The Role of Need Satisfaction as a Distinct and Basic
Psychological Component of Autobiographical
Memories: A Look at Well-Being
Frederick L. Philippe,1 Richard Koestner,1 Genevieve
Beaulieu-Pelletier,2 and Serge Lecours2
12

McGill University

University of Montreal

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present research was to show thatsatisfaction of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, andrelatedness constitutes a basic component characterizing autobiographical memories. In Study 1, a coding scheme and a self-rating method formeasuring need satisfaction in memories were developed and shown tobe highly related to each other. Across 3 studies using graduate andundergraduate students (Study 1: N 5 244; Study 2: N 5 309; Study 3:
N 5 159), need satisfaction was found to be moderately associated withwell-being measures, over and above several other memory components
usually assessed in research on autobiographical memories. In addition,
this association between need satisfaction in autobiographical memories
and well-being held, even after controlling for person-level measures, suchas personality traits, self-determined orientation, or experience of needsatisfaction in general in one’s life, thus suggesting that autobiographicalmemory and semantic self-knowledge are distinct databases.

The functional role of autobiographical memories has attracted increasing interest in recent decades. Whereas autobiographical researchin the 1970s was more focused on the remembering, recent researchThis research was supported by doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to Frederick L. Philippe and Genevieve Beaulieu-Pelletier and by a research grant from the same agency to Richard
Koestner.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Frederick L. Philippe, Psychology Department, University of Quebec at Montreal, P.O Box 8888
Station Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3C 3P8. Email: philippe.frederick@ugam.ca

Journal of Personality 79:5, October 2011r 2010 The Authors
Journal of Personality r 2011, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00710.x

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modeling autobiographical memories is more concerned about therememberer (Robinson, 1996). This interest has generated several
studies investigating the characteristics of autobiographical memories
that are associated with general positive functioning. Despite considerable evidence of linkages between autobiographical memory andwell-being, we propose that previous research may have overlookedsome core psychological components of autobiographical memories.
Speciﬁcally, we seek to illustrate that the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in autobiographical memories
play a critical role in people’s well-being.
On Autobiographical Memories

It is well recognized that speciﬁc life experiences have an effect on people’s functioning and well-being. For example, negative experiencessuch as childhood trauma not only impact people’s mental health as achild, but also exert a continuing pervasive effect into adulthood(Thomas, 2003). Positive experiences of attachment, success, and selfexpression usually fulﬁll people’s self-conﬁdence and promote their selfgrowth (Deci & Ryan, 2000). One way these life experiences, positive or
negative, can affect people’s well-being immediately and over time isthat people use the memories of these experiences to guide their choices,
attitudes, and actions in life, which has an important consequential
impact on their well-being (Pillemer, 2003). Important life experiences
are encoded in the memory system as autobiographical memories andremain associated with the cognitive-affective component experienced
during the initial event (Conway, 2008; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce,
2000). In this article, we propose that the concept of need satisfaction is
one important cognitive-affective component that characterizes many
autobiographical memories and that it can help explain the adaptive
signiﬁcance of autobiographical memories for well-being.
On Need Satisfaction

Psychological need satisfaction is based on self-determination theory(Deci & Ryan, 2000) and grounded in a phenomenological and humanistic perspective rather than in a strict personality one. Selfdetermination theory does not focus on individual differences in thestrength of motives (e.g., whether achievement strivings are more
important for a person than another) but is rather interested in people’s level of satisfaction of innate and universal needs. According toNeed Satisfaction and Memories

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self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), humans have an
overarching goal of psychological growth, which is expressed
through the pursuit of fulﬁllment of three psychological needs:
autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy refers to theneed to feel volitional and authentic in one’s actions. Competence isdeﬁned as the need to feel effective and efﬁcacious. Relatedness refers
to the need to feel connected and cared for by others and to care forothers in turn. Satisfaction of these three needs provides people with
the necessary nutriments for psychological growth and the healthy
development of their well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2000). A great deal ofresearch has highlighted the fundamental nature of these three needs
across diverse domains and cultures (e.g., Deci et al., 2001; Sheldon,
Elliot, Kim, & Kasser, 2001) and has shown that their satisfaction in
everyday life is positively associated with measures of well-being,such as psychological growth, purpose and meaning in life, generallife satisfaction, and psychological adjustment (e.g., Meyer, Enstrom, Harstveit, Bowles, & Beevers, 2007; Reis, Sheldon, Gable,
Roscoe, & Ryan, 2000; Sheldon, Ryan, & Reis, 1996).
Need Satisfaction and Autobiographical Memories

Because of the fundamental nature and prominence of these threepsychological needs across situations, their need satisfaction representations should remain attached to a majority of signiﬁcant autobiographical memories. In addition, because people frequently use theirautobiographical memories to guide their choices, attitudes, andactions in life (Pillemer, 2003), the need satisfaction representations
attached to these memories should affect people’s well-being accordingly. More speciﬁcally, memories characterized by need satisfaction
should signal possibilities for psychological growth and the opportunity to build and expand the self (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Hodgins & Knee,
2002), which should lead to well-being. Conversely, memories characterized by need thwarting should signal a potential threat to the self
and to the innate psychological growth goal and should lead to selfclosure and strategies that seek to protect the self (Deci & Ryan, 2000;
Hodgins & Knee, 2002), which should detract from well-being.
One type of frequently used and thought about memories are selfdeﬁning memories. Self-deﬁning memories are deﬁned as autobiographical memories that are emotional, vivid, repeatedly retrieved,
linked to other similar memories, and that are believed to play an im-

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portant role in deﬁning one’s identity and perception of oneself (Singer& Salovey, 1993). It is posited that these types of memory represent
people’s enduring concerns and that people are likely to refer to thesememories in their life to guide their actions (Singer & Salovey, 1993).
Consequently, the level of need satisfaction characterizing these memories should have an important impact in people’s well-being.
Other Autobiographical Memory Approaches

The study of autobiographical memories in the ﬁeld of personality andsocial psychology is characterized by three major approaches. A ﬁrst
approach is that of narrative life stories (McAdams, 2001) and focuseson identifying a number of themes and sequences (e.g., personal
growth) present in people’s autobiographical narratives that are related to well-being (e.g., Adler, Kissel, & McAdams, 2006; Bauer,
McAdams, & Sakaeda, 2005; King, Scollon, Ramsey, & Williams,
2000). The central idea is that the themes people include in their narrative and the ways they tell their story (the structure) reﬂect emergent
aspects of their personality, tapping into the intentions and meanings
people use to make sense of events in their lives (Bauer et al., 2005).
A related approach assumes that people may be unaware of certain
aspects of their personality that would be expressed in the content andstructure of their autobiographical memory narratives (Woike, 2008).
This research has mostly focused on implicit motives, such as the motives for power, achievement, and intimacy. These motives have beencoded from autobiographical memories and have been shown to relate
to well-being, especially when only intrinsic, positive, related themes
are taken into account (e.g., Bauer & McAdams, 2004; King & Noelle,2005). Both of these approaches described use judges to code thedifferent themes from participants’ narrative materials.
A third approach to understanding the adaptive role of autobiographical memories has focused on their qualitative and functional
aspects. This third approach departs from the ﬁrst two in that data
are not obtained by coding autobiographical memories, but rather
by directly asking the participants about certain qualities or functions of a memory (but see Pasupathi, Lucas, & Coombs, 2002).
Within the qualitative aspects, research has examined, for instance,
the vividness of a memory or its reliving sensation, the perspective ofa memory (ﬁrst or third person), its coherence, its signiﬁcance, or theage of the memory. Within the functional perspective, research has

