Chapter6
Psychological Needs
PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS
Organismic Approach to Motivation
Person-Environment Dialectic
Organismic Psychological Needs
AUTONOMY
The Conundrum of Choice
Supporting Autonomy
Autonomy-Supportive Motivating Style
Controlling Motivating Style
Nurtures Inner Motivational Resources
Relies on Informational L nguage
Provides Explanatory Rationales
Acknowledges and Accepts Negative Affect
Moment-to-M ment Autonomy Support
Benefits from Autonomy Support
Two Illustrations
COMPETENCE
Involving Competence
Optimal Challenge and Flow
Interdependency between Challenge and Feedback
Structure
Failure Tolerance
Supporting Competence
Positive Feedback
Pleasure of Optimal Challenge and Positive Feedback
RELATEDNESS
Involving Relatedness: Interaction with Others
Supporting Relatedness: Perception of a Social Bond
Communal and Exchange Relationships
Internalization
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
PUTIING IT ALL TOGEHER: SOCIAL CONTEXTS THAT SUPPORT PSYCHOLOGICAL
NEEDS
Engagement
What Makes for a Good Day?
Vitality
SUMMARY
READINGS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Imagine visiting a lake for the afternoon-a lake at a campground or state park, for
instance. As you lie on the shore soaking up the sun s rays, you notice a young girl
playfully skipping stones across the water' surface. Before each toss, she studiously
inspects piles of stones to find the flattest one. With stone in hand, she puts all her effort
into the toss. Each time a rock skips according to plan, she smiles and her enthusiasm
grows. Each dud brings a somber expression but also increased determination. At first, she
tries only to make each stone skip once off the water's surface. Mter some practice and
several big smiles, she moves on to develop three or four finely tuned techniques-one
very long skip, short skips with many hops, and so forth. And she pretends to throw
others, the big and heavy stones like hand grenades, because these splashes look like
explosions in her imagination. Despite her family's fish fry currently going on, her rock
skipping continues.
The child is at play For her, an urban child, the lake is a relatively novel setting. It
allows her to use her imagination in a way that is different from every day. As she plays,
she feels excited and ntertained. Each rock and each toss provides her with a different,
surprising result. E ch attempt challenges her skills and gives her an experience that is
somehow deeply satisfying when her developing skill results in an improved toss. She
feels competent, she feels free, she learns, and she develops skills.
Such in rinsically motivated behavior is more than frivolous play. It is integral to
healthy development. The lake setting provides the child with an opportunity to learn
to enjoy an activity solely for the experience, the fun, and the private sense of personal
satisfaction it provides.
As with play, sports, hobbies, school, work, and travel also offer opportunities for
people to engage in activities capable of involving and satisfying their psychological needs. This chapter examines the motivational significance of three psychological
needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The theme throughout the chapter is
that when people find themselves in environments that support and nurture their psychological needs, then positive emotions, optimal experience, and healthy development
follow.
PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS
People and animals are inherently active. As children, we push and pull things; we shake,
throw, carry, explore, and ask questions about the objects that surround us. As adults,
we continue to explore and to play. We play games, solve mysteries, read books, visit
Psychological Needs
143
friends, undertake challenges, pursue hobbies, surf the Web, build new things, and do
any number of activities because these activities are inherently interesting and enjoyable
things to do.
When an activity involves our psychological needs, we feel interest. When an activity satisfies our psychological needs, we feel enjoyment. So, we feel and are aware of our
sense of interest and enjoyment (i.e., "I play tennis because it's fun"), but the underlying
motivational cause of engaging our environment is to involve and satisfy our psychological needs. Playing games, solving mysteries, and undertaking challenges are interesting
and enjoyable things to do precisely because they provide a arena for involving and
satisfying psychological needs.
Psychological needs are an important addition to our analysis of motivated behavior.
Physiological needs for water, food, and so on emanate from biological deficits. This sort
of need-motivated behavior is essentially reactive, in the sense that its purpose is to react
against and alleviate a deficit bodily condition Psychological needs are of a qualitatively
different nature. Energy generated by psychological needs is proactive. Psychological
needs promote a willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment that we expect
will be able to nurture our psychological needs. Because psychological needs motivate
exploration and challenge-seeking, they are understood as growth (rather than as deficit)
needs.
Organismic Approach to Motivation
The three psychological needs reviewed in this chapter are sometimes referred to as
organismic psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 1991). Organismic theories get their
name from the term rganism, an entity that is alive and in active exchange with its
environment (Blais, 1976). The survival of any organism depends on its environment
because the enviro ment offers resources like food, water, social support, and intellectual
stimulation. And all organisms are equipped to initiate and engage in exchanges with
their environment as all organisms possess skills and the motivation to exercise and
develop those skills. Organismic theories of motivation acknowledge that environments
constan ly change and, hence, organisms need flexibility to adjust to and accommodate
those changes. Organisms also need environmental resources to grow and to actualize
thei latent potentials. To adapt, organisms must learn to substitute a new response for
a previously successful but now outdated one (because the environment changed), and
organisms must grow and develop so that new skills, new interests, and new ways of
adjusting emerge. The whole focus concerns how organisms initiate interactions with
the environment and how organisms adapt, change, and grow as a function of those
environmental transactions.
The opposite of an organismic approach is a mechanistic one. In mechanistic theories,
the environment acts on the person and the person reacts. For instance, environments
produce heat, and the person responds in a predictable and automatic way-by sweating.
Sweating leads to water loss, and when the biological systems detect the loss, thirst arises
rather automatically (i.e., mechanistically). Chapter 4 discussed these biologically rooted
needs. The person and the environment relate to one another within a one-way relationship
such that the environment acts and the person reacts.
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
Person-Environment Dialectic
Organismic theories reject such one-way portrayals (environment---+ person) and instead
emphasize the person-environment dialectic (Deci & Ryan, 1991; Reeve, Deci, &
Ryan, 2004). In dialectic, the relationship between person and environment is reciprocal
(two-way); the environment acts on the person and the person acts on the environment.
Both the person and the environment constantly change.
The person acts on the environment out of curiosity interest, and an intrinsic
motivation to seek out and affect changes in it; the environment offers affordances (opportunities), imposes structure, makes demands, provides feedback, offers need-satisfying or
need-frustrating relationships, and offers a community and cultural context as the person strives to adjust and accommodate to it (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). The outcome of
the person-environment dialectic is an ever changing synthesis in which the person's
needs are fu1filled (or frustrated) by the e vironment, and the environment produces
in the person new forms of motivation. The person-environment dialectic appears in
Figure 6.1.
The organismic approach to motivation begins with the assumption that the organism
is inherently active. As shown in the lefthand side of Figure 6.1 ("Person"), psychological
needs, interests, and integrated values are the source of that inherent activity (Deci &
Ryan, 1985b). The expression of the person's inherent activity appears as the upper
arrow in Figure 6.1, and in daily life looks like engagement and challenge-seeking.
As shown in the righthand side of Figure 6.1 (''Environment"), the person-environment
dialectic also assumes that environmental events affect the individual, as the environment
offers challenges and interesting things to do, provides feedback, imposes goals, contains
The proactive individual seeks out and engages
in the challenges of the environment as an
expression of the self and out of a desire to
interact effectively in it.
