—16-year-old boy
But it’s more than belonging; they write of needing support and respect:
We are strong, smart and ready to learn and grow. we need support, love and to be treated like we matter.
—16-year-old girl
They speak out for autonomy—to have more of a say in figuring things out.
Let us be more independent and make our own decisions. We need to learn to find our own way.
—15-year-old boy
A number of them write about needing to contribute, to improve the world:
We aren't as lazy as you portray us to be. We are just trying to figure out this world and how we can make a difference
—16-year-old girl
When asked what adults should know about people their age in the Breakthrough Years study, nearly one in four (24%) asks adults to understand their needs.
“You Don’t Really Know What You Need Until It’s Gone”
I was speaking to a group of educators, talking about adolescents’ need for autonomy, belonging, contribution. They’d heard these words many times—perhaps so many times that they’d lost most meaning.
So, I stopped and asked them to think about a time when they—as adults—were in a challenging situation, perhaps a new place or a situation where people treated them differently than they were usually treated. I asked them to share their stories.
And the stories flowed.
An urban superintendent told of coming to America and finding the English he’d learned in his country’s English classes was insufficient to understand what people were saying, especially idioms—like “put a pin in it” or “ace you out.” He’d been so competent in his own country and here, he felt stripped of what he’d worked so hard to achieve.
A rural superintendent spoke of going to a doctor about a persistent pain in her leg. The doctor accused her of not coming for help soon enough, then gave her lists of do’s and don’ts for her recovery in a condescending way. “I felt like I was a child,” she said. “There was little respect.”
A suburban principal spoke of the sudden, unexpected loss of a valued teacher in the district who was hit by a car while walking at night. “I was a stranger to that kind of grief,” he said. Everything was devoid of color and meaning, until he had the idea of approaching the school community and asking them to make their neighborhoods safer for walking. By coming together, his and others’ grief wasn’t lessened but was re-channeled into contributing.
Through telling and listening to each other’s stories, the ideas of competence, respect, and contributing weren’t just tired words anymore. They were themes they could understand anew, in their own lives as adults.
One said, “You don’t really know what you need until it’s gone.”
That’s been my experience too. Pre-pandemic, I was hospitalized and put into isolation because they thought I had a rare infection. The hospital staff—strangers moments before—became the center of the universe as I worked to connect with them personally so I would feel safe in their care. It turned out I didn’t have a rare infection and could walk back into my regular life, but I can never walk back the awareness of how much belonging matters.
Meeting Needs are Must-Haves
We’re used to the idea that we need food, water and shelter to survive, but I would guess that many of us aren’t used to the fact that we have basic psychological needs and that those needs MUST be met to thrive. Belonging sounds like a nice-to-have, not the must-have that it is.
This concept isn't at all radical in Self-Determination Theory, where there are decades of research on it. Wendy Grolnick of Clark University, a scholar of Self-Determination Theory, uses the comparison between physiological and psychological needs. Food, water, and shelter are the nutrients required for bodily health and safety and survival:1
But you can also think about needs as psychological. Psychological needs are nutrients required for growth, integrity, well-being.
When these needs are met, we can do more than survive. We can grow, have better well-being, and thrive! When these needs are unmet, it can lead to less positive outcomes, such as increased mental health concerns.2
What Are the Needs in Self-Determination Theory?
Self Determination Theory is a very robust theory of human motivation conceptualized by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester3 and tested over many decades. In fact, this broad theory encompasses six “mini-theories” on motivation, relationships, and goals. One of these six mini-theories is “Basic Psychological Needs Theory” that addresses how psychological needs are connected with our well-being.4 Here’s Grolnick’s description of the needs, beginning with relatedness:5
We need to feel connected or related to other people. We are social human beings and need to feel valued and loved and connected.
A second need is autonomy:
We need to feel autonomous. What we mean is that people need to feel choiceful. They need to feel like they're the owners of their actions or behind what they do; that they're not pushed and coerced.
Grolnick notes that the concept of autonomy has been confusing. Some people see autonomy as being independent or separate from others, but in Self-Determination Theory, autonomy depends on relationships where people feel that they're not controlled and have choices.