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focused on how much a memory was rehearsed (Alea & Bluck,2007), shared with others (Pasupathi, 2003), or whether it has served
as a lesson (Pratt, Arnold, Norris, & Filyer, 1999). This approach isrelated to the ﬁrst one in the sense that reﬂecting on past events ortalking about them with others is seen as an important way in whichpeople develop a life story or a narrative identity/personality (e.g.,
Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean & Breen, 2009). These memory
aspects have also been shown to be related to well-being (e.g.,
McLean & Breen, 2009; Pals, 2006).
The need satisfaction perspective is different from these threeother approaches. First, the narrative approach of autobiographicalmemories focuses on individual differences in autobiographical narratives, representing the intentions and meanings that people use to
make sense of the events in their lives (Bauer et al., 2005). Needsatisfaction in a memory focuses on how a past event has actually
been experienced (and is recalled to have been experienced). The
implicit motives approach focuses on individual differences in thestrength of some motives (e.g., achievement, communion). As mentioned earlier, the need satisfaction perspective does not focus on theimportance of some motives (or needs) in people’s lives but on
whether the three fundamental needs are satisﬁed or thwarted(the term need is indeed used to refer to the innate, universal, andessential nature of these needs, in contrast to the term motive, which
represents a personal inclination or personality difference). Finally,
the qualitative perspective highlights different structural qualities ofa memory, whereas the functional perspective speciﬁes what people
do with their memories. Thus, the need satisfaction approach is relatively independent of all these other approaches. In addition, another important aspect of the need satisfaction perspective is that it
relies on a phenomenological perspective. This implies that people
can be consciously aware of whether their needs have been satisﬁedor thwarted in a speciﬁc past event when asked about it. This is incontrast with the two ﬁrst perspectives presented earlier, which rely
on coding participants’ narrative materials to extract the personality
components that researchers are interested in.
Autobiographical Memories and Semantic Self-Knowledge

Autobiographical memories and semantic self-knowledge are two
independent databases informing the self. Cognitive and neuropsy-

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chological research on this topic has suggested that episodic memories and semantic self-knowledge structures are stored in different
areas of the brain (Conway, 2008; Craik et al., 1999) and play different functional roles (Klein & Loftus, 1993; Tulving, 1987).
Whereas semantic self-knowledge is generally applied at the person level, autobiographical memories are used to inform one about
how to behave in speciﬁc instances (Klein, Cosmides, Tooby, &Chance, 2002). Therefore, autobiographical memories should havean additional predictive utility for understanding meaningful life
outcomes above and beyond person-level measures referring to semantic self-knowledge, such as traditional questionnaire measures of
personality (Lodi-Smith, Geise, Roberts, & Robins, 2009). Researchfrom all the approaches presented earlier found supporting evidence
for this claim. For instance, the presence of growth themes (intrinsic
and integrated memories) or of some types of sequence in important
memories postulated to constitute people’s life stories—such as turning points, self-deﬁning memories, lower points, or narratives of
personality change—were found to be associated with well-being,over and above some of the common ﬁve personality traits, perceived personality change, or attributional style (Adler et al., 2006;
Bauer et al., 2005; Lodi-Smith et al., 2009). Research on implicit
motives has shown that themes of achievement and intimacy codedfrom autobiographical memories were mostly uncorrelated with selfreports measuring trait-related achievement and communion andpredicted different outcomes (see Woike, 2008). In line with thistheoretical and empirical evidence, we expected that need satisfaction in memories would also be independent of semantic self-knowledge measures in its association with well-being.
The Present Research

The purpose of the present research was to show that need satisfaction
for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are core psychologicalcomponents of autobiographical memories because they are the basisof the cognitive-affective component of autobiographical memories.
Across three studies, participants described a self-deﬁning memory,that is, a memory representing the person’s enduring concerns and thatis frequently thought about. Our general hypothesis was that needsatisfaction in self-deﬁning memories would be positively associatedwith well-being. In Study 1, we planned to test this hypothesis while

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assessing memory need satisfaction both by self-ratings and coded ratings. In addition, in all three studies, it was expected that level of needsatisfaction in autobiographical memories would be associated withwell-being over and above several other memory components identiﬁed
in past research through the narrative, implicit motives, or memory
quality/functional approaches. Finally, we also hypothesized that needsatisfaction in autobiographical memories would be associated withwell-being over and above semantic self-knowledge measures.
STUDY 1In Study 1, we ﬁrst developed a method to accurately code satisfaction of the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in
autobiographical memories. We also developed a self-rating scale
for participants to rate their own need satisfaction in an autobiographical experience.
On the basis of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000),
which supposes that people can have a good and accurate subjective
sense of their need satisfaction levels within a situation, we expectedthat the correlation between need satisfaction, as coded by judges
and as rated by the participants, would be large. In line with selfdetermination theory, it was also expected that satisfaction of thesethree needs (either coded or rated) would be moderately correlated
to each other and would converge on a single dimension in a factorial analysis. Finally, we expected that need satisfaction, either
coded by judges or self-rated by the participants, would be correlatedwith well-being measures to the same extent.
A second purpose of Study 1 was to show that need satisfaction
constitutes an important memory component that has an incremental predictive value with respect to a number of narrative andimplicit motives measures coded from autobiographical memories.
We expected that need satisfaction would have an incremental predictive value with respect to well-being measures, over and above
several coded memory components used in past research—that is,
integrative and intrinsic memories (e.g., Bauer et al., 2005), redemption and contamination sequences (McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis,
Patten, & Bowman, 2001), degree of closure (King et al., 2000), andachievement and intimacy motives (Bauer & McAdams, 2004),
which were also all hypothesized to correlate with well-being basedon the past research cited earlier.

