Need to Belong scale (NTBS)

Abstract

The Need to Belong Scale (NTBS), developed by Mark R. Leary, Kelly M. Kelly, Catherine A. Cottrell, and Lisa S. Schreindorfer (2001, 2013), is a 10-item self-report psychometric instrument designed to assess individual differences in the strength of the fundamental motivation for interpersonal acceptance and social connection. Rooted in the seminal theoretical framework advanced by Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary (1995), which posits that the drive to establish and maintain enduring, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships is a universal human need, the NTBS operationalizes dispositional variation in this evolutionary imperative. The instrument evaluates the degree to which an individual desires social inclusion, experiences anxiety or distress over potential or actual social exclusion, and expends cognitive and behavioral effort to avoid rejection. Respondents evaluate 10 items—three of which are reverse-scored to mitigate acquiescence response bias—on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). Psychometric investigations consistently demonstrate that the NTBS exhibits sound internal consistency (with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .78 to .87 across diverse collegiate and community populations) and robust test-retest reliability over temporal intervals. While initially conceived as a strictly unidimensional scale, subsequent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have sparked scholarly discourse regarding whether a single general factor or a bifactor structure (differentiating positive desires for acceptance from concerns regarding rejection) best characterizes the instrument’s latent space, though total scores reliably reflect aggregate belongingness motivation. The NTBS demonstrates extensive convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity, correlating predictably with measures of loneliness, self-esteem, rejection sensitivity, affiliation motivation, and neural and behavioral reactions to ostracism.

Keywords

Need to Belong Scale, NTBS, Mark R. Leary, Baumeister and Leary, belongingness motivation, social exclusion, social acceptance, ostracism, rejection sensitivity, sociometer theory, interpersonal attachments, psychometrics

Authors

The Need to Belong Scale was developed and validated by a team of prominent social psychologists:

• Mark R. Leary, Ph.D. — Gallaudet University and Duke University (Department of Psychology and Neuroscience). Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, renowned for his pioneering contributions to sociometer theory, self-presentation, social emotions, and interpersonal dynamics.
• Kelly M. Kelly, Ph.D. — Wake Forest University and affiliated research programs; contributed extensively to the initial empirical operationalization and psychometric validation of the construct.
• Catherine A. Cottrell, Ph.D. — New College of Florida (Division of Social Sciences); specialist in intergroup relations, social emotion, prejudice, and evolutionary social psychology.
• Lisa S. Schreindorfer, Ph.D. — Wake Forest University; co-investigator on the original multi-study program establishing the nomological network and behavioral correlates of the scale.

Purpose

The Need to Belong Scale (NTBS) was constructed to fulfill a vital need in social, personality, and clinical psychology: the quantitative assessment of stable individual differences in the evolutionary drive to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships. In their foundational treatise, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995) proposed that the “need to belong” is not merely a derivative of secondary motivations—such as power, affiliation, or social approval—but is instead a fundamental, phylogenetically conserved human motive. While every human possesses this motivation to some extent, empirical observation reveals substantial variance in how intensely individuals crave social affiliation, how acutely they monitor cues of social inclusion or exclusion, and how vulnerable they are to the psychological and physiological sequelae of interpersonal rejection.

Prior to the introduction of the NTBS, researchers relied on proxy measures, such as the Need for Affiliation (nAff) derived from thematic apperception tests, measures of extraversion, sociability scales, or loneliness inventories. However, these tools conflated the subjective motive for meaningful connection with outward social behavioral patterns, emotional distress, or introversion. The primary purpose of the NTBS is to isolate the motivational strength of belongingness per se. It seeks to delineate:

• The intrinsic desire for social immersion and sustained group or dyadic bonds;
• The affective sensitivity an individual possesses regarding threats to their relational value;
• The regulatory behavioral adaptations individuals employ to preclude social ostracism or marginalization.

In clinical and counseling settings, the NTBS serves as a potent diagnostic and research tool for understanding interpersonal pathologies. Individuals exhibiting disproportionately elevated NTBS scores are at increased risk for clinical rejection sensitivity, social anxiety disorder, dependent personality dynamics, and depressive reactions following interpersonal conflicts. Conversely, abnormally low belongingness needs may signal schizoid detachment, emotional blunting, or defensive dismissing-avoidant attachment styles. In organizational and educational contexts, the NTBS elucidates group cohesion, employee burnout, workplace ostracism vulnerability, and the emotional transitions associated with institutional onboarding.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the NTBS is the belongingness orientation—a dispositional trait reflecting the magnitude of an individual’s desire for social acceptance, their concern over belonging, and their aversion to social isolation. In accordance with the belongingness hypothesis, satisfying the need to belong requires two distinct, non-fungible criteria: (1) frequent, affectively pleasant or neutral interactions with a consistent set of other people, and (2) temporal stability, mutual affective concern, and perceived continuation into the foreseeable future.

