Self Determination Theory Essay

When deciding on the Basic Psychological Needs Scale to take, many thoughts came into my head. The first was my friendship with my best friend and roommate. I decided to choose this domain of my life because of all the people I spend time with; my roommate is the one I spend most time with. We have been friends for almost three years now and spend a lot of our time together as we go to the same school and also both play football. It was interesting to examine our relationship by taking the Basic Psychological Needs in Relationships Scale. In class we discussion self-determination theory. In this theory, the focus is put more on intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation. According to self-determination theory, there are three fundamental needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is independence or a feeling like you have control over your life. Competence is feeling effective in one’s actions, or having a task be optimally challenging. Relatedness, also referred to …show more content…
When taking the questionnaire, I received high scores for all three fundamental needs. This may mean that all three components are evident in our relationship. For example, autonomy is evident as neither one of us is forcing the other to be the other’s friend. We are very independent of each other but enjoy each other’s company. This is also evident when it comes to competence, as we like to challenge the other’s thoughts frequently. Neither one of us just sits back and lets the other talk about something without challenging them. This makes our friendship optimally challenging for both parties. Throughout the development of our friendship, we have also become closer. We know a lot of things about each other that many people wouldn’t know or care to know. This illustrates the third component of self-determination theory,