COMMENTARIES

Fundamental Human Needs: Making Social Cognition Relevant

Susan M. AndersenDepartment of Psychology

New York University

Serena ChenDepartment of Psychology

University of Michigan

Christina CarterDepartment of Psychology

New York University

Research on intrinsic motivation, much of whichhas progressed within the framework of Deci andRyan’s (this issue) self-determination theory, has pro-foundly shifted our view of how people respond to re-wards and punishments in terms of interest in andenjoyment of what they do and how they live. A key ar-gument of their work is that controlling external influ-ences, emanating from other people or situations, areassociated with suboptimal performance and a lack ofsatisfaction. This contention is based on their assump-tion that there is a fundamental human need for auton-omy, to freely choose and determine one’s ownactions. Hence, having one’s autonomy supported bythe environment should be associated with optimalfunctioning and well-being, and it is. Evidence has ac-crued across numerous domains and paradigms to sub-stantiate these core claims. Before discussing points ofcontact between Deci and Ryan’s theory and our owntheorizing on human needs, and on the self, signifi-cant-other representations, and transference, we high-light some key contributions of their work.

Expanding and Enriching theIntrinsic–Extrinsic Dichotomy

Deci and Ryan’s work expands and enriches thecentral distinction drawn in social psychology and so-cial development between intrinsic and extrinsic moti-vation. Their work suggests that environmentalsupport for another person’s autonomy, even if aimedat influencing that person’s behavior, fosters intrinsicmotivation, and thus better enables the person to reachpersonal full potential and to achieve personal aspira-

tions, as compared to controlling environments, whichdiminish intrinsic motivation.Intrinsic motivationisdefined in terms of self-determination, or the idea of“freely” choosing to act, on the basis of one’s own mo-tivation, in adherence with internal standards that areintegrated into the self. Although external influencescan be internalized, behavior regulated by such inter-nal standards does not reflect the “real” self. This iswhat is crucial about intrinsic motivation—activitiesemanating from the autonomous, authentic self elicitthe most interest and are enjoyed most.

This matter is far broader in scope than the intrin-sic–extrinsic dichotomy, as it is considered in the field.In the Deci–Ryan model, self-determined action iscouched in terms of fundamental human needs and theway in which these needs must be taken into account ifoptimal performance and well-being are to be under-stood. And because it includes complex distinctionsbetween motivations, and factors that may exist inter-nal and external to the person, the model extendswellbeyondthe intrinsic–extrinsic distinction, and this hassubtly revolutionized the field for nearly 2 decades.

Such intricate distinctions are fascinating becausethey suggest that people may at times “force” them-selves to do things that they do not really care about ortake “ownership” of, for reasons that stem from within,but not from the “true” self. Importantly, such inter-nally regulated actions would end up looking verymuch like those pursued for entirely extrinsic rea-sons—namely, pursued with less interest, persever-ance, and well-being, and less likely to be performedwhen not required. Allowing for this possibility theo-retically is significant in part because it implies amodel of human personality that pays heed to what is

Psychological Inquiry Copyright © 2000 by2000, Vol. 11, No. 4, 269–318 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

authentic or true of the self, which is not commonlyseen in personality and social psychology. It is also im-portant because it addresses processes that govern in-ternalization, as a more generic matter, as distinct fromthe specific integration of some internalized elementsinto the self.

Points of Contact With Our ResearchInvolving Significant Others : Parallels

and New Issues

Fundamental Human Needs

Self-determination theory assumes that the individ-ual is innately inclined toward the satisfaction of threefundamental needs—autonomy, competence, and relat-edness. We agree with the general assumption that thereare basic human needs and believe that existing psycho-logical evidence paves the way for drawing at least ten-tative conclusions as to what these motivations mightbe. In our view, the three needs that Deci and Ryan pro-pose in the context of self-determination theory are ontarget, and are ones that we proposed in our own theoriz-ing, along with a few others (which we will describebriefly; Andersen, Reznik, & Chen, 1997). We agreethat the profound relevance of such needs to humanfunctioning is supported by considerable evidence.

Thus far, the need for relatedness has been the focusof our own work and model. We refer to this need astheneed for human connection, and view it as encom-passing one’s need for tenderness, warmth, emotionalresponsiveness, and acceptance. We contend that theneed for human connection is profoundly influentialand in practice may even dwarf the others. The needfor regard and kindness from loved ones would seem tobe primordial indeed. Nonetheless, we argue as well,based on evidence obtained in the context of self-deter-mination theory, that the need for relatedness coexistswith the need for autonomy. In addition, it coexistswith the need for competence. Moreover, we also ar-gue that people have a fundamental need for mean-ing—that is, to comprehend and make sense of theirexperiences, among them, the many difficulties andtragedies of life. As well, we believe that people have afundamental need for security and safety—to believeone will be able to survive and thrive, physically andpsychologically.

Empirical evidence supports the existence and im-pact of all of these basic human needs, in our view (fora review, see Andersen et al., 1997). In our researchthus far, we examined the need for relatedness and theneed for security in some depth (e.g., Andersen,Reznik, & Manzella, 1996), and relevant other re-search is ongoing. This past empirical focus reflectsthe fact that a core theme in our model is that the selfdevelops and exists in relation to significant others, so

that the self is fundamentally encumbered or “entan-gled” with these others. We turn now to this theme, andelaborate on how it is relevant to Deci and Ryan’s viewof the need for relatedness as well as on the notion offundamental human motivations more generally.

Self-With-Significant-OtherRepresentations

In our work, we proposed a social-cognitive modelof the self in which the self is fundamentally interper-sonal, bound up with the significant others that pre-dominate in people’s lives (Andersen & Chen, 2000).The model assumes that mental representations of sig-nificant others are stored in memory and that they in-clude knowledge and beliefs about the characteristicsof significant others, as well as the affect, motivation,and behavioral tendencies typically experienced in re-lationships with these important individuals. A mainfocus of the model is the manner in which these repre-sentations are used in responding to new people—inthe phenomenon of transference as it occurs in dailysocial life (Andersen & Glassman, 1996). We concep-tualize transference as occurring on the basis of the ac-tivation and use of a significant-other representation tointerpret and respond to a newly encountered person. Itis by virtue of these basic social-cognitive processesthat aspects of relationships from the past with a signif-icant other may resurface in a present relation with anew person, which is a claim supported by a growingbody of research (e.g., Chen & Andersen, 1999).

Our model also argues that the self is implicated intransference—namely, when the phenomenon occurs,not only is the significant-other representation acti-vated and used to interpret a new person, but the selfthat oneis in relation to the relevant significant other isalso activated (Hinkley & Andersen, 1996). In so-cial-cognitive terms, we assume this occurs becauseaspects of the self typically experienced with the sig-nificant other are linked in memory to the signifi-cant-other representation. Hence, when therepresentation is activated, associated self-aspects areconcomitantly activated and brought into play. In es-sence, we propose that multiple self-with-signifi-cant-other representations, varying with particularsignificant others, exist and are activated in part on thebasis of cues in a new person that heighten the accessi-bility and likelihood of use of different signifi-cant-other representations. These processes are partand parcel of the phenomenon of transference as wetracked it experimentally (for similar approaches, seee.g., Baldwin, 1992; Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991).

It is in the context of our view of the self-in-rela-tion-to-significant-others, conceptualized from a so-cial-cognitive perspective emphasizing representationsof the selfwitha significant other, that we consider basic

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human needs akin to those that are the focus of self-de-termination theory. From our view, the social-cognitiverepresentations and processes underlying transferenceare relevant to how and when different feelings and ex-periences relevant to basic needs are likely to emerge in-terpersonally. More specifically, we assume thatexperiences relevant to basic needs are pervasive in re-lationships with significant others and thus that such in-formation is likely to be an essential part of what isstored in memory about oneself in relation to the other.Our work supports this assumption and, moreover,demonstrates that motivational material stored about agiven significant other emerges in new encounters whenthe representation of the other is activated. In this sense,motivational material is stored, activated, and used inmuch the same way as is other material (see Bargh,1990).

In more specific terms, our research shows that thedesire to be emotionally close to or to be distant from asignificant other, based on, respectively, prior satisfac-tion or disappointment in needs for connection with thisother, emerges in transference when the representationof this significant other is activated and used (Andersenet al., 1996, Berk & Andersen, in press). We also dem-onstrated that if a threatening experience occurs intransference, leading one to experience the self some-what negatively, a defensive, compensatory response ofself-protection and self-bolstering occurs, presumablyin effort to address security needs (Hinkley & Andersen,1996). Thus, the need for security clearly emerges intransference, as do relatedness needs. Overall, then,compatible with Deci and Ryan’s theorizing, we arguethat basic needs and related affect, behavior, etc. arestored as part of significant-other and self-with-signifi-cant-other representations, and come into play as part ofthe transference phenomenon (see also Andersen &Baum, 1994; Andersen et al., 1996; Baum & Andersen,1999). We note, however, that research on transferencehas yet to fully and systematically examine optimalfunctioning and performance, well-being and satisfac-tion, as a function of these stored needs and the signifi-cant others and relationships to which they are linked.

Relatedness as a Basic Human Need

We echo Deci and Ryan’s view that a desire forconnection to others is a fundamental human need,whether this need is termed, for example,belongingness (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995) or at-tachment (e.g., Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980; Collins &Read, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Indeed, a grow-ing number of personality and social psychologists aretaking quite seriously the idea that individuals strivefor connection with others and that being connected toothers (or not) has consequences for cognition, affect,and behavior (e.g., Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs,

1995; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Smith, Murphy, &Coats, 1999).

Although Deci and Ryan assume a basic need forrelatedness, they also argue it has a limited role, sug-gesting that relatedness needs affect adults only indi-rectly. In the pursuit of adult goals, people carryprimary caregiver relationships with them as a founda-tion. We agree with this latter assumption, but argue, inaddition, that people are continuously being socialized(sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in not so subtleways) during adulthood. In our view, romantic part-ners, friends, mentors, coworkers, and others, includ-ing spouses and children, all provide new socializationexperiences. And of course current significant rela-tionships are likely to be the object of transferencefrom earlier relationships, just as a current significantrelationship can be the subject of a transference experi-ence with a new person. It does not seem to comportwell with people’s lives that the need for warmth andtenderness from others, and to express the same, is notprofoundly influential in adulthood.

Although needs for relatedness in new situationsand in new relationships are not identical to those ex-perienced with a caretaker during infancy or child-hood, it seems that these needs provide a frame ofreference for interpreting and responding to new rela-tionships, especially with potentially significant per-sons. Just as a new relationship can evoke novelelements of the self, unique to the new significantother, this stored knowledge about a relatively new sig-nificant other should be used in still newer interper-sonal relations. Presumably new relationships can beinfluential in creating a new (or renewed) sense ofsafety and security, as well as of emotional acceptance,and even shifts in competence, meaning, and auton-omy, even when prior relationships did not. In anyevent, each significant-other relationship is unlikely tobe a simple replica of all those that preceded it. More-over, all significant-other relationships, older andnewer, should be defined affectively in terms of the de-gree to which each of one’s fundamental needs are (orwere) satisfied in the relationship. In short, departingfrom the Deci–Ryan model, we argue that the need forhuman connection may have special status and may re-main pressing in the ever-shifting nature of people’sinterpersonal lives.

To elaborate further, we suggest that a sense of re-latedness between a person and a socializing agentshould not only enable the person to act freely andcompetently, without undue control, but it should alsomake it more sustaining and fulfilling to do so, eventhough the latter assumption appears to be one thatDeci and Ryan do not make. That is, the degree towhich relatedness needs can be satisfied has no inde-pendent status in well-being or satisfaction, so long asit is there to lay the ground work for autonomy. We donot agree, and instead suggest that this may underesti-

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mate people’s need for relatedness, and thus the role ofthis need in well-being, and accordingly how readily itcan become problematic in terms of potentially over-riding other needs. Of course, we concur with the prop-osition that good relationships (whether early ones orlater ones) that involve a sense of connection are likelyto promote autonomy, and therefore are not diametri-cally opposed to autonomy in any way. As this sug-gests, like Deci and Ryan, we assume that the need forrelatedness and the need for autonomy can be, but cer-tainly are not necessarily, at odds with one another. In-deed, they report research demonstrating that it is thebalance between support for people’s autonomy andsupport for people’s need to be connected with othersthat is most strongly linked to optimal performanceand well-being. Clearly the experience of autonomyhas been shown to enhance the effectiveness of inter-ventions of various kinds—for example, those directedtoward preventing school dropout among at-risk youth(Vallerand, Fortier, & Guay, 1997)—perhaps by en-abling achievement tasks and personal connections tobe pursued freely.

Although we emphasize relatedness needs, andDeci and Ryan do not, they do argue that experiencingrelatedness can provide a child with the comfort levelto freely explore and thus the opportunity to find an op-timal balance between relatedness and autonomy.Such a balance is what should allow people to behavein a more integrated and intrinsic way, thus suggestingthat relatedness needs have primarily or only a distalinfluence. Still, they do not explicitly acknowledgethat satisfaction of relatedness needs may be primary,and do not assume, as we do, that relatedness needsmay even override other needs in how people live theirlives and what they choose, even though satisfyingallneeds is optimal for well-being. Our view is that theneed for connection with others is more primary.

Indeed, our model leads us to conceptualize othermotivations beyond the need for connection in terms ofhow well the need for connection can be satisfied in agiven relationship while satisfying these other needs.For example, in positive terms, connectedness mayfoster a shared sense of socially constructed meaning,which may provide a sense of security while promot-ing exploration and autonomy. In negative terms, seek-ing connectedness may lead one to forgo autonomyneeds and other needs so as to have the love sought. Inthis regard, we emphasize relatedness more than weemphasize other basic human needs, whereas Deci andRyan clearly emphasize autonomy more than otherneeds. They do not elaborate on the satisfaction of re-latedness needs as an end in itself except when consid-ering these needs in an evolutionary perspective.

In this vein, it may be worth noting that, in our ownwork, we have not focused on, nor marshaled any evi-dence that speaks to, the evolutionary origins or signif-icance of relatedness needs, as the universality and

innateness of such needs are not critical to our theory.However, like Deci and Ryan, we do not emphasize in-dividual differences in relatedness needs (e.g., needstrength), assuming instead that the need to developand maintain connections with significant others existsin some form across individuals. At the same time, weof course acknowledge that there is considerable vari-ability across individuals (and in fact individuality anduniqueness) in the nature of one’s relationships withsignificant others, which in turn may correspond tomore or less satisfaction of relatedness needs. Such aview is not unlike Deci and Ryan’s recognition of indi-vidual differences in causality orientations, regulatorystyles, and so forth, that can affect the degree to whichpeople will experience their relatedness (as well as au-tonomy and competence) needs as satisfied, althoughwe emphasized the uniqueness of one’s signifi-cant-other representations and one’s experiences withthese others.

In addition, we acknowledge that Deci and Ryan’sapproach to basic human needs generates a number ofnovel hypotheses that are provocative. For example,their describe how need deprivation may contribute tothe formation of controlled and defensive styles, by in-dicating that a relatively more controlled motivationalstyle should be present in people whose need for relat-edness was thwarted in early relationships. These peo-ple turn away from more intrinsic and integratedaspirations, including turning away from more open,responsive, and uncontrolling modes of relatedness,because they did not receive this kind of acceptanceand positive regard themselves. Hence, they also turntoward more extrinsic aspirations as a compensatorymeasure. These assumptions are fascinating and theexisting data are quite supportive. The exploration tothe link to our work, and to specific significant-otherrelationships, is ripe for empirical work.

Social-Cognitive Structures andProcesses

As indicated, in our social-cognitive model, weplace a heavy emphasis on stored knowledge, in theform of mental representations, and how such knowl-edge is activated and used. We agree with Deci andRyan’s point that most information processing modelsare silent on matters central to self-determination the-ory. It is perhaps this silence that leads Deci and Ryanto assume such models are likely to have little rele-vance to how the processes assumed to occur inself-determination theory take place. Yet our work issolidly located in the assumptive framework and meth-odology of basic research in social cognition, and wenonetheless believe it is compatible with and likely tobe interestingly related to many of the core claims of

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self-determination theory. Hence, we believe there canbe a rapprochement.

In fact, it is our view that the social-cognitive pro-cesses widely thought to govern the activation and useof stored knowledge are valuable to consider in an-swering the question as to why and how optimal orsuboptimal patterns of responding, learned in the past,may emerge in new situations. We argue that such pat-terns are reflected in stored knowledge about signifi-cant others and our relationships with them. Forexample, in our research we examined various formsof motivational material associated with significantothers and the self that comes to the fore in transfer-ence. Hence, basic needs can be examined in the con-text of social cognition and these models may thus bemore compatible in principle with the Deci and Ryanmodel than they imply.

Assumptions about the self in self-determinationtheory are also worth considering in social-cognitiveterms. That is, Deci and Ryan are careful to distinguishtheir view of the “self” from most existing personalityand social–psychological conceptions of the self in-cluding, we would suspect, ours. In their view, this dis-tinction is important to draw because prevailing viewsof the self do not acknowledge how antecedents andconsequences of behavior emanating truly, entirely, orpurely from the self, as is crucial in self-determinationtheory, may differ from those that do not. As an exam-ple, Deci and Ryan argue that the “ought self,” a con-struct central to self-discrepancy theory (Higgins,1987), serves as the basis for behavior that is notself-determined and thus is not reflective of the inte-grated self—a notion that suggests the need to articu-late more complex layers of predictions aboutought-self standards than currently exist withinself-discrepancy theory, if the integrated self with theframework of self-determination theory is to be takeninto account.

Clearly, the distinction between selves that do versusdo not serve as the basis for self-determined behavior iscritical to bear in mind when considering self-determi-nation theory; indeed, it lies at the crux of the theory.But does this necessarily imply that this distinction can-not be addressed in social-cognitive terms? We agreewith the authors that ought selves, for example, as wellas possible selves, and the self-with-each-particular-sig-nificant-other, can serve as the basis of behavior that iseither self-determined or not. Nonetheless, we note thata wide range of theory and evidence suggests that theseconstructs are cognitively represented, and tracks howthey function. This evidence thus leads to the questionof how these aspects of the self are related empirically toself-determined action and the integrated self. And toput it different, they lead to the question of how the selfthat serves as the basis for self-determined action, is ulti-mately represented cognitively. Is the integrated selfdistinguishable in some way from the nonintegrated self

in terms of cognitive organization or other properties?What evidence is there to suggest that they are or arenot? What implications, if any, would such cognitivedifferences have? More to the point, under what circum-stances is self-determined or controlled responses froma person elicited in different situations, and how mightthis extend our understanding of self-determination the-ory and its implications? In short, although the reasonswhy Deci and Ryan wish to distinguish their conceptu-alization of the self from social-cognitive formulationsof the self are clear, the distinction they draw seems toraise more questions than provide answers. In our view,these questions are fascinating and worthy of empiricalexamination.

Building on this, we suggest that it could prove to beuseful to address at least some of the social-cognitiveimplications of the key arguments of the Deci–Ryanmodel. We do not mean to imply by this that the poten-tial contributions of their work hinge on a specificationof the social-cognitive structures and processes under-lying human needs and self-determined behavior,given the substantial accomplishments alreadyachieved. Still, theorizing and research on the self, incontemporary psychology, is grounded at least in partin social-cognitive theory (e.g., Baumeister, 1998;Linville & Carlston, 1994; Markus & Wurf, 1987), andit would thus be a valuable contribution to have aclearer sense of the ways in which the authors’ theoriz-ing might cohere with, rather than simply how it de-parts from, these prevailing social-cognitive views onthe self. More to the point, it might be illuminating todevelop this still more integrative framework for un-derstanding the self, human needs, and behavior.

Indeed, we argue that delineating the social-cogni-tive structures and processes that serve as the basis forself-determined behavior would leave researchers betterequipped to formulate testable hypotheses about whensuch behavior is and is not likely to occur, what factorsmight influence the likelihood of such behavior, etc.Such a delineation could provoke an interesting and po-tentially important cross-fertilization of issues dis-cussed in the social-cognitive literature and thosecentral to self-determination theory. As an example, thedistinction between conscious and unconscious pro-cesses, which is widely discussed in the social-cognitiveliterature, seems especially pertinent to various aspectsof the theory. Recent research, moreover, suggests thatmotives are mentally represented and may be triggeredconsciously or unconsciously, leading to goal-directedbehavior of which perceivers are and are not aware (e.g.,Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Lee-Chai, 1999). In Deci andRyan’s work, this raises such questions as: Are therequalitative differences between self-determined behav-ior when perceivers are consciously engaging in it ver-sus when they are not? Does the integration of externalregulations require a conscious awareness of their exter-nal nature? Is the experience of autonomous behavior

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always a conscious one? Or what are the varying formsof consciousness when experienced in the context of au-tonomous behavior?

Relatedness at the Interpersonal andGroup Levels

It is also of interest to consider the self as proposedin self-determination theory in terms of the groups orcollectivities to which people belong. In the theory, theself is conceptualized in broad enough terms that dif-fering levels of analysis in understanding the potentialtension between autonomy and relatedness needs, forexample, is possible. In our theorizing (Andersen &Chen, 2000), as well as that of a growing number ofother social psychologists (Brewer & Gardner, 1996;Gabriel & Gardner, 1999; Smith, Murphy, & Coats,1999), relatedness needs may operate and manifestthemselves at least at two different levels—the inter-personal level and the level of the group. People maystrive for and satisfy their relatedness needs in their in-terpersonal relationships or in terms of their groupmemberships or both. Whereas the former involvesconnection with specific other individuals, the latteremphasizes ties to a group of individuals. An increas-ing body of research suggests that these two levels ofrelatedness may be distinct in important ways. As anexample, Smith and colleagues recently producedcompelling evidence demonstrating that attachment toother individuals in the context of interpersonal rela-tionships is distinct from the attachment people experi-ence to groups (Smith et al., 1999). Thus, attachment toa group predicts group-related feelings and outcomesbetter than, and independently from, attachment to in-dividuals.

In our work, we suggested potential ways in which re-latedness to particular individuals versus to groups maybe relevant to transference and to the emergence of theself-with-significant-others in new interpersonal encoun-ters (Andersen & Chen, 2000). For example, a newly en-countered person may embody cues that remind aperceiver of a significant other, thereby increasing thelikelihood that the relevant self-with-significant-otherwill be activated. Yet at the same time, the new personmay embody cues that bring into play one of theperceiver’s collective selves, which would then reflectthe self in relation to the group or collective. What factorsare likely to influence which self—the interpersonal,self-with-significant-other or collective—predominateswhen their influence runs in differing directions? For ex-ample, what happens when the affective or motivationalcontent of the different selves conflict—such as whenone feels good about the self one is when with the signifi-cant other, but the collective self associated with this sig-nificant other corresponds to a stigmatized collectiveidentity that makes one feel bad?

Distinguishing relatedness at the interpersonal andgroup levels raises many questions, in our view, forself-determination theory as well. For example, is thebasic human need for relatedness, as discussed by theauthors, satisfied better by or less well by (or similarlyby) interpersonal versus group relatedness? Can satis-fying relatedness at one level compensate for a lack ofrelatedness at another? Is it more difficult to balanceneeds for autonomy and relatedness at one level of re-latedness than another? Although the authors argue forthe innateness and universality of relatedness needs,are these universal needs more likely to be satisfied atdifferent levels in different cultures or among differentsubpopulations in a given culture? These questionswarrant exploration.

Concluding Comments

The line of work spearheaded by Deci and Ryan isamong the most significant now being done on person-ality and motivation in contemporary psychology. Theinsights that emerged from self-determination theoryand the empirical work that has examined it, are theo-retically and practically important, and have numeroussocietal implications. The work stands on its own andspeaks for itself as a contribution to knowledge. Fewtheoretical models in psychology inspired as muchwork across so many subdisciplines of our field, andaddressed quite such a prodigious variety of questionsconcerning optimal human functioning. At the sametime, we argue that greater precision is needed in un-derstanding the specific social-cognitive processes bywhich varying motives, and basic human needs in par-ticular, are evoked and engaged in—within specificcontexts. Theoretical elaboration and empirical speci-fication along these lines would be valuable in contrib-uting to a better specified, causal model of howparticular effects occur when they occur. As an impe-tus for such integrative theorizing and empirical work,we presented our own social-cognitive, interpersonalmodel of the self in relation to others, with its relianceon mental representations of significant others, linkedto the self, that can be activated and used in respondingto new people. The work taps basic social-cognitiveprocessing mechanisms and speaks to how basic needsin relation to significant others may be experienced innew relationships. We argue that our work providesfertile ground for a rapprochement between self-deter-mination theory and social cognition.

