Assessing Who Needs to Matter Most: Development, Psychometric Properties, and Correlates of Measures of the Need to Matter, the Importance of Mattering, and Mattering Hypersensitivity

Research and theory on mattering have evolved considerably, and the focus has been on individualdifferences in levels of feelings of mattering and not mattering to others. This work sought toadvance understanding by uniquely examining individual differences in the need to matter andwho is most impacted and influenced by feelings of not mattering to others. We introduce measuresthat assess levels of the need to matter, the personal importance of mattering (i.e., the importanceof being important), and mattering hypersensitivity (i.e., vulnerability to feeling hurt when made tofeel insignificant). Psychometric analyses confirmed that these measures comprise one factor each,with high internal consistency and adequate convergent validity. Correlational analyses establishedlinks between elevated scores and levels of psychological distress and narcissistic personality traits.Most notably, the unmet need to matter predicted unique variance in psychological distressand narcissistic traits beyond the variance attributable to self-esteem, general mattering, anti-matteringand fear of not mattering. Overall, these results attest to the research utility of the proposedmeasures, and they illustrate the risk to mental health and personal vulnerability of people with anunmet need to matter who have a heightened sensitivity and importance associated with whetherthey matter to other people