Interpersonal Problems and the Social Reality of Psychological Need Fulfillment

People with interpersonal problems have difficulty adapting to situational demands and navigating social hierarchies, which has important implications for the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Though people with interpersonal problems are likely to experience frustrated need fulfillment, the mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well understood. One such mechanism is interpersonal perception specifically the way a person is perceived by their peers (target effects) and the way they perceive others (perceiver effects). This study investigated whether target and/or perceiver effects mediated the relationship between interpersonal problems and psychological need fulfillment. Undergraduate students participated in a group interaction task. Measures of personality, interpersonal problems, and psychological need fulfillment were completed pre-task and need fulfillment was measured again post-task. Results demonstrated that people with dominance-related problems reported lower autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction post-task in part because they tended to perceive their peers as competitive.M.A