The relationship between affect, anxiety, depression and basic psychological needs in the workplace

The workplace is an environment that is capable of emotionally affecting the individual and potentially causing psychological distress. It is known via previous research conducted in the workplace, that anxiety and depression are among the important problems that the individual may face in a working environment. It has also been documented by recent research that positive and negative affect, as personality traits, can be related to variables such as job satisfaction and stress. Based on the previous research, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between affect, anxiety, depression and the satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs tied to the Self-Determination Theory, a different approach on motivation and emotional well-being. Participants consisted of 246 individuals aged between 18-67, who were either employed at the time or have been employed in the past. All participants filled out a demographics form, the Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), and the Turkish form of Job-related Affective Well-being Scale (JAWS). The results indicate that the needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness are strongly and significantly related to affect, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, it was found that the basic psychological needs significantly predicted positive and negative affect. Competence accounted for 11%, autonomy for 8% and relatedness for 9% of total variance in negative affect, whereas for positive affect, these rates were 25%, 13% and 16% respectively. Results are discussed and compared according to the related literature and ideas for future research are presented.