Note

Susan M. Andersen, Department of Psychology,New York University, 6 Washington Place, #468, NewYork, NY 10003. E-mail: andersen@psych.nyu.edu

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or Serena Chen, Department of Psychology, Univer-sity of Michigan, 3231 East Hall, Ann Arbor,MI 48109–1109. E-mail: serena@umich.edu

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Competence, Relatedness, and Autonomy in Life Stories

Jack J. Bauer and Dan P. McAdamsThe Foley Center for the Study of Lives

Northwestern University

Over the past two decades, self-determination the-ory (SDT) has offered empirical psychology amuch-needed framework for understanding the organ-ismic–humanistic perspective on personality. In thetarget article, Deci and Ryan (this issue) claim thatthree needs—competence, relatedness, and auton-omy—are so fundamental that they may be viewed asinnate organismic tendencies. Although we are not inthe position to examine this nativistic proposition ade-quately, we feel we can offer a critique on how thethree needs are indeed fundamental in another way. Ifcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy are basic psy-chological needs in everyday life, then they shouldplay fundamental roles in how people interpret andmake sense of their lives. Throughout time and acrosscultures, people have made sense of their lives in storyform (Bruner, 1990; Polkinghorne, 1988). The purposeof our commentary is to outline the relationship be-tween SDT’s three needs and the basic elements of lifestories, in the spirit of a synthesis between the organis-mic and narrative studies of lives.

Life stories are like other stories in that they involvea cast of characters (namely the self and others), impor-tant episodes (e.g., high points, low points, turningpoints), and an interplay of motivations, intentions, ex-pectations, actions, reactions, and evaluations. Lifestories are unique among stories in that they function toorganize or make sense of one’s own life, providing theperson with a sense of unity and purpose in a complexworld. Thus the construction and reconstruction ofone’s life story over time equates to the ongoing pro-cess of constructing one’s identity (Giddens, 1991;Hermans & Kempen, 1993; McAdams, 1985, 1993;Singer & Salovey, 1993). A person’s identity, likeother stories, has dimensions of content and structure.Content refers to the thematic substance of the story(i.e., what the story isabout), whereas structure refersto the formal organization of the story (i.e., how thesubstance of the story isintegrated). In telling their lifestories, people tend to portray what happens in theirlives (i.e., the content) along two dimensions, whichBakan (1966) labeled agency and communion. In ourcommentary we outline the connections between theorganismic needs for competence and relatedness andthe life-story themes of agency and communion, re-spectively. Briefly, agentic themes are found in storiesthat emphasize the importance of achievement, mas-tery, and having an impact on one’s environ-ment—qualities that closely correspond to the need forcompetence. Communal themes are found in stories

that emphasize the importance of intimacy, connec-tions to others, and caring for others—qualities thatclosely correspond to the need for relatedness. We alsosubmit that the structure or integration of life stories isclosely aligned with the organismic need for auton-omy. Autonomy involves the need to organize one’sexperiences and behaviors into an integrated sense ofself (Deci & Ryan, this issue). Similarly, the effective-ness of a story’s structure depends largely on the de-gree to which the story integrates the thematic qualitiesof one’s actions, experiences, and characteristics. Inall, we propose that the needs for competence, related-ness, and autonomy help answer why life stories con-form to the content themes of agency and communionand aim toward an integrated narrative structure.

Need Types and Life Stories

Before describing the connections further, we shouldnote that Deci and Ryan clearly outlined the differencesbetween the types of needs typically compared withagency and communion (i.e., in the Murray tradition)and the types of needs in SDT. The aim in studying theneeds for achievement, intimacy, and so forth has beento uncover individual differences, that is, how individu-als vary in the degree to which they are disposed towardcertain needs (McClelland, 1985). Research shows thatindividual differences in motives of power and intimacyare significantly correlated with agentic and communalthemes, respectively, in life stories (McAdams,Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day, 1996; Woike, 1994;Woike, Gershkovich, Piorkowski, & Polo, 1999). Incontrast, the aim in studying needs in SDT has been touncover more universal, organismic facts, that is, howthe needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomyuniversally foster psychological well-being and growth.Deci and Ryan have provided considerable evidencethat people maintain interest and perform better on pro-jects—as well as attain higher levels of well-be-ing—when given conditions that foster competence,relatedness, and autonomy (Deci & Ryan, this issue).Thus the individual-differences (e.g., McClelland,1985) approach asks the question, “How much does theperson need the need?” whereas the organismic ap-proach typically asks the situation-based question, “Towhat extent is the need gratified for the person?” Wefeel that the study of life stories should speak to both ap-proaches. Life stories indicate thedegree to which peo-ple need, strive toward, and interpret their lives in terms

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of agency, communion, and narrative integration (indi-vidual-differences approach) as well as thedegree towhich people’s needsof competence, relatedness, andautonomyare satisfied(organismic approach).

Content: SDT Needs and Life-StoryThemes

We find substantial conceptual overlap betweencompetence and agency and between relatedness andcommunion. We start with relatedness and commu-nion, which share more conceptual space than the otherpair. Life stories with content themes of communionemphasize caring for others and connections with oth-ers on varying levels. McAdams et al. (1996) identifiedfour main themes of communion in life stories:

1. Friendship and love.2. Interpersonal dialogue or sharing.3. Connection with groups, society or humankind.4. Caring for or helping others.

Deci and Ryan portray relatedness as “the desire to feelconnected to others—to love and care, and to be lovedand cared for” (this issue). Thus communion and relat-edness deal with much the same issues. The relation-ship between the two lies in the relationship betweenneeds and their manifestations. For instance, people’slevels of the need for intimacy (in the Murray tradition)have been empirically related to the prevalence ofcommunion themes in their life stories. We suggestthat the theme of communion represents the narrativeexpression of the need for relatedness, which is evalu-ated in life stories at varying degrees of fulfillment.Thus it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the de-gree to which one’s circumstances satisfy the need forrelatedness partly determines the degree to whichone’s life story portrays a sense of connection to othersand caring for others.

We propose that an organismic approach to agencyin life stories would focus on competence and certainaspects of autonomy. Four facets of agency can beidentified (Bakan, 1966; McAdams, 1985, 1993;McAdams et al., 1996):

1. Havingan impactonself,others,andenvironment.2. Achieving desired goals.3. Self-mastery and independence, that is, the

sense of the self as an individual agent.4. Status and prestige.

In the target article, Deci and Ryan describe compe-tence as the “propensity to have an effect on the envi-ronment as well as to attain valued outcomes within it”(this issue). Thus competence is closely related to thefirst two facets of agency, namelyimpacting one’s en-

vironmentandachieving valued outcomes. We suggestthat the theme of agency largely represents the narra-tive expression of the need for competence, which isevaluated in life stories at varying degrees of fulfill-ment. Thus it seems reasonable to hypothesize that thedegree to which one’s circumstances satisfy the needfor competence partly determines the degree to whichone’s life story portrays a sense of personal impact andachievement.

Agency also deals with independence and status,which relate more to autonomy than to competence. Al-though not equivalent to autonomy (as Deci and Ryanmention), independence refers to the aspect of autonomythat deals with one’s sense of individuality, that is, thesense of the self as an individual agent. The notion of in-dependence is related to another aspect of autonomy: in-tegration. When a person says in a personal life story,“I’m an independent person” or “things in my life fit to-gether,” that person is talking about independence or inte-gration (respectively) as agentic themes. However,autonomy involves much more than the thematic contentof independence and self-integration; autonomy plays acentral role in thestructureof life stories, which will becovered in the next section. Finally, status relates to au-tonomy in that both are ways of defining the individual inrelation to others. The difference is that autonomy fostersintrinsic motivation and psychological well-being,whereas status seeking is related to extrinsic motivationand lower levels of psychological health (Sheldon &Kasser, 1995). Thus status is not part of SDT’s organis-mic taxonomy, although it provides an important exam-ple of what autonomy isnot. (It is worth noting that,although the presence of communal themes in life storieshas been found to relate to well-being, the relationshipbetween agentic themes and well-being is equivocal[McAdams, 1985]. Part of the reason for this may be thatagency involves extrinsically and intrinsically motivatedthemes, whereas communion for the most part deals withintrinsically motivated themes.) Overall, then, agenticthemes in life stories revolve around the need for compe-tence as well as some aspects of the need for autonomy.

Structure: SDT Needs and NarrativeIntegration

Content refers towhat people say in their life sto-ries; structure refers tohowpeople say it, how they or-ganize the various facts and themes of life stories. Onedimension of structure is ubiquitous in life stories: thedegree to which the person creates complexity, whichis commonly understood in terms of differentiationand integration (Loevinger, 1976; Woike et al., 1999).Like all stories, life stories range in complexity fromthe vaguely differentiated and not integrated (i.e., con-fusing, almost nonstory-like) to the highly differenti-ated and integrated (i.e., coherent, rich). Unlike other

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stories, the life story is about the self, meaning that thestory’s complexity reflects to a large degree the com-plexity of the person’s identity. Examples of relatedresearch on the structure of identity include: ego devel-opment (Loevinger, 1976), differentiation and integra-tion in relation to agency and communion themes(Woike, 1994; Woike et al., 1999), and concrete versusabstract self-evaluations in relation to psychologicalhealth (Bauer & Bonanno, in press; Linville, 1985). Inthese cases, structure is viewed more as a process thanas a product. We mentioned earlier that autonomytakes the form of life-story content when used as a de-scription of the self. For example, “I’ve lived my lifelike I wanted to” is an agentic statement of autonomy.In the structural sense, however, autonomy has more todo with the process of describing than with being a de-scription or product. The need for autonomy, we feel,spurs the perpetual process of trying to organize thecomplexities of one’s daily life. In other words, theneed for autonomy spurs whatever it is that holds to-gether the notion of the self.

To paraphrase, Deci and Ryan defineautonomyasthe desire to integrate the various, valued aspects ofone’s life into a coherent whole. This definition does notview integration as simply the coherent merging of in-formation. Rather, an organismic integration is primar-ily concerned with coherence and congruence (Sheldon& Kasser, 1995. Coherence refers to the degree to whichthe elements of a life story are related to each other.Congruence refers to the degree to which the elementsof a life story are related to what one values most—inorganismic terms, the degree to which the elements of alife story foster intrinsic motivation. Several researchersand theorists have claimed that a mere assemblage offacts in a life story does not point to the person’s iden-tity; identity emerges as the person ascribes personalvalue and meaningfulness to those facts (Baumeister &Newman, 1994; Klinger, 1977; McAdams, 1985, 1993;Taylor, 1989). To that we add the finding that some per-sonal values are more “personal” than others, namelythose that foster intrinsic motivation (Sheldon & Elliot,1998). Therefore, although coherence and congruenceplay important roles in personal integration and auton-omy, congruence (with its emphasis on personal value)would appear to be more effective in terms of well-be-ing (Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). It seems reasonable tohypothesize that the degree to which one’s circum-stances satisfy the need for autonomy partly determinesthe degree to which one’s life-story structure integratesthe story’s contents, particularly in terms of intrinsicallymotivating values.

Conclusion

In our commentary we attempt to fortify the targetarticle’s claim that SDT’s three needs are fundamental

by demonstrating how the three needs underlie thecontent and structure of life stories. Our assumptionwas that, if the three needs were basic, then they shouldbe reflected in the basic components of life stories. Inshort, the needs for competence and relatedness are re-flected in the life-story themes of agency and commu-nion, whereas the need for autonomy is primarilyreflected in the structural integration and congruenceof life stories. We feel that the organismic andlife-story approaches as traditionally studied havemuch in common. However, much of the personalityresearch on SDT has occurred on what McAdams(1995) labeled Level I, the study of traits, and Level II,the study of goal constructs, such as personal strivingsand personal projects (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998; Shel-don & Kasser, 1995, 1998; Sheldon, Ryan,Rawsthorne, & Ilardi, 1997). Research on life stories istypically a Level III pursuit, aiming to understand howa person organizes and makes narrative sense of a per-sonal life over time. We envision future research thatsynthesizes SDT and life stories in an effort to under-stand, among other things, how people interpret theirlife conditions in terms of SDT-related needs and moti-vations, how people plan their lives of love and work inthe direction of personal growth and well-being, andhow people figure out what “really” interests (i.e., in-trinsically motivates) them.

Note

Jack J. Bauer and Dan P. McAdams, The Foley Cen-ter for the Study of Lives, Northwestern University,2115 North Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208.

References

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Bauer, J. J., & Bonanno, G. A. (2000). Being and doing well (for themost part): Adaptive patterns of narrative self-evaluation duringbereavement.Journal of Personality.

Baumeister, R. F., & Newman, L. S. (1994). How stories make senseof personal experiences: Motives that shape autobiographicalnarratives.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20,676–690.

Bruner, J. (1990).Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press.

Giddens, A. (1991).Modernity and self-identity: Self and society inthe late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.Hermans, H. J. M., & Kempen, H. J. G. (1993).Thedialogical self. New York: Academic.

Klinger, E. (1977).Meaning and void: Inner experience and the in-centives in people’s lives. Minneapolis: University of Minne-sota Press.

Linville, P. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity:Don’t put all of your eggs in one cognitive basket.Social Cogni-tion, 3,94–120.

Loevinger, J. (1976).Ego development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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McAdams, D. P. (1985).Power, intimacy, and the life story:Personological inquiries into identity. New York: Guilford.

McAdams, D. P. (1993).The stories we live by: Personal myths andthe making of the self. New York: Morrow.

McAdams, D. P. (1995). What do we know when we know a person?Journal of Personality, 63,365–396.

McAdams, D. P., Hoffman, B. J., Mansfield, E. D., & Day, R. (1996).Themes of agency and communion in significant autobiographi-cal scenes.Journal of Personality, 64,339–377.

McClelland, D. C. (1985).Human motivation. Glenview, IL: Scott,Foresman.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988).Narrative knowing and the human sci-ences. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1998). Not all personal goals are per-sonal: Comparing autonomous and controlled reasons for goalsas predictors of effort and attainment.Personality and SocialPsychology Bulletin, 24,546–557.

Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. (1995). Coherence and congruence:Two aspects of personality integration.Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 68,531–543.

Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. (1998). Pursuing personal goals: Skillsenable progress, but not all progress is beneficial.Personalityand Social Psychology Bulletin, 24,1319–1331.

Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R. M., Rawsthorne, L. J., & Ilardi, B. (1997).Trait self and true self: Cross-role variation in the Big-Five per-sonality traits and its relations with psychological authenticityand subjective well-being.Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 73,1380–1393.

Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1993).The remembered self. New York:Free Press.

Taylor, C. (1989).Sources of the self: The making of the modern iden-tity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Woike, B. A. (1994). The use of differentiation and integration pro-cesses: Empirical studies of “separate” and “connected” ways ofthinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67,142–150.

Woike, B. A., Gershkovich, I., Piorkowski, R., & Polo, M. (1999).The role of motives in the content and structure of autobiograph-ical memory.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76,600–612.

Why Intraindividual Needs Are Not Enough:Human Motivation Is Primarily Social

Bram P. BuunkDepartment of Social and Organizational Psychology

University of Groningen

Aukje NautaDepartment of Management and Organization

University of Groningen

In their extensive review of self-determination the-ory (SDT), Deci and Ryan (this issue) argue that thereare three innate human needs, that is, for autonomy,competence and relatedness. According to SDT, in thepursuit of goals, fulfillment of these needs is essentialfor psychological growth and in particular for well-be-ing. Their theory is based upon an impressive amountof work on the importance of intrinsic motivation in avariety of domains, and it would seem an importantstep to link findings from this line of work to broadertheoretical and metatheoretical issues, and to considerwhat research on intrinsic motivation tells us about ba-sic human needs. However, we see a number of limita-tions of this theory. We believe that Deci and Ryanmay be aiming too high by drawing rather far-reachingconclusions from findings on a specific phenomenon,and, more importantly, by paying too little attention tothe social context of human behavior, and in particularthe social nature of human motivation.

We feel that there is not enough evidence to sub-stantiate the crucial and central role of precisely thethree needs proposed by SDT play in determiningwell-being. To begin with, there is something tauto-logical about this approach as the concept ofwell-be-

ing is defined as “experiences of autonomy, compe-tence, and relatedness” (this issue). On the basis ofthe argument that the fulfillment of specific needs isassociated with a high well-being, there are manyother potential conceptualizations of needs thatwould be supported by similar evidence. For exam-ple, Deci and Ryan cite evidence that employees’ re-ports of satisfaction of their needs for autonomy,competence and relatedness in the workplace were re-lated to self-esteem and general health. However,work on psychosocial stress in work settings has iden-tified numerous stressors that are related to a lowwell-being, including role conflict, low status, roleambiguity, and work overload, and so forth (Buunk,De Jonge, Ybema, & De Wolff, 1998), but that are notalways easy to relate to the three needs SDT proposes.Moreover, although SDT suggests that there are noinnate individual differences in need strength, it issomewhat difficult to understand why there are at thesame time learned individual differences in causalityorientations—the general tendencies toward perceiv-ing autonomous, controlled, and impersonal causalityin the regulation of behavior. The vast literature onpersonality differences in, for example intellectual

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autonomy, need for affiliation and dominance wouldsuggest that substantial individual differences exist inthe three needs proposed in SDT. Related to this issueof individual differences, it is not too difficult to comeup with examples that suggest that well-being may in-crease because the need for competence is not ful-filled, for example when people feel very happy whilerelaxing during a vacation, or during retirement. Con-versely, for example the organizational literature sug-gests that well-being may decrease simply becausethe need for autonomyis “fulfilled.” That is, efforts toincrease autonomy often fail because manufacturingemployees prefer to receive close supervision andclear instructions rather than autonomy. In addition,fulfillment of extrinsic needs may be much more im-portant for well-being than SDT assumes. For exam-ple, a movie star who feels autonomous, competent,and related in her work, may become depressed be-cause she does not receive the Oscar she hoped for,whereas an athlete who wins an Olympic medal mayexperience a drastic upsurge in well-being, eventhough he felt the race was not going well.

The next issue we would like to raise, concernsthe claims that SDT makes that the three needs arerooted in the evolution of the human species. Weagree with the intention of Deci and Ryan to put theirown findings in a broader perspective. As noted byBuss (1996), just as astronomy was filled with im-portant observations of planetary motions beforethey were successfully explained, social psychologyis filled with a plethora of important empiricallydocumented phenomena that lack a powerful ex-planatory framework. In fact, we feel that eventu-ally, social psychology will become more and morefirmly based in an evolutionary perspective. In gen-eral, it seems that SDT implies a stronglyintraindividual perspective, seemingly ignoring thefact that humans evolved as social animals for whomgroup living was of the utmost importance, and thatbasic human needs and motivation would primarilyhave to reflect this. As argued by Dunbar (1993), thefact that there is across primates a high correlationbetween the ratio of the neocortex to the rest of thebrain, and the size of the group in which a primatelives, suggests that the neocortex developed to animportant extent to deal with the challenge of livingin large and complex groups. Although a claim canbe made for a need for relatedness, it is not very clearto us why a need for competence and autonomywould have evolved, and why, as Deci and Ryanclaim, evolution would have favored a fundamentalhuman trajectory toward vitality, integration, andhealth. Why would particular such needs have beenadaptive for our ancestors? Any theory on basic hu-man needs would have to start with an analysis ofwhat we know about the way the human speciesevolved and of what kind of situations make people

feel proud, happy, sad, angry or depressed in all cul-tures.

As one way of developing SDT into a theory thatacknowledges the social nature of the human species toa greater extent, we feel that more attention could bepaid to a number of other related theories that nowseem to be ignored, in particular in the organizationalarea. A particularly relevant theory is Herzberg’s(1966) motivation-hygiene theory according to whichjob enlargement and enrichment increase intrinsic mo-tivation, because such jobs are less boring and givemore freedom to workers, or in SDT terms: enable thefulfillment of the needs for autonomy and competence.Herzberg makes a distinction between contextual fac-tors that can motivate people and factors that candemotivate people. The first, labeled motivators (e.g.,having or not having a challenging job with much au-tonomy), determines whether people are neu-tral-to-satisfied with their jobs. The second, labeledhygiene factors (e.g., low versus high salary or otherextrinsic rewards), determine whether people are neu-tral-to-dissatisfied with their jobs. According toHerzberg, as soon as rewards fall below this compari-son level, people feel dissatisfied, maybe not even be-cause they are really deprived, but because they feelrelatively deprived compared to other people. It is pre-cisely the lack of attention to suchsocialprocesses thatseems to constitute a limitation of SDT.

Moreover, and also illustrating how social factorsneed to be incorporated in SDT, people are not aloneon this world, and cannot attain need satisfaction with-out cooperating with others. SDT seems to pay too lit-tle attention to the fact that needs have to be fulfilled ina social context. SDT defines need for autonomy as aneed for self-organization and self-regulation. How-ever, in social contexts, a need for autonomy of personA can lead to the “thwarting” of the need for autonomyof person B when A wants something that conflictswith what B wants. In this context, the dual-concernmodel (Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim, 1994) is particularly rel-evant. This model distinguishes between “concern forown goals” and “concern for goals of other’s.” Al-though according to SDT the need for autonomy andthe need for relatedness are not necessarily incompati-ble, the dual-concern model clarifies the conditions un-der which these needs are indeed incompatible,namely, in situations of conflicting interests. Onlywhen two parties want incompatible things, their re-spective needs for relatedness and needs for autonomyare likely to conflict. Interestingly, the dual-concernmodel has a similar “normative” point of view as SDT;only when combining concern for self and concern forother, people will choose constructive conflict behav-ior, that is, problem solving, and thus attain the highestlevel of joint outcomes, and concurrently of need satis-faction (e.g., Nauta & Sanders, in press; Van de Vliert,Nauta, Euwema, & Janssen, 1997).

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Social Comparison

As our central thesis we would like to argue that ahigh level of well-being is not only, and at least onlypartially, determined by feeling competent and autono-mous, but to an important extent by social comparison,that is, by how one perceives one’s competence and au-tonomy in comparison to that of others (Buunk, 1995).Although the desire for feeling better off than otherswould be labeled as an extrinsic need, SDT seems tooverlook the dramatic effects of the frustration or fulfill-ment of such a desire for well-being. Engaging in socialcomparisons is not, as SDT suggests, simply a “wrong”thing to do for people who want to be happy, but a veryfundamental aspect of human nature, and an importantdeterminant of well-being. According to Gilbert and hiscolleagues (Gilbert, 1990; Gilbert, Price, & Allan,1995), social comparison is phylogenetically very old,biologically very powerful, and recognizable in manyspecies. As many other social animals, humans competewith each other for status and prestige in groups, and so-cial comparison assists individuals in determining theirrank in the group, in assessing what others find attrac-tive in them, and, importantly, in providing informationon how one should change one’s behavior to obtain fa-vorable outcomes. Whatever one’s sense of autonomyand competence, there is a lot of evidence that the expe-rience of a raise in status as well as a permanent high sta-tus are accompanied by a high well-being, whereas aloss of status as well as a long lasting low status are det-rimental to well-being (Gilbert, 1988; Gilbert et al.,1995; Kemper, 1990). For example, depression may beviewed as resulting from a state of an involuntary lowstatus from which escape through flight or acceptance isblocked, and many findings on social comparisonamong depressed individuals can be interpreted fromthis perspective (Buunk & Brenninkmeyer, 2000).Buunk and Ybema (1997) argued that because humanshave developed the potential for self-deception and cog-nitive distortion, they have the possibility to symboli-cally assign themselves prestige and status in theirreference group. Such a reference group need not evenbe actually present but may be cognitively construed.From an evolutionary perspective, this search for sym-bolic superiority over others is the translation of thephysical struggle among primates for status in a group.There is a wealth of evidence neglected by SDT that theperception of being better off than others in one’s groupis related to a high well-being (e.g., Buunk; 1995;Buunk & Ybema, 1997; Taylor & Brown, 1988;VanderZee, Buunk et al., 1996). In particular, work is amajor area in which individuals in our society try to at-tain prestige and status and build positive self-esteem(Brockner, 1987), and a lack or loss of status can havedetrimental consequences, even when needs for compe-tence and autonomy in itself are met. Losing an actual orsymbolic social struggle for status at work may lead to

permanent depression and health damage (e.g., Buunk& Janssen, 1992), and feeling underpaid in comparisonof others may generate considerable stress, and feelingworse off than comparable others in terms of aspectssuch as physical safety, autonomy, and freedom, pro-motion prospects, and social atmosphere, may lead toabsenteeism (Geurts, Buunk, & Schaufeli, 1994). Toconclude then, a serious limitation of SDT is that notonly a high sense of competence and autonomy as such,but in particular how one perceives one’s autonomy andcompetence in comparison to others, seems related towell-being.

