ABSTRACT
Competence refers to “people's existing capacity to interact effectively with their environment”, whereas a sense of competence describes “the subjective side of actual competence”. Feelings of competence lead to involvement, learning, coping, adaptation, and intrinsic as well as extrinsic activity. The basic life energy of the biological level may be channelled into the service of aggression, conflict, and competence on the psychological level, and these motivations are present, to a greater or lesser degree, in any individual. This chapter concentrates on the measurement of the constructs central to the model. These were the three psychological motivations—aggression, conflict, and competence—and the two social motivations—competition and cooperation. It also describes the theoretical background to and the development of a 10-item scale for competence that has been used for the assessment of motivation in people from youth to old age, and in the study of sports and leisure, university studies, occupation, and adjustment to aging.
