Belongingness

Belongingness is one of the conditions in Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the sense of safety.

The ease with which associations are formed depends on the items to be associated. This holds for classical conditioning in which some conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus combinations are more effective than others (e.g., learned taste aversions) and for instrumental conditioning in which some response-reinforcer combinations work more easily than others (e.g., specific defense reactions in avoidance conditioning of species).