Reciprocity

Although social comparison processes aimed at as-sessing one’s status in groups seem in particular rele-vant for understanding the relationship betweencompetence and well-being, we would like to arguethat particularly considering the role of the need for re-latedness could benefit from taking into account therole of reciprocity in interpersonal relationships. AsDeci and Ryan note, relatedness may be less importantfor intrinsic motivation than autonomy and compe-tence. Indeed, on the basis of our work we would liketo suggest that it is not relatedness as such, but in par-ticular being involved in reciprocal relationships, thatis associated with a high well-being. Within social psy-chology, especially social-exchange theorists havedocumented already decades ago how interpersonal re-lationships are governed by reciprocity concerns. Inour own research program, we have shown how in par-ticular a lack of reciprocity is related to a low well-be-ing. We examined the role of reciprocity in giving andreceiving love, affection, support, and attention notonly in marital relationships in general, in the maritalrelationships of remarried individuals, and in the inti-mate relationships of cancer patients, but also in rela-tionships with colleagues and superiors at work, in bestfriendships, in lesbian relationships, in profes-sional–client relationships, and in the relationshipswith the organization in which one is employed (for areview, see Buunk & Schaufeli, 1999). From all thesestudies a rather consistent finding emerges: not onlyfeeling underbenefitted in the exchange, but also (al-though to a somewhat lesser extent) feelingoverbenefitted is associated with a lower well-being.People do not like to feel in debt, and exert many ef-forts to prevent this and to restore reciprocity as best asthey can. Not only giving more support than one re-ceives, but also receiving more support than one is ableor willing to return may evoke quite negative feelings,such as the feeling of being unable to reciprocate, andthe concern that something is expected in return thatone is unwilling to provide (Buunk & Hoorens, 1992).Just to give a few examples, among employees of a

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psychiatric hospital, and among employees of theDutch railway company, a lack of perceived reciproc-ity in the relationship with the supervisor was in gen-eral associated with negative mood, independently ofthe effect of perceived job stress (Buunk, Doosje, Jans,& Hopstaken, 1993), and those who feltunderbenefitted as well as those who feltoverbenefitted in the relationship with their best friend,were more lonely than those who perceived a recipro-cal exchange (Buunk & Prins, 1998). Substantiatingthe wide-ranging implications of reciprocity in rela-tionships, in our research program we have shown thata lack of reciprocity is associated with a variety ofmental health outcomes, including burnout, loneliness,marital satisfaction, and depression, and with diver-gent “exit” behaviors, including extradyadic sex, di-vorce, and absenteeism. These associations areindependent from other factors such as reward level,self-esteem, perceived job stressors, length of the rela-tionship, and type of relationship. Moreover, reciproc-ity seems even to matter in those contexts in whichcultural norms would seem to foster a mitigation ofreciprocity concerns, such as the situation in which oneof the spouses develops a serious disease (Kuijer,Ybema, & Buunk, 1998).

In view of the broad range of relationships that seemsto be governed by similar principles of reciprocity, andgiven the wide range of outcomes affected by a lack ofreciprocity, we suggested that a basic psychologicalmechanism is at work that may be rooted in evolution(Buunk & Schaufeli, 1999), and have argued that astrong concern with reciprocity may have fostered sur-vival and reproductive success in our evolutionary past(e.g., Alexander, 1987; Buss, 1996), as suggested byneo-Darwinistic theories on altruism. Evolutionary bi-ologists have for more than a century struggled with theoccurrence of many prosocial and empathic behaviorsin groups of unrelated individuals, and recently pro-posed the theory of reciprocal altruism. According tothis theory, altruism may arise and be adaptive when itcan be assumed that altruistic acts will be reciprocated(cf. Gould & Gould, 1989; Trivers, 1985). More in par-ticular, reciprocal altruism may develop when (a) itcosts little to provide favors to others, although onewould considerably benefit when there is a chance thatthe favor is returned at a later point in time, for exampleby sharing meat that is too much for a single individualto consume with others; (b) when there are sufficientopportunities for help to be reciprocated, thus whenthere is long-term contact with others who might even-tually provide similar benefits in return; and (c) whenmechanisms evolve for the identification of cheaters,and the development of responses that punish those whocheat. In all cultures strong moral feelings are attachedto reciprocity, and reciprocal behaviors are watchedwith a high degree of involvement (Brown, 1991).Many emotions that occupy such a central place in hu-

man life, have as their basic function to monitor and reg-ulate reciprocity in social interaction, such as moralisticstandards against which behavior is judged. To con-clude then, a limitation of SDT is that not a high sense ofrelatedness as such, but in particular the extent to whichone perceives one’s relationships as reciprocal seemsrelated to well-being. Moreover, it would seem that ex-periencing a high degree of autonomy implies in partnot being indebted toward others, and not having to in-volve oneself in unreciprocal relationships, indicatingthat this need may be conceived more in terms of one’sinvolvement in relationships with others than SDT does.

Conclusion

From our perspective, it seems unlikely that thefeelings and responses associated with the innateneeds described by Deci and Ryan (this issue) are asstrong as those associated with, for example, beingcheated versus treated fairly, and with successfullysurpassing others versus being surpassed by oth-ers—experiences that deal with one’s relationshipswith others in a group, in particular with the “need”to maintain reciprocal relationships and the “need”to achieve a high status. In general, a theory on hu-man motivation cannot ignore the fundamental so-cial nature of the human species, even when itimplies characteristics and “needs” that may notseem morally desirable such as the desire to be betteroff than others, and the monitoring of relationshipsin terms of the give and take. We are somewhat con-cerned about the political agenda that researchersworking on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation some-times seem to have. This agenda is manifest from,for example, the criticism of Terror ManagementTheory that “it does not provide us with clear direc-tion for facilitating positive social change (i.e., thosethat promote human growth and well-being)” (Deci& Ryan, this issue). We feel that this is a rather inap-propriate criterion for evaluating a theory. The polit-ical agenda was also manifest in a recent paper at theSociety of Personality and Social Psychology, inwhich Kasser (2000) presented findings oncross-cultural differences and similarities in the im-portance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, andconcluded his talk by expressing the concern that ascapitalism and consumerism spread around theglobe, extrinsic motivation would become more im-portant, and intrinsic motivation less important. Werather suggest the opposite: Being able to do intrinsi-cally motivating work is only in Western “capitalis-tic” countries reserved for a substantial part of thepopulation. In most countries around the globe, sur-vival, and thus extrinsic motivation completelydominates people’s lives, and people’s well-being isprimarily served by rigidly following extrinsic moti-

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vation, that is, the desire to make money, or to en-gage in exchange of goods to serve the basic needs ofsubsistence. In fact, at one point Deci and Ryan sug-gest in parentheses that SDT applies only, “once oneis above poverty” (this issue). Unfortunately, mostpeople do not live under these circumstances, and inour evolutionary past probably nobody lived likethis: the struggle for life in its most literal sense pre-dominated. Whoever pays even superficial attentionto the social behavior of humans under a variety ofhistorical and geographical conditions, might bemore struck by the omnipresent “needs” for statusand reciprocal exchanges, than by the needs for au-tonomy, relatedness and competence in task con-texts.

Note

Bram P. Buunk, Department of Social and Organi-zational Psychology, University of Groningen, GroteKruisstraat 2/1, NL–9712 TS Groningen, The Nether-lands. E-mail: a.p.buunk@ppsw.rug.nl

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Autonomy and Self-Regulation

Charles S. CarverDepartment of Psychology

University of Miami

Michael F. ScheierDepartment of Psychology

Carnegie Mellon University

The target article summarizes well the current stateof the literature of self-determination theory and itspredecessors. Deci and Ryan (this issue) and theirmany collaborators have generated a large body of evi-dence, constituting impressive support for many oftheir assertions. Whether or not one agrees with all as-pects of their analysis, it’s hard not to be impressed bythe breadth of their efforts to develop a viewpoint onhuman behavior that is humanistic as well as organis-mic. In the target article they also extended their dis-cussion to a wide range of theories that have focusesdifferent from their own. In so doing, they made astrong claim for self-determination as a comprehen-sive statement on human nature.

In our commentary, we devote our attention largelyto issues that we think still lack clarity, assumptionsthat seem arbitrary, and points on which we disagree(for a discussion that is wider ranging, see Carver &Scheier, 1999b).

What Is Autonomy?

An aspect of this theory we always have troublewith is the concept of autonomy. In fact, we have sev-eral problems with it, starting with how it is definedwithin the theory.

Defining Autonomy

What does autonomy mean? The nearby dictionarydefines autonomy as “the quality or state of beingself-governing; … self-directing freedom and esp.moral independence.” A check on the adjective form“autonomous” adds “undertaken or carried on withoutoutside control; self-contained; responding, reacting,or developing independently of the whole” (Webster’sNinth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1984) Autonomy,then, seems to be self-direction, self-determina-tion—plain and simple.

In contrast to this, however, the target article (thisissue) includes the following statements: “autonomyconcerns the experience ofintegration[italics added]and freedom; it is in people’s nature to develop greaterautonomy (as represented by greaterintegration[ital-

ics added] within the self); and autonomy, as a humancharacteristic, is an extension of this deeply evolvedtendency [toward integrated functioning].” It seemsclear that autonomy has very different connotations inself-determination theory than it does in everyday lan-guage. We think it is confusing to use the word thisway. We believe the matter of self-determination islogically distinct from the matter of integration withinthe self, and that the two should be kept separate.

Deci and Ryan wrote elsewhere in the target articlethat the development of an integrated self reflects adeep inner design of the human organism towardself-cohesion and the avoidance of self-fragmentation.We have no problem accepting this principle. Thisprinciple fits very nicely with a hierarchical organiza-tion of goals and development (Carver & Scheier,1999b). We just object to seeing it incorporated intothe term autonomy.

Is Autonomy Real?

Apart from the issue of whether integration shouldbe included in it, what else is bothersome about theconcept of autonomy? Another thing that’s bother-some is the question of whether true autonomy actuallyexists. We raised this question earlier (Carver &Scheier, 1999a), asking whether true independence ofaction ever really exists—in effect, whether there isfree will. Clearly people experience a stronger sense ofindependence and self-determination at some timesthan at others. Just as clearly, however, the subjectiveexperience of free will does not make it true in reality(cf. Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). We are happy to havethe sense of self-determination (at times), but we retainsome skepticism over whether that sense is illusory.

On the other hand, it isn’t clear whether the impor-tance Deci and Ryan place on autonomy is aboutwhether or not people trulyareautonomous. The issueinstead may be whether people “need tofeel [italicsadded] autonomous,” as Deci and Ryan (this issue)wrote at one point in the target article. Perhaps the uni-versal need is actually the need to screen away enoughof the controlling pressures tofeelthe sense of self-di-rection, even if it happens to be illusory. Ryan and Deci(1999) placed great weight on the fact that feeling a

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sense of self-determination promotes better outcomesof various sorts, as do Deci and Ryan in the target arti-cle. Yet those findings cannot shed light on whether itis theperceptionof autonomy or theexistenceof au-tonomy that matters.

Does Everyone Want Autonomy?

People in Western culture do seem to like to feel au-tonomous. However, we’ve also wondered how uni-versal this desire really is (Carver & Scheier, 1999b).Of considerable interest, in this regard, are the findings(discussed in the target article) reported by Iyengar andLepper (1999). That research found that reflections ofintrinsic interest among Asian-American childrenwere greater when a close and trusted other (theirmother, their classmates) made a choice for them thanwhen they made the choice themselves.

Deci and Ryan interpret these results as indicatingthat the means through which autonomy is expressedcan differ across cultures, an interpretation we find alittle strained. Deci and Ryan say that “in some EastAsian cultures, people may feel both highly volitionaland autonomous when endorsing and enacting valuesof those with whom they identify” (this issue). We willnot dwell on the discrepancy between this and the dic-tionary definition of autonomy. But we are compelledto ask what evidence sustains the conclusion that thechildren whose mothers chose for them were feelingautonomous, as opposed to the conclusion that the de-sire for autonomy is a Western phenomenon. We mustalso ask why the Asian-American children who chosefor themselvesapparently didnot feel autonomous. Ifthe essence of autonomy is self-determination, howcould their actions possibly be more self-determinedthan by making their own choices?1

The Self In Self-Determination

A final point about the use of the terms autonomyand self-determination: Again we put aside the issue ofintegration and deal only with the dictionary definitionof autonomous as self-governing. There remains a fur-

ther definitional problem here. To Deci and Ryan, the“self” in the term self-governing or self-determiningmeans more than just an “internal” perceived locus ofcausality (despite their occasional emphasis onI-PLOC). An internal locus of the origination of the act(i.e., the impetus starts from within the person) doesnot equal self-determination in this theory. In this the-ory an action is self-determined only if it reflects avalue of the “true” self.2 Deci and Ryan acknowledgethat their concept of self is very different from the selfin most other views. From their perspective, not every-thing that’s inside the person’s mind is a part of the trueself.

This point is easy to lose track of. In an early draft ofour commentary, one of us wrote that self-determina-tion can be exercised by stepping onto a busy highwaywithout looking, but that’s not right. Internal perceivedlocus of causality could (we assume) be reflected insuch an act, if the impetus to act originates inside theperson’s mind. So could self-governance, in the sensethat the decision to act is made on one’s own with nooutside interference (the dictionary definition of au-tonomy). The act could be freely chosen. But upon fur-ther review, such an act probably would not beautonomous in the Deci and Ryan view, because it failsto advance a value of the true self, and indeed may con-flict with an important value of the true self (desire forself-preservation).

This difference in assumptions about what consti-tutes the self can make debate difficult. It’s not thatDeci and Ryan are not explicit about taking a positionthat’s different from those taken by others. They areexplicit that they do so. But it’s hard for at least someof us to keep the difference in mind, and difficulties incommunication do arise on that account (for a broadercritique of the true self as a construct, see Carver &Scheier, 1999b).

The Core Needs Are Not StructurallyEquivalent

Another set of issues is raised by the nature of thebasic needs that Deci and Ryan postulate. Throughouttheir target article, they refer to the three fundamentalhuman needs of autonomy, relatedness, and compe-tence. Relatedness is a relative latecomer to the Deciand Ryan model, which formerly incorporated onlyself-determination and competence. Adding related-ness broadens the theory. However, relatedness alsodiffers in a fundamental way from the other two needs.

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1As an aside, we offer the speculation that Asian-American chil-

dren may hold the belief that their mothers and peers typically makewiser or better choices than they would make themselves. If so, theywould prefer to relinquish control over the choice, because relin-quishing control would promote a better outcome. This would renderthe pattern consistent with the view that obtaining a desirable out-come is more important than exerting personal control over the out-come, a view that we have and others have promoted (see, e.g., Bur-ger, 1989; Carver et al., 2000; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Skowronski &Carlston, 1982). Although we are mindful of Deci and Ryan’s pointthat autonomy is not quite the same as personal control, this extrapo-lation seems not unreasonable.

2The notion of a “true” self is on the one hand appealing, and on the

other hand maddeningly difficult to be precise about. One of the prob-lems many observers have had with self-actualization models is thatit is very hard to specify a priori what anyone’s true self consists ofand thus what kind of behavior is self-actualizing for that person.

Relatedness Is Different in Form

Relatedness concerns a “content” domain of behav-ioral experience (albeit a broad one). The other two ba-sic needs are not content needs. The need forcompetence applies in principle to any domain of be-havior, as does the need for self-determination. Indeed,competence and self-determination are qualities thatcould readily be applied to relatedness. That is, somepeople are good at maintaining relatedness (are com-petent at it), others are not. Some people feel that theirefforts to be connected to others are self-determinedand authentic, others feel they “ought” to be connectedto others and are trying to be so in order to satisfy thoseconditions of worth.

This difference between relatedness and the othersupposed core needs raises a number of questions.Why is this particular content need special? Are thereno other psychological content needs that are universalbesides this one? The other two needs that Deci andRyan postulate have to do with the “why” of behavior(actually, the more we think about it, the more theyseem to be part of the “how” of behavior—that is, be-havior being done well and done freely). Can it be thatthe need for relatedness is the only universal “what” ofbehavior?

Self-Determination ModeratesCompetence

The two noncontent needs also turn out to have an-other important relationship to each other, which ren-ders suspect the status of at least one of them as a basicneed in and of itself: Deci and Ryan say that their viewis very different from others that emphasize constructssuch as personal efficacy. Their position is more nar-row and specific. In their view, efficacy or competenceis not valuable unless it is efficacy at the right activi-ties, being done under the right circumstances. Morespecifically, competence is desirable only if it pertainsto an activity that authentically reflects some value ofthe true self, and is being engaged in freely rather thanbeing controlled.

This conditional quality does indeed make their the-ory different from others that emphasize competence.At the same time, however, this conditional quality is adouble-edged sword. It also places a boundary on therelevance for human well-being of the need for compe-tence. It means that the need for competence cannot befundamental in the sense of applying to all domains ofbehavior.

Thus, competence does not stand on its own in thistheory. Competence matters only in interaction withself-determination. Being highly competent at break-ing into houses is not good, because housebreakingdoes not reflect the true self, even if one is choosing

freely to engage in it (question: does this remain trueeven if the housebreaking stems from such motives asthe desire for fun, or curiosity, rather than the desire tosteal?). Being competent at the piano is not good if thereason for it is your mother standing over you with aswitch for 10 years forcing 2 hr of practice every day.Competence is good only if it furthers some value ofthe self, and does so freely and without coercion.What’s beneficial is behavior that simultaneously re-flects competence and self-determination.

This moderation of the positive value of compe-tence by self-determination raises a methodologicalquestion. Moderation or synergistic effects should betested via interactions between the predictors (Carver,1989). Do researchers testing the role of competenceand self-determination approach the question in de-signs that permit testing for interactions? If not, thiswould seem to be an important avenue for further ex-ploration.

Although we’ve focused on the issue of moderationwith respect to competence, the question can also beraised for autonomy. Does self-determination stand onits own? Is behavior beneficial if it is self-determinedbut not competent? If it is not, the same two problemspertain to self-determination as apply to competence. Itcannot be fundamental in the sense of applying to allactivities, and the proper test of its effect is its interac-tion with competence.

Why Is Competence Necessary for anActivity to Relate to the AuthenticSelf?

A final question about these needs (also raised inCarver & Scheier, 1999b) concerns the role that thetheory assumes for competence in the authentic self.We’ve always found it odd that competence per seshould be a hallmark of the authentic self. What if aperson wants to do something for perfectly authenticand intrinsic reasons, but is horrible at it? We canreadily see how this person would have trouble havinga “flow” experience while engaged in the activity. Butwhy should this desire (this goal) not be part of the per-son’s authentic self?

We are not arguing here that Deci and Ryan’s po-sition reduces to an efficacy model. As noted earlier,in their view it is not beneficial to be efficacious atan activity that’s imposed on you, or is irrelevant toyour true self. Efficacy is desirable only with regardto values that are authentic. But if the value is au-thentic, efficacy seems very important indeed. Infact, it seems from what Deci and Ryan have writtenin various places that efficacy is one determinant ofwhether the valueis authentic. We find that hard tounderstand.

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Avoidance and Autonomy

In considering the distinction between self-determi-nation and control, we have argued that many con-trolled actions appear to have their origins in theattempt to avoid some undesired state, either sanctionsfrom outside or self-sanctions (Carver & Scheier,1999a, 1999b). In this respect, they appear to resemble“ought” self-guides (Higgins, 1987, 1996)—valuesthat people approach, but which seem to have a partialbasis in the attempt to avoid other self-guides such asthe “feared” self (Carver, Lawrence, & Scheier, 1999).Ryan and Deci (1999) rejected this argument, holdingthat the distinction between approach and avoidance isunrelated to the distinction between self-determinedand controlled behavior. They reiterated that positionin the target article.

Some of the data suggest otherwise, however. Asnoted in the target article, Ryan and Connell (1989)found that introjected (controlled) and identified (au-tonomous) regulation related to motivated effort inschoolchildren. However, introjected regulation alsorelated to anxiety, whereas identified regulation re-lated to enjoyment. Why were the children who wereengaged in introjected regulationanxious? Anxiety re-lates to avoidance processes (Carver & Scheier, 1998;Davidson, 1992; Gray, 1987; Higgins, 1987, 1996;Roseman, 1984). This pattern of findings thus seemsconsistent with the idea that introjected regulation inthese children is rooted in an avoidance im-pulse—avoidance of a sense of guilt or shame.

Eliot and Sheldon (1998) conducted another projectbearing on this issue. They had participants report 10goals they were actively pursuing and characterizeeach as being primarily an approach goal or an avoid-ance goal. Participants also rated the extent to whichtheir pursuit of each goal was based on reasons thatwere extrinsic, introjected, identified, and intrinsic.These ratings were used to create indices of autonomy(from intrinsic and identified reasons) andcontrolledness (from extrinsic and introjected rea-sons). Elliot and Sheldon found that people who werepursuing a higher proportion of avoidance goals re-ported less autonomy and more controlledness in theirgoal pursuit. This pattern is also consistent with theidea that much of controlled behavior has avoidance asits core basis.

Let us be clear about what we are not saying here, aswell as what we are saying. We are not making the as-sertion, which Deci and Ryan incorrectly ascribe toCarver and Scheier (1999b) that approach is autono-mous and avoidance is controlled. Our assertion isasymmetrical. What Carver and Scheier (1999b) wrotewas “we can think of no case in which a value of thetrue self as [Ryan and Deci] discuss it has an avoidancetendency as its core motivational basis” (p. 291). Canan action that has approach as its core motivational ba-

sis be controlled? Yes. Can an action that has avoid-ance as its core motivational basis be autonomous? Be-cause the process leading to avoidance is alwayscoercive (some danger forces the avoidance), we be-lieve the answer is no.

Internalization and Compensation

We also have some comments about how valuesthat are not at first intrinsic become part of the self.Deci and Ryan describe the process of internalizationas moving along a continuum of incorporation into theself: introjection moves the control inside the person’smind but not into the self; identification begins an as-similation into the self; integration makes that assimi-lation more complete. We have no doubt that this is auseful and accurate description of how people changeover time. However, it leaves tantalizing questionshanging. In particular, what is the process by whichthis happens?

Deci and Ryan discuss evidence that certain envi-ronmental conditions foster the occurrence of this in-ternalization and others do not. But the mechanism bywhich it happens was less clearly specified. Theywrote that “for integration to occur there must be anopportunity for the individual to freely process and en-dorse transmitted values . . . ,”(this issue) and that peo-ple must grasp the importance of the values “andsynthesize their meaning with respect to other valuesand motivations” (this issue). It appears that they aresaying that internalization typically involves givingthe child (a) a rationale for why a value is important,(b) a chance to think about the rationale for a while,and (c) a chance to see that there are links from this toother values that the child already holds. It would ap-pear that the key element is the discovery (throughwhatever means) of links to other values that are al-ready in place within the self.

Let us reframe this slightly in terms of a hierarchicalmodel of goals, using the core values that Deci and Ryanemphasize. We start with the situation of external con-trol. External regulation of children’s behavior entailspressure from the parent, either in the form of cajolingand rewards or in the form of threats and sanctions. Asan example, we use the child who doesn’t want to prac-tice the piano. Typical tactics to elicit practicing are em-phasizing how much the parent wants the child topractice, and emphasizing that the child will be able togo outside and play (or whatever) only after the practic-ing is done (Figure 1, Section A). These two tactics arecontrolling, in that they interfere with autonomy. None-theless, they rely ultimately on core needs. Satisfyingyour mother’s desires is one way of maintaining a senseof relatedness in the family. Getting to the goal of beingable to go outside and play is a way of pursuing an in-trinsic motivation.

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Now fast forward a few years. After having thoughtabout why (or whether) learning the piano is valu-able—most importantly, after having experiencedother connections among values in the hierarchy ofgoals within the self, the child is now organized a bitdifferently regarding relations among higher order val-ues that support the practicing (Figure 1, Section B).

Now the child realizes that acquiring a musical skillenhances personal overall competence, and provides anew path to relatedness (i.e., playing along with othersand for the enjoyment of others), and that both of thosepaths permit the activity to be autonomous. This childhas also begun to discover an intrinsic interest in themusic making itself, and even in some of the activities

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Figure 1. Internalization of a goal into the self, as changes in hierarchical links among self-goals over timeand experience. Importance accrues to a concrete action goal in two ways. The action goal may contribute in alarge way to attainment of a higher order goal (indicated by a thicker line here), or it may contribute to attain-ing several higher order goals at once (indicated by a larger number of upward projections). Interference withattaining a higher order goal (what one might think of as an inhibitory link upward) is indicated here by barredlines. (A) This child is being induced to practice the piano by the mother, who emphasizes how happy it willmake her, and that the child can go do something fun only after practicing. Both of these tactics rest in part onpresumed core needs (maintaining relatedness, and intrinsic interest in the other activity), though both of thesecontrolling tactics also interfere with the desire to maintain autonomy. (B) Later, these controlling reasons be-come less important; this child has discovered that developing skill at the piano is a path to an overall sense ofcompetence, to having connections with other people, and also autonomy. Even a sense of intrinsic interest hasemerged, with respect both to the development of skill and to some of the activities of practice itself. The goal ofpracticing the piano has been internalized.

of practicing.3 The relevance of the controlling paths(the links to satisfying mom and getting free to go dosomething else) has faded. This activity is now identi-fied, possibly even integrated.

As suggested previously, the key to internalizationseems to be the discovery that the activity or value con-nects to some other value that is already in place withinthe self (either because it is fundamental, or because ithas already been acquired). This discovery can be quiteserendipitous (see the longer discussion on how newgoals are acquired, in Carver & Scheier, 1999b). Thisline of thought would also seem consonant with Deciand Ryan’s assertions at several points that people canbe filling core needs even when they are not trying todo so (although they may later discover that they aredoing so), and with their statement that finding an ac-tivity interesting or important is influenced by prior ex-periences of need satisfaction.