PER ON
Psycho1ogical Needs
• Autonomy
• Competence
• Relatedness
Intrinsic Motlvadon
Developmental
Tendencies
• Differentiation
• Integration
ENVIRONMENT
Inter sl5 and
Jnrerna.Hzed Types of
Go s
Extrinsic Motlvadon
•
•
•
•
Interests
• Identified Regulation
Preferences
"Values
Self-Set Goals • Integrated Regulation
Causality
Orientations
• Personal Strivings
Curiosity
Environmen1al Events
•
•
•
•
A.ffordances
Interesting Activities
Optimal a.allenges
Opportunities for Action
Enriched Learning Activities
• Autonomy Support
• Competence Support
• Relatedness Support
Community/Odture
• Incentives
• Choices
• Rewanls
• Imposed Goals
COI!Se<J[ueiices • Competitions
• Praise
The environment sometimes nurtures and
enriches the individual's inner resoun:es,
facilitating development, but other times
disrupts and thwarts these inner resoun:es,
leading to less optimal development.
Figure 6.1
Beladonships
Person-Environment Dialectical Framework in Motivation Study
•
•
•
•
Prescriptions and Proscriptions
Values, Priorities, Preferences
Expectations, Roles
Aspirations to Well-Being
Autonomy
145
relationships that support (or frustrate) the psychological needs, and features a community
and cultural context for the person's ongoing development. The extent of support versus
neglect and frustration of the person's inner motivational resources appears as the lower
arrow in Figure 6.1, and in daily life looks like opportunities, obstacles, and sources of
support and frustration.
While the entries in Figure 6.1 may seem overly complex at first, the previous
chapter (Chapter 5) covered many of the person's inner motivational resources (e.g.,
intrinsic motivation, interests, internalized types of extrinsic motivation) and many of
the environmental influences on the person's motivation (e.g., affordances and external
events such as incentives, consequences, and rewards). The focus in the present chapter is
on the psychological needs and the relationships that support versus neglect these needs.
Organismic Psychological Needs
Consider why people want to exercise and develop their skills, such as walking, reading,
swimming, driving, making friends, and hundreds of other such competencies. In part,
these competencies emerge maturationally, b t mostly they emerge through opportunities
and affordances from the environment (Gi son, 1988; White, 1959). Organismic psychological needs provide the motiva ion that supports such initiative and learning (Deci
& Ryan, 1985b; White, 1959). As illustrated in the chapter's opening with the young
girl skipping rocks, children best illustrate how organismic psychological needs motivate
the exercise and development of skills. Endlessly, young children motor about from one
place to another without any apparent motivation other than just wanting to do something
better than they did it the time before (because of the need for competence). Furthermore, children desire to experiment with the world on their own terms as they want to
decide for themselves what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and whether to do it at
all (because of the need for autonomy). And which activities, skills, and values children
regard as important depends on the attitudes, values, and emotional climates offered to
them by the important people in their lives (because of the need for relatedness).
Collectively, the organismic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and
relatedness p ovide people with a natural motivation for learning, growing, and developing. Whether they experience such learning, growing, and healthy development depends
on whether the environments support or frustrate the expression of these needs.
AUTONOMY
When deciding what to do, we desire choice and decision-making flexibility. We want
to be the one who decides what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to stop doing it,
and whether or not to do it at all. We want to decide for ourselves how to spend our time.
We want to be the one who determines our actions, rather than have some other person
or some environmental constraint force us into a particular course of action. We want
our behavior connected to, rather than divorced from, our interests, preferences, wants,
and desires. And we want our behavior to arise out of and express our preferences and
desires. We want the freedom to construct our own goals, we want the freedom to decide
what is important and what is and is not worth our time. In other words, we have a need
for autonomy.
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Psychological Needs
Autonomy is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal
endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one's behavior (Deci & Ryan, 1985b).
Behavior is autonomous (or self-determined) when our interests, preferences, and wants
guide our decision-making process to engage or not to engage in a particular activity.
We are not self-determining (i.e., our behaviors are determined by others) when some
outside force takes our sense of choice away and, instead, pressures us to think, feel, or
behave in particular ways (Deci, 1980).
Three experiential qualities work together to define the subjective experience of
autonomy-an internal perceived locus of causality, volition, nd perceived choice-as
shown in Figure 6.2.
Perceived locus of causality (PLOC) refers to an individual's understanding
of the causal source of his or her motivated actions (Heider, 1958). PLOC exists
within a bipolar continuum that ranges f om in ernal to external. This continuum
reflects the individual's perception that his or her behavior is initiated by a personal
(internal PLOC) or by an environmental (external PLOC) source. For instance, why
read a book? H the reason why you read is some motivational agent within the self
(interest, value), then you read out of ani ternal PLOC. However, if the reason why
you read is some motivational agent in the environment (upcoming test, the boss),
then you read out of an external PLOC. Some prefer to use the terms "origins"
and "pawns" to communicate the distinction between a person whose behavior
emanates from an internal versus an external PLOC (deCharms, 1968, 1976, 1984;
Ryan & Grolnick, 1986). Origins "originate" their own intentional behavior. "Pawn,"
a metaphor taken from the game of chess, captures the experience we feel when
powerful people push us around in much the same way that employers boss around
their workers, military sergeants command privates, and parents order their children to
behave.
Volition is an unpressured willingness to engage in an activity (Deci, Ryan, &
Williams, 1995). It centers on how free versus coerced people feel while they are doing
what they want to do (e.g., playing, studying, talking), and also how free versus coerced
they feel while avoiding what they do not want to do (e.g., not smoking, not eating,
not apologizing). Volition is high when the person engages in an activity and feels free
and feel tha one's actions are endorsed fully by the self-saying, essentially, "I freely
want to do this" (Deci & Ryan, 1987; Ryan, Koestner, & Deci, 1991). The opposite
Perceived
Autonomy
Internal
Perceived Locus
of Causality
Volition
(Feeling Free)
Perceived
Choice over
One's Actions
Figure 6.2 Three Subjective Qualities within the Experience of Autonomy
Autonomy
147
of volition and feeling free is feeling pressured and coerced into action. In addition
to being pressured by the environment, people sometimes create within themselves a
pressure-fueled motivation to force themselves into action-saying, essentially, "I have
to do this" (Ryan, 1982; Ryan et al., 1991; Ryan, Mims, & Koestner, 1983).
Perceived choice refers to that sense of choice we experience when we find ourselves
in environments that provide us with decision-making flexibility that affords us many
opportunities from which to choose. The opposite of perceived choice is that sense of
obligation we experience when we find ourselves in environments that rigidly and infiexibly push us toward a prescribed course of action. For instance, when children are given
choices within their schoolwork (Cordova & Lepper 1996), when nursing-home residents are given decision-making power in how to schedule their daily activities (Langer
& Rodin, 1976), and when patients communicate with flexible (not authoritarian) doctors
(Williams & Deci, 1996), the children, residents, and patients all feel that their behavior
flows from a sense of choice.
The Conundrum of Choice
Providing a person with a choice may be the most obvious and widely used way to
support a person's need for autonomy (Flowerday & Schraw, 2000). There is a difference,
however, between the environmental event of being offered a choice and the personal
experience of true choice. Understanding this difference is an excellent way to understand
the nature of the psychological need for autonomy.
