“When we do something that is not in line with our beliefs, we change our beliefs”
When there’s a mismatch between our beliefs and behavior we experience what Leon Festinger calls a ‘cognitive dissonance’. And we have a strong motivational drive to reduce this dissonance.

We can’t change the displayed behavior anymore, but we can change our beliefs and cognitions. In order to reduce dissonance we simply alter our beliefs, which we actually do a lot. There are 3 ways to do so:

We lower the importance of the dissonant elements,
we add new consonant beliefs to create a consistent belief system, or
we …

“We prefer to behave in approval with our social groups”
Belongingness is our innate need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships. More than we are often consciously aware, we want to be part of a peer group, community and society.

Once we feel we belong to a group, we will conform to, and internalize, the groups values and norms. In general, we conform to both injunctive norms of our groups (implied approved behavior by the group), and to descriptive norms (common behavior among group members). We may even behave adversely to groups that we do not want to be …

“We prefer situations that we have control over”
Autonomy is our innate and universal need to be causal agents of our own lives. Our perception of our autonomy influences our behavior. A high level of perceived autonomy comes with feelings of certainty, reduced stress and a high level of ‘intrinsic motivation’. This increases the likelihood of persistent behavior. On the other hand, taking away our autonomy (e.g. by introducing external rewards and deadlines), undermines our intrinsic motivation as we grow less interested in it.

Situations that give autonomy as opposed to taking it away also have a similar link to motivation. …