It seems important, however, to be explicit aboutthe underlying assumption: that for goals and values tobe internalized, their attainment must be enhancingcongruence within the self. Without this principle, wesee no obvious way to account for the absorption of thegoals into the self. This example thus illustrates how ahierarchical conception of self can render more ex-plicit one of the processes that is less explicit inself-determination theory.

Compensatory Activity

Deci and Ryan (this issue) contrast the process ofinternalization with what they called compensatory ac-tivities, or substitute fulfillments. The development ofcompensatory activity is hypothesized to occur whenfulfillment of basic needs is repeatedly thwarted. Thecompensatory motives do not satisfy the thwartedneed, but provide some “collateral satisfaction.” Pre-sumably that means that they satisfy needs or motivesthat are not as important as the core ones (e.g., peoplewill work for money to buy food, even if they don’tlike the work).

The notion of compensatory activities is a part ofthe theory that seems less well explicated conceptuallythan others. For example, it is not obvious why the fail-ure to experience relatedness should lead to intensifiedattempts to accumulate money, a “wrong” goal. Nor isit obvious why accumulating money will enhance theperson’s focus on the pursuit of this goal.

Presumably Deci and Ryan are not saying that suc-cess in pursuing money “reinforces” the tendency topursue money, as reinforcement is not a key part intheir theory. Is it that accumulating money, posses-sions, and fame produces at least a semblance of relat-edness that feels better than no relatedness at all? Thuspeople hold tightly to the ersatz relatedness? But peo-ple presumably feel the difference between actual andersatz relatedness. Why should people who have onlyersatz relatedness not simply experience more andmore acutely the absence of satisfaction of their coreneeds? Why shouldn’t involvement in pursuing the“wrong” goals lead people to be more ready to aban-don those goals? Why (and how) do they become en-meshed in compensatory activities? How (and underwhat circumstances) could they ever get out of that en-meshment?

We have suggested a different way of thinkingabout this kind of situation (see Carver & Scheier,1998), one that rests partly on the ideas of dy-namic-systems theory. We suggest that people oftenfind themselves in less than ideal circumstances andbecome adapted to those circumstances. This idea,which is hardly revolutionary, views the person’s be-havior less as compensatory than as being “adaptive”in the current life situation (though possibly not at alladmirable to an outsider). As long as the behavior re-mains adaptive (helps the person fit into personal lifespace—including fitting with the person’s other val-ues), there is no pressure to change. Only if the personexperiences substantial “error” (which may come fromconflict with other values, from demands from outside,from changes in other aspects of the situation) is therepressure to shift, reorganize, move from one life pat-tern to a different one.

This view would be consonant with the ideas dis-cussed by Deci and Ryan, if one were to accept theircore values as being already embedded in the person’shierarchy of self (as Deci & Ryan do, of course). Thisview adds some interesting predictions, however, in-cluding the notion that a shift (if it ever does occur)may be expected to be fairly abrupt (cf. Hayes &Strauss, 1998).

On the other hand, the fit with Deci and Ryan wouldbe less good if one were not to assume that the needsfor relatedness, competence, and autonomy are alreadythere and actively pulling at the person. One of theproblems many observers have had with self-actual-ization models is that it’s hard to specify a priori whatanyone’s true self consists of. If an individual’s trueself incorporates an intrinsic interest in accumulatingwealth, for example, who can say that that interest isn’tpart of that person’s true self, and that the accumula-tion of wealth isn’t self-actualizing for that person(Carver & Baird, 1998)?

Although it is disheartening to consider the possi-bility, it is not clear that the “true self” of every person

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3This example is framed in terms of a child who actually has some

intrinsic interest in the piano. If the interest isn’t there at all, that linkwon’t solidify. Further, if the child has no inborn skill at the piano, thesense of competence won’t be fed, not will the piano become a meansto connect with other people. For such children, practicing may neverbe absorbed into the true self.

is really rooted in values that affirm humanconnectedness and excellence (cf. Baumeister &Campbell, 1999). Might it not be the case that the trueself of the sociopath is exactly what itseems—exploitive, unconnected, and entitled; inimi-cal to society, but supportive and protective of its ownautonomous well being?

Concluding Comment

Despite their criticisms of cybernetic theories, Deciand Ryan suggest that there is the potential for a suc-cessful integration across conceptual boundaries. Weagree. For example, we think the notion ofhierarchicality adds considerably to discussions ofhow needs are interwoven, and we think Deci andRyan’s model benefits from explicit consideration ofthis idea. As another example, Powers (1973, Chap. 14& 17) discussed in control-theory terms some of thesame issues as Deci and Ryan discuss in the context ofautonomy needs, including the idea that giving a re-ward to induce a behavior can impede a naturalself-correcting reorganization process (p. 193).

Deci and Ryan criticized the cybernetic model pri-marily because it doesn’t specify a basis for determin-ing what the higher order goals are, that it “seem[s] tosuggest that what lies at the top of goal hierarchies isnot organismically determined” (this issue). We sus-pect (once again) that the difference between views inthis respect is not nearly as sharp as Deci and Ryanthink it is (see also Powers, 1973, Chap. 17).

We offer three bases for this opinion. First, the or-ganismic and humanistic principle of integration, co-herence, or congruence within the self is entirelycommensurate with self-regulatory control principles.That’s what discrepancy-reducing loops do: create andmaintain congruency.

Second, a number of people have begun to invokethe principle of self-organization as a basis for emer-gent properties in dynamic systems (Nowak &Vallacher, 1998; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; for basicintroduction see Carver & Scheier, 1998, Chap. 17).Interestingly enough, MacKay (1956) anticipated thisnotion and described a system of feedback processesthat could evolve its own goals (see also Beer, 1995;Maes & Brooks, 1990). In such an arrangement thegoals at the top of the hierarchy would truly be“organismically determined”—that is, determined bythe characteristics of the entity as a whole in interac-tion with its environment—not just postulated, as Deciand Ryan did with respect to competence, autonomy,and relatedness.

This is not to say that competence, autonomy, andrelatedness are not perhaps key emergent propertieswithin the framework of human functioning. They maywell be. Our third reason for believing that the cyber-netic and organismic viewpoints are not as different

from each other as Deci and Ryan think they are comesfrom Powers (1973). In closing his discussion of thecontrol hierarchy he had proposed, Powers speculatedon the development of further layers of control. Part ofhis description of this possibility was not unlikeMaslow’s view of transcendent self-actualizers:

Perhaps what some see as a universal urge towardOneness represents the glimmerings of a mode of per-ception in which all system concepts are seen as exam-ples of higher versions of reality, so that … what wecall ‘realities’ will some day be manipulated as casu-ally as we now manipulate principles in service of sys-tems. (Powers, 1973, p. 174)

We suggest that the cybernetic (which Powers hasalso pointed out was an analogy from living to artificialsystems, rather than the other way around) and the hu-manistic–organismic share a great deal. Further explo-rations of their intersection can only enrich both ofthem.

Notes

Preparation of this comment was facilitated by NCIgrants CA64710, CA64711, and CA78995. We thankSheri Johnson for her comments on an earlier draft.

Charles S. Carver, Department of Psychology, Uni-versity of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124–2070.E-mail: ccarver@miami.edu

References

Baumeister, R. F., & Campbell, W. K. (1999). The intrinsic appeal ofevil: Sadism sensation thrills and threatened egotism.Personal-ity and Social Psychology Review, 3,210–221.

Beer, R. D. (1995). A dynamical systems perspective on agent-envi-ronment interaction.Artificial Intelligence, 72,173–215.

Burger, J. M. (1989). Negative reactions to increases in perceivedpersonal control.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,56,246–256.

Carver, C. S. (1989). How should multifaceted personality constructsbe tested? Issues illustrated by self-monitoring, attributionalstyle, and hardiness.Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-ogy, 56,577–585.

Carver, C. S., & Baird, E. (1998). The American dream revisited: Is itwhatyou want orwhyyou want it that matters?PsychologicalScience, 9,289–292.

Carver, C. S., Harris, S. D., Lehman, J. M., Durel, L. A., Antoni, M.H., Spencer, S. M., & Pozo-Kaderman, C. (2000). How impor-tant is the perception of personal control? Studies of early stagebreast cancer patients.Personality and Social Psychology Bul-letin, 26,139–150.

Carver, C. S., Lawrence, J. W., & Scheier, M. F. (1999). Self-discrep-ancies and affect: Incorporating the role of feared selves.Per-sonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25,783–792.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998).On the self-regulation of be-havior. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1999a). Themes and issues in theself-regulation of behavior. In R. S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.),Advances insocial cognition(Vol. 12, pp. 1–105). Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates, Inc.

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Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1999b). Several more themes,a lot more issues: Commentary on the commentaries. In R.S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.),Advances in social cognition(Vol. 12,pp. 261–302). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associ-ates, Inc.

Davidson, R. J. (1992). Anterior cerebral asymmetry and the natureof emotion.Brain and Cognition, 20,125–151.

Elliot, A. J., & Sheldon, K. M. (1998). Avoidance personal goals andthe personality–illness relationship.Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 75,1282–1299.

Gray, J. A. (1987).The psychology of fear and stress. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Hayes, A. M., & Strauss, J. L. (1998). Dynamic systems theory as aparadigm for the study of change in psychotherapy: An applica-tion to cognitive therapy for depression.Journal of Consultingand Clinical Psychology, 66,939–947.

Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and af-fect.Psychological Review, 94,319–340.

Higgins, E. T. (1996). Ideals, oughts, and regulatory focus: Affectand motivation from distinct pains and pleasures. In P. M.Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.),The psychology of action:Linking cognition and motivation to behavior(pp. 91–114).New York: Guilford.

Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (1999). Rethinking the value ofchoice: A cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation.Journalof Personality and Social Psychology, 76,349–366.

MacKay, D. M. (1956). Toward an information-flow model of hu-man behaviour.British Journal of Psychology, 47,30–43.

Maes, P., & Brooks, R. A. (1990). Learning to coordinate behaviors.Proceedings of the American Association of Artificial Intelli-gence(pp. 796–802). Los Alto, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Nowak, A., & Vallacher, R. R. (1998).Dynamical social psychology.New York: Guilford.

Powers, W. T. (1973).Behavior: The control of perception.Chicago:Aldine.

Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984).Order out of chaos: Man’s newdialogue with nature. New York: Random House.

Roseman, I. J. (1984). Cognitive determinants of emotions: A struc-tural theory. In P. Shaver (Ed.),Review of personality and socialpsychology(Vol. 5, pp. 11–36). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1999). Approaching and avoidingself-determination: Comparing cybernetic and organismic para-digms of motivation. In R. S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.),Advances in socialcognition (Vol. 12, pp. 193–215). Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates, Inc.

Ryan, R. M., & Connell, J. P. (1989). Perceived locus of causality andinternalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57,749–761.

Skowronski, J. J., & Carlston, D. E. (1982). Effects of previously ex-perienced outcomes on the desire for choice.Journal of Person-ality and Social Psychology, 43,689–701.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. (1984).Autonomy.Springfeild, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation:Sources of the experience of will.American Psychologist, 54,480–492.

Aging and the Satisfaction of Psychological Needs

Peter G. ColemanDepartments of Geriatric Medicine and Psychology

University of Southampton

Deci and Ryan (this issue) provide new impetus toresearch on human motivation by revisiting the con-cept of psychological need, and specifying compe-tence, relatedness and autonomy as three needsessential to goal-related activity. Their fundamentalpostulate is that “humans are active, growth-orientedorganisms who are naturally inclined toward integra-tion of their psychic elements into a unified sense ofself and integration of themselves into larger socialstructures” (this issue). As might be expected they pro-vide evidence for this model from research on humandevelopment. However they cite relatively little fromthe expanding field of gerontology.

All research areas in personality and social psychol-ogy would benefit from greater consideration of aging.But this is particularly true of the study of humanneeds. The experience of aging can and does placeharsh limitations on needs satisfaction. Research onprocesses of adjustment and of continued develop-ment in adulthood emphasizes the value of modifyinggoals in late life. For example, models of adaptation as-sociate flexibility of goals with successful aging and

avoidance of depression (Brandtstädter & Greve,1994). But as Deci and Ryan’s theory implies, thisflexibility is limited by the persisting character of theunderlying psychological needs.

Motivation theorists should make more effort intesting their models on older people. The reluctance togive proper acknowledgement to the study of aging ispartly due to psychology’s traditional reliance on labo-ratory experiment and student participation. Partly itreflects gerontophobia. Yet there are some striking ex-amples where the study of aging has led to new theorybuilding. Research on the importance of subjectivecontrol for health and well-being, for example, beganin American nursing homes (Langer, 1983). Likewise,growing attention to the epidemiology of depressiveillness among older people, helped the identification ofmaintenance of self-esteem, as well as social support,as central to the prevention of depression. Subsequentresearch has established that self-esteem generally re-mains remarkably stable until late life, but shows pro-gressive loss from the beginning of the ninth decade(Atchley, 1991). Social contacts show the same pat-

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tern, remaining relatively high until advanced old age,but then undergoing changes that ultimately threatenolder people’s sense of connectedness. Dementia pro-vides an extreme example of social disintegration inwhich failure to recognize caregivers leads to search-ing for primal attachments in memories of long-deadparents (Coleman & Jerrome, 1999).

Even within the psychogerontological literaturethere is resistance to studying advanced old age. This ismainly the result of practical difficulties involved incollecting data from representative samples of very oldpeople. In this age-group qualitative, observational,and case study inquiries provide more suitable re-search vehicles than questionnaire-based surveys. Cur-rent literature rightly emphasizes how relatively wellolder people withstand the initial threats and losses ofaging, delineating coping devices as social-emotionalselectivity, accommodation, and employment of sec-ondary control strategies (Filipp, 1996). Older peopleare envisaged as progessively retreating beyond reachof harm, sheltered by an irreducible nucleus of intimaterelationships and meaningful activities that shore uptheir sense of self. But in time the ravages of aging canundermine these central defenses as well.

One consequence of the recent stress on successfulaging (Rowe & Kahn, 1998) has been to stigmatizeelderly people. The nature of the criteria, includingavoidance of disease and disability, preservation ofhigher mental function, and active engagement withlife, means that sooner or later many people fail thetest. People are living longer in circumstances of goodhealth and function, but also additional years in condi-tions of frailty and disability. Positive meanings alsoneed to be found for the last stage of life, not only forthe sake of older people themselves but also becausefailure to do so casts a shadow over the precedingstages.

There is a sense in which the aging of advanced soci-eties in the 20th century has outstripped the evolution ofhuman culture (Baltes, 1997). Whereas biology is the en-emy of age, culture has been its friend. The developmentof human societies has enabled older people to preservetheir autonomy and relatedness, and display new compe-tences. However, the reality of the threat is evident fromthe cultural records, such as the admonition in Psalm 71:“Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake mewhen my strength is gone” (NIV). As observers of tradi-tional cultures have pointed out, later-life social and psy-chological developments within such societies serve toplace older people beyond the competition of youngermembers of society, giving them positions of honor andprestige at the same time (Gutmann, 1994).

Theories of developmental changes in motivation inadulthood have typically emphasized two basic needs,variously worded, on the one hand for “agency,”“power” and “mastery”, and on the other for “commu-nion,” “intimacy,” and “belonging” (Bakan, 1966).

Often these are seen to be at odds with one another, andone of the themes of the psychological literature on ag-ing from Jung through Gutmann has been the possibili-ties for their integration and reconciliation in later life(Henry, 1988). These developments often have agendered character, with older men learning to displaymore “feminine” motivations and older women more“masculine” motivations. Greater relatedness cancompensate for men’s loss of competence, whereaswomen’s often late-won independence is somethingthey may safeguard strongly. The resultant greater an-drogynous character of later life is claimed to be ad-vantageous for both sexes.

But cultural development in favor of older peoplenow lags behind social change. Present day Westernsocieties are youth oriented and ill adapted to the in-creasing numbers of very old people they contain. Thetechnological innovations required to maintain controland communication in situations of increasing frailtyare coming within our reach. More challenging thoughare the attitudinal changes required to make agingseem less aversive a prospect, and therefore quality oflate life at this stage worth striving to enhance.

Aging provides plenty of material for needs theoriesof motivation to explain, and some of the best testcases of their adequacy. For example Deci and Ryan’smodel is nicely reflected in Ryff’s scales of well-beingwhich are derived from an amalgam of life-span devel-opmental theories and are now in widespread use in ag-ing research (Ryff, 1995). Three of the six scales(autonomy, environmental mastery, and positive rela-tionships) reflect the three basic needs, whereas theother three (self acceptance, personal growth, and pur-pose in life) reflect the basic postulate of the model.Studies of age differences indicate that the initial prob-lems people encounter as they age in Western societiesare loss of sense of growth and purpose. This wouldsuggest that psychological integration is completed attoo early a stage in the life course within present-daysocieties, resulting in premature identity closure, andleaving as the only task for the long remaining yearsmaintenance of the status quo.

There is a suggestion in the aging literature thatolder people can move to broader attachments, to adevelopment of gerotranscendence in which self-cen-teredness declines and broader affinities develop(Tornstam, 1997). In this way older people’sgenerativity may continue to grow, as they witness tonew insights into life’s meanings. Certainly the mean-ing component of well-being seems to take on addedimportance in later life. What a person contributes be-comes less important, and what that person believesin more so. Continued commitment appears vital towell-being in later life. Hence the growing impor-tance in the aging literature of the subjects of spiritu-ality and religion (McFadden, 1996). Yet even in thearea of religion, connectedness can be threatened. In a

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fast-changing society, previous traditions and valueslose hold. Much of the alienation current older peoplefeel reflects their sense that society has changed toomuch in their lifetime. Hence the importance of mem-bership of smaller groups which emphasize continu-ity and belonging.

Aging has long had negative associations in theWestern mind. Nowadays those associations are in-creasingly focused on the frail and disabled membersamong those living to their 9th and 10th decades, andsoon the 11th as well. Basic human needs for auton-omy, competence and relatedness become harder tosatisfy in this period of life. It is for this reason that itbecomes an ideal time to investigate the nature of theseneeds, and the variety of ways in which they can be sat-isfied. Essential characteristics of human need, whichperhaps remain somewhat transparent earlier in adultlife, are more likely to reveal their contours in the re-stricted circumstances of old age.

Note

Peter G. Coleman, Department of Psychology, Uni-versity of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, Eng-land, United Kingdom.

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issues. In J. E. Birren, J. E. Lubben, J. C. Rowe, & D. E.Deutchman (Eds.),The concept and measurement of quality oflife in the frail elderly(pp. 207–225). New York: Academic.

Bakan, D. (1966).The duality of human existence: isolation and com-munion in Western man. Boston: Beacon.

Baltes, P. B. (1997). On the incomplete architecture of human on-togeny. Selection, optimization, and compensation as founda-tion of developmental theory.American Psychologist, 52,366–380.

Brandtstadter, J., & Greve, W. (1994). The aging self: stabilizing andprotective processes.Developmental Review, 14,52–80.

Coleman, P. G., & Jerrome, D. (1999). Applying theories of ag-ing to gerontological practice through teaching and re-search. In V. L. Bengtson & K. W. Schaie (Eds.),Handbookof theories of aging(pp. 379–395). New York: Springer.

Filipp, S.-H. (1996) Motivation and emotion. In J. E. Birren & K. W.Schaie (Eds.),Handbook of the psychology of aging. Fourthedition (pp. 218–235). San Diego, CA: Academic.

Gutmann, D. (1994).Reclaimed powers: men and women in later life.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Henry, J. P. (1988). The archetypes of power and intimacy. In J. E.Birren & V. L. Bengtson (Eds.),Emergent theories of aging(pp.214–246). New York: Springer.

Langer, E. J. (1983).The psychology of control.Beverly Hills, CA:Sage.

McFadden, S. H. (1996). Religion, spirituality, and aging. In J.E. Birren & K. W. Schaie (Eds.),Handbook of the psychol-ogy of aging. Fourth edition(pp. 162–177). San Diego,CA: Academic.

Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. C. (1998).Successful aging.New York:Pantheon.

Ryff, C. D. (1995). Psychological well-being in adult life.CurrentDirections in Psychological Science, 4,99–104.

Tornstam, L. (1997). Gerotranscendence in a broad cross-sectionalperspective.Journal of Aging and Identity, 2,17–36.

Self-Determination Theory and the Social Psychology of Creativity

Beth A. HennesseyDepartment of Psychology

Wellesley College

“The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Humanneeds and the self-determination of behavior” is thelatest, and in many respects the most ambitious, con-tribution to what some have termed the rebirth of mo-tivational research. Deci and Ryan are representativeof a small but growing number of theorists and inves-tigators who have become dissatisfied with the com-paratively narrow and disjointed approaches thathave been applied to the study of human motivation.At the core of their self-determination theory (SDT) isthe consideration of innate psychological needs andthe degree to which persons are able to satisfy thesebasic needs as they pursue and attain their valuedgoals. Integrating a variety of literatures (e.g., Hull,McClelland, Murray, & White), the authors offer anambitious and insightful review of related but very

distinct motivational approaches (including but notlimited to areas of intrinsic motivation and internal-ization). Although researchers such as myself may beaware of these various traditions, we typically haveviewed them in relative isolation: Rarely have we at-tempted to differentiate their major contributions andthen integrate them into a unified approach. Deci andRyan accomplish such a synthesis and offer what theyterm an organismic-dialectical metatheory, which isespecially detailed, comprehensive and applicable toa wide variety of issues. Self-determination theoryexplains specific phenomena and provides a frame-work for integrating these understandings and formu-lating additional hypotheses.

Deci and Ryan’s contributions have long been in-fluential in my work. But of all their publications, it is

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probably their theory described in this target articlethat has most profoundly impacted my own thinkingand theorizing. My primary area of interest focuses onthe social psychology of creativity. The basic modelupon which my research is based proposes that there isa direct relation between the motivational orientationbrought to a task and creativity of performance on thattask. As explained by Amabile’s (1983, 1996) IntrinsicMotivation Principle of Creativity: Intrinsic motiva-tion is conducive to creativity, and extrinsic motivationis almost always detrimental. Yet no one of us is intrin-sically motivated under all conditions. Research hasdemonstrated that a variety of environmental factors,particularly situations of expected reward, expectedevaluation and competition, can have a profound im-pact on motivational orientation.

The social–psychological study of the impact ofthese extrinsic constraints on motivation has a long andwell-established tradition. In fact, the first publishedstudy of this genre appeared in 1971 and was authoredby Deci (for other early contributions to the field seeDeci, 1972; Kruglanski, Friedman, & Zeevi, 1971;Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). Since those earlydays, our understanding of the interface between moti-vational orientation and environmental influences hascontinued to grow. We now know, for instance, that asimple hydraulic model which proposes that, as extrin-sic motivation increases, intrinsic motivation mustnecessarily decline cannot sufficiently explain the be-havior of all individuals under all circumstances. Un-der certain conditions intrinsic and extrinsicmotivation have been found to combine in a comple-mentary fashion. Under what circumstances can weexpect to see such additive effects? Are there specificindividual difference variables or personality traits thatmake some people less susceptible to the deleteriouseffects of extrinsic constraints than are others? What isthe mechanism behind the undermining of intrinsicmotivation? And what is the role of culture in this pro-cess? SDT has allowed me to at least reframe, if not an-swer, these and a number of other research questionsthat up until recently had appeared intractable.

The Undermining of IntrinsicMotivation in Young Children

Over the years, a number of cognitively based ex-planations for the undermining of intrinsic motivationhave been offered. The “discounting principle”(Kelley, 1973), the “overjustification hypothesis”(Bem, 1972; Kelley, 1967, 1973; deCharms, 1968) and“cognitive evaluation theory” (Deci, 1975; Deci &Ryan, 1980) have all proven useful for understandingthe negative effects of extrinsic environmental con-straints in adults, yet they fail to adequately explainwhy young children have also been observed to suffer

decreases in intrinsic motivation and creativity. Sim-ply stated, children under the age of 7 or 8 years haveconsistently been shown to lack the cognitive capabili-ties necessary for weighing multiple sufficient causesof behavior and employing discounting (e.g., Shultz,Butkowsky, Pearce, & Shanfield, 1975; Smith, 1975).In fact, some studies have indicated that many youngchildren seem to employ an additive algorithm and in-terpret the expectation of reward as anaugmentationofintrinsic interest (e.g., DiVitto & McArthur, 1978;Morgan, 1981). How is it that, when working under theexpectation of reward or evaluation, young childrenfrequently demonstrate decreases in intrinsic motiva-tion and creativity of performance, yet they seemcognitively incapable of engaging in the thought pro-cesses believed to underlie the overjustification para-digm?