Providing choices does generally enhance people's sense of autonomy and intrinsic
motivation (Zuckerman, Porac, Lathin, Smith, & Deci, 1978). However, not all choices
are the same and not all choices promote autonomy (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson,
2008; Reeve, Nix, & Hamm, 2003; Williams, 1998). Hence, the conundrum-does
the provision of choice nurture autonomy and intrinsic motivation, or does it not?
A choice among options offered by others fails to tap into and involve the need for
autonomy (e.g., "Do you want to listen to country music or to classical music?";
Overskeid & Svartdal, 1996; Schraw, Flowerday, & Reisetter, 1996). For instance,
offering peo le a choice between working on a crossword puzzle or working on
an essay activity resulted in no boost in autonomy, engagement, or performance
(Flowerday & Schraw, 2003). Likewise, offering students a choice of topics to write
about yielded no benefit in terms of later autonomy or performance (Flowerday,
Schraw, & Stevens, 2004). In these "either-or'' choice offerings, the person is told to
make a choice and is even somewhat forced or pressured to make a choice (Moller,
Deci, & Ryan, 2006). In contrast, it is only when people have a true choice over
their actions (e.g., "Do you even want to listen to music?") and when they are offered
choices that are meaningful to their lives do they experience a sense of autonomy
(Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Reeve et al., 2003; Williams, 1998). When people are offered
unrestricted choices with no strings attached and when people are allowed to make
choices that truly reflect their personal values, goals, and interests, then they do feel
a sense of need-satisfying autonomy. Such an experience of autonomy, in tum, leads
to positive post-choice functioning in terms of enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort,
creativity, preference for challenge, and performance (Moller et al., 2006; Patall et al.,
2008).
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
Supporting Autonomy
External events, environments, social contexts, and relationships all vary in how much
versus how little they support a person's need for autonomy. Some environments involve
and nuture our need for autonomy, while others neglect and frustrate this need (recall
Figure 6.1). For instance, when the environment imposes a deadline, it interferes with
autonomy, but when it provides opportunities for self-direction, it supports autonomy.
Relationships, too, can sometimes support and other times thwart our need for autonomy,
as when a coach bosses athletes around (undermining their au onomy) or when a teacher
listens carefully to her students and uses that information to gi e students opportunities
to work in their own way and at their own pace (supporting their autonomy). Social
contexts and cultures in general also vary in how much versus how little they support
people's autonomy, as is illustrated when the military commands its personnel versus
when day care providers go out of their way o support children's interests and initiatives.
When environments, relationships, social contexts, and cultures successfully involve and
satisfy people's need for autonomy, these environments are referred to as autonomy
supportive, in contrast, when environments relationships, social contexts, and cultures
neglect, frustrate, and interfere with people s need for autonomy, these environments
are referred to as controlling (Deci & Ryan, 1987). Table 6.1 provides the definition,
enabling conditions, and interpersonal behaviors associated with both autonomy support
and control.
Autonomy-Supportive Motivat ng Style
What makes any appro ch to motivating others an autonomy-supportive one (i.e., its
enabling conditions) s one person's willingness to take the other's perspective and to
Table 6.1
Definition. Enabling Conditions, and Interpersonal Behaviors Associated with
Autonomy Support and Control
Autonomy Support
Control
Definition
Interpersonal sentiment and behavior to
identify, nurture, and develop another's
inner motivational resources.
Definition
Interpersonal sentiment and behavior to pressure
another toward compliance with a prescribed
way of thinking, feeling, or behaving.
Enabling Condition
Takes the other person's perspective.
Values personal growth opportunities
Enabling Condition
Pressures the other person toward a prescribed
outcome.
Targets a prescribed outcome
Instructional Behaviors
Nurtures inner motivational resources
Relies on flexible language
Provides explanatory rationales
Acknowledges and accepts expressions of
negative affect
Instructional Behaviors
Relies on outer sources of motivation
Relies on pressuring language
Neglects explanatory rationales
Asserts power to silence negative affect and to
resolve conflict
Autonomy
149
value personal growth opportunities during an activity. By taking the other person's perspective and by valuing personal growth opportunities, the first person becomes both
more willing and more likely to create environmental conditions in which the other
person's autonomous motivation can potentially initiate and regulate his or her activity. The lower part of Table 6.1 lists the central interpersonal behaviors that constitute
autonomy support-namely, nurturing inner motivational resources, relying on flexible
language, providing explanatory rationales, and acknowledging and accepting the other's
expressions of negative affect.
Controlling Motivating Style
What makes any approach to motivating others a con rolling one (i.e., its enabling conditions) is that one person pressures the other toward prescribed outcome and uses social
influence techniques to achieve that targeted social zation outcome. When one person
(e.g., teacher, coach, parent, manager, counselo) pressures another toward a specific
outcome, they do so by making salient a prescribed outcome and using social influence
techniques to such an extent that controlling (rather than autonomous) motivation initiates
and regulates students' classroom activity Being very controlling (e.g., drill instructors,
Division I basketball coaches, authoritarian parents) further adds interpersonal behavior
to suppress and even deaden students' inner motivational resources (so to enhance the
relationship between controlled motivation and compliant behavior; see Ricks, 1997). The
lower part of Table 6.1lists the central interpersonal behaviors that constitute behavioral
and emotional control-namely, relying on outer sources of motivation, relying on pressuring language, neglecting to provide explanatory rationales, and reacting to students'
expressions of negative affect with authoritarian power assertions.
As shown in Box 6, a person's motivating style toward others can be understood
along a continuum hat ranges from highly controlling to highly autonomy supportive
(Deci, Schwartz, et al., 1981; Reeve, Bolt, & Cai, 1999). Just how people go about
creating and establishing autonomy-supportive environments for others involves four
essential ways of relating to others (Assor, Kaplan, & Roth, 2002; Deci, 1995; Koestner
et al., 1984; McCombs & Pope, 1994; Reeve, 1996, 2006; Reeve, Deci, & Ryan, 2004;
Reeve, ang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004; Ryan & Deci, 2000b), as discussed below.
Nurt res Inner Motivational Resources
People with an autonomy-supportive motivating style motivate others by nurturing their
inner motivational resources, whereas people with a controlling style motivate others
by using outer motivational resources. When autonomy-supportive, one person seeks
to encourage initiative in the other by identifying and nurturing their interests, preferences, and psychological needs. In a school setting, for instance, an autonomy-supportive
teacher will coordinate the day's lesson plan with students' expressed interests, preferences, sense of challenge, and competencies. When controlling, one person seeks to
create an external compulsion to act in the other by introducing incentives, consequences, rewards, directives, deadlines, commands, or threats of punishment. A controlling teacher, for instance, will bypass students' inner motivational resources and
instead rely on extrinsic motivators such as directives to gain the students' pawn-like
compliance.
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
Relies on Informational Language
At times the people we try to motivate are listless, other times they perform poorly, and at
other times, they behave inappropriately. People with an autonomy-supportive motivating
style treat listlessness, poor performance, and inappropriate behavior as motivational
problems to be solved rather than as targets for criticism (Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989).
