College Student Motivation to Lead in Relation to Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Leadership Self-Efficacy

We investigated basic need satisfaction and leadership self-efficacy as psychological antecedents of college students’ motivation to lead (MTL), while controlling for individual differences by gender and academic class. Preliminary analyses revealed significant gender differences with males scoring higher than females on calculative MTL and classification differences with seniors scoring higher on affective-identity MTL compared to less advanced students in college. When these demographic differences were controlled for, need satisfaction for competence was significantly associated with all 3 types of MTL through the mediation effect of leadership self-efficacy. Need satisfaction for relatedness was significantly associated with social-normative MTL and calculative MTL.