I have come to hypothesize that the reduction of in-trinsic interest in young children (and perhaps all of us)is driven primarily by the learned expectation that re-wards are usually paired with activities that need to bedone—activities that are often not fun and sometimeseven aversive. The undermining of intrinsic interestmay result as much from emotion or affect as it doesfrom cognitive analysis. Children may learn to reactnegatively to a task as “work” when their behavior iscontrolled by socially imposed factors (such as re-wards), and they may react positively to a task as“play” when there are no constraints imposed. Nega-tive affect resulting from socially learned stereotypesor scripts may be what leads to decrements in intrinsicinterest (see Hennessey, 1999). SDT, with its emphasison needs, drives and orientations, provides a welcomeshift of focus away from cognitively based explana-tions and a reliance on the concept of goals. If, in fact,innate psychological needs rather than learned goalsare the dominant motivational force, it is much easierto understand how the motivation of young and oldalike would be similarly affected by environmentalconstraints.

Individual Differences

The complexity of evaluation and reward effectshas been demonstrated in several recent publications(e.g., Harackiewicz, Abrahams, & Wageman, 1991;Hennessey, in press; Jussim, Soffin, Brown, Ley, &Kohlhepp, 1992). Creativity research conducted overthe past decade has yielded some replications of thenegative effect of expected reward or evaluation oncreativity (and intrinsic motivation), some failures toreplicate, some partial replications, and occasionallysome evidence of positive effects of these extrinsicconstraints under specific conditions. In a study thatcrossed the expectation of reward with choice abouttask engagement, participants who perceived their re-

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ceipt of a reward as a kind of “bonus” were the mostcreative and most intrinsically motivated of any of thedesign groups, including a no-reward “control” condi-tion (Amabile, Hennessey, & Grossman, 1986). In thecase of evaluation, Cheek and Stahl (1986) offereddata that suggests that the effects of evaluation may bedriven by certain personality characteristics such asshyness. Conti, Collins, and Picariello (1995) foundthat the detrimental effects of competitive evaluationheld for girls but not for boys. And Conti and Amabile(1995) reported that individuals’ skill levels mediatedthe impact of evaluation. Low-skill students producedmore creative products (and demonstrated higher lev-els of intrinsic motivation) when expecting an evalua-tion, and high-skill students were more creative in theno-evaluation condition. Pollak (1992) and Hill,Amabile, Coon, and Whitney (1994) observed similareffects.

Nonexperimental research carried out over the pastseveral years has also uncovered some evidence that ex-pected reward or evaluation need not always undermineintrinsic interest and creativity. For example, in a studyof commissioned and noncommissioned works done byprofessional artists, some artists viewed the extrinsic in-centive of a commission as a highly controlling con-straint; and the creativity of their work plummeted. Yetfor those who looked at the commission as an opportu-nity to achieve recognition or a confirmation of theircompetence by respected others, creativity was en-hanced (Amabile, Phillips, & Collins, 1994). Interviewstudies in the workplace have also revealed that theprospect of impending, critical evaluation often co-oc-curs with low levels of intrinsic motivation and creativ-ity (Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1987). However, thissame research showed that when employees were askedto describe the circumstances surrounding high-creativ-ity events, it was found that informative evaluation thatconveyed positive recognition of creative work oftencontributed to highly creative performance. Similarly,in studies employing questionnaire measures to assessthe presence or absence of specific social factors in thework environment (e.g., Amabile, Conti, Coon,Lazenby & Herron, 1996; Amabile & Gryskiewicz,1989), constructive feedback has also been associatedwith the maintenance of intrinsic motivation and highlevels of creativity.

The important element here seems to be the preser-vation of a sense of self-determination. Deci andRyan’s earlier contributions (1985) tell us that any ex-trinsic factors that support a sense of competence with-out undermining self-determination should positivelycontribute to intrinsic motivation. Thus, evaluations orrewards that are perceived as useful and informativerather than as instruments of coercion can serve to in-crease involvement in the task at hand and should notbe expected to have detrimental effects. But how andwhy does this synergistic effect, this “extrinsics in ser-

vice of intrinsics cycle” (Amabile, 1993, p. 194), takeeffect? With its emphasis on proximal causes of moti-vational states and processes formulated in terms ofimmediate social contexts, developmental historiesand individual differences, SDT may hold the key.

My reading of this article has added to my convic-tion that motivational orientation must be seen not as adichotomy (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) but as a highly com-plex and multilayered continuum. Deci and Ryanspeak of people pursuing extrinsic aspirations for au-tonomous reasons. They offer a conceptualization ofindividual differences based not on differences in needstrength but on differences in causality orientation anddifferences in the interactions of those basic needs withthe social world—including past experiences of needsatisfaction or thwarting. Within SDT, extrinsic moti-vation is not viewed as the simple absence of intrinsicmotivation. The authors differentiate among a varietyof types of extrinsic motivation and contend that ex-trinsically motivated behaviors can vary in the degreeto which they are self-determined versus controlled.The content and theprocessof motivational orienta-tion are considered; and SDT’s portrayal of the inter-nalization of extrinsic motivation as a central part ofthe socialization process helps explain how the highlyskilled research and development scientist might expe-rience heightened levels of intrinsic interest and cre-ativity in a competitive situation or how a well-knownartist might thrive when asked to work for a substantialcommission.

The Immunization Studies

In a series of three related investigations, my col-leagues and I were guided by a medical metaphor. Wedecided to look at the extrinsic constraint of an ex-pected reward or an impending evaluation as a kind ofgerm or virus and wondered whether it might be possi-ble to “immunize” people against its usually negativeeffects on intrinsic motivation and creativity. Our goalwas twofold: (1) to strengthen intrinsic motivation and(2) to provide techniques for fighting extrinsic motiva-tion. In the first of these research attempts (Hennessey,Amabile, & Martinage, 1989, Study 1), elementaryschool students were randomly assigned to intrinsicmotivation focus or control groups. Children in the in-trinsic motivation condition were helped to find waysto focus on the intrinsically interesting, fun, and play-ful aspects of a task, and were encouraged to makeeven the most routine assignment exciting. Strategiesto distance themselves from socially imposed extrinsicconstraints were also suggested. Students in the controlcondition also met with the experimenter as a group,but their conversation focused on favorite “things”such as foods, music groups, movies, and seasons.

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Following this training procedure, all students metindividually with a second adult for testing. One halfthe children in each of the two conditions were told thatthey would receive a reward only if they promised totell a story later for the experimenter. Remaining par-ticipants told the story without any expectation of re-ward. It was expected that only those children who hadbeen specifically instructed in ways to overcome theusual deleterious effects of extrinsic constraints wouldmaintain baseline levels of intrinsic motivation andcreativity in situations of expected reward (i.e., theywould be immunized against the effects of extrinsicconstraints). The data from this initial investigation notonly confirmed these expectations, but gave us reasonto believe that our intervention had much more of animpact than we had expected. Intrinsic motiva-tion-trained children tended to report higher levels ofintrinsic motivation on a paper-and-pencil assessmentthan did children in the control (no-training) condition;and, in addition, we found that the offer of reward actu-ally augmented the creativity of the trained group. Thisadditive effect of intrinsic and extrinsic motivationwas quite robust. In fact, the creativity of children whoreceived intrinsic motivation training and expected areward was significantly higher than that of any otherdesign group. Two follow-up investigations of our in-trinsic motivation focus techniques (Hennessey,Amabile, & Martinage, 1989, Study 2; Hennessey &Zbikowski, 1993) indicated that although we cannotexpect that children exposed to our intrinsic motiva-tion training and offered a reward for their perfor-mance will demonstrate unusually high levels ofcreativity, we can expect these children to maintainbaseline levels of intrinsic motivation and creativityunder reward conditions.

How can the impact of our training sessions be ex-plained? SDT tells us that it may not be the expectationof reward or evaluation per se that undermines intrinsicmotivation, rather it may be the individual’s interpreta-tion of that environmental contingency and the indi-vidual’s role in the reward or evaluation process that inlarge part determines whether task motivation will beundermined, enhanced, or remain unchanged. The au-thors remind us that extrinsic motivation must not beautomatically equated with perceptions of constraint.In essence, children undergoing our immunization pro-cedure appear to have accomplished what Deci andRyan term an “internalization of extrinsic motivation”.

Cross-Cultural Data

Over the past 25 years, numerous empirical studieshave demonstrated that, for persons who initially dis-play a high level of interest in a task, working for an ex-pected reward or expected evaluation decreases theirmotivation and undermines the globally assessed qual-ity and creativity of their performance. This undermin-

ing effect has proven to be extremely robust—affectingeveryone from 3 to 83. What is not clear is whetherthese same negative effects are consistently felt outsideof Western cultural contexts. Researchers are only nowbeginning to question whether the negative impact ofenvironmental constraints is a global phenomenon orwhether it is culturally specific.

Recently, my students and I set out to examine theimpact of expected reward on the motivation and cre-ativity of performance of Saudi Arabian children.Fifty-eight elementary school students (28 Americansand 30 Saudis) were randomly assigned to one of twodesign groups. Participants in the Expected RewardCondition were told that if they made a collage and tolda story to accompany an open-ended picture book, theywould be given a packet of stickers. Participants in theNo-Reward Condition engaged in both experimentaltasks without any expectation of reward. Upon com-pleting each of the two experimental activities, chil-dren in both conditions were asked to report their levelof task interest.

In support of the Intrinsic Motivation Principle, the datarevealed that among the American children, children in theNo-Reward Condition found the storytelling and the col-lage-making tasks to be significantly more interesting thandid children in the Expected Reward Condition. Saudichildren in the No-Reward Condition also found the col-lage-making task to be significantly more interesting thandid their rewarded counterparts. Saudi self-reports of inter-est in the storytelling activity paralleled these results, butthis comparison failed to reach significance.

How should these findings be interpreted? Onceagain, it appears that SDT has direct relevance to this is-sue. Although expected reward appeared to underminethe intrinsic motivation of the U.S. and Saudi study par-ticipants, the negative impact of this extrinsic constraintwas not as strong in the Saudi sample as it was amongthe Americans. Deci and Ryan postulate that althoughthe satisfaction of the innate psychological need forcompetence, autonomy, and relatedness is essential forthe healthy development and well-being of all individu-als, these needs may be satisfied while engaging in awide variety of behaviors across cultures. Some de-scribe Saudi society as being more “collectivist” in ori-entation than our own, and certainly our visits to theschool where we collected data corroborated this view.According to SDT, the autonomy of our young Saudistudents might be expected to be less adversely affectedby the promise of a reward. In the collectivist culture oftheir classroom, Saudi students may not have been asquick as were their American counterparts to experiencethe offer of a reward as a threat to their autonomy.

Conclusions

The research examples cited in my commentarydemonstrate the wide-range applicability of SDT.

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Deci and Ryan are to be commended for their ambi-tious efforts to construct a theory of human motiva-tion that incorporates elements from a variety ofexisting motivational models and for their willing-ness to extend their thinking beyond the usual moti-vational frameworks and into the domains ofcross-cultural psychology, evolution, and the like.As a researcher who is primarily interested in the so-cial psychology of creativity, I would encourageDeci and Ryan to think more about how SDT mightbe specifically applied to the creative process. Ithink that the distinction they draw between intrinsicmotivation and need satisfaction is particularly im-portant and insightful and I find it easy to see howthe need for autonomy “fits” with creative pursuits.However, it is more difficult to understand how anindividual breaking new ground and working at theforefront of her field is satisfying the need for com-petence or relatedness. In fact, the creativity litera-ture tells us that highly creative persons often feelisolated, misunderstood, and unappreciated. Finally,I would be interested to learn more about the role ofaffect in SDT and the possibility of applying this the-ory to entire “creative milieus”—such as classroomsor the workplace.

Note

Beth A. Hennessey, Department of Psychology,Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481. E-mail:bhennessey@wellesley.edu

References

Amabile, T. M. (1983).The social psychology of creativity.NewYork: Springer-Verlag.

Amabile, T. M. (1994). Motivational synergy: Toward new concep-tualizations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the work-place.Human Resource Management Review, 3,185–201.

Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context.Boulder, CO:Westview.

Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H. M., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M.(1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity.Acad-emy of Management Journal, 39,1154–1184.

Amabile, T. M., & Gryskiewicz, N. (1989). The creative environ-ment scales: The work environment inventory.Creativity Re-search Journal, 2,231–254.

Amabile, T. M., & Gryskiewicz, S. (1987).Creativity in the R&Dlaboratory. (Tech. Rep. No. 30). Greensboro, NC: Center forCreative Leadership.

Amabile, T. M., Hennessey, B. A., & Grossman, B. (1986). Socialinfluences on creativity: The effects of contracted-for reward.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50,14–23.

Amabile, T. M., Phillips, E. D., Collins, M. A. (1993).Creativity byContract: Social Influences on the Creativity of ProfessionalArtists.Unpublished manuscript, Brandeis University.

Bem, D. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (ed.),Ad-vances in experimental social psychology(Vol. 16, pp. 1–62).New York: Academic.

Cheek, J. M., & and Stahl, S. (1986). Shyness and verbal creativity.Journal of Research in Personality, 20,51–61.

Conti, R., & Amabile, T. M. (1995, April).Problem solving amongcomputer science students: The effects of skill, evaluation ex-pectation and personality on solution quality.Paper presented atthe annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association,Boston, MA.

Conti, R., Collins, M. A., & Picariello, M. (1995).Differential ef-fects of competition on the artistic creativity of girls andboys. Unpublished manuscript, Brandeis University,Waltham, MA.

deCharms, R. (1968).Personal causation.New York: Academic.Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrin-

sic motivation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,18,105–115.

Deci, E. L. (1972). Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic reinforcement, andinequity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 22,113–120.

Deci, E. L. (1975).Intrinsic motivation.New York: Plenum.Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1980). The empirical exploration of intrin-

sic motivational processes. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.),Advances in ex-perimental social psychology(Vol. 14, pp. 39–80). New York:Academic.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985).Intrinsic motivation and self-de-termination in human behavior.New York: Plenum.

DiVitto, B., & McArthur, L. Z. (1978). Developmental differences inthe use of distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency informa-tion for making causal attributions.Developmental Psychology,14,474–482.

Harackiewicz, J. M., Abrahams, S., & Wageman, R. (1991). Per-formance evaluation and intrinsic motivation: The effects ofevaluative focus, rewards and achievement orientation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63,1015–1029.

Hennessey, B. A. (1999). Intrinsic motivation, affect and creativity.In S. Russ (Ed.),Affect, creative experience and psychologicaladjustment(pp. 77–90). Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.

Hennessey, B. A. (in press). The social psychology of creativ-ity: Effects of evaluation on intrinsic motivation and cre-ativity of performance. In S. Harkins (Ed.),Multiple per-spectives on the effects of evaluation on performance:Toward an integration.Norwell, MA: Kluwer AcademicPublishers.

Hennessey, B. A., Amabile, T. M., & Martinage, M. (1989). Immu-nizing children against the negative effects of reward.Contem-porary Educational Psychology, 14,212–227.

Hennessey, B. A., & Zbikowski, S. (1993). Immunizing childrenagainst the negative effects of reward: A further examination ofintrinsic motivation training techniques.Creativity ResearchJournal, 6,297–307.

Hill, K., Amabile, T. M., Coon, H. M., & Whitney, D. (1994).Testingthe componential model of creativity.Unpublished manuscript,Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.

Jussim, L. S., Soffin, S., Brown, R., Ley, J., & Kohlhepp, K.(1992). Understanding reactions to feedback by integratingideas from symbolic intereactionism and cognitive evalua-tion theory.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,62,402–421.

Kelley, H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Le-vine (Ed.),Nebraska symposium on motivation(Vol. 15, pp.192–240). Lincoln: University of Nebraska.

Kelley, H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution.American Psy-chologist, 28,107–128.

Kruglanski, A. W., Friedman, I., & Zeevi, G. (1971). The effects ofextrinsic incentive on some qualitative aspects of task perfor-mance.Journal of Personality, 39,606–617.

Lepper, M., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. (1973). Undermining chil-dren’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic rewards: A test of the“overjustification” hypothesis.Journal of Personality and So-cial Psychology, 28,129–137.

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Morgan, M. (1981). The overjustification effect: A developmentaltest of self-perception interpretations. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 40,809–821.

Pollak, S. (1992).The effects of motivational orientation and con-straint on the creativity of the artist.Unpublished manuscript,Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.

Shultz, T., Butkowsky, I., Pearce, J., & Shanfield, H. (1975). The de-velopment of schemes for the attribution of multiple psycholog-ical causes.Developmental Psychology, 11,502–510.

Smith, M. C. (1975). Children’s use of the multiple sufficient causeschema in social perception.Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 32,737–747.

Substitute Needs and the Distinction BetweenFragile and Secure High Self-Esteem

Michael H. KernisDepartment of Psychology

University of Georgia

Deci and Ryan (this issue) present a great deal of re-cent research related to their extensive and highly ap-pealing conceptual framework. They pull togethervarious strands of empirical work (e.g., work on cau-sality orientations and self-regulatory styles), theyflesh out important distinctions (e.g., innate needs vs.acquired motives), and they make a solid case for theexplanatory value of psychological needs. The authorsclearly are at the “top of their game.” One aspect oftheir article that I found particularly appealing wastheir discussion of substitute needs. In my commen-tary, I want to draw some links between substituteneeds and recent research and theory on the nature ofhigh self-esteem.

Deci and Ryan (this issue) suggest that when thefundamental needs for self-determination, compe-tence, and relatedness are thwarted, people will investthemselves in “compensatory activities or substitutefulfillments” (this issue) and develop “nonautonomousregulatory styles, and rigid behavior patterns that serveto protect them from the threat. . .” (this issue). Theynote that people’s compensatory efforts may revolvearound gaining approval or worth, which can be ob-tained via fame, material representations of one’svalue, or tangible markers of one’s worthiness. Theseinsights have profound, yet relatively unexamined, im-plications for how high self-esteem is conceptualized,which is the focus of my commentary. First, I providesome necessary background material.

Secure and Fragile Forms of HighSelf-Esteem

Elsewhere (Kernis & Goldman, 1999; Kernis &Paradise, in press), I have argued for a distinction be-tweensecureandfragile forms of high self-esteem.Se-cure high self-esteem reflects positive feelings ofself-worth that are well anchored and secure, and that

are positively associated with a wide range of psycho-logical health and well-being indices. Individuals withsecure high self-esteem like, value, and accept them-selves, “warts and all.” They do not feel a need to besuperior to others, nor do they feel a great need toself-promote or to defend against threats. In contrast,people withfragile high self-esteem are very proud ofwho they are, they feel superior to most other people,and they are very willing and able to defend againstpossible threats to their positive self-view. As well,people with fragile high self-esteem frequently engagein self-promoting activities and they constantly seekvalidation of their worth.

Currently, there exist four major ways to distin-guish between fragile and secure high self-esteem.Deci and Ryan (1995) do so based on whether an indi-vidual’s self-esteem iscontingent(fragile) ortrue(se-cure). My colleagues and I (for reviews, see Kernis &Paradise, in press; Kernis & Waschull, 1995) do sobased on whether individuals’ high self-esteem is sta-ble or unstable. Although not identical, contingentand unstable high self-esteem share important fea-tures, as do true and stable high self-esteem. First,contingent and unstable high self-esteem involvelinking feelings of self-worth to specific outcomes(i.e., heightened ego involvement). Second, contin-gent and unstable high self-esteem reflect enhancedtendencies to be caught up in the processes of defend-ing, maintaining, and maximizing one’s positive, al-though tenuous, feelings of self-worth. Conversely,stable and true high self-esteem reflect secure,well-anchored feelings of self-worth that donotneedcontinual validation. Pleasure following success anddisappointment following failure characterize peoplewith either stable or true self-esteem, but these reac-tions are not tinged with defensiveness or self-ag-grandizement (Deci & Ryan, 1995; Kernis, Greenier,Herlocker, Whisenhunt, & Abend, 1997).

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Secure high self-esteem (whether labeled true orstable) emerges when one’s actions are self-deter-mined and congruent with one’s inner, core self, ratherthan a reflection of externally imposed or internallybased demands. Secure high self-esteem is notearned,nor can it betaken away. In contrast, directly pursuinghigh self-esteem reflects fragile high self-esteem(whether labeled contingent or unstable), because feel-ings of self-worth and value are subject to the vicissi-tudes of internally generated and externally providedpositive and negative events (Deci & Ryan, 1995;Greenier et al., 1999; Kernis et al., 1998). In otherwords, when individuals strive to have high self-es-teem, their self-worth is continually “on the line” asthey go about their everyday activities.

Substitute Needs and Fragile HighSelf-Esteem

In recent years, we learned much about theconse-quencesof possessing fragile as opposed to secure highself-esteem, particularly as reflected in unstable and sta-ble high self-esteem, respectively. However, we knowmuch less aboutwhy people develop these differentforms of high self-esteem. Deci and Ryan’s (this issue)analysis suggests an intriguing possibility, namely thatpeople are likely to take on thesubstitute needof striv-ing for high self-esteem when their basic needs arethwarted. In other words, when individuals’ are not ableto satisfy their fundamental needs, they may compen-sate by directing their efforts to demonstrating theirvalue and worth. These efforts are not wholly satisfac-tory, however, as striving for high self-esteem has adrivenquality to it (see also Deci & Ryan, 1995), and soat best, it results in a fragile form of high self-esteem.Secure (true or stable) high self-esteem emerges effort-lessly from the satisfaction of one’s fundamental needs.

Fortunately, there is research that bears on the sup-position that fragile high self-esteem reflects thwartedneed satisfaction. Deci and Ryan (this issue) contendthat one consequence of thwarted need satisfaction isthe adoption of suboptimal regulatory styles consistingof external controls and introjected regulations, ratherthan intrinsic motivation and identified regulations. Itis revealing, then, that compared to children with sta-ble self-esteem, children with unstable self-esteem re-port being less intrinsically motivated in the classroom(Waschull & Kernis, 1996). Also, compared to peoplewith stable self-esteem, people with unstable self-es-teem regulate their goal strivings more in terms of ex-ternal and introjected regulations and less in terms ofidentified and intrinsic regulations (Kernis, Paradise,Whitaker, Wheatman, & Goldman, 2000). These find-ings demonstrate that fragile self-esteem is related tosuboptimal regulatory styles that are presumed toemerge when basic needs are thwarted.

Other research demonstrates that people with unsta-ble high self-esteem are more defensive and self-ag-grandizing than are their stable high self-esteemcounterparts. Defensiveness may manifest itself in fre-quent outbursts of anger and hostility, which often areaimed at restoring damaged self-feelings. Kernis,Grannemann, and Barclay (1989) found that unstablehigh self-esteem individuals scored the highest on sev-eral well-validated anger and hostility inventories, sta-ble high self-esteem individuals scored the lowest, andstable and unstable low self-esteem individuals scoredbetween these two extremes. With respect to self-ag-grandizing tendencies, compared to stable high self-es-teem individuals, persons with unstable highself-esteem say that they would be more likely to boastabout a success to their friends (Kernis et al., 1997).After an actual success, they were also more likely toclaim that they did so in spite of the operation of per-formance inhibiting factors (Kernis, Grannemann, &Barclay, 1992).

Importantly, as would be expected if fragile self-es-teem emerges from thwarted fundamental needs, theseenhanced tendencies toward self-glorification andself-defense do not translate into greater psychologicalhealth and well-being. Paradise and Kernis (1999)found that relative to individuals with stable highself-esteem, individuals with unstable high self-esteemreported (on Ryff’s, 1989, scales of psychologicalwell-being) lowerautonomy, environmental mastery,purpose in life, self-acceptance,andpositive relationswith others. Stated differently, whereas stable highself-esteem individuals reported that they functionedin a highly autonomous manner, possessed a clearsense of meaning in their lives, related effectivelywithin their physical and social environments, andwere highly self-accepting, the same was less true ofunstable high self-esteem individuals. Also, whenfaced with considerable daily hassles, individuals withunstable as opposed to stable self-esteem (regardlessof their self-esteem level), showed a greater increase indepressive symptoms (Kernis et al., 1998).

In much of the social psychology literature, defen-sive and self-promoting strategies are viewed as mark-ers of healthy psychological functioning (Taylor &Brown, 1988; but see Tennen & Affleck, 1993). At firstblush, then, research showing that unstable high self-es-teem is associated with heightened use of such strategiesmay seem to contradict research that links unstable highself-esteem to less than optimal psychological function-ing. Importantly, this apparent contradiction can be re-solved by viewing heightened use of defensive andself-promoting strategies as compensatory reactions tofundamental need thwarting. In other words, rather thanviewing defensive and self-promotion strategies as nec-essarily reflective of normal, healthy functioning, ourunderstanding of fragile self-esteem and its relation tosubstitute needs and compensatory activitiessuggests

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another, more compelling, interpretation. Namely, Deciand Ryan’s (this issue) analysis identifies heighteneduse of these strategies as stemming from insecurity, fra-gility, and suboptimal functioning that emerge whensatisfaction of one’s fundamental needs is thwarted. Inshort, the quest for high self-esteem may reflect a substi-tute need, rather than a fundamental one. I am not sug-gesting that there is something wrong with wanting tofeel good about oneself. Rather, I am suggesting thatwhen feeling good about oneself becomes aprime di-rective, excessive defensive and self-promotion arelikely to follow and the resultant self-esteem is likely tobe fragile rather than secure.

