Motivation and emotion/Book/2026/Need to love and be loved

Need to love and be loved:
How does the desire to give and receive love influence motivation?

Overview

Understanding love in pop culture

Do you ever wonder how the media portrays love-driven behaviours?

Filmmakers and game developers intentionally create love-driven character stories as it floods our brain with oxytocin (the "bonding and empathy" hormone). In turn, this hormone enhances our viewing experience, making films and video games much more memorable (Zak, 2015).

In the 2026 psychological horror film the Backrooms [Use an internal link as shown in Tutorial 2], the deuteragonist, Mary, investigates the disappearance of her patient, Clark. She visits his workplace, Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire, and unknowingly stumbles across the backrooms of the establishment. Mary's decision to search for Clark requires considerable risk and effort. Her behaviour raises the question of a person might pursue another person's wellbeing, even when doing so conflicts with their own safety. A more positive example of giving and receiving love is portrayed in the popular 2013 video game The Last of Us. The game centres around a hardened smuggler named Joel who must escort a teenage girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States. As they spend more time together, their relationships develops into a close emotional bond resembling that of a parent and child.

The Overview section should provide:

Scenario: (see above) ✅
Explanation of the problem, issue, or topic: Briefly explain the problem, why it is important, and outline how psychological science can help ✅
- Motivation: First, explain the importance of motivation and how it is a psychological process that influences direction, intensity, and the persistence of a behaviour.
- Love and Belonging: Follow with introducing the concepts of love and belonging. Love and belonging is needs involving affection, acceptance, and connection. Love is not limited to romantic relationships (THIS WILL BE EMPHASISED).
- Interpersonal Connection: This term can bridge the above concepts to the theories. The need for meaningful connection is considered in several psychological perspectives: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Self-determination theory, and Attachment theory.
- Outline the aim of the chapter; (i.e. this chapter develops the readers[grammar?] understanding of the desire to give and receive love, and how motivation plays an important role in influencing said behaviours. This chapter will draw on a breath of psychological research, including key concepts and terms, and draw upon different psychological theories related to understanding love. This is to provide the reader a comprehensive but applicable direction for knowledge.

DRAFT OVERVIEW:

Love is a complex interpersonal experience that can influence how people think, feel, and behave. In psychology, motivation refers to the processes that give behaviour direction, intensity, and persistence. The desire to love and be loved can therefore be understood as a source of motivation. Motivation can influence people to initiate and invest in meaningful relationships. Love and belonging involve the desire for affection and acceptance, while interpersonal connection refers to the emotional and social bonds people develop with others.

Several psychological theories provide different perspectives for understanding this relationship between love and motivation. Maslow's hierarchy of needs conceptualises love and belonging as fundamental humans needs, while basic psychological needs theory identifies relatedness, or feeling connected to and cared for by others, as a fundamental psychological need. Attachment theory provides another framework for understanding how close emotional bonds can influence behaviour. Particularly, caregiving and responses to separation or threat.

Recommended length: 180-330 words.

Focus questions: Unpack the sub-title into focus questions in a feature box (see below) ✅

Focus questions

[Use bullet points as shown in Tutorial 2]

1. Why is the need to love and be loved considered an important source of human motivation?

2. How do psychological theories explain the motivation to form and maintain meaningful relationships?

3. How does the desire to give and receive love influence behaviours such as affiliation, caregiving, and prosocial behaviour?

4. When can the motivation to obtain love and belonging conflict with other psychological needs or become maladaptive?

1. Love and Belonging as Human Motivation

[Provide more detail]

1.1 The Need to Belong

Love and interpersonal relationships can influence motivation by directing people towards social connection. In other words, forming and maintaining relationships. Humans do not simply interact with others because social interaction is available. Baumeister and Leary (1995)'s Theory of Belonging reviewed evidence supporting the belongingness hypothesis and concluded that people have a pervasive desire to form social attachments.