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Finally, a third purpose was to illustrate the distinction between
autobiographical memories and semantic self-knowledge. Autobiographical memory need satisfaction (coded and self-rated) was expected to saturate a dimension, whereas person-level measures of needsatisfaction in one’s life were expected to correspond to a second anddifferent dimension. As past research has shown for other memory
components (e.g., Bauer et al., 2005), we expected that need satisfaction in autobiographical memories, whether coded by judges or rated
by the participants themselves, would reﬂect information about theperson’s well-being that is not fully accessible through the person’s
semantic self-knowledge. Therefore, it was also hypothesized that
autobiographical memory need satisfaction (coded and rated) would
remain signiﬁcantly associated with well-being, even once person-level
semantic self-knowledge measures were controlled for, such as personality traits and need satisfaction experienced in general in one’s life.
MethodParticipants
A total of 244 undergraduate and graduate students (147 women, 97 men)from a Canadian university took part in this study. The mean age was
29.68 years (SD 5 9.29 years).
Measures
Autobiographical memory
Instructions were derived from past research on self-deﬁning memories(Singer & Salovey, 1993; Sutin & Robins, 2005). Participants were asked
to describe in detaila personal memory of an event that occurred at least one year ago
which was signiﬁcant (important) for you. This memory should reﬂect
your identity or who you are and should reveal something about how
you perceive yourself generally. Choose a memory that often comes toyour mind. This memory can be either positive, negative, or both.
Thus, participants were free to recall any type of memory and were notguided in selecting one memory of a particular valence.
Need satisfaction. Participants were also asked to rate the level of psychological need satisfaction they experienced during the self-deﬁning

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913

event on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from –3 (Strongly disagree) to 13(Strongly agree), with 0 representing ‘‘Do not agree nor disagree or not
applicable’’—this latter option indicating that there were both needsatisfaction and need thwarting in the event or that need satisfaction
was not present in the event. They were thus provided with two items
assessing each of the three basic psychological needs postulated by selfdetermination theory (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness). A
sample item for autonomy is ‘‘I felt free to do things and to think how I
wanted’’; for competence: ‘‘I felt capable or skillful’’; and for relatedness:‘‘I felt connected to one or more people.’’ These items were derived frompast research (e.g., Reis et al., 2000; Ryan, Rigby, & Przybylski, 2006;
Sheldon et al., 2001) and adapted to assess experience during a past event.
A conﬁrmatory factor analysis revealed an excellent ﬁt for a three-factor
model, w2 5 (df 5 6, n 5 244) 5 7.82, p 5 .25, NNFI 5 .99, NFI 5 .99,
CFI 5 1.00, RMSEA 5 .035 [.00; .09], SRMR 5 .024, GFI 5 .99, withfactor loading ranging from .52 to .98. These results suggest that the
selected items adequately discriminate the three needs. Correlations
among the three latent factors were high, ranging from .55 to .85, andthe examination of a second-order factor (super factor) yielded virtually
the same ﬁt indices, thus indicating that the needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness can be subsumed under the broader and single
concept of need satisfaction. Therefore, all three needs were averaged toyield a need satisfaction index, as is commonly done by self-determination
theory researchers (e.g., Deci et al., 2001; Gagné, 2003).1 Cronbach’s
alpha for this index was .82.
Coding of memories by judges
Need satisfaction. Two judges coded participants’ memory for autonomy, competence, and relatedness using the same Likert scale used by the
1. Some researchers have also looked at the distinct association between eachneed and well-being. However, these researchers have usually used special types ofdesign or method, such as experience samplings or meta-analyses, to make thisinvestigation. This is because all three needs are at least moderately correlated (asshown in Studies 1–3, they all converge on a single dimension), and this may leadto multicollinearity issues. Following Patrick, Knee, Canevello, and Lonsbary’s
meta-analysis (2007), we combined the present three studies’ data and regressed
our index measure of well-being (hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and psychological adjustment) on all three needs, allowing them to covary with eachother’s in the same block (n 5 712). Results revealed that each need was signiﬁcantly associated with well-being, with beta coefﬁcients ranging from .10 to .31 (allpso.05). This ﬁnding replicates past research showing that all three needs areimportant.

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participants ( 3 to 13). The judges were blind to the participants’ otherdata and rated the need satisfaction experienced within the event composing
the autobiographical memory. More speciﬁcally, autonomy was coded assatisﬁed when the episode description included aspects related to feelings ofchoice, self-determination or self-concordance, self-initiative, self-expressiveness, feelings of self-control, or feelings of freedom. Autonomy was rated as
thwarted when descriptions included aspects related to felt pressure andstress, feelings of being controlled by others or by something, evaluative
contexts, inability to decide between alternatives, and feelings of guilt or
shame. Competence satisfaction was coded when aspects such as feelings ofintrinsic achievement, competency, taking on challenges, belief in one’s
capacity, or feelings of working hard on something were present in theepisode description. Thwarted competence was coded when aspects such as
feelings of incompetence, failure, incapacity, and envy of others’ success were
included in the episode description. Relatedness satisfaction was rated when
aspects such as connectedness and afﬁliation, feelings of being appreciatedby others, sharing, or taking care of someone were present. Relatedness was
rated as thwarted when aspects such as the loss of a signiﬁcant other,interpersonal conﬂict, rejection, or loneliness were present. Adequate interjudge reliability was obtained for the memory ratings on the ﬁrst half of thesample (n 5 122; one-way random intraclass correlations between .80 and.86). One of the two judges coded the remaining memories (total N 5 244),
and this procedure was used for all other coding procedures in Study 1.
Below are two samples of narrative of high and low need satisfaction.
High Need Satisfaction: ‘‘What I have to say summarizes six years of mythinking and conversations with myself in my thesis. I notice W’s eyes arefull of pride and those of X are amazed. . . . I thank them, I hear theapplause stronger than expected. . . . I ask for one other little moment. . . .
I thank my spouse for being there all this time. Turn after turn, I respondto my jury’s questions. I do not have to defend my thesis. It is amazing. I
receive praise, compliments. . . . The jury goes out to deliberate and comesback. Z declares that the jury unanimously agrees to award me the highest
Ph.D. grade.’’Low Need Satisfaction: ‘‘My grand-mother was at the hospital, and she
was taking strong medications. One day I was left alone with her
at the hospital. She had taken a lot of medications and she started behaving in a very strange way. She tried to escape from the hospital, andI was alone with her. I tried to stop her but I absolutely couldn’t and it
was very hard for me to see the person that took care of me acting in sucha bizarre way, as though she had lost her mind, so I burst into tears,
I wasn’t capable of handling the situation and the nurse had to intervene
and tie her up.’’Need Satisfaction and Memories

915

Integrative and intrinsic memories. Integrative memories emphasized theimportance of learning, integrating, or otherwise coming to a new or
deeper understanding about the self or others. Intrinsic memories emphasized the importance of personal growth, meaningful relationships,
and contributing to society (see Bauer et al., 2005, for further coding details). Two judges coded these two themes (11: theme present; 0: theme
not present) and obtained adequate inter-judge reliability for the ﬁrst halfof the material (one-way random intraclass correlations of .72 and .74).
Redemption and contamination sequences. Two judges rated the memories for contamination and redemption sequences in line with McAdams
and colleagues’ (2001) rating procedure. A redemption sequence is amemory description that transforms from a bad, affectively negative
life scene to a subsequent good, affectively positive life scene. Conversely,
a contamination sequence is a memory description that transforms froma good, affectively positive life scene to a subsequent bad, affectively
negative life scene. A score of 11 was attributed to memories showing aredemption sequence and a score of
1 was attributed to memories
that showed a contamination sequence. Finally, self-deﬁning memories
that did not show either of these two sequences were scored 0 (seeMcAdams et al., 2001, for further rating details). Adequate inter-judge
reliability was obtained on the ﬁrst half of the sample (one-way random
intraclass correlation was .85).
Closure. Following the work of King and colleagues (2000) and Pals
(2006), closure in participants’ autobiographical memory was coded
according to the degree to which the memory exhibited evidence ofa coherent resolution. Closure was rated on a 5-point scale (1 5 notresolved at all, 5 5 very resolved) reﬂecting the extent to which the participant exhibited a sense of closure with respect to the event/experiencedescribed, in terms of the consequences of the experience and a lack ofunresolved issues and emotions. Adequate inter-judge reliability was
obtained on the ﬁrst half of the sample (one-way random intraclasscorrelation was .76).
Achievement and intimacy motives. In line with McAdams, Hoffman,
Day, and Mansﬁeld (1996), each memory was coded for achievement andintimacy motives. Achievement refers to themes of self-mastery, status/
victory, achievement/responsibility, and empowerment. Themes of intimacy include love/friendship, positive dialogue, caring/help, and a senseof community unity. Adequate inter-judge reliability was obtained on theﬁrst half of the sample (one-way random intraclass correlation was .80
and .82).