Although the NTBS yields a single unidimensional summary score, granular examination of its construct reveals three key experiential facets:

1. Craving for Inclusion and Acceptance

This facet captures the direct, positive desire to be absorbed into social networks, dyads, and communal collectives. Individuals high in this dimension explicitly report wanting others to accept them (e.g., Item 5: “I want other people to accept me”) and report possessing a self-conscious, salient awareness of this motivation (e.g., Item 8: “I have a strong ‘need to belong'”). It reflects the appetitive component of belongingness motivation, driving individuals toward prosocial gestures, group membership, and intimate disclosures.

2. Rejection Avoidance and Social Monitoring

Belongingness does not operate solely as an appetitive drive; it functions equally as a protective, defensive mechanism. This facet captures proactive behavioral and emotional calibration aimed at evading social exclusion (e.g., Item 2: “I try hard not to do things that will make other people avoid or reject me”). Individuals who score high on this dimension invest significant cognitive resources in social surveillance, continually scanning their environment for verbal and nonverbal indicators of interpersonal standing, peer evaluations, and shifting relational value.

3. Affective Reactivity to Exclusion and Isolation

This dimension taps into the emotional pain or psychological distress precipitated by actual, anticipated, or imagined social disconnect. The construct accounts for susceptibility to hurt feelings (e.g., Item 10: “My feelings are easily hurt when I feel that others do not accept me”), distress regarding omission from communal activities (e.g., Item 9: “It bothers me a great deal when I am not included in other people’s plans”), and discomfort with extended periods of solitude (e.g., Item 6: “I do not like being alone”). It represents the affective consequence of thwarted belongingness.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture supporting the NTBS is grounded in evolutionary psychology and Mark Leary’s renowned sociometer theory, fully contextualized within the seminal framework articulated by Baumeister and Leary (1995).

The Belongingness Hypothesis

Baumeister and Leary (1995) asserted that the drive to belong is a fundamental human motivation shaped by natural selection. Throughout hominid evolutionary history, solitary hominids faced near-certain mortality due to predation, starvation, and vulnerability to hostile conspecifics. Group living, cooperative foraging, shared childcare, and mutual defense conferred massive survival and reproductive advantages. Consequently, evolutionary pressures embedded an innate, deeply seated psychobiological drive within the human species to seek inclusion and avoid detachment. When this drive is satisfied, individuals experience flourishing, positive affect, and emotional security; when it is chronically thwarted, individuals manifest profound psychological, cognitive, and somatic dysregulations, including severe depression, impaired immune functioning, cognitive decrements, and heightened mortality risk.

Sociometer Theory

Complementing the belongingness hypothesis, Leary’s Sociometer Theory conceptualizes self-esteem not as an internal need or an end in itself, but rather as an internal, psychological gauge—a sociometer—that monitors the degree to which an individual is included versus excluded by other people. State self-esteem fluctuates in direct correspondence to real or perceived changes in an individual’s relational value to others. The NTBS measures individual differences in the sensitivity and baseline calibration of this sociometer. Individuals who possess an extraordinarily high need to belong exhibit a hyper-vigilant sociometer: even minor, ambiguous social cues are interpreted as impending rejection, activating immediate corrective behaviors, distress, and distress vocalizations.

Attachment Theory Connections

The NTBS also interfaces theoretically with attachment theory as formulated by John Bowlby and extended to adults by Hazan and Shaver. The need to belong represents an ontogenetic and phylogenetic continuation of the infant-caregiver attachment behavioral system. Anxious-preoccupied attachment styles correspond closely with elevated NTBS scores, characterized by an insatiable craving for closeness coupled with an omnipresent fear of abandonment, whereas dismissive-avoidant styles reflect defensive down-regulation or deactivation of the conscious need to belong.

Validity

The construct validity of the Need to Belong Scale has been thoroughly evaluated across multiple empirical investigations, highlighted by the comprehensive psychometric monograph by Leary, Kelly, Cottrell, and Schreindorfer (2013).