They rely on flexible, noncontrolling, and informational language that helps the other
person diagnose and solve the motivational problem. For example, a coach might say
Autonomy
151
to her athlete, "I've noticed that your scoring average has declined lately; do you know
why this might be?" In contrast, people with a controlling style use a pressuring, rigid,
"no-nonsense," and guilt-inducing communication style that says that the other person
should, must, ought to, or has to do a certain thing (e.g., "Johnny, you should try harder"
or "You must finish that project"). More specifically, those with a controlling style try
to motivate others by inducing feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety for not performing
a requested activity (Barber, 1996), by threatening to withdraw their approval (Assor,
Roth, & Deci, 2004), by threatening self-esteem beliefs (Ryan, 1982), by cultivating
perfectionist standards (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Duriez, Luyten, & Goossens, 2005), and
by offering "conditional regard" more generally (Assor et al., 2004). What all these
communications have in common is that they promo e the person's tendency to introject
a pressuring type of self-imposed control to comply with another's perspective on what
is a "right" way of thinking, feeling, or behaving.
Provides Explanatory Rationales
In trying to motivate others, we sometimes ask them to engage in tasks that are relatively
uninteresting things to do. For instance parents ask children to clean their rooms, teachers
ask students to follow the rules, coaches ask athletes to run laps around the track, and
doctors ask patients to take their medicine in a timely fashion. To motivate others on
uninteresting tasks, people with an autonomy-supportive style communicate the value,
worth, meaning, utility, or importance of engaging in these sorts of behaviors, as in "It
is important that you follow the ules because we need to respect the rights of everyone
in the class; by following the rules, you are respecting others" (Koestner et al., 1984).
Promoting valuing means using a ''because" phrase to explain why the uninteresting
activity is worth the other's time and effort. People with controlling styles, however,
do not take th time to explain the use or importance in engaging in these sorts of
activities, saying things like, "Just get it done" or "Do it because I told you to." The
logic in communicating a rationale is that the person who hears it is more likely to
internalize and voluntarily accept the externally imposed rules, constraints, or limits.
Once internalized ("Yeah, flossing is a pain, but it keeps plaque off my teeth and that's
a worthwhile thing to do"), people put forth voluntary effort in even uninteresting (but
important) activities (Reeve et al., 2002).
Acknowledges and Accepts Negative Affect
Sometimes the people we try to motivate show little motivation and express negative
affect about having to engage in tasks that they do not find to be interesting. They
sometimes show "attitude," sometimes utter criticisms, and other times display a resistance to having to do things like cleaning their rooms, following rules, running laps, and
being nice. People with an autonomy-supportive style listen carefully to these expressions
of negative affect and resistance and accept them as valid reactions to being asked to
engage in an activity that seems, to them, uninteresting and not worthwhile. Essentially,
autonomy-supportive individuals say "okay," and then work collaboratively with the other
person to solve the underlying cause of the negative affect and resistance. People with
controlling styles make it clear that such expressions of negative affect and resistance
are unacceptable, saying things like, "My way or the highway," "Shape up," and "Quit
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
Table 6.2
What Autonomy-Supportive and Controlling People Say and Do to Motivate Others
What Autonomy-Supportive People Say and Do
What Controlling People Say and Do
*Listen carefully
* Allow others time to talk
* Provide rationale
* Encourage effort
* Praise progress, mastery
* Ask others what they want to do
* Respond to questions
*Acknowledge the others'perspective
* Hold/Hog learning materials
* Show correct answers
* Tell correct answers
* Speak directives, commands
* Should, must, have to statements
* Ask controlling questions
* Seem demanding
your complaining and just get the work done, or else " Instead of working collaboratively
with the unmotivated others, those with controlling motivating styles try to change the
other person's negative affect into something more socially acceptable and compliant.
Moment-to-Moment Autonomy Support
The four characteristics listed above illustrate a general autonomy-supportive motivating
style. In addition, when people create autonomy-supportive environments for others, they
typically do so by exhibiting characteristic moment-to-moment behaviors. Consider, for
instance, specific interactions such as teachers motivating students during a particular
lesson (Reeve & Jang, 2006) or a doctor trying to motivate a patient during a 10-minute
office visit (Halvari & Halvari, 2006). Several studies have used a teacher-student
paradigm in which they first assessed whether the teacher has an autonomy-supportive
or controlling style and then asked the teacher to teach the student during an instructional episode. The researchers observed how each teacher tried to motivate the student.
As shown in Table 6.2, the lefthand column shows what autonomy-supportive teachers
characteristically say and do when they try to motivate students, while the righthand
column shows what controlling teachers characteristically say and do when they try to
motivate students (based on Deci, Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner, & Kauffman, 1982; Reeve
et al., 1999; Reeve & Jang, 2006).
When taken as a whole, the behaviors listed above reveal a motivating style associated with promoting high autonomy in others: listen carefully, share learning materials,
create opportunities for others to talk and to work in their own ways, communicate rationale for uninteresting endeavors, ask others what they want to do, respond to questions,
offer hints when the other is stuck, encourage effort, praise progress and improvement,
and acknowledge the other person's perspective.
Benefits from Autonomy Support
The motivating styles teachers, parents, coaches, therapists, doctors, and workplace
managers use have strong implications for the subsequent motivation, engagement, development, learning, performance, and psychological well-being of the students, children,
athletes, clients, patients, and employees they try to motivate. These benefits are shown
in Figure 6.3. As shown in the motivation column, autonomy support nurtures not only
Autonomy
Autonomy
Engagement
SeW-Worth
Conceptual
Understanding
G:rades
Psychological
WeJl.Being
Competence
Positive Emotion
Creativity
Deep Processing
Task Performance
Vitality
Relatedness
Less Negative
Emotion
Preference fur
Active Information Standatdized Test
Optimal Cballenge Processing
Scores
Intrinsic Motivation Class Attendance
153
School/Life
atisfaction
Self-Regulation
Stl:ategies
Mastery Motivation Persistence
and Perceived
Control
School Retention
Curiosity
vs. Dropping Out
Internalized Values
Figure 6.3
Benefits from Autonomy Support
the psychological need of autonomy (Reeve & Jang, 2006), but the needs for competence (Ryan & Grolnick 1986) and relatedness (Baard, Deci, & Ryan, 2004) as well as
additional motivations such as intrinsic motivation (Reeve et al., 2003) and mastery motivation (Deci, Schwart et al., 1981). Autonomy support also enhances various aspects of
engagement, su h as higher effort (Reeve et al., 2004) and more positive emotion (Patrick,
Skinner, & Connel 1993). Furthermore, as shown in columns 3-6 in Figure 6.3, autonomy support enhances important aspects of development (e.g., higher self-worth, Ryan &
Grolnick, 1986; pleasure from optimal challenge, Harter, 1978b), learning (e.g., enhanced
conceptual understanding, Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Soenens, & Matos, 2005; more
active inform tion processing, Grolnick & Ryan, 1987), performance (e.g., higher grades
and standardized test scores, deCharms, 1976), and psychological well-being (e.g., greater
vitality, Nix, Ryan, Manly, & Deci, 1999; psychological well-being, Deci et al., 2001).