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Well-being
Three types of well-being were assessed: hedonic well-being, eudaimonic
well-being, and psychological adjustment. Hedonic well-being refers to
one’s general happiness with one’s life (Ryan & Deci, 2001), whereas
eudaimonic well-being is concerned with self-realization and personal
growth (Bauer et al., 2005; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Ryff & Keyes, 1995).
Psychological adjustment is more concerned with the absence of psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety and with high levels of
self-esteem.
Hedonic well-being. The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons,Larsen, & Grifﬁn, 1985) was used as a measure of hedonic well-being(a 5 .85).
Eudaimonic well-being. A short version of the Psychological Well-Being
scale (PWB; Ryff & Keyes, 1995) was used in this study to assesseudaimonic well-being. This short scale assesses six dimensions of well-being, each with three items. However, in the present study, only three of these
dimensions—that is, self-acceptance, purpose in life, and personal growth—were used because the PWB’s other dimensions (i.e., autonomy, mastery,and relatedness) are related to the three basic psychological needs (a 5 .85).
Participants were asked to rate all items presented above on a 7-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (totally agree).
Psychological adjustment. Psychological adjustment was measured withthree items (a 5 .61) from the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward,
Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961) and with six items (a 5 .83) drawn
from the Beck Anxiety Inventory measuring the subjective state of anxiety (see Osman, Kopper, Barrios, Osman, & Wade, 1997). One item assessing self-esteem was also used (Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski, 2001).
All these items were transformed in z scores (depression and anxiety
measures reverse-scored) and averaged to create a psychological adjustment index. Alpha for this index was .85.
Self-knowledge measures
Personality traits. The Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling,
Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) was used to assess the ﬁve factors of personality (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, andAgreeableness). This brief scale uses two pairs of adjectives to assess eachof the ﬁve personality factors. This scale has yielded correlations between.65 and .87 with the complete Big Five Inventory (John & Srivastava,Need Satisfaction and Memories

917

1999). Participants were asked to rate, on a 7-point Likert scale (1 5
disagree strongly, 7 5 agree strongly), their degree of agreement with eachpair of adjectives (e.g., ‘‘I see myself as . . . extraverted, enthusiastic’’).
Adequate evidence of validity and reliability has been found for this
instrument (Ehrhart et al., 2009; Gosling et al., 2003). In this study, theinteritem correlation for each trait ranged from .11 to .46.
General need satisfaction. A short version of the Basic Need Satisfactionin General (Gagné, 2003; Ilardi, Leone, Kasser, & Ryan, 1993) was used
to assess participants’ general need satisfaction. Nine items assessedautonomy, competence, and relatedness with three items each. In thepresent study, Cronbach’s alpha for this complete short scale was .60.
Procedure
Participants were all from a Canadian university and were contacted
through their institutional email. An email explained that we were conducting a study about personality and memory. The incentive was that
their participation allowed them to be entered into a drawing of four
prizes of $125. The incentive was the same for all studies reported in thepresent article. Participants were told that participating in this study
involved completing an online questionnaire on a secure Web site. Participants were also assured that all their responses would remain conﬁdential
and anonymous. Finally, it is important to note that all participants
completed the personality traits, general need satisfaction, and well-being
measures before describing their autobiographical memory, such that theirmemory description did not affect their well-being ratings.

Results and Discussion

Need Satisfaction (Coded and Rated) and Well-Being
Correlations between the judge’s scores and participants’ ratings ofneed satisfaction in the autobiographical memory were relatively
large for each need (rs between .52 and .59). In addition, thisjudge’s average score of the three needs correlated at .70 with theparticipants’ average rating score of the three needs. These results
suggest that participants were able to accurately rate their levelof autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction in linewith what is theoretically expected by self-determination theory’s
conception of need satisfaction.
A principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted to examine whether the three needs as coded by the judges and as rated by918

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the participants would all load on a same single factor. Results ofthis analysis revealed only one factor with an eigenvalue higher thanone (3.63), accounting for 60.50% of the variance. All six factor
loadings were high for each need, either coded or self-rated, ranging
from .68 to .85. These results suggest that (a) all three needs converge
on a single factor and should thus be averaged together, and (b) needsatisfaction in an autobiographical memory coded by judges converges with the participants’ own ratings. Finally, as expected, needsatisfaction either coded or rated was positively associated with wellbeing to about the same extent (see Table 1).
Incremental Validity of Need Satisfaction
Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the incremental value of need satisfaction with respect to the other coded
memory components. Each well-being measure was hierarchicallyregressed on each memory component divided in ﬁve steps—(1)intrinsic and integrative memories, (2) redemption/contamination
sequences, (3) closure, and (4) intimacy and achievement motives—with an additional ﬁfth step including need satisfaction as coded by
the judges. Results are shown in Table 2. Replicating past research,
intrinsic memories, but not integrative memories, were associatedwith hedonic well-being (Bauer et al., 2005), as well as redemption
and contamination sequences (McAdams et al., 2001) and intimacy
and achievement motives (Bauer & McAdams, 2004). As predicted,
need satisfaction made a strong additional contribution to the prediction of hedonic well-being. Eudaimonic well-being was signiﬁcantly predicted by integrative memories (but not by intrinsic
memories; Bauer et al., 2005), redemption and contamination sequences, and achievement motives. Again, need satisfaction showed
an incremental predictive value with respect to eudaimonic wellbeing. Finally, in line with past research, redemption and contamination sequences were associated with psychological adjustment(Adler et al., 2006). Closure was only marginally associated withpsychological adjustment, whereas achievement was signiﬁcantly
positively associated with it. Need satisfaction was also signiﬁcantly
and positively associated with psychological adjustment, over andabove all these memory components.
Overall, need satisfaction accounted for 2.3% to 5.2% of
the variance of the well-being measures and for 21% to 40%

Note. npo.05. nnpo.01.