To the extent that striving for high self-esteem is asubstitute need, this suggests that some recent attemptsin schools to directly raise children’s self-esteem maybe ill-conceived. Rather than promoting secure highself-esteem, programs that focus directly on self-es-teem, may, in fact, be fostering fragile high self-esteem.It may be more fruitful, then, to foster the emergence ofsecure high self-esteem by promoting the satisfaction ofthe fundamental psychological needs for competence,self-determination, and relatedness.

Note

Michael H. Kernis, Department of Psychology,University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

References

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1995). Human agency: The basis for trueself-esteem. In M. H. Kernis (Ed.),Efficacy, agency, andself-esteem(pp. 31–50). New York: Plenum.

Greenier, K. D., Kernis, M. H., Whisenhunt, C. R., Waschull, S. B.,Berry A. J., Herlocker, C. E., & Abend, T. (1999). Individual dif-ferences in reactivity to daily events: Examining the roles of stabil-ity and level of self-esteem.Journal of Personality, 67,185–208.

Kernis, M. H., & Goldman, B. N. (1999). Self-esteem. In D.Levinson, J. Ponzetti, & P. Jorgensen (Eds.),Encyclopedia of

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Kernis, M. H., Grannemann, B. D., & Barclay, L. C. (1989). Stabilityand level of self-esteem as predictors of anger arousal and hostil-ity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56,1013–1022.

Kernis, M. H., Grannemann, B. D., & Barclay, L. C. (1992). Stabilityof self-esteem: Assessment, correlates, and excuse-making.Journal of Personality, 60,621–644.

Kernis, M. H., Greenier, K. D., Herlocker, C. E., Whisenhunt, C. R., &Abend, T. (1997). Self-perceptions of reactions to positive andnegative outcomes: The roles of stability and level of self-esteem.Personality and Individual Differences, 22,845–854.

Kernis, M. H., & Paradise, A. W. (in press). Distinguishing be-tween fragile and secure forms of high self-esteem. In E.L.Deci and R. M. Ryan (Eds.),Handbook of Self-DeterminationResearch.Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Kernis, M. H., & Paradise, A. W., Whitaker, D. J., Wheatman, S. R.,& Goldman, B. N. (2000). Master of one’s psychological do-main? Not likely if one’s self-esteem is unstable.Personalityand Social Psychology Bulletin, 26,1297–1305.

Kernis, M. H., & Waschull, S. B. (1995). The interactive roles ofstability and level of self-esteem: Research and theory. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.),Advances in Experimental Social Psychology(Vol. 27, pp. 93–141). San Diego, CA: Academic.

Kernis, M. H., Whisenhunt, C. R., Waschull, S. B., Greenier, K. D.,Berry, A. J., Herlocker, C. E., & Anderson, D. A. (1998). Multiplefacets of self-esteem and their relations to depressive symptoms.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24,657–668.

Paradise, A. W., & Kernis, M. H. (1999).Self-esteem and psycho-logical well-being: Implications of fragile self-esteem.Manu-script submitted for publication.

Ryff, C. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on themeaning of psychological well-being.Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 57,1069–1081.

Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: Asocial psychological perspective on mental health.Psycho-logical Bulletin, 103,193–210.

Tennen, H., & Affleck, G. (1993). The puzzles of self-esteem: Aclinical perspective. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.),Self-esteem:The puzzle of low self-regard(pp. 241– 262). New York:Plenum.

Waschull, S. B., & Kernis, M. H. (1996). Stability and level ofself-esteem as predictors of children’s intrinsic motivation andreasons for anger.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,22,4–13.

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Toward a Dialectical Analysis of Growth and Defensive Motives

Tom PyszczynskiDepartment of Psychology

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Jeff GreenbergDepartment of Psychology

University of Arizona

Sheldon SolomonDepartment of Psychology

Brooklyn College

Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan,1980) is an impressive accomplishment. It has longstood at the vanguard of empirically oriented psychol-ogists’ attempts to grapple with the exploratory andgrowth-oriented aspects of human behavior that tradi-tional drive theories have been unable to explain. Itserves as a reminder of what is possible for humankindand provides a counterpoint to the grim picture of ourspecies painted by theories of motivation that depictthe human animal as driven by powerful needs thatpush us toward self-deception, the manipulation ofothers, and inevitable social inequality. Indeed, severalyears ago, this work inspired us to rethink our own ex-clusive emphasis on defensive forces in explaining hu-man behavior and led to our ongoing attempts tograpple with the interface between defensive and ac-quisitive motivational systems (e.g., Greenberg,Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1995; Pyszczynski, Solo-mon, Greenberg, & Stewart-Fouts, 1996). We foundmuch to like in the current target article, in which Deciand Ryan use SDT to explore some core issues in moti-vational psychology. Nonetheless, we find their analy-sis incomplete in several crucial respects that make itunable to adequately account for the complexity anddiversity of human conduct. In the following para-graphs, we raise some questions for SDT and outlinesome of our own thoughts about these issues.

Is the Dark Side of Human NatureSimply the Product of Unmet Needs?

Our most basic concern is whether SDT can ade-quately account for the “dark side” of human activity:the anger, fear, prejudice, and hostility that are anall-too-common part of everyday human experience.Although explaining these phenomena was not theoriginal purpose of SDT, the range of intended applica-tions of its more recent incarnations appears to includethese unfortunate affectations. Defensiveness, self-de-ception, and other nonoptimal forms of functioning,which presumably lead to prejudice, aggression, andhuman evil, are seen as the result of deficits in meeting

three basic psychological needs for competence, be-longing, and autonomy. From the SDT perspective,optimal functioning, in which the individual inexora-bly moves toward better integration of itself with thenatural world is the default state of the organism. But isthis a realistic depiction of human nature?

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that we think not.This humanistic vision of our species is noble, and per-haps worth striving toward. However, it is far too ide-alistic to bear the weight of the realities of life. We seethree basic problems with the SDT view. First, these“needs” often conflict and it is in the nature of thingsthat they will. Autonomous functioning often threatensrelatedness, and competence often does as well (thinkof Galileo or Van Gogh). To sustain relatedness, peo-ple often have to sacrifice autonomy and efforts atcompetence. Minimally, a theory that views human de-structiveness as the result of unmet needs would needto consider the consequences of the inevitable conflictsamong these needs.

Deci and Ryan in the target article might suggestthat human evil results from flaws in the social climate,and that better social conditions would allow the threeneeds to be optimally met without conflict. But thereare three difficulties with that counterpoint. First,flaws are part of every aspect of life. Second, if one au-tonomous person wants to relate to another, won’tthere inevitably be conflicts? What if Pat autono-mously wants to play progressive jams at 120 dbs at thesame moment next door neighbor Carol autonomouslywants to take a nap? Third, and most importantly, asRank (1931) proposed, and we will discuss in more de-tail later, during the socialization process, the child’sontological needs for attachment and individuation in-evitably cause anxiety and guilt; it is part of growingup and developing one’s own identity.

The second basic problem is that the realities of lifealways place obstacles in the way of our desires forcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy. Life chal-lenges beyond our skills often block our developmentof competence (how many of us would like to but can-not dunk a basketball?), demands of loved ones and au-thorities block our autonomy (who followsall societal

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rules because they believe in them and what wouldsuch a person be like?), and the caprice and death ofloved ones end our relationships. Beyond all of that,our own death, which we know is inevitable, ends ourcompetence, our relatedness, and our autonomy.

The third basic problem is that autonomous func-tioning is no guarantee that a person will behave welltoward others. Prejudice and aggression are ubiquitoushuman phenomena that are found even among thosewho are quite competent in many domains of life, wellintegrated within their social networks, and perhapseven autonomously pursuing what they believe is im-portant in life. The competence, relatedness, and feel-ing of being in control of their own destiny of the Nazileaders who masterminded the Holocaust come tomind as an example of evil in the face of apparent needfulfillment. Prejudice and violence seem often theprovince of the competent, connected, and powerful.

One may maintain that at some level, these peoplemust have been psychologically damaged or deprived,but consider the average German boy raised in the Hit-ler Youth in the 1930s. He may exuberantly embraceand integrate the culture’s teachings, optimally fulfill-ing his needs for autonomy, relatedness, and compe-tence by being the ideal Nazi. Such examples suggestthat evil often flourishes as people fulfill their needsfor competence, belonging, and autonomy. Althoughwe agree that deficits in these three domains may exac-erbate hostility toward those who are different, wedoubt that the core answer to the puzzle of humanity’sinhumanity to humanity is to be found simply in thefrustration of these needs.

SDT thus seems better suited to explain the positiveself-actualizing aspects of human existence; indeed,this is the theory’s primary focus. Although we whole-heartedly agree with Deci and Ryan that people do in-deed have great potential for growth and development,we argue that human progress toward optimal func-tioning is blocked by core human fears that exist in allhumans regardless of competence, belonging, and au-tonomy, and the defensive tactics that people typicallyengage to battle those fears..

Through What Mechanisms do“Natural” Processes Operate?

At various points in their analysis, Deci and Ryanargue that humans are “naturally inclined” towardgrowth, development, and the integration of internalpsychological elements and the integration of individ-ual selves into larger social structures. But we wonder:What does it mean for a process to be “natural”? Deciand Ryan clearly eschew a role for drive or tissue defi-cits in the instigation of such processes, which weagree is a reasonable starting point. Self-expansivegrowth motivation simply cannot be reduced to the re-

duction of tension. People do notneedto explore, orchange, or grow. There is nodrive for self-expansionthat must be met lest the individual face calamitousconsequences. Nonetheless, people do seem to be mo-tivated to enhance their capacities. What, then, are themechanisms through which suchnatural motivationalprocesses instigate, energize, and direct behavior?Simply saying that the movement toward integration isan “inherent” or “natural” feature of the organism, orthat this “is what selves do” does little to explain such atendency.1

We feel that this is a particularly important questionfor theories that emphasize growth motivation to ad-dress. Without a clear specification of mechanisms, theconcept of growth motivation can be all-too-easily dis-missed as “pollyannaish,” overly optimistic, and per-haps a bit on the mystical side. Although SDT takes theimportant step of specifying that particular nutrimentsare necessary for this motivation to operate, it does notexplicitly explain the basic mechanisms through whichgrowth and intrinsic motivation occur.

We have recently attempted to synthesize ideasfrom Rank, Maslow, Csiksentmihalyi, Deci and Ryan,and others to produce a simple testable analysis of themechanism through which intrinsic motivation forgrowth operates (Greenberg et al., 1995; Pyszczynski,et al., 1996). Self-expansive motivation is seen as anemergent product of the positive affect or exhilarationthat results from the integrative processing that occurswhen one faces an external environment that is opti-mally divergent from one’s current level of under-standing or skill. Such situations instigate integrativeprocessing aimed at changing one’s current state of in-ternal organization to better fit the realities of the envi-ronment or to enable one to act more effectively in thatenvironment. The integrative processing produces apleasant rush of positive affect or exhilaration that re-inforces the integrative processing and serves as an in-

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1Note in this regard that there is nothing in nature that we are

aware of that is oriented toward continued growth, except cancercells (and their economic analog, compound interest). According toSDT, the natural state of a healthy human would be continuous andunbridled “growth” and progressive “integration,” but this suggestsa positive feedback loop (in traditional motivational terms) result-ing in an ever-increasing level of (ultimately lethal) activity. Ac-cordingly, regulatory systems in living organisms typically operateaccording to negative feedback loops—resulting in dynamic equi-librium—change within stability. So in addition to producing an ac-count of the underlying mechanisms that instigate “growth-ori-ented” behaviors, we urge Deci and Ryan to consider if they reallymean that a healthy human would be characterized by continuous“growth”, per se; and, if the kind of growth they envision for ahealthy humanity can be accomplished unencumbered by defensiveprocesses. Even Abraham Maslow concluded that there is no suchthing as self-actualization that does not of necessity include defen-sive affectations: “We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibili-ties we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simulta-neously shiver with weakness, awe and fear before the very samepossibilities” (Becker, 1973, p. 48).

centive for further engagement in similar challengingsituations in the future. Thus rather than being pushedby a drive for creativity, reorganization of internalstructures is pulled by the potential for positive affectinherent in the process of such reorganization. It is theexhilaration produced by the process of integrationrather than the improved competencies that are the endresult of this process that provides the motivational im-petus. Although more research is needed, our prelimi-nary empirical tests of this model suggest that theaffective experience of exhilaration does indeed play arole in intrinsic motivation. If further research supportsthis analysis, it may provide a simple motivationalmechanism to explain the general process of humandevelopment, a process of obviously great importanceto understanding the human condition.

This is not to say that the products (i.e., improvedcompetencies) play no role in such motivation. A de-sire to be competent can indeed exert a powerful influ-ence on creative behavior. However, being motivatedby the product of one’s action is inherently extrinsic innature; the goal in such cases is the self-perception orsymbolic representation of oneself as having a particu-lar competency or understanding. It is basically egotis-tic in nature, aimed at increasing one’sperceptionofone’s competence. Thus we suggest that the pursuit ofcompetence and other achievement-oriented activity ismotivated by a dialectical interplay of self-expansivemotivation (as described previously) and the defensiveego-driven desire to perceive oneself as competent. Aswe have argued for quite some time now, the self-es-teem motive is essentially defensive in nature andfunctions to provide protection from deeply rooted ex-istential fears (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon,1986).

The Role of Objective Self-Awarenessin Human Motivation

Humans are self-reflective animals, perhaps theonly truly self-reflective species in existence. We notonly exist, but we know we exist. Many contemporarytheories of human motivation view this self-reflectivecapacity as playing a pivotal role in human motivation(e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1981; Duval & Wicklund,1972). Although they have empirically demonstratedthe effects of such self-awareness on intrinsic motiva-tion (e.g., Plant & Ryan, 1985), the concept ofself-awareness or self-reflexivity plays little role in theformal SDT analysis of human motivation. We viewthis as a serious omission because we believe that be-ing aware of oneself, of one’s desires, one’s feelings,and one’s current state changes the dynamics of moti-vation, making human motivation unlike that found inany other species. People not only relate to others, actcompetently, and behave autonomously, but they are

also aware that they do such things, and perhaps moreimportantly, that they often do not. We believe thisself-reflective awareness profoundly changes the na-ture of human motivation, transforming it from themeeting of basic organismic needs to the achievementof symbolic demonstrations of one’s identity.

From the perspective of terror management theory(TMT; Greenberg et al., 1986), the capacity forself-awareness is one of the cognitive abilities thatmake us uniquely human and also uniquely aware ofthe inevitability of our own mortality. Self-awarenessmakes terror possible, and as a result, leads people toevaluate their current standing on self-relevant dimen-sions and to then work to bring their current state inline with those standards. The key point here is thatwhat is being regulated is one’sperceptionof one’scurrent state. One’sperceptionof one’s current state iscompared with one’sinternal representationof thestandard for that state, and then behavior is engaged into reduce any discrepancy that isperceived.Self-awareness, then, opens the door, not only for thepotential for terror, but also for the potential forself-deception and illusion. Although Deci and Ryando not explicitly address the objective–subjective dis-tinction, it seems clear that their concept of basic needsrefers to actual rather than perceived competence,belongingness, and autonomy. It seems to us, however,that much human behavior is driven by the self-con-scious desire toperceive oneselfas competent, at-tached, and self-determined rather than to simply bethese things. Does the objective–subjective distinctionmake a difference in the SDT analysis?

The Evolution of Basic Human Needs

Deci and Ryan (this issue) argue that the basicneeds for competence, belongingness, and autonomyevolved because they yielded adaptive advantages toour prehuman ancestors. They provide reasonablycompelling arguments for what these advantagesmight have been. Unlike much contemporary evolu-tionary theorizing, they make a strong case for emer-gence of domain general adaptations that operateacross diverse behavioral niches. Clearly such domaingenerality is needed to provide coherence to self-regu-lation; a completely domain specific system would behorribly inefficient. Although we have no major quar-rel with their basic evolutionary analysis, we have twoimportant concerns.

First, although we agree that some adaptations arefairly general, as conceptualized, these particular onesare far too general. As we have argued in previouswork, we see little evidence of a general need to be-long. People certainly have attachment needs, butthese change over the life span as a function of life cir-cumstances. For every group we are attracted to, there

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are one or more we want no part of. For every personwe want to connect with, there are others we want tostay away from. This suggests that it may be moreprofitable to view attachments as serving more basicfunctions, providing things like comfort, security, andself-esteem. Indeed, although the supposition of a re-latedness need is derived, in part, from Bowlby’s(1969) seminal studies of the development of attach-ments, for Bowlby, attachment is not a need in and ofitself. Rather, the original impetus for the formation ofattachments is anxiety reduction: “attachment resultsfrom the fact that the young of most mammals…have abuilt-in fear of the unknown and unfamiliar … fear ofthe unfamiliar produces an attachment” (Gleitman,1986, p. 525).

Our point here is simply that if we understand thosefunctions, we may be better able to specify who wantsto belong to which set of others and under what cir-cumstances, and which attachments are more impor-tant than which others. If we simply had an inherentneed for relatedness or belonging, why would it matterwith what groups or individuals we associate? Yet, asthe proliferation of Chicago Bulls (rather than, say theDenver Nuggets) gear worldwide during Michael Jor-dan’s reign attests, people do carefully choose and shifttheir attachments. Similar reasoning applies to theother two needs as well. Do we desire competence inall things and all ways? Does any species? Do we wantautonomy in all ways and at all times? Thus, we sug-gest that these concepts need substantial refinement tounderstand how our varying yearnings for relatedness,competence, and autonomy are manifested, and thatthis refinement might entail consideration of the morebasic functions that these needs serve.

Even if this were accomplished, we believe that acompelling understanding of human motivation andbehavior needs to acknowledge: (1) the emergence ofreflective self-awareness as an adaptation that greatlyincreased the flexibility of the human behavioral reper-toire to respond to varying and changing environmen-tal conditions, (2) the awareness of the inevitability ofdeath that such self-awareness produced, and (3) theemergence of the symbolic universe of culture as a re-sponse to these two precursors. This is not to say thatculture emergedonlyas a response to death awareness.No doubt shared systems of meaning fulfilled manyfunctions for early humans, including the coordinationof social interaction, distribution of power and re-sources, and rights to sexual access. TMT simply ar-gues that the emergence of the potential for terrorbrought on by self-reflective awareness of the inevita-bility of death put a press on emerging cultures suchthat cultural beliefs that were to succeed in winning ac-ceptance needed to provide effective means of manag-ing this terror. Thus although cultures serve manyfunctions, one basic function that all cultures mustserve is that of terror management.

The emergence of awareness of self and the inevita-bility of death is important because we believe that it isjust this evolutionary development that pushed the hu-man motivational and self-regulatory system in the di-rection of subjective existence on an abstract symbolicplane. From this point on, objective and subjective re-ality were forever separated. Culturally derived sym-bolizations of basic human needs rather than the needsthemselves came to the fore as the goals toward whichpeople strive. This is where cultural worldviews thatspecified what it meant to be a valuable person cameinto play. Specifications of what it means to be compe-tent, connected, and autonomous, in which domainsthese things are especially important, and in which do-mains these things should be avoided (competence atdoing evil, belonging to ostracized groups, and autono-mous actions that violate social norms tend to be cul-turally sanctioned and thus avoided) came to define thegoals that people pursued. Becker (1973) referred tothis process as “re-instinctivization,” meaning thatonce our species became self-aware and death-aware,cultural systems of meaning took the place of (or per-haps more correctly came to co-exist alongside of andoften supplanted) the evolved behavioral tendenciesthat guide and direct other species’ behavior.

SDT specifies that autonomous people are able toeffectively internalize existing social values; but, SDTdoes not attempt to account for the existence of thosevalues in the first place. If one grants that such values(e.g., God punishes the wicked, therefore do not covetthy neighbor’s wife) are humanly created rather thangenetically transmitted or divinely infused, then anythorough account of human affairs must also accountfor the development and maintenance of culturalworldviews (humanly constructed beliefs about the na-ture of reality shared by groups of people)—the preex-isting social order that is effectively internalized byautonomous individuals. For TMT, the potential terrorengendered by the uniquely human awareness of deathis the psychological impetus for the construction andmaintenance of culture.

Toward a Dialectical Understanding ofHow Defensive and Self-Expansive

Motivates Interact

SDT is a rather optimistic theory about the humanpotential for growth, change, and freedom. TMT is arather pessimistic theory about the role of core humanfears in producing slavish conformity to cultural dic-tates and defensive conceptions of self. It seems clearto us that both theories capture important aspects of hu-man experience and behavior. But how do they fit to-gether? SDT argues that a tendency toward creativegrowth and self-expansion are the natural state of thehuman organism and that all that is needed for this

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blissful state to emerge is the meeting of three basicpsychological needs. As long as these needs are met,there is little reason to expect stress, discomfort, or so-cial unrest.

Unfortunately, life is hard. Any species likely to lastlong in this world needs defensive as well as acquisi-tive motivational concerns. Indeed, the first concernswe all expressed as infants were cries of distress. Anentirely nondefensive creature simply approaching thethings in life it desires with no fears or negative affectwould not last long. Similarly, an organism totally fo-cused on avoiding dangers would never develop thecompetencies and engage in the risky explorationsnecessary to successfully meet its biological needs, notto mention to successfully mate and perpetuate itsgenes. Thus, as many previous theorists have argued,both orientations to life are needed, and the most suc-cessful organisms are probably those who strike an op-timal balance, given their environmental niche,between the two motivational systems.

We believe that although SDT provides valuable in-sights into the interplay between basic needs and hu-man development, by attending insufficiently todefensive or, in Maslow’s terms, deficit motives, thisanalysis has it essentially backwards. We argue that al-though the potential for exhilaration and positive affectinherent in the process of self-expansion gives rise tothe possibility of unlimited growth and perfection ofone’s skills and understandings, the major obstacle tosuch open integrative processing is anxiety. Anxiety isantithetical to open integrative processing and thusmust be controlled in order for growth to occur. AsTMT suggests, people typically control their anxietyby working to maintain faith in their culturalworldviews and conceptions of themselves as valuablecontributors within the context of their worldviews.Ironically, such stubborn allegiance to a stableworldview and self-concept is antithetical to open inte-gration of new information and experience with one’sexisting psychological structures. Thus we are caughtin a bind: To be able to grow, we must control our anxi-ety, but to control our anxiety we must cling to concep-tions of self and reality that limit our possibilities fortruly meaningful change. The end result is aback-and-forth (i.e., dialectical) struggle of the posi-tive allure of the process of growth countered by thevulnerability to core human fears that letting go of ourexisting defensive structures would create. Unfortu-nately, as the classic work on approach–avoidanceconflicts shows, avoidance tendencies are usuallystronger and we tend to play it safe and forego opportu-nities for growth to maintain the safety and securitythat our existing conceptions of self and world provide.

But obviously anxiety does not always preventchange. If it did, how would cultural worldviews everevolve? We would still be living in the stone age. Thuswe are not arguing for the inevitable primacy of one

system over the other, and do not think that progresswill be made by arguing about primacy. Rather, we be-lieve that acknowledgement and study of the necessityand potent operation of both systems in everyday hu-man functioning is the key to real progress in the studyof human motivation. A comprehensive theory of hu-man motivation must acknowledge fundamental andirreducible defensive and proactive motives that existin a complex dialectical relationship. STD in its currentform provides a valuable account of one side of humanmotivation, and we’d like to think that TMT does a fairjob of this for the other side as well, but both are sin-gle-motive-nondialectical systems, and thus provideunbalanced distorted depictions of human goalstrivings—both can tell part of the story but neither byitself can offer a complete understanding of any signif-icant category of human endeavor. Only a dual-motivesystem with provisions for dialectical relations be-tween them will be capable of explaining the richnessof human behavior as it occurs in the world.

Note

Tom Pyszczynski, Department of Psychology, Univer-sity of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs,CO 80933–7150. E-mail: tpyszy@brain.uccs.edu

References

Becker, E. (1973).The denial of death. New York: Free Press.Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of a child’s tie to his mother.Interna-

tional Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99,265–272.Bowlby, J. (1969).Attachment and loss: Vol. 1, Attachment.New

York: Basic Books.Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1981).Attention and self-regulation:

A control theory approach to human behavior. New York:Springer-Verlag.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1980). The empirical exploration of in-trinsic motivational processes. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.),Advancesin experimental social psychology(Vol. 13, pp. 39–80). NewYork: Academic.

Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972).A theory of objectiveself-awareness.New York: Academic.

Gleitman, H. (1986).Psychology(2nd Ed.). New York: Norton.Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes

and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror manage-ment theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.),Public self and privateself(pp. 189–212). New York: Springer-Verlag..

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, J. (1995). Toward a dualmotive depth psychology of self and social behavior. In M.Kernis (Ed.),Efficacy, agency, and self-esteem(pp. 73–97).New York: Plenum.Plant, R. W., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrin-sic motivation and the effects of self-consciousness: An investi-gation of internally controlling styles.Journal of Personality,53,435–449.

