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LIT-2000: Basic psychological need satisfaction, need frustration, and need strength across four cultures

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StatusActive — read in full 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1527), from the publisher's typeset copy in the ULB repository DI-fusion; worth reading as the source of the BPNSFS, the standard need-frustration scale, and for its test that need satisfaction helps regardless of how much a person values or desires the need. Its satisfaction/frustration split coincides with item direction by construction.
Version2
Tagsmotivation, well-being
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1527 — Chen et al. — Need satisfaction, frustration and strength across four cultures
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1308 — In Chen et al.'s student samples from Belgium, China, the USA and Peru, need satisfaction related to life satisfaction and vitality and need frustration to depressive symptoms with no detectable difference across countries, and neither relation was moderated by how much a person valued or desired the need, THEORY-1338 — In the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale as Chen et al. built it, the distinction between satisfaction and frustration coincides with item direction: every satisfaction item states a positive experience and every frustration item an aversive one, so the better fit of six factors over three, which is the scale's evidence that frustration is a separate dimension, is also what a keying or valence factor would produce

Graph View

Chen, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Beyers, W., Boone, L., Deci, E. L., Van der Kaap-Deeder, J., et al. (2014). Basic psychological need satisfaction, need frustration, and need strength across four cultures. Motivation and Emotion, 39(2), 216-236. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9450-1.

Key takeaways

Read in full on 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1527). THEORY-1338 (Active) and THEORY-1308 (Proposed) are filed from it.

Standing in the record

Tests need satisfaction and frustration across four cultures; bears on THEORY-052 and on QUESTION-131’s operative frustration. Not NOTE-440’s “Chen et al. 2015b”, which is a different paper.

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