The positive outcomes that arise in response to having one's autonomy supported
occur because autonomy support, and autonomy-supportive relationships in general, provide people with the "psychological nutriments" they need to satisfy their psychological
needs (Ryan, 1995, p. 410). These experiences of psychological need satisfaction energize
the person's inherent growth potentials introduced in Figure 6.1 in ways that promote
healthy motivation, strong engagement, growth-oriented development, meaningful learning, enhanced performance, and psychological well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000b).
Two mustrations
Consider one study whose purpose was to predict which high school students would and
would not drop out of school (Vallerand, Fortier, & Guay, 1997). Students reported the
extent to which they felt autonomy support versus control from their parents, teachers, and
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Teachers'
Autonomy-
Support
Students'
Pen:eived
Autonomy
Students'
Parental
Autonomy-
SelfDetermined
Academic
Support
Students'
Dropout
Behavior
Motivation
Students'
Pen:eived
Competence
Administrators'
Autonomy-
Support
Figure 6.4 Motivational Model of High-School Dropouts
Source: Adapted from Self-Determination and Persistence in a Real-Life Setting: Toward a Motivational
Model of High School Dropout, by R. J. Vallerand M S. Fortier, and F. Guay, 1997, Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 12, 1161-1172. Copy-right 1997 by American Psychological Association. Adapted
with permission.
school administrators. How autonomy-supportive versus controlling a social world each
high school student lived in was then used to predict how much or how little perceived
autonomy and perceived competence each student felt while in school. As shown in
Figure 6.4, how autonomous (and how competent) the student felt toward school then
predicted the quality of their academic motivation (autonomous vs. controlled), which
predicted whether each student actually dropped out or not.
In a second study, researchers asked schoolchildren to paint while the teacher acted
in either an autonomy-supportive or controlling way. In both conditions, teachers imposed
a list of constraints (rules) children needed to following during the painting, including
instructions to not mix the paints, to clean off the brushes before switching to a new
color o paint, and to paint only on a particular piece of paper (Koestner et al., 1984).
Some children painted under these conditions imposed on them by a controlling teacher.
Thi teacher used controlling, pressuring language that told children to follow the rules.
Other children painted under autonomy-supportive conditions. This teacher used informational language that communicated the rationale for each rule so the children could
understand why the constraints were important and worth following. Mter all the children
painted, the researchers measured the quality of their motivation and scored their artwork on various dimensions, and these results appear in Table 6.3. Children who painted
under autonomy-supportive conditions enjoyed the painting more, were more intrinsically
motivated to paint (see "free-choice behavior''), and produced artwork that was creative,
technically good, and of high quality.
COMPETENCE
Everyone wants and strives to be competent. Everyone desires to interact effectively with
their surroundings, and this desire extends into all aspects of our lives-in school, at
Competence
Table 6.3
Children's Motivational Benefits from Autonomy-Supportive (Rather Than
Controlling) Rules
Dependent
Measure
Enjoyment
Free Choice Behavior
Creativity
Technical Goodness
Quality
155
M
(SD)
M
(SD)
M
(SD)
M
(SD)
M
(SD)
Rules Communicated
in a Controlling Way
Rules Communicated in a
Autonomy-Supportive Way
4.87
(0.99)
107.7
(166.0)
4.80
(1.16)
4.88
(0.87)
4.84
(068)
5.57
(0.65)
257.1
(212.6)
5.34
(1.17)
5.90
(1.28)
5.62
(1.06)
Notes. M = Mean, SD = Standard Deviation; Fr e choice
differences are significantly different, p < .05.
=
Intrinsically motivated behavior; All mean
Source: Adapted from Setting Limits on Children s Behavior: The Differential Effects of Controlling Versus
Informational Styles on Intrinsic Motivation and Creativity, by R. Koestner, R. M. Ryan, F. Bernieri, and
K. Holt (1984). Journal of Perosnality, 52 233-248.
work, in relationships, and during recreation and sports. We all want to develop skills
and improve our capacities talents, and potential. When we find ourselves face-to-face
with a challenge, we give the moment our full attention. When given the chance to grow
our skills and talents, we all want to make progress. When we do so, we feel satisfied,
even happy. In other words, we have a need for competence.
Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one's capacities and skills and, in doing so,
to seek out and master optimal challenges (Deci & Ryan, 1985b). The need for competence generates the willingness to seek out optimal challenges, and when we engage in a
task with a level of difficulty and complexity that is precisely right for our current skills
and talent , we feel strong interest. When we make progress on developing our skills,
we feel a strong need-satisfying sort of satisfaction.
Involving Competence
The situations we find ourselves in can involve and satisfy our need for competence, or
they can neglect and frustrate this need. The key environmental conditions that involves
our need for competence are optimal challenge, clear and helpful structure, and high
failure tolerance from others, and the key environmental condition that satisfies our need
for competence is positive feedback and the perception of progress.
Optimal Challenge and Flow
To determine the conditions that create enjoyment, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1982,
1990) interviewed and studied hundreds of people he presumed knew what it felt like to
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Chapter 6
Psychological Needs
Very
High
Anxiety
High
Opportunities
for
Challenge
Low
Very
Low
Very
Low
Personal Skills
and Competencies
Very
High
Figure 6.5 Flow Model
Source: Adapted from Beyond Boredom nd Anxiety: The Experience
Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
of Flow in Work and Play,
by M.
have fun: rock dim ers, dancers, chess champions, basketball players, surgeons, and others. Later, he studied more representative samples, including working professionals, high
school students, assembly-line workers, groups of older adults, and people who generally
sat at home and watched television. Irrespective of which sample he studied, Csikszentmihalyi found the essence of enjoyment could be traced to the "flow experience."
Flow is a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption and deep
involvement in an activity (Keller & Bless, 2008). Flow is such a pleasurable experience
that the person often repeats the activity with the hope of experiencing flow again and
again (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 1989). It occurs whenever a person uses his or her
skills to overcome some challenge. The relationship between task challenge and personal
skill appears in Figure 6.5. The figure identifies the emotional consequences that arise
from the different pairings of challenge and skill. When challenge outweighs skill (skill
is low, challenge is high), performers worry that the demands of the task will overwhelm
their skills. Being overchallenged threatens competence, and that threat manifests itself
emotionally as worry (if moderately overchallenged) or anxiety (if highly overchallenged). When challenge matches skill (challenge and skill are both at least moderately
high), concentration, involvement, and enjoyment rise. If challenges and skills are
perfectly matched, the experience is one of flow. When skill outweighs challenge (skill
is high, challenge is low), task engagement is characterized by reduced concentration,
minimal task involvement, and emotional boredom. Being underchallenged neglects
competence, and that neglect manifests itself emotionally as indifference or boredom.
Competence
157
Being overchallenged or overskilled produces emotional problems and suboptimal
experience, but the worst profile of experience actually emanates from the pairing of low
challenge and low skill (the lower lefthand comer of Figure 6.5). With both challenge and
skill low, literally all measures of emotion, motivation, and cognition are at their lowest
levels-the person simply does not care about the task (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde,
& Whalen, 1993). Flow is therefore a bit more complicated than just the balance of
challenge and skill because balancing low skill and low challenge produces apathy. A
more accurate description of how challenge relates to skill is that flow emerges in those
situations in which both challenge and skill are moderat ly high or high (Csikszentmihalyi
& Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Keller & Bless, 2008). With this qualification in mind, another
way to look at Figure 6.5 is to divide it into four quadrant in which the upper-left quarter
represents conditions for worry and anxiety, the lower-left quarter represents conditions
for apathy, the lower-right quarter represents conditi ns for boredom, and the upper-right
quarter represents conditions for flow.
