ABSTRACT
The Need for Uniqueness (NfU) reflects an individual’s desire to feel special and distinct from others. The feeling of uniqueness is essential to an individual’s self-concept and is a defining force in the promotion of psychological processes like divergent thinking, feeling, and acting. According to the Uniqueness Theory (Snyder & Fromkin, 1980), individuals pursue a balance between two fundamental needs: the need to belong and the need to be different. As high levels of either similarity or dissimilarity are perceived as unpleasant, individuals seek to be moderately distinct from others. The subjectively optimal degree of uniqueness versus similarity varies as a personality trait between individuals (Fromkin, 1972). However, the NfU is not only conceptualised as an inter-individual different personality trait but also as a temporary motivation and is influenced by social environments and situational factors. Also, cross-cultural studies have found systematic differences between cultural groups in the strength of individuals’ NfU: people in individualistic cultures have been found to have a greater tendency to pursue uniqueness than people from collectivistic cultures (e.g., Kim & Markus, 1999). Two scales are mostly used to measure the NfU as an inter-individual disposition: the Need for Uniqueness Scale (Snyder & Fromkin, 1977; Lalot et al., 2019; Schumpe et al., 2016) focuses on public expressions of uniqueness, whereas the Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (Lalot et al., 2019; Lynn & Harris, 1997) assesses private self-representations of uniqueness. Various studies have shown that NfU is a relevant predictor of several differences in behaviour, e.g., creativity (Dollinger, 2003), risk-taking (Schumpe et al., 2016), identification with minority groups (Brewer, 1991), or resistance to majority influence (Imhoff & Erb, 2009). Some of these behaviours are closely related to factors that promote nonconformity, innovation, and consequently social change.