Need satisfaction coded (1)Need satisfaction self-rated (2)Intrinsic memories (3)Integrative memories (4)Redemption/contamination (5)Closure (6)Achievement motive (7)Intimacy motive (8)Hedonic well-being (9)Eudaimonic well-being (10)Psychological adjustment (11)

—
.70nn
.56nn
.16n
.55nn
.54nn
.32nn
.43nn
.38nn
.28nn
.34nn

1
—
.44nn
.11
.31nn
.28nn
.20nn
.39nn
.34nn
.31nn
.34nn

2

—
.10
.23nn
.39nn
.09
.62nn
.19nn
.10
.10

3

—
.23nn
.05
.00
.04
.05
.15n
.09

4

—
.38nn
.32nn
.17nn
.20nn
.22nn
.20nn

5

—
.15n
.28nn
.23nn
.12
.19nn

6

—
.14n
.16n
.18nn
.21nn

7

—
.23nn
.12
.10

8

—
.46nn
.67nn

9

Table 1
Study 1: Correlations Among Need Satisfaction (Coded and Rated), Other Coded Memory Variables,
and Well-Being Measures

—
.52nn

10

920

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

Table 2
Study 1: Hierarchical Regression Analyses of Narrative Memory
Sequences, Motives, and Need Satisfaction on Hedonic andEudaimonic Well-Being and Psychological Adjustment
Hedonic Eudaimonic PsychologicalWell-Being Well-Being Adjustment.07
Step 1: Intrinsic memories.19nn
Integrative memories
.03
.15n
.19n
Step 2: Redemption/contamination.17n
Step 3: Closure
.14n
.04
.14n
Step 4: Achievement.14n
Intimacy.18n.11
Step 5: Need satisfaction coded.33nn (.24nn) .24n (.27nn)
.155
.108
Total R2.044 (.041) .023 (.049)
R 2change due to need satisfaction

.08
.09
.17nn
.13 p 5 .08.16n.08.36nn (.31nn).129.052 (.068)

Note. N 5 244. The numbers in parentheses are the results for need satisfaction
as rated by the participants.
npo.05. nnpo.01.

of the variance predicted by all identiﬁed memory components. Furthermore, results were virtually the same when the need satisfaction
index, as rated by the participants, was used (see Table 2). In addition, once self-rated need satisfaction was entered in the regression,coded need satisfaction did not signiﬁcantly predict additional variance in any of the three well-being measures. This latter result suggests that self-ratings of need satisfaction are equivalent to thecoding of need satisfaction in the prediction of well-being.
Autobiographical Memories and Semantic Self-Knowledge
It was hypothesized that measures related to autobiographical memories would be relatively independent of those related to semantic
self-knowledge. It was expected that need satisfaction either codedby judges or rated by the participants would constitute a dimension,
while need satisfaction experienced in general in one’s life would
saturate a second, different dimension. As expected, the correlation
between need satisfaction in memory and need satisfaction in general
was small to medium in size (r 5 .25, po.05). To further examine thisissue, a PCA with a Varimax rotation was conducted including theNeed Satisfaction and Memories

921

need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness from the autobiographical memory as coded by judges and rated by the participants,
and as experienced in life in general and reported by the participants.
Results of this analysis revealed two factors with an eigenvalue
higher than one (3.88 and 1.34), accounting for 58% of the variance.
The ﬁrst factor was saturated by the three needs in autobiographicalmemory, as coded by judges and rated by the participants (the six
factor loadings ranging from .65 to .86). The second factor was saturated by the three needs in general (the three factor loadings ranging from .68 to .78). In addition, there were no cross-loadings higher
than .19. The fact that autobiographical need satisfaction (either
coded or self-rated) and general need satisfaction ratings loaded on
two separate factors suggests that episodic memories and personlevel self-knowledge are distinct sources of information.
A second line of evidence for the above assertion would be to showthat need satisfaction in autobiographical memories is associated withwell-being over and above person-level semantic self-knowledge measures, such as traits and general need satisfaction experience. Correlational results revealed that need satisfaction in memory and all ﬁve
traits were correlated in the expected directions and were all small to
medium in size (rs ranging from .17 to .21). Hierarchical regression
analyses were then conducted, with the ﬁve traits and general needsatisfaction entered at Step 1 and need satisfaction in the autobiographical memory as coded by judges at Step 2. A regression was
conducted for each of the three well-being measures separately. Ageand gender were also controlled for in the analysis at Step 1. Results
revealed that need satisfaction in the autobiographical memory was
associated with all three measures of well-being, over and above age,gender, traits, and general need satisfaction (see Table 3). Results werevirtually the same when using need satisfaction in memories as rated by
the participants in the regression. These results further suggest that
autobiographical memories capture and reﬂect an important processwith respect to people’s well-being that is distinct from person-level
semantic self-knowledge.
STUDY 2

In Study 2, we sought to replicate the main results of Study 1 while
controlling for a number of self-rated memory components that havebeen examined in past research. These memory components included

922

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

Table 3
Study 1: Hierarchical Regression Analyses of Age, Gender, Traits,
General Need Satisfaction, and Need Satisfaction in Memories on
Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being and Psychological Adjustment
Hedonic
Well-Being
Step 1: Age.01
Gender.01
Extraversion.04
Agreeableness.09
Neuroticism.25nn
Openness.03
Conscientiousness.11n
General need satisfaction.52nn
nn
Step 2: Need satisfaction coded .22 (.16nn).47
Total R2
.042 (.021)
R 2change due to need satisfaction

Eudaimonic PsychologicalWell-Being Adjustment
.04
.03
.15n
.03
.07
.07
.20nn
.37nn
n
.12 (.16nn).31.012 (.021)

.09
.05
.07
.10n
.39nn
.01
.08
.43nn
nn
.16 (.16nn).50.021 (.021)

Note. N 5 244. The numbers in parentheses are the results for need satisfaction
as rated by the participants.
npo.05. nnpo.01.

how much a memory has been shared with others (e.g., Bluck, Alea,
Habermas, & Rubin, 2005), its level of thought rehearsal (Alea &Bluck, 2007), its vividness (Pillemer, 2003), and personal signiﬁcance(Alea & Bluck, 2007). Valence of the autobiographical memory was
also measured. Other research has also looked at the types of explicit
motive (in contrast to implicit motives) included in a memory, suchas achievement, intimacy, and power (i.e., the extent to which people
consciously sought this speciﬁc type of goal during a past event; see
Sutin & Robins, 2008). As in Study 1, it was hypothesized that needsatisfaction in autobiographical memories would be associated withwell-being. It was also expected that need satisfaction would show anincremental predictive value with respect to well-being, above andbeyond the other self-rated memory components presented earlier.
Finally, it was also predicted that need satisfaction in autobiographical memories would again be associated with well-being over andabove traits and general need satisfaction. However, in Study 2, weused the full versions of the Big Five traits and the general needsatisfaction measures in order to ensure that all the variance was
accounted for by these measures.

