Roy F. Baumeister
Case Western Reserve University
Mark R. Leary
Wake Forest University
A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the ypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.
The purpose of this review is to develop and evaluate the hypothesis that a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation and to propose that the need to belong can provide a point of departure for understanding and integrating a great deal of the existing literature regarding human interpersonal behavior. More precisely, the belongingness hypothesis is that human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships. Satisfying this drive involves two criteria: First, there is a need for frequent, affectively pleasant interactions with a few other people, and, second, these interactions must take place in the context of a temporally stable and enduring framework of affective concern for each other’s welfare. Interactions with a constantly changing sequence of partners will be less satisfactory than repeated interactions with the same person (s), and relatedness without frequent contact will also be unsatisfactory. A lack of belongingness should constitute severe deprivation and cause a variety of ill effects. Furthermore, a great deal of human behavior, emotion, and thought is caused by this fundamental interpersonal motive.
The hypothesis that people are motivated to form and maintain interpersonal bonds is not new, of course. John Donne ( 1975) has been widely quoted for the line “No [person] is an island.” In psychology, the need for interpersonal contact was asserted in several ways by Freud (e.g., 1930), although he tended to see the motive as derived from the sex drive and from the filial bond. Maslow (1968) ranked “love and belongingness needs” in the middle of his motivational hierarchy; that is, belongingness needs do not emerge until food, hunger, safety, and other basic needs are satisfied, but they take precedence over esteem and self-actualization. Bowlby’s (e.g., 1969, 1973) attachment theory also posited the need to form and maintain relationships. His early thinking followed the Freudian pattern of deriving attachment needs from the relationship to one’s mother; he regarded the adult’s need for attachment as an effort to recapture the intimate contact that the individual had, as an infant, with his or her mother.’ Horney (1945), Sullivan (1953), Fromm (1955, 1956), de Rivera (1984), Hogan (1983), Epstein (1992), Ryan (1991), Guisinger and Blatt (1994), and others have made similar suggestions. The existence of a need to belong is thus a familiar point of theory and speculation, although not all theorists have anticipated our particular formulation of this need as the combination of frequent interaction plus persistent caring. Moreover, most theorists have neglected to provide systematic empirical evaluation of this hypothesis. For example, Mas-low’s (1968) influential assertion of a belongingness need was accompanied by neither original data nor review of previous find-ings. Thus, despite frequent, speculative assertions that people need to belong, the belongingness hypothesis needs to be critically evaluated in light of empirical evidence. A main goal of the present article is to assemble a large body of empirical findings pertinent to the belongingness hypothesis to evaluate how well the hypothesis fits the data.
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