Needs

Everyone has "needs" to motivate their own life. The specific needs are set, shaped and acquired over time during their life experiences. In this assignment, we will discuss the need for achievement, power, affiliation, and intimacy.

The need for achievement is a desire for accomplishment of specific goal. This need is influenced by internal drive for action (intrinsic motivation), and by external factor, in which, the pressure exerted by the expectations of others (extrinsic motivation). There are people with High-Need for achievement and Low-Need for achievement.   People with a High-Need for achievement are usually driven to succeed for internal reasons (personal satisfaction) rather than by external pressures or other's expectations. On the other hand, people with Low-Need for achievement tend to choose very easy tasks, in order to minimize risk of failure, in which the failure would not be shameful. 

Need for Power is a desire to obtain power over other people. The individual with power and authority tend to control, influence and make other people do things for his/her sake. High power motivation managers could be positive and negative for an organization. Power that lead to effective and higher productivity performance is positive for an organization. However, some power-motivated managers may also exercise their power in an aggressive manner for self-aggrandizing purposes, then to have negative impact on their organizations.

Need for Affiliation is need to feel a sense of involvement and belonging to a social group. It can play a role in a variety of human interactions and in the formation of bonds and friendships. In an organization, people who place high emphasis on affiliation tend to be supportive team members, but may be less effective in leadership capacity. They could push achievement to satisfy each team member and the organization as a whole.

Need for intimacy is a desire to have close relationships and associations that provide caring, closeness, self-disclosure, and warmth. Whitbourne (2012) said that there are 5 ways to build intimacy, which are: 1. Open your-self up to new relationships, 2. Strengthen your own identity, 3. Don't give up on intimacy, 4. Think of intimacy as a dynamic quality, not a trait, and 5. Remember that intimacy is important. In addition, Carver and Scheier (2012) mentioned intimacy motivation shares with affiliation motivation.

The above picture (the woman with the dog) shows the need for affiliation or intimacy. "The human--animal bond can be defined as a connection between people and other animals, domestic or wild; be it a cat as a pet or birds outside one's window" (Wikipedia, 2014). In addition, some researchers shown that mentally ill human could be cured by relationship with animal treatments.

TAT (The Thematic Apperception Test) is a kind of projective psychological test. Proponent of the TAT would say that test takers may reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people. In contrast to a so-called "objective test" or "self-report test" in which responses are analyzed according to a presumed universal standard (for example, a multiple choice exam), and are limited to the content of the test. In my opinion, it is difficult to make assessment, interpretation and make validation of TAT results, especially for beginner assessor. 

References

• Carver, CS and Scheier, MF. 2012. Perspective on Personality. Seven Edition.
• Pearson Education, Inc. USA. Pp.95
• Whitbourne, S.K.  2012.  We All Need Some Intimacy in Our Lives.  How
• intimacy shapes your present, and future, well-being. Psychology Today. Web.http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201210     /we-all-need-some-intimacy-in-our-lives
• Wikipedia. 2014. Human bonding. Human--animal bonding. Web.
•              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_bonding#Human.E2.80.93animal_ bonding.