Convergent Validity

The NTBS exhibits pronounced convergent validity across a vast nomological network of interpersonal, emotional, and personality constructs:

• Loneliness: Strong positive correlations are observed between the NTBS and the UCLA Loneliness Scale ($r \approx .35$ to $.48$). Although belongingness is a motive and loneliness is an affective state resulting from unmet relational needs, individuals with higher baseline needs for belonging are considerably more susceptible to experiencing subjective loneliness when social ties are perceived as deficient.
• Rejection Sensitivity: The NTBS correlates substantially with Downey and Feldman’s Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire ($r \approx .45$ to $.55$), confirming that elevated belongingness drives are coupled with heightened anxious expectations of interpersonal rejection.
• Big Five Personality Dimensions: Across multiple studies, NTBS scores correlate moderately and positively with Neuroticism ($r \approx .25$ to $.38$) and Agreeableness ($r \approx .20$ to $.32$). Correlations with Extraversion are typically small to moderate ($r \approx .12$ to $.24$), underscoring that the internal need for relational belonging is structurally distinct from behavioral sociability or outgoingness.
• Need for Affiliation: The NTBS demonstrates moderate positive correlations with Hill’s Interpersonal Orientation Scale subscales ($r \approx .30$ to $.50$), confirming conceptual convergence while retaining unique variance.

Discriminant Validity

The NTBS demonstrates clear discriminant boundaries from adjacent constructs. Crucially, the NTBS is not merely a proxy for social desirability or low self-esteem:

• Social Desirability: Correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale or the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding are consistently negligible to weak ($r = -.05$ to $-.14$), proving that high scorers are not merely exhibiting impression management tactics.
• Global Self-Esteem: While NTBS scores correlate negatively with Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale scores ($r \approx -.25$ to $-.35$, reflecting higher sociometer vulnerability), factor-analytic separation confirms they constitute orthogonal latent dimensions.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Laboratory paradigms provide striking evidence for the criterion validity of the NTBS. In experimental settings involving the Cyberball ostracism paradigm, participants scoring high on the NTBS display significantly stronger physiological stress responses (e.g., elevated salivary cortisol, heightened skin conductance) and report steeper declines in perceived meaningful existence and control when ostracized compared to low scorers. Furthermore, high-NTBS individuals show greater behavioral mimicry (the “chameleon effect”), superior recall of social information in unstructured diary logs, and enhanced nonverbal decoding accuracy of vocal tones and facial expressions, demonstrating real-world cognitive and behavioral calibration toward inclusion.

Reliability

The NTBS demonstrates robust psychometric reliability across diverse demographic strata, cultural contexts, and experimental settings.

Internal Consistency

In the initial developmental studies by Leary et al. (2001, 2013) involving thousands of undergraduate and adult community participants, the internal consistency of the 10-item instrument was consistently solid:

• Sample 1 ($N = 437$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .81$
• Sample 2 ($N = 678$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .82$
• Sample 3 ($N = 1,120$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .80$

Cross-cultural adaptations have yielded comparable internal reliability metrics. For instance, European and Asian translations (such as Dutch, German, Turkish, and Chinese versions) have documented internal consistency coefficients ranging systematically between $\alpha = .78$ and $\alpha = .87$. Corrected item-total correlations across the 10 items typically range between $.38$ and $.64$, well above the conventional psychometric threshold of $.30$, with reversed items (Items 1, 3, and 7) displaying slightly lower but fully acceptable item-total correlations.

Test-Retest Stability

Because the need to belong is posited to operate as a stable, trait-like motivational disposition rather than a transient psychological state, temporal stability is an imperative psychometric benchmark. Leary and colleagues reported a test-retest reliability coefficient of $r = .78$ across an 8-to-10-week test-retest window among collegiate participants. Subsequent independent investigations have affirmed this temporal stability, demonstrating stability coefficients exceeding $r = .70$ over intervals up to six months, thereby validating the NTBS as an enduring measure of personality structure.