A third need is competence:
We need to feel competent. We need to feel like we're able to affect things, to affect our world. We just don't do well as human beings when we feel incompetent, helpless, and unable to do things.
Reconceptualizing Psychological Needs in Adolescence
Brain imaging studies that show that adolescents are neurobiologically primed to respond strongly to:
Rewards and novelty;
being included or excluded;
wanting some say or autonomy in what they do;
being respected and seeking social status; and
trying to figure out who they are and what matters to them.
Their responses to these experiences and many other studies lead me to reconceptualize Basic Psychological Needs into five categories:6
Caring Connections
Agency
Mastery
Identity
Purpose
What Are the Characteristics of the Five Basic Psychological Needs of Adolescence?
These five needs can be further defined and go together in the following ways:
When adolescents feel they belong and are supported, they feel connected (caring connections);
when they have some autonomy and respect, they can become more rightful owners of their own actions (agency);
when they have challenges that they can handle and can develop competence, they can feel effective (mastery);
when they build a narrative about themselves, they can build their sense of identity (identity); and
when they find what’s meaningful to them, they begin to develop a sense of direction in their lives that’s important to them and goes beyond the self, and can contribute to the greater good (purpose).
These Basic Psychological Needs are primary drivers of adolescent development and can become tasks, such figuring out who you are—your identity.
Furthermore….
These needs are all relationship-based. We can work hard on belonging, but if the people in our world aren’t welcoming, that need won't be met. All too often, we assess and judge young people—on, say, whether they're competent—as if they're solo players, neglecting the role of the relational environments in which adolescents become competent or not.
These needs can become internalized. For example, if adolescents are in places and with people who enable them to act in increasingly autonomous or competent ways, they're more likely to feel autonomous or competent.
These needs tend to surface most strongly during transitions and/or in environments where they aren't being met. Adolescence has many transitions, such as starting middle school, high school, or college and/or entering the workforce. Unsupportive relational environments might include a "command-and-control" situation where nothing adolescents do seems to matter.
The Bedrock of Thriving
In the Breakthrough Years baseline study, we tested the extent to which these five Basic Psychological Needs were met through adolescents’ relationships (at home, with friends, at school, in out- of-school activities, and online). In the follow-up study, we found that those adolescents whose needs had been met were much more likely to be doing well in school and in life nine months later.
Nine months later happened to occur during a very difficult and trying time in this country—the COVID-19 pandemic—so it was a strong test of the importance of meeting needs. This finding is especially relevant given what we know about the vulnerabilities of the adolescent years, and the declines our society has been experiencing in the mental health of young people.
In the coming weeks, I will write more about our findings and about our new research on Thriving Workplaces for adults. In the meantime, one fact is very clear. Just as we need to meet biological needs to survive, we need to meet psychological needs to thrive.
Wendy S. Grolnick, “Meeting Development Needs” (Adolescent Virtual Speaking Series, Bezos Family Foundation, October 13, 2020).
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness (New York: The Guilford Press, 2017), https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1521/978.14625/28806; This book describes decades of research on self-determination theory and the role it has played in parenting, social development, and mental health research.
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being,” American Psychologist 55, no.1 (2000): 68-78, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68; and of B. Bradford Brown of the University of Wisconsin as cited in Institute of Medicine (US) and National Research Council (US) Committee on the Science of Adolescence, The Science of Adolescent Risk-Taking: Workshop Report (Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US), 2011).
Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “Brick by brick: The origins, development, and future of self-determination theory,” in Advances in Motivation Science, ed. A. J. Elliot (Cambridge: Elsevier Academic Press, 2019), 111-156, https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1016/bs.adms.2019.01.001.
Wendy Grolnick, interview by Ellen Galinsky, October 27, 2017.
Here I have expanded the conceptual models of Edward l. Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester as cited in Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being,” American Psychologist 55, no.1 (2000): 68-78, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68; and of B. Bradford Brown of the University of Wisconsin as cited in Institute of Medicine (US) and National Research Council (US) Committee on the Science of Adolescence, The Science of Adolescent Risk-Taking: Workshop Report (Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US), 2011).