The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachment as a Fundamental Human

Motivation by Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary

In this article, the authors conducted research on the need that all humans have – the need
to belong. We all want to form attachments to other people and according to the article,
people actually form social attachments fairly easily, whether it be through casual social
contact or with a romantic partner. Many of the bonds that we form come from the
proximity in which we interact with other people, as people everywhere belong to small,
primary groups (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). People generally want to maintain the bonds
that they form, whether it’s promising to keep in touch with a neighbor who is moving
away, or sending a Christmas card every year to someone we haven’t seen or spoken to in
20 years. The article states that much of what humans do is driven by the need to belong,
and is found across cultures with varying degrees of intensity (Baumeister & Leary,
1995). Even someone who is driven by a need for power or fame has an underlying desire
to belong. However, once someone gets to that position of power or fame, they may find
themselves even more socially isolated than before.
People tend to be quite reluctant to dissolve bonds once they are formed – even if it’s a
bad or destructive relationship. For example, battered spouses choose to sometimes stay
in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, partly for economic reasons, but
primarily because to dissolve the relationship would also cause pain due to the
overpowering need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). As trivial as it may sound,
this is also why we don’t want to remove someone from our Christmas card list – because
it would mean the bond has been permanently dissolved. When a bond has been
dissolved, depending on the intensity of the bond, it can cause emotional stress and
even illness due to the powerful need to belong. People in supportive relationships
experience less stress and anxiety than those who are not (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
The study ultimately concluded that due to the large amount of empirical evidence
supporting it, the need to belong is fundamental and is extremely important in
understanding human nature.
The article was a review of empirical literature by Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R.
Leary in which they were interested in seeing if the belongingness hypothesis was
supported by that literature. They studied several different scenarios in regards to the
need to belong, and even looked at the need to belong among members of the military
and found that veterans suffer less post traumatic stress if they have a strong support
system among their fellow military members, as well as family and friends (Baumeister
& Leary, 1995). This research touched on many subjects we have studied in the class,
specifically Maslow’s hierarchy of need, in which a person’s psychological needs of
having a support group and a sense of belonging are in the middle of the pyramid to be
met after basic food and safety needs. This shows how important and pervasive the need
to belong is to the survival of humanity. We also studied the Proximity Effect, in which
we form bonds with someone we are physically close to, such as at work or in class.