The hypothetical case of three individuals, A, B, and C, also appears in Figure 6.4,
as each individual performs a moderately difficult, moderately complex task. A, B, and
C differ only in their levels of persona skill brought to the task. Given a moderately
difficult task, unskilled person A will worry because his skills cannot match the demands
and challenges of the task, somewhat skilled person B will experience flow because his
skills equally match with the dem nds and challenges of the task, and highly skilled
person C will be bored because he skills exceed the demands and challenges of the task.
To alleviate worry, person A has two options: decrease task difficulty or increase personal
skill. To alleviate boredom, person C has two options: increase task difficulty or decrease
personal skill (through self-handicapping, for instance). To alter the challenge, persons
A and C can manipulate task difficulty by solving easier or harder math problems,
choosing an easier or harder jigsaw puzzle, or selecting a more or less proficient partner
in an athletic contest. Persons A and C might also change the rules of the task by, for
instance, solving the jigsaw puzzle with a partner or within a time limit, or allowing
the baseball hitter additional or fewer strikes. As to manipulating skills, persons A and
C can practice to increase skills, or they can impose handicaps to effectively decrease
skills, such as running a race with ankle weights or playing left-handed if one normally
plays right-handed. People engage in these sort of strategies-increase or decrease task
difficulty and increase or decrease personal skill-according to flow theory, because
they want their task participation to involve and satisfy their need for competence.
For a concrete example, consider three friends on a snow-skiing outing. Ski slopes
offer different difficulty levels such that some slopes are relatively fiat (beginner slopes),
some are fairly steep (intermediate slopes), and others are downright death-defying
(advanced slopes). H the skiers have different levels of skill, Figure 6.5 predicts that
the emotional experience will vary for each skier on each slope. The novice skier will
enjoy the beginner slopes but will experience mostly worry on the intermediate slopes
and serious anxiety on the advanced slopes. Because the novice's skill level is so low,
she might ski all day and experience only a hint of flow. The average skier will enjoy
the intermediate slopes but will experience mostly boredom on the beginner slopes and
worry on the advanced slopes. The professional will most likely enjoy the advanced
slopes but will experience mostly mind-numbing boredom on the beginner slopes and
some boredom on the intermediate slopes. Each skier, however, can experience flow on
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each slope by intentionally adjusting level of personal skill or level of slope difficulty. For
example, a skier might increase skill by taking lessons or decrease skill by handicapping
(i.e., using only one ski, using shorter skis, skiing backward); the skier might increase
slope difficulty by confronting moguls or decrease slope difficulty by going at a very
slow speed. The fact that people can adjust both level of skill and level of task difficulty
means that people can establish the conditions for optimal challenge and, hence, create the
conditions under which they can involve the need for competence and experience flow.
The most important practical implication of flow theory is the following: Given
optimal challenge, any activity can be enjoyed. Doing electr cal work, writing papers,
debating issues, sewing, analyzing a play, mowing the lawn and other such activities do
not necessarily make the top of most people's list of must-do activities, but the balance
of skill with challenge adds the spice of flow-concentration, absorption, enjoyment, and
optimal experience. Consistent with the idea that optimal challenge gives rise to flow,
Csikszentmihalyi found in a pair of studies hat students actually (though surprisingly)
enjoyed doing their homework and working their part-time jobs more than they enjoyed
viewing (challengeless) television programs (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). Furthermore,
people more frequently experience enjoyme t at (challenging) work than they do during
(unchallenging) leisure (Csikszentmihalyi 1982).
Generally speaking, people wan optimal challenges that will involve (rather than
neglect or overwhelm) the need for competence and set up the conditions for flow.
But people are motivationally complex, and sometimes people actually enjoy being
overchallenged (Stein, Kimiecik, Daniels, & Jackson, 1995). With very high challenge,
people sometimes see in a task a potential for gain, growth, and personal improvement.
The perception of improvement and progress can be enjoyable, at least until the hope
for gain gives way to the reality of being overwhelmed. Under other conditions, people
sometimes enjoy very low levels of challenge (Stein et al., 1995). Generally speaking,
people enjoy feedback that confirms they have a skill level that is above and beyond the
challenge of the task Easy success can generate some level of enjoyment, especially in
the early stages of task engagement when performers harbor the most doubts as to how
their performances will go. The quality of enjoyment that easy success breeds, however,
is a defensive and relief-based type of enjoyment. This type of enjoyment might keep
anxiety t bay, but it does little to nurture the psychological need for competence. Instead,
it is success in the context of optimal challenge that involves and nurtures the need for
comp tence and therefore generates sincere, need-satisfying enjoyment (Clifford, 1990).
Interdependency between Challenge and Feedback
Everyone is challenged every day. In school, teachers put examinations in front of students. At work, projects and assignments test a person's writing, creativity, and teamwork
skills. On the drive home, the interstate challenges both our patience and our driving
skills. H the car breaks down, our automotive repair skills will be put to the test. In
the gym, the proficiency of an opponent or the weight of a barbell challenges athletic
skills. These situations set the stage for challenge. But setting the stage for challenge is
not the same thing as creating the psychological experience of being challenged. One
additional ingredient still needs to be tossed into the equation-performance feedback.
Confronting a test, project, or contest invites challenge, but a person does not experience
challenge until he or she begins to perform and receive the first glimpse of feedback.
Competence
159
It is at that point-facing a challenge and receiving initial performance feedback-that
people report the psychological experience of being challenged (Reeve & Deci, 1996).
Professional musicians and athletes often echo this insight when they report that their
preperformance feelings of anxiety tum immediately into feelings of challenge with "the
first pitch" or "the first keystroke on the piano."
Structure
Structure is the amount and clarity of information about what the environment expects the
person to do to achieve desired outcomes. The provision of a highly structured environment nurtures the need for competence when it offers clear goals and guidance (Hokoda
& Fincham, 1995; Nolen-Hoeksema, Wolfson, Mumme, & Guskin, 1995) and consistent,
sensitive, and responsive feedback (Hokoda & Fincham, 1995; Skinner, 1986) as people
exercise their skills to meet challenges, solve problems, and make progress (Hollembeak
& Amorose, 2005; Ntoumanis, 2005; Taylor & Ntoumanis, 2007). Overall, what people
who are providing structure to involve the other's psychological need for competence
are doing is providing (1) information about the pathways to desired outcomes and (2)
support and guidance for pursuing these pathways (Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Skinner,
1991, 1995; Skinner, Zimmer-Gembeck, & Connell, 1998).
Failure Tolerance
The problem with optimal challenge and highly structured environments, motivationally
speaking, is that when people f ce moderately difficult and skill-testing tasks, they are
as likely to experience failure and frustration as they are to experience success and
enjoyment. In fact, one ha11mark of optimal challenge is that success and failure are
equally likely. Thus, the dread of failure can squash the competence need-involving
qualities of opt mal challenge. H intense, the dread of failure can motivate avoidance
behaviors so that people go out of their way to escape from being challenged (Covington,
1984a, 1984b).