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Stewart-Fouts, M.(1996). The liberating and constraining aspects of self: Why thefreed bird finds a new cage. In A. Oosterwegel & R. A.Wicklund (Eds.),The self in European and North AmericanCulture: Development and processes. Dordrecht, Netherlands:Kluwer Academic.

Rank, O. (1931).Psychology and the soul.New York: Perpetua.

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The “How” of Goal Pursuit:Interest and Self-Regulation

Carol Sansone and Jessi L. SmithDepartment of Psychology

University of Utah

Deci and Ryan (this issue) present some intriguingand powerful ideas about the role of psychologicalneeds for competence, autonomy, and relatednessthat underlie “intrinsically” and “extrinsically” moti-vated goal pursuit. They propose that when people areintrinsically motivated, engagement with the activityis the goal. Deci and Ryan further argue that “intrinsicmotivation concerns the active engagement withtasks that people find interesting” and that “peoplewill become more or less interested in activities as afunction of the degree to which they experience needsatisfaction while engaging those activities…”(thisissue), particularly satisfaction of the needs for com-petence and autonomy.

In contrast to the autotelic definition of intrinsicmotivation, Deci and Ryan suggest that people are ex-trinsically motivated when they engage in an activityto reach a task-extrinsic outcome or goal. However,they argue that extrinsic motivation can be further dif-ferentiated according to the degree to which this goalstriving satisfies individuals’ need for autonomy. Deciand Ryan thus ultimately give the need for autonomy aprimary role, arraying different types of extrinsic moti-vation and intrinsic motivation along a continuum ofself-determination. For example, they propose that ex-periences that satisfy needs for competence only leadto greater intrinsic motivation if they also satisfy needsfor autonomy. Moreover, they propose that optimalwell-being occurs when people are fully self-deter-mined as they strive toward a task-extrinsic goal.

This theoretical framework beautifully integrates anumber of areas in psychology, and suggests importantareas of application to a wide variety of human behav-iors. Although it is clear from their literature reviewthat experiences of autonomy, competence, and relat-edness are critical to human functioning, our researchhas lead to a different framework for incorporatinggoal striving, self-regulation, interest, and intrinsicmotivation that does not necessarily depend on satis-faction of these needs.

We consider individuals to be intrinsically moti-vated when their behavior is motivated by the actual,anticipated or sought experience of interest. Accordingto this perspective, intrinsic motivation can potentiallyoccur with a variety of goals. This includes goals de-rived from potential needs to act effectively on the en-vironment (White, 1959), but is not limited to thosegoals.The key to a particular goal’s effect is whether itis associated with performing the activity in a way that

is involving and interesting for the person.In additionto the “what” and “why” of goal pursuit (Harackiewicz& Sansone, 1991), therefore, our framework has in-creasingly emphasized the importance of the “how.”Although compatible with many of Deci and Ryan’ssuggestions, our framework suggests some differentimplications for optimal goal striving and well-being.We briefly discuss this framework here, and highlightwhat we see as the most critical differences.

Self-Regulation of Motivation Model

In contrast to Deci and Ryan’s focus on underlyingneeds, Sansone and Smith (2000) suggest that the posi-tive phenomenological experience of interest and in-volvement (“feeling like it”) can serve as the mostproximal motivator for goal-relevant behavior, partic-ularly when the goal is higher level and longer term(e.g., a career goal; see also Sansone & Harackiewicz,1996). Furthermore, instead of focusing on the facilita-tion of a given set of needs, we suggest that the degreeof interest will be determined, in part, by the degree towhich the environment facilitates or interferes with thepursuit of goals. This suggests that match with goals,rather than the content of the goals itself, will be an im-portant influence on interest. Thus, we propose thatself-regulation of behavior over time must include theregulation of motivation to reach goals as well as moti-vation to experience interest. Moreover, these twokinds of motivation may work together or in opposingways to determine behavior. The goal of our empiricalwork has been to test this model and its implications.

Goal Congruence

In early research, Sansone (1986) reasoned that therole of competence feedback in facilitating intrinsicmotivation may have been overestimated because re-searchers had primarily used tasks for which achievinga particular level of competence was a primary defin-ing feature (e.g., solving puzzles, playing games).Sansone (1986) thus created a task that could be de-fined in terms of doing wellor in terms of satisfyingcuriosity (i.e., trivia task). She found that feedbackconveying information about moderately unsatisfac-tory performance levels (less than 50% correct) couldstill enhance interest, if it is also provided information

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that satisfied curiosity about the correct answers. Infact, feedback conveying very positive relative perfor-mance information (i.e., that performance was betterthan 80% of peers) and feedback satisfying curiosityeach enhanced interest to the same degree. This posi-tive competence feedback enhanced interest to agreater degree than curiosity feedbackonly whenindi-viduals were first told that doing well was associatedwith intellectual flexibility and creativity. In addition,it was only in this context that individuals’ perceivedcompetence levels predicted interest. The results fromthese studies suggested that there might be multiplegoals related to interest in a task, and that feelings ofcompetence enhanced intrinsic motivation primarilywhen competence goals were salient at the outset of thetask.

Whether interest is enhanced by feedback that facil-itates feelings of competence and autonomy, therefore,may depend on whether achieving competence or au-tonomy is the primary goal of the individual’s engage-ment in the task. For example, Sansone, Sachau, andWeir (1989) found that the identical feedback on howto score more points on a computer game had differenteffects on interest depending on whether individualsdefined the activity as a skill game or a fantasy adven-ture. When defined as a skill game, the feedback led togreater interest. When defined as a fantasy adventure,in contrast, the same feedback led to lower interest.This “matching” effect on interest was mediated by thedegree of positive affect experienced while working onthe computer task. Subsequent research byHarackiewicz and Elliot (1998) confirmed this match-ing effect in the context of different types of compe-tence goals (performance and mastery achievementgoals). They found that match among these goals was abetter predictor of interest than the content of the goals,and that this matching effect was mediated by compe-tence valuation and degree of task involvement whileworking on the task.

We have more recently extended this investigationof goal congruence beyond competence goals. As afirst step, we collected a large database in a cross-sec-tional life-span study that allowed us to examine indi-vidual and situational factors associated with differentgoals, affect, and strategies (e.g., Berg, Strough,Calderone, Sansone, & Weir, 1998; Sansone & Berg,1993). In support of Deci and Ryan’s assertion of theimportance of relatedness needs, one key finding wasthe importance of interpersonal goals in everyday ac-tivities, including activities that take place in achieve-ment domains (i.e., school and work). We also foundthat although interpersonal goals are important and sa-lient for everyone, they are even more salient for someindividuals (e.g., females) (Morgan & Sansone, 1995;Strough, Berg, & Sansone, 1996).

Our model suggests that if individuals approach ac-tivities with interpersonal goals, they should experi-

ence greater interest if the context facilitates thosegoals. This hypothesis suggests the possibility of a dif-ferent role for “relatedness” needs in intrinsic motiva-tion than that proposed by Deci and Ryan. Theysuggest that satisfaction of the need for relatednessholds a more distal role in intrinsic motivation than sat-isfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence,proposing that “a secure relational base appears to pro-vide a needed backdrop—a distal support—for intrin-sic motivation, a sense of security that makes theexpression of this innate growth tendency more likelyand more robust” (this issue).

According to our model, rather than simply provid-ing a needed backdrop, other people could be essentialto a person’s experience of interest. As a first test ofthis hypothesis, Isaac, Sansone, & Smith (1999) identi-fied individuals who should be most likely to approachactivities with interpersonal goals (individuals higherin interpersonal orientation [IO], who are more likelyto be female). They then varied the actual presence ofother people (actually a same-sex confederate). Con-firming our model, Isaac, et al. found that individualshigher in IO displayed greater intrinsic motivationwhen they worked in the presence of another person,regardless if they worked in cooperation with or sim-ply alongside the person. Moreover, the kind andamount of interaction with the person predicted the de-gree of intrinsic motivation displayed by higher IOpeople.

Together, these studies suggest that facilitation ofgoals, rather than facilitation of a specific set of needs,is an important determinant of interest. Thus, strivingtoward different outcomes can be intrinsically moti-vated, if that striving is associated with the positivephenomenological experience of interest. We next de-scribe research that suggests that individuals may pur-posely alter their performance of an activity in a waythat enhances this phenomenological experience, in or-der to create or maintain sufficient motivation to reacha valued outcome.

Self-Regulating Interest

Sansone, Weir, Harpster, and Morgan (1992) pro-posed that there may be a variety of avenues throughwhich to enhance interest, and that individuals maypurposely explore these avenues in order to maintaintheir motivation to perform relatively uninteresting,but important, activities. They hypothesized that indi-viduals would be most likely to engage in interest-en-hancing strategies when there was a need (the task wasboring), there was a good reason to do the task anyway,and interest-enhancing strategies were available. Theirresults confirmed this pattern in strategy use. More-over, using these strategies was associated with greaterlikelihood of performing the activity in the future.

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In a subsequent paper, Sansone, Wiebe, and Mor-gan (1999) examined interest-enhancing strategy usewhen another option (stopping) was available. A sec-ond purpose was to contrast individual differences(conscientiousness [Costa & McCrae, 1991] and hardi-ness [Kobasa, 1979]) that should reflect differentialweighing of the costs and benefits associated with de-ciding to regulate interest. As expected, individualshigher in conscientiousness persisted longer than indi-viduals lower in conscientiousness independently ofwhether they were provided a good reason to performthe task or used the strategy. In contrast, individualshigh in hardiness (i.e., individuals typically good atcoping with stress) persisted primarily when they wereprovided a good reason to perform the task, and this ef-fect was mediated by their use of the interest-enhanc-ing strategy.

In a subsequent series of studies, we investigatedwhetherany“good” reason to perform a boring task issufficient to initiate self-regulation, or whether the na-ture of the reason matters (Sansone & Smith, 1999;Smith & Sansone, 1999). We compared conditions thatcorrespond to different points along the continuumoutlined by Deci and Ryan: amotivation (no additionalreason provided to perform the boring task), externalextrinsic motivation (additional reason provided in theform of a reward offered to perform the boring task),introjected extrinsic motivation (additional reason pro-vided in the form of statements that they should andought to help others by performing the boring task),identified extrinsic motivation (additional reason pro-vided in the form of statements that they will be able tohelp others by performing a boring task), and intrinsicmotivation (no additional reason provided to performan interesting task).

In line with our model, preliminary results sug-gested that, across reason conditions, greater use of theinterest-enhancing strategy predicted greater subse-quent interest in the boring task, which in turn pre-dicted greater likelihood of performing the activity inthe future. In addition, the identified reason conditionwas associated with the greatest use and the introjectedreason condition was associated with the least use ofthe interest-enhancing strategy, supporting Deci andRyan’s critical distinction between these types of rea-sons. In contrast to predictions based on their proposedcontinuum, however, the external-reward conditionfell between the identified and introjected reason con-ditions in terms of strategy use. Although our resultspartially support Deci and Ryan’s proposition that the“why” of goal pursuit matters, this pattern suggeststhat there may be something in addition to feelings ofautonomy that differentiates between these different“why’s,” particularly in terms of their relation to“how” (i.e., self-regulating interest).

These empirical findings regarding self-regulatinginterest support our model’s assertion that some level

of interest and involvement may be essential tomaintain performance of uninteresting but importantactivities. This suggests that an important componentof self-regulation to reach valuedoutcomesincludesregulating the experience of interest while working to-ward those outcomes.

Implications of the DifferentPerspectives

As is clear from the brief review of our model, wedo not and cannot address whether the needs for com-petence, autonomy, and relatedness are in fact univer-sal and unvarying, as proposed by Deci and Ryan (thisissue). They are clearly important themes that recuracross a variety of measures of motivation andwell-being, and we have found them to be important inour own research. If they do underlie all phenomena,however, our perspective suggests that they may do so,at times, in a more distal manner than that suggested byDeci and Ryan’s framework.

Our research suggests that the explicit role of com-petence and autonomy appears to become less impor-tant to intrinsic motivation in particular contexts andwith different individuals. If competence and auton-omy remain important at these times, they may remainso primarily because some level ofactualcompetenceand control over the activity may be necessary precon-ditions to experiencing interest. That is, rather than be-ing important because they satisfy basic psychologicalneeds, in this case they may be important because ac-tual competence or control allows an individual to per-form the activity in the way that makes it optimallyinteresting for that person (e.g., allows for engaging ininterest-enhancing strategies). In contrast, at othertimes or with other individuals, feelings of competenceand autonomy may be the defining feature of the activ-ity, and may be what makes the experience interesting.In these cases, the experience is interestingbecauseitelicits those feelings.

In addition, our research does not differentiate be-tween interpersonal goals and other kinds of goals interms of their importance to the experience of interest.According to our perspective, relatedness needs are notjust important to the background or context of an activ-ity, but can become part of the activity to the extent thatthey lead an individual to adopt interpersonal goals.Facilitation of interpersonal goals can thus be just ascritical to individuals’ interest and intrinsic motivationas facilitation of other kinds of goals, such as goals toachieve competence or autonomy. In fact, our perspec-tive suggests that a variety of goals may acquire the ca-pacity to generate interest, particularly when thecontext facilitates those goals (see also Barron &Harackiewicz, 2000; Morf, Weir, & Davidov, 2000).

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Finally, our perspective suggests that “internaliza-tion” or valuing an activity can lead to intrinsic motiva-tion, by motivating the individual to exert the effort tomake the experience of the activity more interesting.Moreover, even when the value is fully internalized andintegrated into the self, we argue that some experienceof interest will still be critical for any prolonged activity.Without it, we would expect stress-related effects to oc-cur on physical and psychological well-being. In addi-tion, we have found that engaging in interest-enhancingstrategies can, in turn, lead to greater valuing of the ac-tivity (e.g., Sansone, Wiebe, & Morgan, 1999). Thus, incontrast to Deci and Ryan’s suggested continuum, wedo not see self-determined internalization and intrinsicmotivation as necessarily parallel, but rather, as poten-tially bidirectionally integrated into an individual’sself-regulatory process over time.

Deci and Ryan’s provocative and thought-provok-ing review certainly helps our (and the field’s) attemptto understand how intrinsic motivation and self-regu-lation work optimally over time. We echo the impor-tance of many of the variables identified as critical byDeci and Ryan. We suggest, however, that the relation-ships among some of these variables may work differ-ently within a self-regulatory process. The differentimplications of Deci and Ryan’s and our perspectivesoffer exciting and important avenues to pursue in fu-ture research, and we look forward to the challenge.

Notes

We thank Cynthia Berg, Carolyn Morgan, CarolWerner, and Deborah Wiebe for their insights andfeedback on preliminary versions of this article.

Carol Sansone and Jessi L. Smith, Department ofPsychology, University of Utah, 390 South 1530 East,Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. E-mail:sansone@psych.utah.edu

References

Barron, K., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2000). Rethinking achieve-ment goals: Implications for intrinsic motivation and per-formance. In C. Sansone & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.)Intrin-sic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for OptimalMotivation and Performance(pp. 229–254). San Diego,CA: Academic.

Berg, C. A., Strough, J., Calderone, K. S., Sansone, C., &Weir, C. (1998). The role of problem definition in un-derstanding age and context effects on strategies for

solving everyday problems.Psychology and Aging, 13,29–44.

Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1991).Revised NEO Personality In-ventory. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources Inc.

Harackiewicz, J. M. & Elliot, A. J. (1998). The joint effects of targetand purpose goals on intrinsic motivation: A mediational analy-sis.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24,675–689.

Harackiewicz, J., & Sansone, C. (1991). Goals and intrinsic motiva-tion: You can get there from here.Advances in Motivation andAchievement, 7,21–49.

Isaac, J. D., Sansone, C., & Smith, J. L. (1999). Other people as asource of interest in an activity.Journal of Experimental SocialPsychology, 35,239–265.

Kobasa, S. C. (1979). Stressful life events, personality, and health:An inquiry into hardiness.Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 37,111.

Morf, C. C., Weir, C. R., & Davidov, M. (2000). Narcissism and in-trinsic motivation: The role of goal congruence.Journal of Ex-perimental Social Psychology, 36,424–438.

Morgan, C., & Sansone, C. (1995).Achievement and interpersonalconcerns in everyday problems: Gender differences and simi-larities. Unpublished manuscript, University of Utah, Salt LakeCity, UT.

Sansone, C. (1986). A question of competence: The effects of compe-tence and task feedback on intrinsic interest.Journal of Person-ality and Social Psychology, 51,918–931.

Sansone, C., & Berg, C. (1993). Adapting to the environment acrossthe lifespan: Different process or different inputs?InternationalJournal of Behavioral Development, 16,215–241.

Sansone, C., & Harackiewicz, J. (1996). “I don’t feel like it”: Thefunction of interest in self-regulation. In L. L. Martin and A.Tesser (Eds.),Striving and feeling: Interactions among goals,affect and self-regulation(pp. 203–228). Mahwah, NJ: Law-rence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Sansone, C., Sachau, D. A., & Weir, C. (1989). Effects of instructionon intrinsic interest: The importance of context.Journal of Per-sonality and Social Psychology, 57,819–829.

Sansone, C., & Smith, J. L. (1999).Reasons for performing a boringactivity: Effects on initial engagement and regulation of inter-est.Manuscript in preparation.

Sansone, C. & Smith, J.L. (2000). Interest and self-regulation: Therelation between having to and wanting to. In C Sansone and J.Harackiewicz (Eds.),Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: Thesearch for optimal motivation and performance(pp. 341–372).San Diego, CA: Academic.

Sansone, C., Weir, C., Harpster, L., & Morgan, C. (1992). Once aboring task always a boring task?: Interest as a self-regulatorymechanism.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63,379–390.

Sansone, C., Wiebe, D. J., & Morgan, C. (1999). Self-regulating in-terest: The moderating role of hardiness and conscientiousness.Journal of Personality, 67,701–733.

Smith, J. L., & Sansone, C. (1999, August).Reasons for self-regulat-ing interest: Does it matter?Paper presented at the 107th meet-ing of the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA.

Strough, J., Berg, C. A., & Sansone, C. (1996). Goals for solving ev-eryday problems across the life span: Age and gender differ-ences in the salience of interpersonal concerns.DevelopmentalPsychology, 32,1106–1115.

White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of com-petence.Psychological Review, 66,297–333.

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Self-Determination in Interpersonal Situations

Paul A. M. Van LangeDepartment of Social Psychology

Free University

Self-determination theory (SDT) provides athoughtful analysis of the psychological needs forcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy, the adaptivevalue of these needs, as well as how these needs relateto past contemporary theories of motivation. SDT isone of the few theories within psychology that extendsand complements the “logic” that rewards and punish-ments always guide people in the predicted direction:Indeed, rewards may have hidden costs as well as hid-den gains. Given that rewards and cost are so omni-present, the processes outlined by SDT should berelevant to many different situations, varying fromclose relationships, educational settings, organiza-tions, to societies at large. It also interesting to note thatSDT seems particularly relevant to social dilemmas:conflicts between self-interest and collective interest(Komorita & Parks, 1995). According to SDT, peoplemay not always respond to externally provided costand rewards in a manner consistent with “economictheory” and rational choice models. For example, inregulating social dilemmas, governments may some-times exert too much control, so that the provision ofrewards for “cooperative” behavior (e.g., tax reductionfor those who commute by public transportation ratherthan by car) turn out less effective than manypolicymakers had anticipated. Some work on social di-lemmas provides at least indirect support for this rea-soning, although it is not clear whether the hiddencosts of rewards ultimately need to be understood interms of the needs for competence, relatedness, or au-tonomy (e.g., Van Lange, Van Vugt, & De Cremer,2000).

In this commentary, I discuss the utility of SDT inthe context of interpersonal situations. The basic thrustof this commentary is that although SDT can provide areasonable account of motivational processes in inter-personal situations, this account needs to be consideredin light of alternative theories that focus on the se-quence of behavior (i.e., patterns of social interaction)and relationship-relevant features that shape motiva-tion, behavior, and interaction.

Self-Determination in InterpersonalSituations

Is self-determination essential to our understandingof social interaction or interpersonal behavior? Shouldother types of theoretical analyses complement SDT?Although Deci and Ryan (this issue) do not directly ad-dress this issue, they do stress the importance of the in-

terpersonal or social environment in outlining somekey postulates and definitions. The concept of socialstructures is emphasized in the organismic–dialecticalapproach that is central to SDT, and the concept of “so-cial world” is emphasized in the definition of needs.SDT suggests that social contexts that support theneeds for competence, relatedness, and autonomy helpindividuals maintain or enhance intrinsic motivation,regulatory orientations, and aspiration of life goals,which in turn, enhance functioning and mentalwell-being.

Although SDT emphasizes the importance of socialinfluences, SDT does not advance a systematic analysisof concepts such as social structures. That is, SDT doesnot provide a taxonomy of social structure in order tounderstand the basic situational features that are rele-vant to support—and lack of support—for the needs ofcompetence, autonomy, and relatedness. A taxonomicapproach to situations might also illuminate whetherand why the three needs are fundamental to understand-ing functioning and mental health. I hope to illustratethat, at the very least, theoretical approaches that are in-herently “social” or “interpersonal” are needed to fullyunderstand the manner in which external rewards influ-ence motivation, behavior, and interaction.

An Illustration

In a recent article entitled “How intrinsic motiva-tion is crowded out and in, ” Frey (1994) describes aninterpersonal scenario to illustrate the undermining ef-fect of extrinsic rewards (which he referred to as the“crowding out effect”). The scenario reads as follows:

A boy on good terms with his parents willingly mowsthe lawn of the house. His father then offers to pay hima fee for each time he cuts the lawn. As a result, the boynow only mows the lawn when the payment comesforth—nor is he prepared to do any other type ofhousework for free. (Frey, 1994, p. 243)

How should one explain that the boy is no longerprepared to do any housework for free? According toDeci and Ryan, the payment by the father does not ac-knowledge, for example, the level of competence andautonomy that is associated with mowing the lawn,and so, the boy will begin to exhibit lower levels of in-trinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In the fol-lowing I analyze the scenario from an interpersonalperspective, hoping to demonstrate the overall utilityof this perspective.

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In the scenario, the relationship between the boyand parents is good, which may well be the interper-sonal context in which paying represents an externalintervention or extrinsic reward, which is said to un-dermine intrinsic motivation. But this response couldalso be interpreted in terms of a sequence of interper-sonal behavior, that is, in terms of social interaction.Presumably, the boy is willing to mow the lawn with-out receiving any benefit, for at least two reasons: (a)he enjoys mowing the lawn, (b) he seeks to help hisparents (e.g., because he likes them, because he want todo something in return, or because he wants somethingfrom them), or both. From an interpersonal point ofview, only the latter motivation—or set of motiva-tions—is interesting. For the boy, mowing the lawnmay well be one of the few ways in which he can (a)communicate love, consideration, and respect to hisparents (i.e., prosocial explanation), (b) “pay back”what he has received from his parents in the past (i.e.,reciprocity explanation), or (c) seek to get some differ-ent reward from his parents in the future (e.g., a per-mission to attend a particular party; i.e., strategyexplanation). In order to pursue any of these interac-tion goals, the boy should not receive money in return.Moreover, when the parents start paying their son, theymight be communicating “interpersonal distance,”treating their son as “anybody who could mow thelawn.” In the event that the boy mowed the lawn“for-the-parents” (prosocial explanation), then bystarting to pay, the father conveys that he did not getthe message that the boy wanted to convey. The son isnow faced with the rules of the game as defined by thefather (“whenever I do something for them, I shouldget paid”), and is thus no longer prepared to do anytype of housework for free.

Social Interaction and RelationshipFeatures

The general point is that the undermining effects ofrewards in this and related situations can be readily ex-plained in terms of interpersonal processes. Two ex-planatory concepts seem especially important. Thefirst concept may be referred to as relationship-rele-vant features, such as the degree of interpersonal lik-ing, dependence, commitment, and trust. For example,the parents have resources that the boy presumablydoes not really have but considers important (i.e.,money), which is a source of dependence on the part ofthe boy and a source of power on the part of parents.Moreover, the boy and the parents have a good rela-tionship, which is also likely to mean that they are in atrusting relationship.

The second concept may be referred to as interac-tion process, the sequence of behaviors that the boyand parent(s) display. Interaction process is importantto understanding specific motivations (e.g., the spe-

cific motivation for wanting to help the parents) and in-terpersonal communication (e.g., the communicationof that motivation; and the degree to which that com-municated message is well understood). This type ofinterpretation follows from theories developed in sev-eral interaction-relevant areas of research, such as in-terdependence, cooperation and competition,relationships, and communication (Kelley & Thibaut,1978; Rusbult & Van Lange, 1996).