Need Satisfaction and Memories

923

MethodParticipants and Procedures
A total of 309 undergraduate and graduate students (235 women, 74 men)from a Canadian university took part in this study. Mean age was 25.91
years (SD 5 6.24 years; range 5 18–56 years). Procedures in Study 2 wereidentical to those presented in Study 1.
Measures
Personality traits. The Big Five Inventory ( John & Srivastava, 1999) wasused to assess the ﬁve common traits of personality. This well-validated
measure requires participants to rate on a 5-point scale the extent to which
each of 44 items describes their own personality. In this study, Cronbach’s
alpha coefﬁcients were .77 and above for each of the ﬁve traits.
General need satisfaction. The Basic Psychological Needs Scale (Gagné,
2003; Ilardi et al., 1993) was used to assess participants’ general needsatisfaction. A total of 21 items (1 5 not true at all, 7 5 deﬁnitely true)
assess autonomy, competence, and relatedness (a 5 .76).
Well-being. The same well-being measures used in Study 1 were again
used in Study 2. However, because results in Study 1 were the same for eachwell-being measure taken separately, we averaged all three well-being measures in an index. The Cronbach’s alpha coefﬁcient for this index was .81.
Autobiographical memory. As in Study 1, participants were asked todescribe a self-deﬁning memory. Participants also rated a number of single items related to various memory components, such as vividness (‘‘The
memory I have for this event is vivid (or clear in my mind) and detailed’’),signiﬁcance (‘‘This memory is signiﬁcant/important for me’’), rehearsal(‘‘I frequently think about this memory’’), and sharing with others (‘‘Ifrequently talk about or share this memory with others’’). These items
were drawn from the Memory Quality Questionnaire (Alea & Bluck,2007) and were slightly adapted to ﬁt our Likert scale. Participants also
rated the extent to which they had motives of achievement (‘‘to do something well or to excel at something’’), power (‘‘to exert power or control
over others’’), or intimacy (‘‘to feel close or intimate with others’’) during
the experience or event described in their memory. These items were takenfrom Sutin and Robins (2008). Participants also rated the valence of theirmemory ( 3 5 very negative, 13 5 very positive). As in Study 1, participants also rated their psychological need satisfaction. However, in order
to be able to make fair comparisons among need satisfaction and all other924

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

single-item memory components, each need was assessed with only one
item (one item assessing autonomy, one item for competence, and one
item for relatedness). Speciﬁcally, the item of each need with the highest
factor loading in the CFA presented in Study 1 was retained. The participants thus rated all these items on a 3 to 13 Likert scale.

Results and Discussion

Need Satisfaction and Well-Being
As in Study 1, all three needs were highly correlated with each other(rs 5 .55 to .74), and a PCA extracted only one factor, accounting for
76% of the variance and factor loadings between .82 and .91. All
three needs were thus averaged together. Table 4 shows that needsatisfaction was moderately positively correlated with well-being.
Need satisfaction was also only weakly correlated with all othermemory components, except for signiﬁcance and valence. While thecorrelation with signiﬁcance was small to moderate (r 5 .25), the one
with valence was much higher (r 5 .75). This correlation was expected since the emotional response to an event is tightly related to
the need satisfaction experience (see Sheldon et al., 2001). This is also
particularly the case with positive memories (but see Study 3). Finally, the other memory components showed small to moderate correlations with well-being.
Incremental Validity of Need Satisfaction
A hierarchical regression was conducted to examine the incremental
predictive value of need satisfaction with respect to well-being, over
and above all other memory components. The three motives wereentered at Step 1; followed by memory signiﬁcance, vividness, rehearsal, and sharing at Step 2; valence at Step 3; and need satisfaction at Step 4. At Step 1, achievement was signiﬁcantly related towell-being (b 5 .19, po.01), as well as power (b 5 .15, po.05). At
Step 2, signiﬁcance (b 5 .16, po.05), rehearsal (b 5 .17, po.05),
and sharing (b 5 .12, po.05) were signiﬁcant. Valence at Step 3(b 5 .31, po.01) and need satisfaction at Step 4 (b 5 .32, po.01)
were also signiﬁcantly associated with well-being. Thus, need satisfaction signiﬁcantly contributed to the prediction of well-being, over
and above all other memory components entered in Steps 1–3,
Fchange(1, 300) 5 16.70, R2change 5 .043, po.01.

Note. N 5 309. rs4.11, po.05.

Need satisfaction (1)Achievement (2)Power (3)Intimacy (4)Vividness (5)Signiﬁcance (6)Rehearsal (7)Sharing (8)Valence (9)Extraversion (10)Agreeableness (11)Conscientiousness (12)Neuroticism (13)Openness (14)General need satisfaction(15)
Well-being

1.84
1.86
1.79
1.98
1.06
0.97
1.06
1.95
2.37
0.83
0.63
0.64
0.86
0.58
0.65
0.73

0.00

SD

1.20
1.25
1.39
0.43
2.41
2.54
2.39
1.25
1.13
3.37
3.87
3.78
2.94
3.86
5.15

Mean

.44

—
.16
.14
.14
.13
.26
.03
.12
.75
.15
.19
.19
.29
.18
.33

1

.19

—
.09
.14
.04
.07
.03
.02
.19
.04
.06
.04
.10
.05
.09

2

.12

—
.12
.07
.07
.01
.00
.15
.03
.19
.11
.05
.09
.10

3

5

.09 .08—.09 —.17 .42.14 .50.14 .26.15 .04.05 .15.03 .10.03 .12.06 .03.16 .07.11 .12

4

.17

—
.44
.26
.23
.12
.12
.22
.02
.20
.24

6

.01

—
.38
.07
.01
.04
.07
.13
.07
.06

7

.12

—
.06
.15
.11
.13
.03
.03
.14

8

.38

—
.16
.13
.18
.25
.12
.31

9

Table 4
Study 2: Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations

.37

—
.11
.15
.12
.17
.45

10

.39

—
.29
.33
.18
.43

11

.44

—
.27
.03
.40

12

14 15

.57 .19 .75—.03 —.42 .25 —

13

926

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

Autobiographical Memories and Semantic Self-Knowledge
The contribution of need satisfaction to well-being over and above
person-level self-knowledge measures such as traits and general needsatisfaction was examined within a hierarchical regression. All ﬁve
traits were entered at Step 1 along with general need satisfaction,age, and gender. At Step 2, need satisfaction in the memory wasentered. Results revealed that even when traits, general need satisfaction, age, and gender were taken into account, need satisfaction in
the memory was still signiﬁcantly associated with well-being (b 5 .15,
po.001), along with Conscientiousness (b 5 .14, po.001), Neuroticism (b 5 .27, po.001), age (b 5 .07, po.05), and general needsatisfaction (b 5 .49, po.001). Need satisfaction in the memory
accounted for a signiﬁcant portion of the variance, Fchange(1, 300) 5
19.38, R2change 5 .02, po.01, over and above traits, general needsatisfaction, age, and gender. These results replicate those of Study 1,
this time using the full assessment versions of personality traits andgeneral need satisfaction.
STUDY 3

Study 2 showed that need satisfaction and valence were strongly
correlated (r 5 .75). Even if need satisfaction predicted well-being
over and above valence in Study 2, their high correlation raises someconcerns about the differentiation between need satisfaction andvalence. One issue with Study 2 is that when asked to report a selfdeﬁning memory, people usually report a positive one, thus confounding need satisfaction with the positive valence of the majorityof the reported memories. To address this issue, in Study 3, we asked
participants to report a negative self-deﬁning memory. Although we
expected that there would be a lower level of need satisfaction in
negative memories compared to positive memories, need satisfaction
in negative events should still correlate with well-being. For example,
even in an interpersonal conﬂict, people may feel autonomy in thesense that they could have freely expressed who they truly are and set
their limits. People may also feel relatedness through being supported by another person after having failed at an important task.
Finally, certain negative events may be more need thwarting thanothers; a negative event thwarting only one of the three needs shouldbe less detrimental for the person’s well-being than an event thwart-Need Satisfaction and Memories

