To deal with the motives of affiliation, you should first give a definition of this concept. In psychology, affiliation is the need of the individual to constantly be in society, to build warm and trusting relationships with other people. A person strives for friendly communication, love and other close relationships.
Affiliate Basis
The basis of the formation of the need for communication and love is the initial impact of the child with parents and relatives, and later with peers. Failure in the formation of affiliation occurs when exposed to negative external factors, for example, excitement, self-doubt, doubts, and so on. And only communication with loved ones helps to get rid of feelings of anxiety. The formation of an affiliation motive is an important stage in the development of personal characteristics.
What is the point?
The motive for affiliation in psychology is motivation and action aimed at establishing new and ending old relationships between people. An individual may have excellent communication skills that enable him to make new acquaintances and establish informal relationships without problems. But despite this, a person may experience a fear of misunderstanding, failure or rejection. That is why a person feels the need to create not one-time acquaintances, but full, long, close relationships. Affiliation over time develops into a person’s personality traits.
The motives of affiliation acquire their significance in the process of building communications. Inwardly, a person experiences attachment, fidelity, outwardly this manifests itself in the desire to build cooperation, friendships, desire is constantly next to another individual. The concept of affiliation, motives of affiliation and loneliness are interrelated definitions.
Higher Affiliate Motivation
Love for another individual is the highest manifestation of affiliation motives. This category is due to ease of communication, confidence in their actions and words, courage, sincerity and openness. The motives of affiliation are closely related to the basic need of a person to receive the approval of society, the thirst for self-assertion and self-realization. Psychologists note that people with an increased need for communication usually evoke positive emotions and sympathy among others, because relationships with them are confidential. In contrast to affiliation, there is a rejection motive. This category manifests itself in a fear of being misunderstood, not accepted by the most important people. If this motive dominates, then the character of a person is replete with such features as insecurity, isolation, constraint.
The features of the manifestation of the motives of affiliation and power differ from the motive of achievement and anxiety in the first place by their social character. That is why a person can satisfy affiliation motives through interaction with others.
Etymology of the word
The concept of affiliation is of English origin and means “attach” in translation. We can distinguish the following needs that are regulated by this concept:
- friendship;
- attachment;
- the joy of communication and interaction with other people;
- love;
- activities as part of certain groups of society.
Based on the above categories, the motive for belonging is much broader than just a motive for communication. Many scholars have noted that the need for communication is based on other needs that began to function earlier. The basis of communication needs is the need for new emotions and impressions. M. I. Lisina noted that the motives of affiliation are secondary, it is only a tool to satisfy the most important cognitive need. That is why the motive of belonging is a complex concept that includes many categories.
The specifics of motives
Despite the fact that the motives of affiliation are considered mainly from a positive position, however, the goals can be very different. For example, they can be based on the desire to impress people in order to seize power.
The basis of the motivation for affiliation is partnerships, there is no place for asymmetric separation of roles. This category does not suggest the use of a partner for personal goals, and even vice versa, such relationships destroy affiliation. For the most favorable development of affiliate relations, you need to take into account the opinions of both partners, they should feel their own value. Features of the motive of affiliation and its interaction with other motives are of paramount importance for building communications.
Affiliate Goals
The purpose of affiliation motives is to establish trust, sympathy, support. Two ways of expression have such motives - the hope of affiliation, the desire for approval and self-affirmation, and the fear of being misunderstood. This fear does not allow a person to feel comfortable in the process of communication, therefore, such people are quite closed, do not cause sympathy or trust, and are essentially lonely. Diagnosing affiliate motives is an important step in building fruitful and positive relationships with people around you.
Positive values
A person’s motivation is determined by his expectations, which are based on past experience. If we take the category of expected value, then affiliation is a positive value. You can give the following example, a person is facing a dialogue with a complete stranger. And the result of this communication depends on the expectations of success. The stronger this expectation, the higher its positive attractiveness, and, accordingly, vice versa. Here you can observe some kind of connection, when the expectation of success affects a person’s behavior and course of action, while the course of events affects the result of communication. To build a successful dialogue, the expectation of success must be higher than the expectation of failure, this helps to ensure that positive attractiveness will prevail over negative. But such a connection is inherent only in the motives of affiliation. For example, in the motive of achievement, everything works the other way around. The higher the expectations of success, the lower the attractiveness of the person’s task.
Gender affiliation
Psychologists note that affiliation motivation is also affected by gender. For example, girls prefer to sincerely and openly share their experiences, guys try to build communication based on business issues and discussions. It should be noted that in addition to gender affiliation, age also has an effect. Over the years, the content of communication can change dramatically.
The propensity for affiliation increases when a person becomes involved in a potentially critical and stressful situation. It is at such moments that the people around make it possible to check whether the choice of the method of behavior in a dangerous situation is correct. As practice shows, the proximity of other people during a stressful situation leads to a decrease in anxiety and excitement, which positively affects not only the psychological, but also the physiological state. Blocking a person’s affiliation provokes a feeling of loneliness, alienation and rejection.
Central motivational moment of communication
This category includes the choice of a temporary or permanent communications partner. The choice of a permanent partner is carried out not only in business, moral and intellectual qualities, but also in appearance. You can determine the motives for affiliation of a particular individual using various methods, of which there are a huge number. The most used technique to date is developed by Mehrabian. It is based on the diagnosis of two common motivators, which are sustainable and are part of affiliation motives. These motivators are a tendency to affiliate or a love of communication and a sensitivity to rejection, a fear of rejection. These two categories are the basis for the diagnosis of affiliation motives according to A. Mehrabian.
Ethnic affiliation
Ethnic or group affiliation is focused on the desire of a particular ethnic group to receive support from other complementary ethnic groups. Group affiliation is expressed in the relationship between some groups, of which one is only an integral part of the other. Simply put, this is the interaction between groups that have different weight and scale in society. In this case, the larger group absorbs the smaller one and it begins to conduct its activities in accordance with the rules and values of the larger group. The modern theory of affiliation assumes that any person needs to belong to a certain group. Due to the instability of the transitional society, the individual feels the need for family or ethnicity, this reduces the feeling of anxiety makes it possible to feel like part of a whole. Ethnicity is formed in primary school age, when children acquire the first knowledge that relates to this area. By the age of 8-9, the child clearly identifies himself with a certain ethnic group. Full ethnic identity and affiliation motives form around the age of 10-12.