Crafting One’s Life and its Relationship with Psychological Needs: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Crafting is the intentional and proactive behavioural or cognitive changes people make to satisfy their psychological needs. This can take place across life domains, including at work, at home, and in broader life goals, though little research exists comprehensively integrating the different crafting types. Psychological needs are one way that these various crafting types are related. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of the literature on crafting and the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, relatedness, and meaning in life to better understand how these psychological needs relate to or impact the crafting process. We systematically searched four databases and found 134 papers that met the inclusion criteria. We found that autonomy and meaning in life were two psychological needs that were frequently related to the process of crafting and that competence and relatedness were important but less researched. The satisfaction of psychological needs were often an outcome of crafting, though only job crafting consistently measured psychological needs as the antecedent to crafting. We conclude with recommendations for future research and questions to be addressed. This review may be useful for future basic and applied crafting research by better understanding how specific psychological needs relate to the process of crafting and how individuals may proactively shape their needs.