Theoretical analyses focusing on relationshipfeatures and interaction process are also relevant to“interpersonal” situations involving many individu-als, such as organizations, educational settings, orsocieties at large. For example, one might hypothe-size that several forms of control by others are expe-rienced as a threat not only to their competence andautonomy, but to their benevolence as well. Indeed,management and authorities often exert control(e.g., the implementation of sanctioning systems) inorder to discourage noncooperative behavior (e.g.,absenteeism). People may respond to such controlwith some strong reactance not only because theyfeel controlled, but also because they do not feeltrusted. Just as the father and son in the scenario arecommunicating through behavior, so might authori-ties and the public by means of their mutual actionscommunicate trust or distrust, respect or disdain,and sympathy or apathy.

It is also appropriate to outline that in the interper-sonal life “reward” frequently also entails “hidden re-wards.” For example, acts of self-sacrifice arerewarding to the partner not only because of the rela-tively concrete outcomes they yield but also because ofliking, trust, and related forms of positive of intent thatsuch acts reveal (Van Lange et al., 1997). It seemsplausible that, over the long run, such positive actsyield desirable outcomes in terms of functioning andmental health. This may be true even when the psycho-logical needs of competence and autonomy arethwarted by some acts of sacrifice (e.g., sacrificingtime and energy by helping the partner to complete anego-involving task). The reason would be that, over thelong run, one important ingredient to healthy relation-ships (and healthy individuals) is the exchange of ma-terial and immaterial rewards, and to do so in a fairlyunconditional, trusting manner.

In closing, it should be clear that these lines of rea-soning are not inconsistent with SDT. At the sametime, given that hypotheses derived from SDT oftenhave been tested in interpersonal settings, and giventhat external regulation often entails regulation by so-cially relevant others, it becomes especially importantto outline the importance of theoretical analyses thatfocus on relationship-relevant features, such as sympa-thy, commitment, and trust, and interaction processesthrough which individuals communicate sympathy,commitment, and trust.

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Notes

I thank Sander Koole for his helpful comments onan earlier draft of this commentary.

Paul A. M. Van Lange, Department of SocialPsychology, Free University at Amsterdam, VanDer Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, theNetherlands. E-mail: pam.van.lange@psy.vu.nl

References

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985).Intrinsic motivation and self-de-termination in human behavior.New York: Plenum.

Frey, B. S. (1994). How intrinsic motivation is crowded out and in.Rationality and Society, 6,334–352.

Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978).Interpersonal relations: Atheory of interdependence.New York: Wiley.

Komorita, S. S., & Parks, C. D. (1995). Interpersonal relations:Mixed-motive interaction.Annual Review of Psychology, 46,183–207.

Rusbult, C. E., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (1996). Interdependence pro-cesses. In E. T. Higgins, & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.),Social psy-chology: Handbook of basic principles(pp. 564–596). NewYork: Guilford.

Van Lange, P. A. M., Rusbult, C. E., Drigotas, S. M., Arriaga, X. B.,Witcher, B. S., & Cox, C. L. (1997). Willingness to sacrifice inclose relationships.Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-ogy, 72,1373–1395.

Van Lange, P. A. M., Van Vugt, M., & De Cremer, D. A. (2000).Choosing between personal comfort and the environment:Solutions to the transportation dilemma. In M. Van Vugt, M.Snyder, T. R. Tyler, & A. Biel (Eds.),Cooperation in mod-ern society(pp. 45–63). London: Routledge.

Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory:A View From the Hierarchical Model of

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Robert J. VallerandLaboratoire de Recherche sur le Comportement Social

Université du Québec à Montréal

Self-determination theory (SDT) has gone throughseveral revisions over the years (Deci, 1975; Deci &Ryan, 1980; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Deci & Ryan, 1991).In the target article, Deci and Ryan present the most re-cent version of SDT. The authors make a number ofimportant points and it is impossible to discuss them allhere. Because there is a fairly high level of agreementbetween SDT and my own position presented morefully in the Hierarchical Model of intrinsic and extrin-sic motivation (Vallerand, 1997; Vallerand & Ratelle,in press), I therefore focus on certain elements of dis-agreement between the two perspectives or issues thatdeserve further treatment. Thus, I focus on four mainpoints:

1. The importance of a hierarchical structure ofmotivational processes.

2. The role of psychological needs in the motiva-tional sequence.

3. Individual differences in needs.4. The different roles of the need for relatedness.

However, before discussing these various issues I firstbriefly present the Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic andExtrinsic Motivation.

A Quick Overview of the HierarchicalModel

The model takes into consideration the differenttypes of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) at threelevels of generality, how these various motivations arerelated, as well as the determinants and consequencesof these motivational representations. The model ap-pears in Figure 1.

Several elements deserve our attention. First, themodel posits that we must consider motivation from amultidimensional perspective. Thus, we agree withDeci and Ryan that it is not sufficient to distinguish be-tween intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in a dichotomy.Rather, we must consider these constructs on a contin-uum in which different types of intrinsic and extrinsicmotivation range from a high to a low level of self-de-termination. These constructs are: intrinsic motivationto know, to accomplish, and to experience stimulation(see Vallerand et al., 1992, 1993 on the three types of in-trinsic motivation), integrated, identified, introjected,and external regulation, and finally amotivation (or therelative absence of motivation; see Deci & Ryan, 1985).Much research now supports the existence of such acontinuum (see Vallerand, 1997 for a review).

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A second premise of the model is that intrinsic andextrinsic motivation, and amotivation take placewithin the individual at three hierarchical levels ofgenerality. These levels are the global (or personality),contextual (or life domain), and situational (or state)levels. The global motivation refers to a broad disposi-tion to engage in activities with an intrinsic or extrinsicorientation. It sits on top of the motivational hierarchyand refers loosely to what Deci and Ryan call “causal-ity orientations.” Contextual motivation, on the otherhand, refers to motivational orientations (or “do-main-specific regulatory styles” in SDT) that are spe-cific to various contexts such as education, leisure, andinterpersonal relationships (the three most importantlife contexts for college students, see Blais, Vallerand,Gagnon, Brière, & Pelletier, 1990). This second levelof generality sits at the intermediate level of generality.Finally, situational motivation refers to the last level ofgenerality. It refers to the here and now of motivation(or state motivation).A third important element of themodel focuses on motivational determinants (see theleft-hand side of Figure 1). Several different aspectsdealing with motivational determinants need to be un-derscored. First, motivation results from social factorsat each of the three levels of generality. Thus, situa-tional factors can affect situational motivation, contex-tual factors can affect contextual motivation, andfinally global factors can affect global motivation. Sec-ond, the impact of social factors on motivation is pro-posed to be mediated by perceptions of competence,autonomy, and relatedness (or “need satisfaction” in

SDT) at each of the three levels. Thus, I agree withDeci and Ryan on the importance of the satisfaction ofthe three needs for self-determined motivation (engag-ing in activities and tasks as a function of intrinsic mo-tivation and self-determined extrinsic motivation) toflourish. However, although SDT posits that theseneeds are innate and universal, the jury is still out onthis issue.

A third aspect dealing with the determinants of mo-tivation is that motivation is also influenced by the mo-tivational dynamics involving the relations amongmotivation at the three levels of generality. One suchtype of effect involves a top-down effect from motiva-tion at a higher level in the hierarchy on motivation atthe next lower level in the hierarchy (see the downwardarrows in Figure 1). Another type of motivational dy-namics involves a recursive relationship (or bottom-upeffect) between motivation at the lower level in the hi-erarchy that over time can have some feedback effecton motivation at the next higher level (see the upwardarrows in the center of Figure 1). A final type of moti-vational dynamics refers to the interplay among thedifferent types of contextual motivation (see the side-ways arrows in the center of Figure 1). As I show, suchan interplay among the contextual motivations maylead to compensation effects.

A final element of the model is that motivation pro-duces psychological outcomes. This dimension of themodel can be subdivided into four aspects. The first isthat these motivational outcomes can be cognitive, af-fective, and behavioral in nature (see the right side of

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Figure 1. The Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation. From Toward a Hierarchical Model of Intrinsicand Extrinsic Motivation, by R. J. Vallerand, 1995, June. A theory/review paper presented at the Canadian Psychology As-sociation annual conference, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Figure 1). The second point is that intrinsic motivationproduces the most positive consequences, whereas cer-tain types of extrinsic motivation (especially externalregulation) and amotivation produce the most negativeones. Thus, it is not sufficient to be highly motivated toderive positive outcomes from our efforts. One alsoneeds to be motivated in a self-determined fashion.The third point that is made explicit by Figure 1 is thatconsequences take place at three levels of generality(the global, contextual, and situational levels). As im-plied by the right-hand side of Figure 1, the conse-quences are of the same level of generality as the levelof generality of the motivation that engendered them.More specifically, situational motivation induces situ-ational consequences (e.g., levels of attention toward aparticular task at a specific time), contextual motiva-tion produces contextual consequences, and globalmotivation leads to global consequences (e.g., life sat-isfaction). Of course, contextual consequences shouldbe mainly determined by relevant contextual motiva-tions. Thus, education-related outcomes (e.g., satisfac-tion toward education) should be the result ofmotivation toward education and not of motivation to-ward leisure activities.

On the Importance of a HierarchicalStructure of Motivational Processes

In their presentation of SDT, Deci and Ryan (this is-sue) propose that motivational orientations exist atleast at two levels of generality, namely the causal-ity-orientation and the domain-specific levels. How-ever, they don’t indicate how these motivationalrepresentations are formerly integrated into a broaderscheme that involves situational (or state) motivation.The Hierarchical Model of intrinsic and extrinsic moti-vation proposes such an integration. As noted previ-ously, the model allows us to integrate motivationalrepresentations at three levels of a hierarchy, theglobal, contextual, and situational levels. Recent re-search (e.g., Vallerand, Guay, & Blanchard, 2000)supports this three-level hierarchy of motivation. It ap-pears that the three levels of generality account best forthe data and in the order proposed by the model. Of ad-ditional importance is the fact that the model proposesthe nature and the functions of the relationships amongthe different motivational representations. First, thereis a top-down effect from motivation at a higher levelin the hierarchy on motivation at the next lower level inthe hierarchy. Global motivation, for example, is ex-pected to influence contextual motivation (in the edu-cation, leisure, interpersonal relations and othercontexts). Thus, to the extent that someone is intrinsi-cally motivated at the global (or personality) level, thatperson is likely to also be intrinsically motivated inthese various life contexts. The top-down effect also

applies to the contextual motivation-situational moti-vation relation. Much empirical support exists for thetop-down effect (see Vallerand, 1997; Vallerand &Rousseau, in press).

The top-down hypothesis is important not only be-cause it suggests how motivation at different levels ofgenerality can be integrated, but also because it repre-sents a new mechanism through which intrinsic andextrinsic motivation can be influenced. Previous re-search (e.g., see Bargh & Barndollar, 1996) revealsthat relatively stable motivational representations ofachievement and affiliation can influence situationalmotivation when primed in laboratory settings, even ifthe individual is unaware of such an effect. The Hierar-chical Model posits that similar types of effects cantake place with respect to intrinsic and extrinsic moti-vation. For instance, Chantal, Guay, and Vallerand(2000, Study 1) showed that contextual motivation to-ward leisure activities predicted situational motivationtoward a specific leisure activity 3 months later. As hy-pothesized, individuals who had the most self-deter-mined contextual motivation toward leisure displayedthe most self-determined situational motivation towardthe leisure activity. Of additional interest is that thetop-down effect can be triggered by the mere mentionof some links between the activity being engaged inand the relevant contextual motivation. Thus, Chantalet al. (2000, Study 2) showed that when a word-com-pletion task was presented to some participants as agame, situational motivation toward the activity waspredicted by leisure contextual motivation. However,when the same task was presented to other participantsas an exercise in French (a common educational taskfor French-Canadian students), situational motivationresulted from contextual motivation toward educationand not that toward leisure.

A second type of effects involving the different lev-els of motivation refers to the recursive effect from alower level to the next higher level in the hierarchy.For example, the model proposes, that repeatedly ex-periencing low levels of intrinsic motivation in theclassroom at the situational level is likely to have anegative feedback effect leading to a decrease in con-textual intrinsic motivation toward school in general.Empirical support has been provided for this postulate.In a first study with basketball players, Blanchard,Vallerand, and Provencher (2000a, Study 1) assessedcontextual motivation toward basketball before a tour-nament, as well as situational motivation and contex-tual sport motivation after each of the two games of thetournament. Finally, contextual motivation was as-sessed 10 days after the tournament. Results revealedthat situational motivation had a recursive bottom-upeffect on contextual motivation toward basketball aftereach of the two games, as well as 10 days after the tour-nament. These results have been replicated over a com-plete season (Blanchard et al., 2000a, Study 2). Thus,

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changes in contextual motivation that take place overtime may be explained through the repeated experi-ences of situational motivation. Similar bottom-up ef-fects are expected to take place from global motivationto contextual motivation.

So far, I have shown how contextual and situa-tional motivation can influence each other throughtop-down and recursive (bottom-up) effects. How-ever, little attention has been devoted to the interplayamong the different contextual motivations. Of sig-nificant interest is how these motivations can influ-ence each other through the phenomenon ofmotivational compensation. From the model’s per-spective, losses in self-determined motivation in onecontext (e.g., education) can lead a person to compen-sate in another context (e.g., leisure) by becomingmore intrinsically motivated there. It is hypothesizedthat such a phenomenon allows individuals to restore(or keep) their global motivation at a certain (self-de-termined) level. This runs contrary to SDT that positsthat a loss in need satisfaction and motivation is com-pensated by engaging in activities that promotenon-self-determined needs and outcomes. As Deciand Ryan put it: “compensatory processes are ex-pected to result … in goal processes and contents thatare associated with less than optimal performance andwell-being” (this issue).

Results from a preliminary study by Blanchard,Vallerand, and Provencher (2000b) support the posi-tion from the Hierarchical Model. In this study, ath-letes completed scales assessing their contextualself-determined motivation and their perceptions ofcompetence toward education and sports on two sepa-rate occasions. They were also asked to rate theirschool performance from the last semester at Time 2.Individuals who experienced failure in the academiccontext at Time 2, and who perceived themselves ascompetent in sports (basketball) at Time 1, reported asmall increase in contextual self-determined motiva-tion toward sports from Time 1 to Time 2. No othergroup experienced an increase in contextual sport mo-tivation. Losses of competence and self-determinedmotivation in one domain (school) seem to have moti-vated individuals to restore their sense of self and, con-sequently, to experience an increase in self-determinedmotivation toward the other context (sport). However,such a compensation effect is only likely to place in lifedomains in which people feel competent. Of course itis possible that both positions are correct. Perhaps thefirst response to “need thwarting” is to try to restore theequilibrium in the self and to enhance self-determinedmotivation in some other important contexts as pro-posed by the Hierarchical Model. However, if after awhile this proves impossible, it is possible that peopleturn toward less optimal ways of functioning (e.g.,external regulation and amotivation and the ensuingnegative outcomes), as proposed by SDT. Future re-

search is needed on this issue to test this developmentalhypothesis.

It thus can be seen that whereas SDT doesn’t ad-dress the issue of the interplay among the various lev-els of motivation, such interactions represent a centralpart of the Hierarchical Model. This leads to new test-able hypotheses with respect to motivational changesand pertinent psychological mechanisms.

The Role of Psychological Needs in theMotivational Sequence

Several times in their target article, Deci and Ryandiscuss the role of need satisfaction in motivation andoutcomes. For instance, they state that: “Motivationalstrategies such as rewards and threats undermine au-tonomy and thus lead to nonoptimal outcomes such asdecreased intrinsic motivation, less creativity, andpoorer problem solving” (this issue). Deci and Ryanthus propose that objective events may affect motiva-tion and psychological outcomes. However, they donot explicitly propose the nature of the causal sequencethrough which the environment affect outcomes, aswell as the role of need satisfaction in the process.More specifically, is need satisfaction a direct contrib-utor of psychological outcomes (e.g., creativity, posi-tive affect, etc.) or is motivation the most proximalinfluence? This question is important from theoreticaland applied perspectives. From a theoretical perspec-tive, we need to know if motivation plays a causal rolein outcomes or if it is only an epiphenomenon. From anapplied perspective, a better understanding of thecausal sequence at play could help us identify the fac-tors to focus on in order to derive better results fromour interventions.

The Hierarchical Model posits the following causalsequence: the environment (social factors) influencesperceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness(need satisfaction in SDT) that in turn influences moti-vation that in turn leads to outcomes (see Figure 1,from left to right). Thus, according to the HierarchicalModel, need satisfaction plays an indirect distal role inthe sequence, whereas motivation is hypothesized toplay a much more direct proximal function in the expe-rience of psychological outcomes. Much research sup-ports several aspects of the causal sequence (seeVallerand, 1997 for a review). For instance, severalstudies using structural-equation modeling or pathanalysis support the link from perceptions of compe-tence and autonomy (and to a smaller extent related-ness) to self-determined motivation and frommotivation to psychological outcomes (see Vallerand,1997). From these studies, it appears that the impact ofneed satisfaction on outcomes as diverse as mentalhealth (see Ryan, Deci, & Grolnick, 1995), school per-formance (Guay & Vallerand, 1997), school dropout

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(Vallerand & Bissonnette, 1992; Vallerand, Fortier, &Guay, 1997), marital satisfaction (Blais, Sabourin,Boucher, & Vallerand, 1990), and others is mediatedby self-determined motivation.

However, no published study shows support for thewhole sequence from the influence of the objective en-vironment to the psychological outcomes. Recentwork of ours (Grouzet, Vallerand, Thill, &Provencher, 2000) provides such a support in two stud-ies conducted at the situational level. In the first study(Grouzet et al., 2000, Study 1), participants performeda hidden-word game and were randomly assigned toconditions of success or failure. Their perceptions ofcompetence and autonomy (feelings of relatednesswere not assessed because the task was individualisticin nature), situational (or state) motivation, and out-comes dealing with concentration on the task, positiveemotions, and intentions of future engagement in theactivity were assessed. In the second study (Grouzet etal., 2000, Study 2), participants were randomly as-signed to conditions of choice or no choice. The samevariables assessed in Study 1 were again measured.Results from structural-equation-modeling analysesprovided support for the proposed sequence in bothstudies. Objective social factors (i.e., success-failureand choice-no choice) had a direct impact on partici-pants’ perceptions of competence and autonomy thatin turn influenced self-determined motivation. Finally,self-determined motivation predicted all three out-comes. As hypothesized, the more self-determined themotivation, the more positive the outcomes. Need sat-isfaction had no impact on outcomes. It would thus ap-pear that the positive effects of psychological needs onpsychological outcomes proposed by SDT are not dueto the process of need satisfaction as such but rather tothe ability of needs to create and sustain the motiva-tional force that will facilitate psychological growth(see Vallerand, 1997 for a review on this issue).

On Individual Differences inPsychological Needs

In their target article, Deci and Ryan propose that itmay not prove useful to look at individual differencesin the basic psychological needs of competence, auton-omy, and relatedness. They make the analogy with eat-ing and drinking in which individual differences inthese drives exist but may not tell us much with respectto psychological processes. I suggest, however, thatthe study of individual differences in psychologicalneeds is important to look at because it may help us geta better grasp of motivational processes. To go back tothe analogy with physiological drives, it may be thatindividuals with a higher eating drive level regulatetheir behavior through different psychological pro-cesses than those with lower drive levels. With respect

to psychological needs, different processes may be inoperation for individuals high and low in the need forrelatedness.

As was seen earlier, much research supports the me-diating role of perceptions of competence, autonomy,and to a certain extent relatedness in the social fac-tors-motivation relationship (see Vallerand, 1997 for areview). However, should it be expected that all threetypes of perceptions yield equally important effects onmotivation? Is it possible that perceptions of related-ness, for instance, are more important for people highin that need, whereas other perceptions such as compe-tence are more important for people low in the need forrelatedness? If so, this would indicate that the psycho-logical processes involved in the production of motiva-tion may be different for people varying in the need forrelatedness, a rather important issue.

Richer, Blanchard, and Vallerand (2000) recentlytested this line of reasoning in a recent study by in thework place. In their study, Richer et al. assessed work-ers’ self-determined motivation as well as perceptionsof competence and relatedness toward work (at thecontextual level). In addition, they assessed their needfor relatedness at work with the Need for RelatednessScale (Richer & Vallerand, 2000). The authors testedwhether the mediating role of perceptions of compe-tence and relatedness varied as a function of the needfor relatedness. They hypothesized a moderating effectsuch that perceptions of relatedness would have astronger mediating effect on self-determined work mo-tivation than perceptions of competence for individu-als high in the need for relatedness but that perceptionsof competence would have a stronger effect than per-ceptions of relatedness for individuals low in the needfor relatedness. Results of structural-equation-model-ing analyses provided support for their hypothesis.

Thus, from the perspective of the Hierarchical Model,individual differences in needs may serve various func-tions, including that of determining which type of percep-tions (i.e., autonomy, competence, or relatedness) willinfluence motivation. Contrary to SDT, it would thus ap-pear that looking into individual differences in psycho-logical needs may prove quite informative.

On the Different Roles of the Need forRelatedness

Much of the research involving motivation and thepsychological needs focuses on autonomy and compe-tence (see Deci & Ryan, 1991; Vallerand, 1997). Re-search on this issue shows that perceptions ofautonomy and competence positively contribute toself-determined motivation. These findings are in sup-port of SDT that posits that these two types of percep-tions play a major facilitating role in motivation.However, according to SDT the role of relatedness is

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less central in the motivational sequence. As Deci andRyan put it, the role of relatedness is more distal. It isseen as basically playing a “needed backdrop—a distalsupport—for intrinsic motivation” (this issue).

However, according to the Hierarchical Model re-latedness need not play a distal role in all tasks and ac-tivities. Although it may play a more remote functionin certain types of activities in which the individualacts in an individualistic fashion, perceptions of relat-edness may play a very important function in activitiesand tasks that are inherently social in nature. The roleof perceptions of relatedness in the motivational se-quence has been studied only recently but researchprovides support for this reasoning. For instance, re-search in the education context (Vallerand, Guay, &Blanchard, 2000, Study 1) reveals that perceptions ofrelatedness have a low and nonsignificant relationshipwith self-determined motivation in education whereasperceptions of competence and autonomy reveal im-portant relationships. This is quite understandable be-cause education is a rather individualistic type ofactivity, especially in the classroom. However, percep-tions of relatedness proved to be an important predictorof self-determined motivation in contexts in which thesocial aspect is important such as team sports (basket-ball; Blanchard & Vallerand, 2000), fitness classes(Cadorette, Blanchord, & Vallerand, 1996), and work(especially for workers high in the need for related-ness; Richer et al., 2000). Clearly, relatedness can playa major role in determining motivation, especiallywhen people engage in social tasks and activities.

I add that relatedness may serve another importantfunction and this relates to the issue of value transmis-sion. Value transmission refers to beliefs and valuesheld by certain individuals and groups that eventuallybecome internalized by other individuals. SDT positsthat relatedness and competence are important in theprocess of value transmission. Although competencemay play a small role in the process, it is my contentionthat relatedness is the key player in the value transmis-sion process. It is mainly through their connection withsignificant others that people come to internalize pre-vious external values. Although no published evidenceexists for this hypothesis, a recent study of ours pro-vides support for this line of reasoning. In this study,Grouzet and Vallerand (2000) followed hockey play-ers 14 to 16 years of age and their coaches in a competi-tive league over a season. Early in the season as well asat the end of the season, they assessed the coaches’ em-phasis on sportsperson-like values with their players.They also assessed the players’ self-reported violentacts at both times in the season, as well as their feelingsof relatedness with their coaches at the beginning ofthe season. Grouzet and Vallerand hypothesized thatthe impact of coaches who maintained the emphasis onappropriate behaviors over the course of the seasonwould translate into a reduction of athletes’ violent be-

haviors but only for those who felt related to theircoaches. Results from moderated regression analysessupported the hypothesis. Interestingly, neither per-ceptions of competence nor perceptions of autonomysignificantly moderated the relationship between thecoaches’ sportsperson-like values and their athletes’report of violent behavior. Although the present data ispreliminary and needs to be replicated with actual be-havior, it would appear that the need for relatednessmay indeed serve as a key variable in the value trans-mission process.

Concluding Statements

Deci and Ryan present the most recent version oftheir theory. SDT represents an articulate theoreticalposition wherein psychological needs play a crucialrole in motivation and psychological outcomes. Al-though there is a large degree of agreement betweenSDT and my own position presented in the Hierarchi-cal Model, in this commentary I underscored some ar-eas in which the two models differ. Such differencesmainly focus on the hierarchical structure of the modelthat leads to the formulation of novel motivational pro-cesses. In addition, I address issues on the role of psy-chological needs in motivation, outcomes, and thevalue transmission process as well as the importance ofconsidering individual differences in psychologicalneeds. It is hoped that by addressing these issues, Ihave been able to clarify various aspects of SDT aswell as point toward fruitful future research directionsthat may enhance our understanding of motivationalprocesses.

Note

Robert J. Vallerand, Laboratoire de Recherche surle Comportement Social, Université du Québec àMontréal, Box 8888, Succursale Centre-Ville,Montréal, Canada H3C 3P8. E-mail: vallerand.rob-ert_j@uqam.ca

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