Before people will engage freely in optimally challenging tasks, the social context
must tolerate (and even value) failure and error making (i.e., adopt a performance climate
rich in "failure tolerance" or "error tolerance"; Clifford, 1988, 1990). Optimal challenge
implies that considerable error making is essential for optimizing motivation (Clifford,
1990) Error tolerance, failure tolerance, and risk taking rest on the belief that we learn
more from failure than we do from success. Failure produces opportunities for learning
because it has its constructive aspects when people identify its causes, try new strategies,
seek advice and instruction, and so on (Clifford, 1984). This helps explain why people
prefer to seek out optimal challenges (rather than easy successes), feel greater competence, and experience an emotional green light toward stretching oneself when they are in
autonomy-supportive and failure-tolerant, rather than in controlling and failure-intolerant,
environments (Clifford, 1990; Deci, Schwartz, et al., 1981).
Supporting Competence
Supporting competence is largely a function of offering informational feedback when
people make progress and creating opportunities for people to enjoy the pleasure of
optimal challenge.
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Chapter 6
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Positive Feedback
Whether individuals perceive their performance to be competent or incompetent is often
an ambiguous undertaking. To make such an evaluation, a performer needs feedback.
Feedback comes from one (or more) of the following four sources (from Boggiano &
Ruble, 1979; Dollinger & Thelen, 1978; Grolnick, Frodi, & Bridges, 1984; Koestner et
al., 1987; Reeve & Deci, 1996; Schunk & Hanson, 1989):
• Task itself
• Comparisons of one's current performance with one's own past performances
• Comparisons of one's current performance with the performance of others
• Evaluations of others
In some tasks, competence feedback is inherent in the performance of the task itself,
as in successfully logging onto a computer (or not), repairing a machine (or not), or
throwing a strike or a ball (in baseball). In most tasks, however, performance evaluation
is more ambiguous than a right-versus-wrong performance outcome. In performing social
skills, artistic talents, or other such tasks, our own past performances, peer performances,
and the evaluations of other people (rather than the task itself) supply the information
necessary to make an inference of competence versus incompetence. As for our own past
performances, the perception of progress is an important signal of competence (Schunk
& Hanson, 1989), just as the perception of a lack of progress signals incompetence. As
Relatedness
161
to the performance of our peers, doing better than others signals competence whereas
doing worse than others signals incompetence (Harackiewicz, 1979; Reeve & Deci, 1996;
Reeve et al., 1985). As for the evaluation of other people, praise and positive feedback
bolsters perceptions of competence, whereas criticism and negative feedback deflates
it (Anderson et al., 1976; Blanket al., 1984; Deci, 1971; Dollinger & Thelen, 1978;
Vallerand & Reid, 1984).
In summary, performance feedback in its various forms-task-generated, selfgenerated, social comparisons, and other-generated-supplies the information individuals need to formulate a cognitive evaluation of thei percei ed level of competence.
When these sources of information converge on an interpretation of a job well done,
we experience positive feedback that is capable of s tisfying the psychological need for
competence.
Pleasure of Optimal Challenge and Positive Feedback
To confirm that people do indeed derive pleasure from optimal challenge, Susan Harter
(1974, 1978b) gave school-age children anagrams of different difficulty levels and monitored each child's expressed pleasure (through smiling) upon solving each anagram. (An
anagram is a word or phrase such as table, with its letters rearranged to form another word
or phrase, as in bleat.) In general, anagram-solving success produced greater smiling and
higher enjoyment than did failure (Harter, 1974), suggesting that mastery in general gratifies the competence need. In addition, however, some anagrams were very easy (three
letters), some were easy (fou le ters), others were moderately difficult (five letters), and
still others were very hard (six letters). As the anagrams increased in difficulty, it took
the children longer and longer to solve them, as expected, but the critical measure in the
study was how much the children smiled after solving the anagrams of different levels
of difficulty (Harter 1978b). A curvilinear inverted-U pattern emerged in which children
rarely smiled after solving the easy and very easy problems, they smiled most following
success on the moderately difficult problems, and they smiled only modestly following
success on the very hard problems. The central point is that children experience the
greatest pleasure following success in the context of moderate challenge. In the words
of the children, "The fives were just right; they were a challenge, but not too much
challenge" and "I liked the hard ones because they gave you a sense of satisfaction, but
the really hard ones were just too frustrating" (Harter, 1978b, p. 796).
RELATEDNESS
Everyone needs to belong. Everyone desires social interaction. Everyone wants friends.
We all go out of our way to form and maintain warm, close, affectionate relationships
with others. We all want others to understand us for who we are as individuals, and
we want others to accept and to value us. We want others to acknowledge us and to
be responsive to our needs. We want relationships with others who really and honestly
care for our well-being. We want our relationships to be reciprocal; as we want to form
not only close, responsive, and caring relationships but we also want the other person to
want to form these same sorts of relationships with us. This desire for relationships with
individuals extends to relationships with groups, organizations, and communities too. In
other words, we have a need for relatedness.
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Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and
interpersonally involved in warm relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Fromm, 1956;
Guisinger & Blatt, 1994; Ryan, 1991; Ryan & Powelson, 1991; Sullivan, 1953). Because
we need relatedness, we gravitate toward people who we trust to care for our well-being,
and we drift away from those who we do not trust to look out for our well-being. What
people are essentially looking for within need-satisfying relationships is the opportunity
to relate the self authentically to another person in a caring and emotionally meaningful
way (Ryan, 1993). Relatedness is an important motivational construct because people
function better, are more resilient to stress, and report fewer psychological difficulties
when their interpersonal relationships support their need for relatedness (Cohen, Sherrod,
& Clark, 1986; Lepore, 1992; Osterman, 2000; Ryan Stiller, & Lynch, 1994; Sarason
et al., 1991; Windle, 1992).
Because we need relatedness, social bonds form easily (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Given an opportunity to engage others in face-to-face interaction, people generally go out
of their way to create relationships (Brewer, 1979). The emergence of friendships and
alliances seems to require little more than p oximity and spending time together (Wtlder
& Thompson, 1980). The more people interact and the more people spend time together,
the more likely they are to form friendships. Once social bonds are formed, people are
generally reluctant to break them. When we move, when we graduate from school, and
when others take their leave of us, we resist the breakup of the relationship. We promise
to write and to telephone, we cry, we exchange addresses and phone numbers, and we
plan a future occasion to get back together.
Involving Relatedness: lntera tion with Others
Interaction with others is the primary condition that involves the relatedness need, at least
to the extent that those interactions promise the possibility of warmth, care, and mutual
concern. Starting a new relationship seems to be an especially easy way to involve the
need for relatedness. Consider, for instance, the relatedness-involving potential of the
following events, each of which promises an entry into new social relationships: first
dates, falling in love, childbirth, fraternity or sorority pledging, and starting anew in
school or in employment. Generally speaking, people seek emotionally positive interactions and interaction partners, and in doing so they gain the opportunity to involve the
psychological need for relatedness.
Supporting Relatedness: Perception of a Social Bond
Although interaction with others is sufficient for involving the relatedness need,
relatedness-need satisfaction requires the creation of a social bond between the self and
another (or between the self and the group). To be satisfying, that social bond needs to
be characterized by the perceptions that the other person (1) cares about my welfare and
(2) likes me (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). But more than caring and liking, the relationships that deeply satisfy the need for relatedness are those steeped in the knowledge that
one's "true self'-one's "authentic self'-has been shown and deemed to be important
in the eyes of another person (Deci & Ryan, 1995; Rogers, 1969; Ryan, 1993).