Factor Analysis

The underlying latent dimensional structure of the NTBS has been the subject of rigorous psychometric analysis within the psychometric literature.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and exploratory factor analyses conducted by Leary et al. indicated that the 10 items predominantly load on a single dominant factor, accounting for a large proportion of total variance. All ten items exhibited primary loadings exceeding $.40$ onto this primary general dimension. Consequently, the authors recommended utilizing the NTBS as a unidimensional instrument representing a global belongingness drive.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Debates

Subsequent structural equation modeling and CFA evaluations (e.g., Lavigne et al., 2011; Leary et al., 2013) have explored whether the scale is strictly unidimensional or whether a two-factor representation provides a superior fit to the data. When testing a two-factor model, the items divide cleanly according to item polarity and psychological focus:

• Factor 1: Desire for Acceptance / Inclusion (Positively Keyed Items: 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10): Strongly characterized by items capturing an active longing for connection and emotional vulnerability to rejection.
• Factor 2: Indifference / Avoidance of Rejection (Reverse-Keyed Items: 1, 3, 7): Composed entirely of the three reverse-scored items reflecting unconcern regarding social disconnection.

In rigorous CFA models, the single-factor model typically achieves adequate fit indices when method effects associated with negatively keyed items are statistically accounted for via correlated error terms or a bifactor specification:

• Standard Single-Factor Model: $\chi^2 / df \approx 3.8 – 4.5$, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) $\approx .90 – .92$, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) $\approx .87 – .90$, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) $\approx .075 – .085$.
• Bifactor Model (General Belongingness Factor + Method Effect for Reverse Items): $\chi^2 / df \approx 2.1$, CFI $\approx .96$, TLI $\approx .95$, RMSEA $\approx .048$, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) $\approx .039$.

Psychometricians generally conclude that the secondary factor is primarily a methodological artifact arising from reverse-item wording rather than an authentic substantive construct. Because the general factor accounts for over $70%$ to $80%$ of the common variance in bifactor decompositions (high Explained Common Variance / ECV), treating the NTBS as essentially unidimensional in applied research and scoring is statistically supported.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Self-report psychological scale / personality inventory
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically ages 14 and older)
• Item Count: 10 items
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Moderately Disagree, 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree, 4 = Moderately Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree)
• Administration Time: Approximately 2 to 4 minutes
• Reverse-Scored Items: Items 1, 3, and 7 must be reversed prior to scoring ($1 \rightarrow 5$, $2 \rightarrow 4$, $3 \rightarrow 3$, $4 \rightarrow 2$, $5 \rightarrow 1$).
• Scoring Procedure: Calculate either the sum (ranging from 10 to 50) or the arithmetic mean (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0) of all 10 items after reversing Items 1, 3, and 7. Higher composite or mean scores denote a stronger dispositional need to belong.
• Normative Interpretation: In collegiate and adult community samples, the normative population mean typically centers between 3.40 and 3.65 ($SD \approx 0.60$ to $0.75$). Scores above 4.25 reflect high belongingness motivation (associated with heightened rejection vigilance), whereas scores below 2.75 indicate exceptionally low belongingness orientation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Need to Belong Scale was developed across research projects initiated at Wake Forest University in 2001 and Duke University, culminating in its definitive peer-reviewed publication by Mark R. Leary, Kelly M. Kelly, Catherine A. Cottrell, and Lisa S. Schreindorfer in 2013 in the Journal of Personality Assessment (with extensive prior dissemination through working manuscripts and academic scale archives since 2001/2005).

Licensing and Accessibility: The scale resides in the public academic domain for non-commercial educational, scholarly, and clinical research purposes. No licensing fees or royalty payments are required to administer the scale in non-profit academic research. Dr. Mark Leary has made the measure openly accessible via university archives and the Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences (MIDSS). Researchers utilizing the scale are expected to maintain instrument integrity and provide formal academic citation of the authors’ published validation manuscripts.

References

• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
• Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1–62). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(00)80003-9
• Leary, M. R., & Hoyle, R. H. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior. Guilford Press.
• Leary, M. R., Kelly, K. M., Cottrell, C. A., & Schreindorfer, L. S. (2001). Individual differences in the need to belong. Unpublished manuscript, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC.
• Leary, M. R., Kelly, K. M., Cottrell, C. A., & Schreindorfer, L. S. (2013). Construct validity of the Need to Belong Scale: Mapping the nomological network. Journal of Personality Assessment, 95(6), 610–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2013.819511
• Lavigne, G. L., Vallerand, R. J., & Crevier-Braud, L. (2011). The Fundamental Need to Belong: On the Distinction Between Growth and Deficit Orientations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(9), 1185–1201. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211405995
• Pickett, C. L., Gardner, W. L., & Knowles, M. (2004). Getting a cue: The need to belong and enhanced sensitivity to social cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(9), 1095–1107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264060
• Williams, K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58(1), 425–452. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085641

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)