The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation

The case that belonging is a drive rather than a preference, assembled from evidence across the whole of psychology.

Baumeister & Leary (1995). Psychological Bulletin 117(3), 497–529. Read it.

Primary reading — read it before the lecture that sets it.

Baumeister and Leary set themselves a high bar: to count as a fundamental motivation, belonging has to produce effects across cognition, emotion, health and behaviour, and it has to be satiable. They then spend thirty pages showing it clears the bar. Two conditions matter for this course — frequent interaction, and a stable framework of ongoing care — because a third place supplies exactly the first and only sometimes the second.

Read it for the two conditions, and for how a review argues. The method here is worth as much to you as the conclusion: they are building a case from other people’s data, which is very close to what you will do in the Place Audit.