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Method

Participants

A total of 888 second year psychology students participated voluntarily in the study as

part of a tutorial exercise, of which 675 (76%) identified as female, 213(24%) identified as

male, and 746 (84%) indicated an identification beside the gender binary. Participants’ age

ranged from 18 to 28years old (M = 20; SD = 1.7 years), with age not reported or treated as

missing in 142 cases.

The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.67 which is relatively acceptable

Procedure

During their first tutorial class, students were informed that their participation was

voluntary and were verbally briefed about the elements of the questionnaire by their tutor. At

the end of the tutorial class, participants were given a link to the online self-report survey.

Upon commencement of the survey, participants filled out basic demographic information.

The survey then presented the basic psychological needs measures followed by the

personality measures. Completing the survey was expected to take no more than 10 minutes.

Materials

Basic Psychological Needs

The Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs (BMPN) scale was used to assess

participants’ satisfaction of basic psychological needs. This measure was developed by

Sheldon and Hilpert (2012) and consisted of three subscales measuring Relatedness (e.g., “I

felt close and connected with other people who are important to me.”), Competence (e.g., “I

took on and mastered hard challenges.”) and Autonomy (e.g., “I was really doing what

interests me.”). Each subscale consisted of six items, asking participants to indicate how true

each statement was to them over the past six months on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly

disagree, 5 = strongly agree). For each subscale, items were recoded and averaged to create
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composite scores, such that higher scores indicated higher levels of need satisfaction. For the

purpose of this study, I focused on the following subscales: __ (α = __).

Personality

Personality was assessed using the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2; Soto & John, 2017).

The BFI-2 assessed the Big Five 5 domain-level personality dimensions of Extraversion (e.g.

“I am someone who is outgoing, sociable.”), Agreeableness (e.g. “I am someone who has a

forgiving nature.”), Conscientiousness (e.g. “I am someone who is dependable, steady.”),

Negative Emotionality (e.g. “I am someone who can be tense.”) and Open-Mindedness (e.g.

“I am someone who values art and beauty.”) with 12 items for each subscale. Participants

were asked to indicate their agreement to statements characterizing them in terms of each trait

on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). For each personality trait, items

were recoded and averaged to create composite scores, such that higher scores indicated a

higher level of the trait. For the purpose of this study, I focused on the following domain-

level subscales: __ (α = __).

Sheldon, K.M., & Hilpert, J.C. (2012). The balanced measure of psychological needs

(BMPN) scale: An alternative domain general measure of need satisfaction.

Motivation and Emotion, 36(4), 439–451. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-012-9279-4

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and

assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and

predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117–143.

https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096