Need Frustration and Vulnerability
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RUNNING HEAD: Need Frustration and Vulnerability
On Psychological Growth and Vulnerability:
Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Need Frustration as a Unifying Principle
Maarten Vansteenkiste
University of Gent, Belgium
Richard M. Ryan
University of Rochester, USA
Corresponding author:
Maarten Vansteenkiste,
Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, University of Gent
H. Dunantlaan 2
9000 Gent
Belgium
E-mail: Maarten.Vansteenkiste@ugent.be
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Abstract
Humans have a potential for growth, integration, and well-being, while also being vulnerable to
defensiveness, aggression, and ill-being. Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000b)
argues that satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and
relatedness both fosters immediate well being and strengthens inner resources contributing to
subsequent resilience, whereas need frustration evokes ill-being and increased vulnerabilities for
defensiveness and psychopathology. We briefly review recent research indicating how
contextual need support and the experience of need satisfaction promote well-being and different
growth manifestations (e.g., intrinsic motivation, internalization), as well as a rapidly growing
body of work relating need thwarting and need frustration to ill-being, pursuit of need
substitutes, and various forms of maladaptive functioning. Finally, we discuss research on
differences in autonomous self-regulation and mindfulness, which serve as factors of resilience.
Key Terms: Self-Determination Theory, Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration,
Growth, Autonomy, Psychopathology
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Individuals can be vital, open, curious and caring. Yet, they can also be depleted, self-
centered, irresponsible, and even aggressive towards people important to them. Indeed, we all
have potentials for growth and flourishing, while also possessing vulnerabilities for
defensiveness, and even pathological functioning. An intriguing question then is which
mechanisms elicit either the ‘best’ or the ‘beast’ in each of us?
While scholars in the field of clinical psychology have primarily focused attention on the
development of pathological outcomes such as impulsivity or depression (see Cicchetti, 2006),
those working from the positive psychology movement (Sheldon & King, 2001) have focused on
what contributes to people’s growth and humanity (e.g., gratitude; empathy; forgiveness). In the
current piece, grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci,
2000b), we review evidence that both people’s healthy tendencies toward growth and integrity
and their vulnerabilities to ill-being and psychopathology can to a significant degree be
explained by a single underlying principle. Stated simply, basic psychological need satisfaction
and frustration can substantially account for both the “dark” and “bright” side of people’s
functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2000a).
Whereas the satisfaction of the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and
relatedness contributes to pro-activity, integration, and well-being, the frustration of these same
psychological needs, especially from significant caregivers, leaves one prone for passivity,
fragmentation, and ill-being. SDT maintains that, although human beings have the natural
tendency to move towards growth under need supportive circumstances, they are also at risk for
defensive functioning when exposed to controlling, critical or rejecting social contexts; that is,
environments that are thwarting of these psychological needs. Thus, need satisfaction and need
frustration are considered to be crucial mechanisms in both optimal and non-optimal functioning,
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helping to bridge the gap between pathology-oriented and strength-oriented frameworks and
research.
Notably, there are important individual differences in capacities for coping with need
frustrating events. People can overcome adverse contexts, using their capacities for mindfulness
(Brown & Ryan, 2003) and autonomous functioning (Deci & Ryan, 1985), which serve as
factors of resilience in the sense described by Bonnano (2004). Yet interestingly, these inner
resources appear themselves to be to a significant degree outcomes of need supports in earlier
development, suggesting the foundations of resilience lie heavily in responsive, need supportive
caregiving (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Masten & Tellegen, 2012).
The aim of this contribution is twofold. First, we provide a cursory review of the rapidly
growing body of empirical work on the relations between need satisfaction and need frustration
and a variety of positive (e.g., vitality, empathy) and negative outcomes (e.g., binge eating,
aggression, self-criticism). Second, we elaborate on how people can cope (or fail to cope) with
need frustrating events, thereby distinguishing between resilience-building and amplification
factors over development.
The Crux of Self-Determination Theory: Need Satisfaction and Need Frustration
Although many theories suggest that environments impact development, SDT specifies both
the mechanisms that are involved in integration and psychological growth, and the elements of
social environments that facilitate or undermine growth processes. SDT’s view on vulnerability
and growth derives from several assumptions key to its organismic-dialectical meta-theory (Deci
& Vansteenkiste, 2004).
First, rather than being naturally passive or reactive entities whose functioning is determined
by contextual features, people are considered pro-active organisms that have the inclination to
shape and optimize their own life conditions. Second, people’s pro-activity is steered towards
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increasing levels of synthesis and self-organization, an assumption that constitutes the
organismic foundation of SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2000b). Specifically, the term ‘organismic’ is
associated with the Latin verb ‘organizare’, which means ‘to arrange in a coherent form’. That
is, people have the tendency to develop towards more coherent and unified functioning, a
tendency that can be observed at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal level. At the
intrapersonal level, people ongoingly refine their interests, preferences and personal values,
while simultaneously bringing them in harmony with one another. The experiential aspect of this
unified form of regulation is the sense of autonomy or volition. This integrative tendency can
also be observed at the interpersonal level, as people, when healthy, strive to enhance their
integration into the social matrix, in part through the processes of internalization (Ryan, 1995).
Third, this movement towards increasing intra- and inter-personal integrity does not take
place automatically. Instead, SDT argues that this inherent nature requires specific nutrients, in
the form of the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and
relatedness. In brief, competence refers to the experience of a sense of effectiveness in
interacting with one’s environment (White, 1959); relatedness satisfaction concerns the
experience of love and care by significant others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Deci & Ryan,
1985); finally, autonomy, perhaps the most debated and studied need in SDT, refers to the
experience of volition and the self-endorsement of one’s activity (Ryan & Deci, 2006). Just as
plants need water and sunshine to grow and to flower, the satisfaction of the basic psychological
needs is deemed essential to psychological thriving (Ryan, 1995).
Not only can low satisfaction of any of these needs hamper growth; need frustration can be
especially harmful and even pathogenic (e.g., Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, &
Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011). Need frustration is experienced when basic psychological needs are