ABSTRACT
The notion of universal human need-states does not enjoy great currency in sociology. Yet, a quick appraisal of existing sociological theories documents that most posit need-states that motivate individuals to behave in certain ways. For symbolic interactionists, it is the need to verify self; for the exchange theorist, it is the need to derive profits in exchange payoffs; for expectation-state theorists, it is the need to meet expectations; for ritual theorists, it is the need to derive positive emotional energy; for ethnomethodologists, it is the need to sustain a sense of a common reality; and so it goes for virtually all micro-level theories. The same can be said for more macro-level theories. For instance, Émile Durkheim (1951 [1897]) posited a human need to feel integrated in the group and to be regulated by cultural norms in order to avoid the pain, respectively, of egoism and anomie; Marx argued that humans have a need to avoid alienation and determine what they produce, how they produce it, and to whom they distribute the results of their labor; and, more recently, Niklas Luhmann (1988) implies a psychological need to reduce complexity, while Anthony Giddens (1984) argues for a need to achieve ontological security. Thus, we do not have to look very hard to see that sociologists theorize need-states for humans and, to some degree, these needs motivate individuals to behave in certain ways and, thereby, channel energies in face-to-face interaction. In turn, this channeling of interpersonal energies can have effects on the formation of culture and social structures, and vice versa.