927

ing all three needs. Thus, we expected that need satisfaction, even inmemories for negative events, would be variable and positively associated with well-being. Showing that need satisfaction in negative
memories is predictive of well-being would be further evidence thatneed satisfaction can be distinguished from the valence of an autobiographical memory.
In Study 3, we examined again the incremental predictive value ofneed satisfaction over two memory components yet unexamined in
the present research: the age of the memory and the perspective of
the memory. However, we also wanted to explore whether thesememory components would interact with need satisfaction. First,
there is a common belief that older memories may have a more profound effect with respect to people’s well-being and life than more
recent memories. However, it is unclear whether this effect would
affect need satisfaction. Thus, we wanted to examine the relationshipbetween need satisfaction and age of the memory and whether it
would alter the relationship between need satisfaction in memory
and well-being. Second, some research has shown that the visualperspective that people take to retell a memory matters with respect
to their self, whether they adopt a ﬁrst- or a third-person perspective(Libby & Eibach, 2002). In a ﬁrst-person memory, people ‘‘see’’ theevent from the same visual perspective that they originally did. In
their memory, they are looking out at the surroundings through theirown eyes. A third-person perspective occurs when people ‘‘see’’ theevent of their memory from an observer’s visual perspective, suchthat in their memory, they can actually see themselves as well as thesurroundings. Research has shown that people report seeing a memory from a third-person perspective when there is a mismatch between their memory and their actual self-concept (Libby & Eibach,2002). Therefore, it is plausible that memories from a ﬁrst- or a thirdperson perspective may inﬂuence differently the relationship between
need satisfaction and well-being. Additionally, we examined the roleof valence in a negative autobiographical memory.
Finally, we also intended to show this association between needsatisfaction in negative memories and well-being while controllingfor self-determined personality orientation. In Studies 1 and 2, we
controlled for the Big Five traits as semantic self-knowledge structures. However, these traits have not been frequently implicated inmotivation per se. Self-determination theory suggests that need satisfaction fuels self-determined motivation in general, which can be928

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

measured by assessing people’s general self-determined orientation(Deci & Ryan, 1985; Pelletier & Dion, 2007). Therefore, we expected
to show that need satisfaction in memories would be associated withwell-being, over and above a self-determined personality orientation,
since this measure corresponds to a person-level self-knowledge.
MethodParticipants and Procedures
A total of 159 undergraduate students (81 women, 78 men) from a Canadianuniversity took part in this study. Mean age was 19.67 years (SD 5 2.89
years). Procedures were the same as those presented in Studies 1 and 2.
Measures
Self-determined orientation. Participants’ self-determined orientation wasmeasured using the Global Motivation Scale (GMS; Pelletier & Dion,2007). This scale is composed of 18 items measuring six types of internalization process (types of regulation)—that is, intrinsic motivation, integrated regulation, identiﬁed regulation, introjected regulation, external
regulation, and absence of regulation or amotivation—with three items
each (e.g., ‘‘In general, I do things . . . for the pleasure of learning somethingnew’’). A continuum-index of self-determination was computed by attributing a different weight to each subscale (see Pelletier & Dion, 2007).
Well-being. The same well-being measures used in Studies 1 and 2 wereagain used in Study 3. As in Study 2, all well-being measures were averaged
in an index. The Cronbach’s alpha coefﬁcient for this index was .81.
Autobiographical memory. The same instructions used in Studies 1 and 2
were again used in Study 3, with the exception that participants were
speciﬁcally asked to describe a negative self-deﬁning memory. Participants also rated the valence of their memory, the perspective they had
with respect to their memory as being either a ﬁrst- or third-person perspective (instructions were taken from Libby & Eibach, 2002), their needsatisfaction levels, and indicated in years how old their memory was.

Results and Discussion

Need Satisfaction and Well-Being
Again, all three needs were correlated with each other (rs ranging
from .36 to 53, pso.001), and all converged on a single factor

Need Satisfaction and Memories

929

within a PCA, accounting for 64.19% of the variance and with factor
loadings ranging from .76 to .86. Table 5 reports means, standard
deviations, data range, and correlations among all study variables.
Correlational results revealed that need satisfaction was positively
associated with well-being, but unrelated to self-determined orientation. Also, need satisfaction was correlated with valence to a much
lower extent compared to Study 2, thus indicating that valence andneed satisfaction mostly correlate when the memory is positive invalence. Interestingly, valence was unrelated to well-being. Finally,need satisfaction was negatively associated with the age of the memory and unrelated to the perspective taken (ﬁrst or third person) withrespect to the memory.

Incremental Validity of Need Satisfaction
A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted with, entered at
Step 1, the valence and the age of the memory and the person’s
perspective with respect to the memory (0 5 ﬁrst person; 1 5 third
person). At Step 2, participants’ age, gender (0 5 female; 1 5 male),and self-determined orientation were entered, whereas at Step 3,
need satisfaction was entered. Results revealed that at Step 3, theonly signiﬁcant predictors of well-being were the self-determinedorientation (b 5 .51, po.01), gender (b 5 .21, po.01), and need satisfaction (b 5 .33, po.01), with need satisfaction predicting 8.9% of
the variance of well-being, over and above the other memory components and self-determined orientation, Fchange(1, 152) 5 23.42,
po.01. Interaction terms were also computed between need satisfaction and the age of the memory or the perspective of the memory.
All interactions were nonsigniﬁcant. Taken together, these results
suggest that need satisfaction in negative autobiographical memories
is also associated with well-being. Results also showed that controlling for the age of the memory, its valence, the perspective takenwith respect to this memory, and people’s self-determined orientation did not affect this association. This latter ﬁnding is noteworthy because self-determined orientation was strongly associated withwell-being but need satisfaction in memories was unrelated toself-determined orientation. This result further underscores thedifference between autobiographical memories and person-levelself-knowledge structures.

0.66
2.38
0.57
4.98
5.63
0.00

1.33
0.78
0.50
4.66
3.96
0.79

SD
3 to 13
3 to 00 and 1
1 to 20
8.67 to 15.17
2.68 to 1.41

Data Range
—
.32nn
.11
.17n
.02
.32nn

1
—
.08
.06
.01
.11

2

—
.11
.07
.08

3

—
.05
.09

4

—
.50nn

5

Note. N 5 159.
aOverall, 91 participants reported seeing their memory from a ﬁrst-person perspective, whereas 68 reported seeing it from a third-person
perspective.
npo.05. nnpo.01.

