Psychological needs and emotional well-being in older and younger Koreans and Americans

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Abstract

This study tested the relevance of ten psychological needs in emotional well-being among older and younger adults in two cultures (the US and South Korea). Participants were asked to recall their “most satisfying event” for the past month, and then were asked to evaluate the relevance of ten psychological needs to that event. Results indicated that both age and cultural groups generally emphasized the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as proposed by self-determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1991). There were, however, some cultural variations. For Americans, self-esteem was the most important need for both young and old age groups. For Koreans, autonomy was the most salient need for young adults, whereas self-actualizing-meaning and popularity-influence were the most important needs for older adults.

Introduction

It is part of our everyday knowledge that the source of the emotional well-being may vary across individuals. For example, an 18-year old woman and a 70-year old woman may both report that they were very satisfied when they ran into an old friend and had a good conversation, but the reasons why they felt satisfied may not be the same. The 18-year-old girl may report that she was very satisfied when she ran into her old friend because during that event she felt that she is very popular and influential; the 70-year-old woman may report that she was very satisfied when she ran into her old friend because during that event she felt close and connected with the people around her. In other words, simply saying that the two women were satisfied when they met their old friends does not describe the inner wants and needs which define each woman’s personal growth and well-being (Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, & Ryan, 2000).

In the present study, we attempted to explore the fundamental dimensions of emotional well-being via an identification of the inner psychological needs related to emotional well-being across different age and cultural groups. By determining the inner needs related to emotional well-being from different age and cultural groups, we integrate research on psychological needs, aging, and cultural variations of well-being, in a way that we believe helps synthesize disparate areas in psychology.

Old age is often characterized as a period of multiple losses (Baltes and Baltes, 1990, Baltes and Mayer, 1999), loneliness (Pratt & Norris, 1994), declining physical and mental functioning (Erber, 1989, Manton, 1990, Ryan, 1992), and restricted cognitive abilities (Cavanaugh, 1989, Levy and Langer, 1994, Ryan and Kwong-See, 1993). Given these well-documented changes in physical and cognitive functioning and social losses, a question about the emotional well-being in old age arises: Do the increasing health risks and social losses in older individuals lead to a decline in emotional well-being? Surprisingly, recent findings suggest that emotional well-being in old age remains relatively intact (e.g., Diener and Suh, 1997, Horley and Lavery, 1995, Larson, 1978, Smith et al., 1999). Empirical support for this “paradoxical” (Baltes and Baltes, 1990, Brandstädter and Greve, 1994, Filipp, 1996, Staudinger et al., 1995) pattern of the relationship between age and well-being consistently displays that older adults fare well emotionally.

However, it is still unclear whether the underlying mechanisms of emotional well-being remain stable throughout adulthood. For example, Ryff (1989) reported that views on positive functioning among middle-aged and older adults reflected both developmental variation and invariance. Both middle-aged and older adults responded that “others orientation,” namely, being a caring person and having a good relationship with others, is a key feature of a well-adjusted and mature person. At the same time, older adults emphasized “accepting changes” as the second most important quality of positive functioning, whereas middle-aged adults underscored self-confidence and self-acceptance, suggesting a difference in the conceptual prerequisites of well-being throughout adulthood.

In an earlier investigation of the role of needs in emotional well-being, Omodei and Wearing (1990) assessed need-satisfaction in relation to well-being. They developed single-item phrases for creativity, self-esteem, personal control, purpose and meaning, and 20 of Murray’s (1938) needs selected in the previous literature (Jackson, 1984). They retained only the items that were associated with either positive or negative affect with correlations greater than 0.20, and identified 15 psychological needs including creativity, self-esteem, control, purpose and meaning, achievement, affiliation, change, cognitive structure, exhibition, impulsivity, play, sentience, social recognition, succorance, and understanding. They found the satisfaction of these needs was related to subjective well-being, and proposed a need-satisfaction model of subjective well-being.

Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996) also examined the link between psychological need and emotional well-being. Sheldon et al. found that the satisfaction of autonomy and competence was related to well-being both at trait and state levels. At the same time, the degree of satisfaction of competence and autonomy needs was predictive of daily well-being. Reis et al. (2000) extended Sheldon et al.’s findings to the satisfaction of relatedness need. They argued that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the most important psychological needs associated with psychological well-being, and that the satisfaction of important psychological needs is critical in predicting emotional well-being.

More recently, Sheldon, Elliott, Kim, and Kasser (2001) expanded the list of psychological needs to ten needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness, physical thriving, security, self-esteem, self-actualization, pleasure-stimulation, money-luxury, and popularity-influence. They evaluated the relative importance of each psychological need in satisfactory experiences among American and South Korean college students, and reported that autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem needs were the key determinants of satisfying experiences for both Americans and Koreans. One notable difference between American and Korean participants was that satisfaction of self-esteem need was the strongest predictor of positive affect among Americans, whereas satisfaction of relatedness need was the strongest predictor of positive affect among Koreans. In other words, Sheldon et al.’s findings reflected the universal importance of autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem as well as some cultural variation in the relative importance of self-esteem and relatedness needs.

One limitation of the previous cross-cultural studies in this area (Diener and Diener, 1995, Oishi et al., 1999, Sheldon et al., 2001) is that comparisons were made between college students in different nations. To test the universality of a theory, however, it is critical to subject the theory to cultural comparisons beyond college students, as salient needs might be different depending on the stage of life (Ryff, 1989). The present study was designed to address this limitation of the previous research. Specifically, we examined the role of ten psychological needs in the emotional well-being of older and younger individuals in the US and South Korea. Inspired by the previous literature on cross-cultural variations of needs (e.g., Heine, 1997), samples representing distinct cultural traditions were selected to test the cross-cultural replicability for the identified needs. Participants of varying ages and different cultural backgrounds were given the list of the ten candidate needs, and asked to evaluate the relevance of those needs in their satisfactory experiences. This procedure allows us (a) to identify the underlying psychological needs in emotional well-being, (b) to explore the age differences of the underlying needs in emotional well-being, and (c) to test the universality or cultural variations of the role of needs in emotional well-being.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were recruited from the US and South Korea. In the US, participants were recruited from Minneapolis—St. Paul metropolitan area, MN. In South Korea, participants were recruited from Seoul. Older adults were recruited from community centers, churches, and with snowball technique. Younger adults were recruited using flyers and advertisements on the electronic bulletin boards in university campuses. No external compensation had been provided, and participation of this study was

Mean differences in the salience of needs

Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations of need salience across the whole sample. When ignoring age and cultural factors, relatedness, autonomy, and self-esteem emerged as the most important needs in our participants, replicating Sheldon et al.’s (2001) study which also found these three needs at the top of the list. Competence emerged in the second position, as in Sheldon et al.’s study. Tied with competence we found self-actualizing need, which was ranked lower in Sheldon et al.’s

Discussion

The primary goal of this study was to examine the universality of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1991), which posits the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key needs in daily well-being, across lifetime and cultures. Our findings generally provide support for the relevance of these three needs to the “most satisfying event” across ages and cultures. As in Sheldon et al. (2001), however, there were some cultural differences in the relative importance of specific needs.

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