Relatedness
163
Relationships that do not involve caring, liking, accepting, and valuing do not satisfy
the need for relatedness. People who are lonely, for instance, do not lack frequent social
contact. They interact with others as frequently as do nonlonely people. Rather, those
who feel lonely lack close intimate relationships (Wheeler, Reis, & Nezlek, 1983).
When it comes to relatedness and relationships, quality is more important than quantity
(Carstensen, 1993).
Marriages, which are clearly close relationships, are not always emotionally satisfying. Some marriages, though full of social interaction, are full of conflict, stress,
and criticism and basically make the other person's life more difficult than it otherwise
would be. AI ematively, supportive marriages, those rich in mutual care and liking, are the
emotionally satisfying relationships that lead people to feel happy (Coyne & DeLongis,
1986). Furthermore, youths' relationships with their parents follow the same pattern in
that to keep youths' depression at bay, parent-youth relationships not only need to exist,
but they also need to be supportive (Camelley, Pietromonaco, & Jaffe, 1994). Having
one's relatedness need satisfied, as opposed to neglected or thwarted, promotes vitality
and well-being (Ryan & Lynch, 1989), and it lessens loneliness and depression (Pierce,
Sarason, & Sarason, 1991; Wmdle, 1992). Emotions such as sadness, depression, jealousy, and loneliness exist as telltale signs of a life lived in the absence of intimate,
high-quality, relatedness-satisfying relationships and social bonds (Baumeister & Leary,
1995; Williams & Solano, 1983).
Communal and Exchange Relationships
We involve ourselves in many relationships, some of which are more need satisfying than
are others. The distinction between communal and exchange relationships captures the
essence of relationships that do (communal) and do not (exchange) satisfy the relatedness
need (Mills & Clark, 1982).
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Exchange relationships are those between acquaintances or between people who do
business together. Communal relationships are those between persons who care about the
welfare of the other, as exemplified by friendships, family, and romantic relationships.
What distinguishes exchange from communal relationships are the implicit rules that
guide the giving and receiving of benefits, such as money, help, and emotional support
(Clark, Mills, & Powell, 1986). In exchange relationships, no obligation exists between
interactants to be concerned with the other person's needs or welfare. As they say in the
movie The Godfather, "It's business." (Incidentally, an "It's business" attitude toward a
relationship helps explain or justify why people can act in neg ectful or uncaring ways.)
In communal relationships, both parties care for the needs of the other, and both feel
an obligation to support the other's welfare. Only communal relationships satisfy the
relatedness need.
In communal relationships, people monitor and keep track of the other's needs,
regardless of any forthcoming opportunities for reciprocity or material gain (Clark, 1984;
Clark & Mills, 1979; Clark et al., 1986; Clark, Ouellette, Powell, & Milberg, 1987).
For instance, people involved in communal (as compared to exchange) relationships
frequently check up on the needs of the other (Clark et al., 1986), resist keeping track
(or score) of individual inputs into joint projects (Clark, 1984), provide help when the
other feels distressed (Clark et al., 1987), and experience tangible economic gifts as
detrimental to how friendly, relaxed and satisfying forthcoming interactions are likely
to be (Clark & Mills, 1979). On this latter point, consider the emotional discomfort you
might feel after providing a ride home to a close (communal) friend and, upon arrival,
were handed $10 for the favor (Mills & Clark, 1982). In communal relationships, what
people want and need is relatedness need satisfaction, not a $10 bill.
Internalization
Internalization refers to the process through which an individual transforms a formerly
externally p escribed regulation or value into an internally endorsed one (Ryan et al.,
1993). For instance, a person might internalize the value of education or internalize
the utility of brushing one's teeth (see Chapter 5). As a process, internalization reflects
the individual's tendency to voluntarily adopt and integrate into the self the values and
regulations of other people (or society).
Relatedness to others provides the social context in which internalization occurs
(Goodenow, 1993; Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997; Ryan & Powelson, 1991). When a
person feels emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved with another, he or
she believes the other person is truly looking out for his or her welfare, relatedness is
high, and internalization occurs willingly. When a person feels emotionally distant from
and interpersonally neglected by another, relatedness is low and internalization rarely
occurs. For instance, children who have a positive relationship with their parents will
generally internalize their parents' ways of thinking and behaving. Children with stormy
or nonexistent relationships with their parents will generally reject their parents' ways of
thinking and behaving and search for a value system elsewhere.
High relatedness does not guarantee that internalization will occur. For internalization
to occur, the individual must also see the value, meaning, and utility in the other's
prescriptions ("do X, believe Y'') and proscriptions ("don't do X, don't believe Y''). To
Putting it All Togeher: Social Contexts that Support Psychological Needs
165
internalize a value or to internalize a way of behaving, the person needs to understand why
the value or way of acting has merit, as in ''Why is it important that I brush my teeth?"
Therefore, relatedness is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for internalization and
cultural transmission to occur. Internalization flourishes in relationships that provide a
rich supply of (1) relatedness need satisfaction and (2) clear and convincing rationale for
why the others' prescriptions and proscriptions will benefit the self.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGEHER: SOCIAL CONTEXTS THAT SUPPORT
PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS
Specific aspects of the social context are noteworthy in their capacity to involve and
satisfy the psychological needs. For illustration, Table 6.4 summarizes the prototypical
events that involve the needs of autonomy, compet nee, and relatedness as well as the
prototypical events that satisfy these three ne ds. When involved in activities that offer
opportunities for self-direction, optimal challenge, and frequent social interaction, people
typically experience need involvement and feel interested in what they do. When involved
in activities that offer autonomy support, positive feedback, and communal relationships,
people typically experience need satisfaction and feel enjoyment in what they do.
Engagement
The motivational model of engagement (see Figure 6.6) illustrates in a comprehensive
way the contribution that relationships and social contexts have for psychological needs
(Connell, 1990; Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Engagement is
a term that captures the intensity and emotional quality people show when they initiate and carry out activities, such as learning in school or practicing skills in music or
sports (Fredricks et al., 2004). When highly engaged, people show behavioral engagement (on-task attention, effort, persistence), emotional engagement (interest, enjoyment),
cognitive engagement (preference for challenge, self-regulation of what they are doing),
and voice (expressions of one's preferences and interests).
Jim Connell and Ellen Skinner explain the conditions under which people show
high and low engagement by tracing the origin of engagement to the three psychological needs. Specifically, they argue that (1) autonomy support enhances engagement
because it involves and satisfies the need for autonomy, (2) structure enhances engagement because it involves and satisfies the need for competence, and (3) involvement
enhances engagement because it involves and satisfies the need for relatedness. How
autonomy support, structure, and involvement are expressed during social interactions
Table 6.4
Environmental Factors that Involve and Satisfy the Psychological Needs
Psychological Need
Environmental Condition
that Involves the Need
Environmental Condition
that Satisfies the Need
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
Opportunities for self-direction
Optimal challenge
Social interaction
Autonomy support
Positive feedback
Communal relationships