Memory need satisfaction (1)Memory valence (2)Memory perspectivea (3)Age of the memory (4)Self-determined orientation (5)Well-being (6)Mean

Table 5
Study 3: Means, Standard Deviations, Data Range, and Correlations

Need Satisfaction and Memories

931

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The present research showed that need satisfaction characterizing
positive and negative autobiographical memories constitutes a distinct and core memory component that is correlated with well-being.
The present research provided empirical evidence that need satisfaction is distinct from a number of other memory components andpossesses a moderately strong association with various well-being
measures. In addition, need satisfaction was shown to relate to wellbeing above and beyond person-level measures, such as traits, general need satisfaction, and self-determined orientation. A number ofcentral ﬁndings and contributions to the literature that can be derived from the present research are underscored below.
Coded and Self-Rated Need Satisfaction in Autobiographical
Memories and Well-Being

The present research sought to develop a coding scheme to measureneed satisfaction in memories in line with self-determination theory’s
deﬁnitions of the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
In addition, on the basis of past research (Reis et al., 2000; Ryan etal., 2006; Sheldon et al., 2001), a self-rating method was developed toassess these needs in memories. As expected by self-determination
theory, satisfaction of these three needs was correlated with eachother and loaded on the same factor in a factor analysis. Speciﬁcally,
they were found to be distinct from each other in a ﬁrst-order conﬁrmatory factor analysis but to converge within a second-order factor. Another important ﬁnding was that need satisfaction as codedby judges and as rated by the participants themselves were highly
correlated. In addition, need satisfaction coded by the judges andrated by the participants was found to be associated with the various
well-being measures at virtually the same strength. Furthermore, allthree needs, both coded and self-rated by participants, loaded on thesame factor in a factor analysis and coded need satisfaction did notpredict well-being measures above self-rated need satisfaction in
Study 1. These results highlight that people are capable of accurately
reporting the level of need satisfaction they experienced in past
events. This ﬁnding is methodologically important, since memory
coding consumes a lot of time and resources. That objective coding
and self-rating methods lead to the same results provides evidence
that memory coding may be replaced with appropriate self-ratings

932

Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

when need satisfaction is measured. Finally, the present researchshows that it is possible to collect valid autobiographical narratives
using online studies.
Why Does Need Satisfaction in Memories Predict Well-Being?

People frequently use their memories of past events to guide theirchoices, attitudes, and actions in life (Pillemer, 2003). Autobiographical memories thus become an important source of information forthe self, dictating whether certain situations should be approached or
avoided and how. Self-deﬁning memories are certainly one type of
autobiographical memories that are frequently used to this effect andthat consequently can have an important effect in people’s life. It was
thus expected that the cognitive-affective component of these selfdeﬁning memories in terms of need satisfaction or need thwarting
would have an important effect on people’s well-being. Indeed, selfdeﬁning memories characterized by need satisfaction and used to
guide one’s actions in life should frequently signal possibilities forpsychological growth and the opportunity to build and expand theself (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Hodgins & Knee, 2002), which over timeshould promote well-being. Conversely, self-deﬁning memories characterized by need thwarting should frequently signal a potential
threat to the self and to the innate psychological growth goal andshould lead to self-closure and strategies that seek to protect the self
(Deci & Ryan, 2000; Hodgins & Knee, 2002), which over time should
negatively affect people’s well-being. Although the correlational designs of the present research do not allow us to speciﬁcally address
the mechanism through which need satisfaction in memories affects
people’s well-being, we believe that the above process merits investigation in future research.
Incremental Validity of Need Satisfaction

Our results generally replicated past research on memory components and well-being. In Study 1, intrinsic memories were found tobe associated with hedonic well-being and not with eudaimonic wellbeing, whereas the reverse ﬁnding was found for integrative memories, thus replicating Bauer and colleagues (2005). Redemption andcontamination sequences (McAdams et al., 2001), closure (Kinget al., 2000), and achievement and intimacy motives (e.g., Bauer &McAdams, 2004) were also found to correlate with well-being

Need Satisfaction and Memories

933

measures in line with what past research has found. In Study 2, explicit motives of achievement and power in memories (Sutin & Robins, 2008) were found to be associated with well-being, as well as
signiﬁcance, rehearsal (Alea & Bluck, 2007), sharing (Pasupathi,
2003), and valence (Philippe, Lecours, & Beaulieu-Pelletier, 2009;
Sutin & Robins, 2005).
One of the most important ﬁndings of the present researchshowed that need satisfaction was associated with well-being, over
and above all these other memory components. In addition, this association was shown for both positive and negative memories. Although need satisfaction and these other memory components weredifferentiated on theoretical bases in the introduction, the present
research provides empirical support for their difference. Overall, it
would appear that need satisfaction corresponds to the cognitiveaffective component associated with an autobiographical memory
and that it is different from other narrative, qualitative, and functional measures of autobiographical memories.
Autobiographical Memories and Self-Knowledge Structures

Recently, there has been evidence that autobiographical memories
and self-knowledge structures were not part of the same system andthat both may function relatively independently of each other.
Research has also shown that some memory components or themes,such as integrative memories, were associated with well-being, evenafter controlling for common personality traits (e.g., Bauer et al.,2005). Similar evidence was found with respect to need satisfaction in
the present research. It was shown that need satisfaction in memories
remained associated with well-being, even after controlling for personality traits (Studies 1 and 2) and self-determined orientation(Study 3). More strikingly, the present research results also showedthat need satisfaction in memories (self-rated or coded by judges)
and judgments of need satisfaction experienced in life in general
constituted two different factors, overlapping only minimally.
Results also showed that need satisfaction in memories was still signiﬁcantly associated with well-being, once need satisfaction in general was taken into account. Taken together, these ﬁndings illustratethat need satisfaction in a speciﬁc memory and need satisfaction
judged from one’s general life experience constitute two different
levels and that both are distinctively associated with well-being. It

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Philippe, Koestner, Beaulieu-Pelletier, et al.

would thus appear that the information contained in autobiographical memories is not the same as the information contained in semantic self-knowledge structures and obtained through traditional
person-level questionnaire measures. Future research is needed tofurther examine this issue, using outcomes other than well-being.

Limitations

The present research was characterized by some limitations that need
to be mentioned. First, only memories from North American students were collected. Although research on need satisfaction within
the ﬁeld of self-determination theory has provided some evidence
that all three needs are important across contexts and cultures (e.g.,
Sheldon et al., 2001), future research will be needed to make thisdemonstration with respect to need satisfaction in memories. Second, it is necessary to extend the present research and show that needsatisfaction in memories can be associated with outcomes other thanwell-being. We encourage researchers to pursue this research avenue
to further develop studies on the role of autobiographical memories
in people’s speciﬁc life spheres. A third limitation is that we only
examined self-deﬁning memories. However, one of the advantages of
the need satisfaction perspective appears to be its broad applicability
such that all types of memories from all contexts can be assessed. For
example, past research has focused on key memories such as turning
points or life transition–related memories to code critical themes inpeople’s narratives, such as markers of personal growth. Althoughneed satisfaction can be assessed from these types of special memories, it can also be assessed from more mundane memories, andthere is a need to study the role of everyday episodic memories. Future research will be needed to provide evidence of a broader applicability.
In sum, the present research offers some evidence that need satisfaction is a core psychological component of autobiographicalmemories and a distinct one from several other memory components
identiﬁed in past research. The present research contributes to theliterature by providing both a coding scheme and a self-rating
method for need satisfaction in memories. Both measures appeared
to be associated with well-being, and this result held after controllingfor a number of other memory components and self-knowledge

Need Satisfaction and Memories

935

measures. The study of need satisfaction in episodic and autobiographical memories thus appears as a fruitful research avenue.

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