People readily develop relationships with others, including under adverse circumstances, and tend to resist the loss or dissolution of existing social bonds even when maintaining them provides no obvious practical benefit. This suggests that interpersonal relationships can function as motivation goals in their own right rather than simply serving other purposes. The importance of belonging can be seen in the psychological consequences associated with social connection and disconnection. Rather than being simply a preference for social interaction, belongingness can influence emotional and cognitive processes. This explains why people may invest considerable time and effort into developing and maintaining relationships. The desire for connection can also become particularly influential when an individual's relationship is perceived as a threat or when dependence on another person becomes excessive. For example, Guan et al., (2015) examined 80 couples longitudinally and found that love addiction was positively associated with emotional dependence and negatively associated with attachment avoidance. Their findings suggest that the motivation to maintain close romantic relationships can interact with attachment patterns and interpersonal dependence.

1.2 Love, Connection, And Relatedness

Belongingness refers to the human emotion to be accepted as a member of a group. Whether family, friends, co-workers, a religion, or something else. People have an inherent desire to belong.

Love can therefore be one way through which the broader need for interpersonal connection is experienced and expressed. Qadir et al., (2026) explored occupational therapists' experiences of belongingness within interprofessional clinical environments and found colleagues and patients contributed to participants' sense of belonging. Conversely, organisational barriers, discrimination and difficulties establishing a professional identity could undermine this sense of connection. The study also illustrates how belongingness and motivation can reinforce one another. Participants identified achievement, professional development and appreciation from others as important sources of motivation, while supportive and welcoming interactions contributed to their sense of belonging. This suggests that interpersonal environments can both motivate individuals to participate and develop the social acceptance that contributes to belongingness.

Think About It: What's On Your Phone Lock Screen?

Imagine you could only have one person on your phone's lock screen for the next year. Who would you choose, and why them?

A lock screen is a practical feature of a phone, yet the image we choose to display can carry considerable emotional meaning. People may choose photographs of partners, family members, friends, or other significant individuals, turning an everyday object into a reminder of an important relationship. Conroy and Fraley (2026) investigated whether photographs of romantic partners could function as everyday attachment-related cues. Their findings suggested that lock screens are embedded with psychological processes involved in close relationships. Simply put, people like having photos of their partners.

2. Theories Explaining Love

[Provide more detail]

2.1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow (1943) proposed that human motivation is influenced by a hierarchy of needs. Beginning with physiological needs and safety, then love and belonging, and finally esteem and self-actualisation. Within this framework, love and belonging involve the desire for affection and acceptance. When these needs are insufficiently satisfied, individuals may become motivated to seek relationships and social connection.

2.2 Self-Determination Theory

People are centrally concerned with motivation, how to move themselves or others to act (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

3. How Love Influences Motivated Behaviour

What does this motivation actually make people do?

Conclusion

Draw back to the Overview; discuss the terms, and how those concepts link to the theories discussed.
Love and interpersonal relationships can influence motivation by directing people towards social connections.
Belongingness can influence emotional and cognitive processes, explaining why individuals invest time and effort in maintaining their relationships despite interfering with other life goals.
Draw on the comparison between Maslow's theory, self-determination theory, and attachment theory.
Potentially answer the focus questions, or at least, reference them once more here.
Recommended length: 150 to 330 words

References

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497

Conroy, K. E., & Fraley, R. C. (2026). Security priming in everyday life: How do symbols of close others support attachment in adulthood? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 130(6), 1229-1247. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000590

Guan, C., Wang, J., Zhang, L. et al. (2025). A longitudinal network of the relationship between love addiction, insecure attachment patterns, and interpersonal dependence. BMC Psychol 13, 330. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02605-3

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-79. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.68

Qadir, N. A., & Sethi, A. (2026). Factors affecting belongingness of Occupational Therapists in an Interprofessional Clinical Environment. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 42(5), 1100-1104. https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.42.5.13539

Zak, P. J (2015). Why inspiring stories make us react: the neuroscience of narrative. Cerebrum: the Dana forum on brain science, 2015, 2.

External links

Love: The Greatest Motivation to Change (unitiedfamilies.org)
The Key to Writing Criminally Good Relationships | Video Essay (YouTube)
You're My Best Friend - Queen (Spotify)