MY SUMMER SEMESTER IS FINALLY OVER
I awake from 10 satisfying hours of sleep to bring you one last tidbit from my psych class...I'm pretty sure I skipped the day this was presented (^^; ), but I found it while studying for the final and it caught my eye.
It's a 10-point scale designed to measure your desire for acceptance and fear of criticism/rejection. Wanna give it a whirl?
The Need to Belong Scale (Leary, Kelly, Cottrell, & Schreindorfer, 2005)
Respondents indicate the degree to which each statement is true or characteristic of them on a 5-point scale (1=not at all, 2=slightly, 3=moderately, 4=very, 5=extremely).
- If other people don't seem to accept me, I don't let it bother me.
- I try hard not to do things that will make other people avoid or reject me.
- I seldom worry about whether other people care about me.
- I need to feel that there are people I can turn to in times of need.
- I want other people to accept me.
- I do not like being alone.
- Being apart from my friends for long periods of time does not bother me.
- I have a strong need to belong.
- It bothers me a great deal when I am not included in other people's plans.
- My feelings are easily hurt when I feel that others do not accept me.
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Reverse the scores for items 1, 3, and 7. Add 'em up, and divide by 10 to get an average.
My score was 2.5...just a smidge below middling, which makes sense to me. I live a bit contradictably in this sense: my everyday behavior suggests a near-nonexistent need to belong, but internally I have a lot of fixations that suggest a very high one. ^^; So it figures that the two opposing forces would average out to something around 3.
Having a low or high score isn't necessarily a bad thing, just FYI. 'Belonging' has a lot of benefits, from an evolutionary perspective, so it makes sense that most people would have an NTB on the higher side. And if your NTB is on the lower side, then all the downsides of not 'belonging' don't even affect you, so it all evens out!
P.S. If you took the scale, would you mind reporting your scores in this poll? I'd love to do some data analysis later on~