TARGET ARTICLE

The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits:Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior

Edward L. Deci and Richard M. RyanDepartment of Psychology

University of Rochester

Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motiva-tion requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, auton-omy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previousneed theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psycholog-ical growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypothesesthat different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associ-ated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contentshave different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically be-cause different regulatory processes and different goal contents are associated withdiffering degrees of need satisfaction. Social contexts and individual differences thatsupport satisfaction of the basic needs facilitate natural growth processes includingintrinsically motivated behavior and integration of extrinsic motivations, whereasthose that forestall autonomy, competence, or relatedness are associated with poorermotivation, performance, and well-being. We also discuss the relation of the psycho-logical needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary mo-tivation theories.

Most contemporary theories of motivation assumethat people initiate and persist at behaviors to the ex-tent that they believe the behaviors will lead to desiredoutcomes or goals. Beginning with the work of Lewin(1936) and Tolman (1932), this premise has led moti-vation researchers to explore the psychological valuepeople ascribe to goals (e.g., T. Kasser & Ryan, 1996;Vroom, 1964), people’s expectations about attaininggoals (e.g., Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978;Bandura, 1989; Rotter, 1966), and the mechanisms thatkeep people moving toward selected goals (e.g.,Carver & Scheier, 1998).

Whereas initially this approach assumed that anytwo equally valued goals with the same expectanciesfor attainment would yield the same quality of perfor-mance and affective experience, recent work ongoal-directed behavior has begun to distinguishamongtypesof goals or outcomes. Researchers have,for example, contrasted ability-development goalswith ability-demonstration goals (Dweck, 1986;Nicholls, 1984) and approach goals with avoidancegoals (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Elliot & Church,1997; Higgins, 1996), suggesting that the different

types of goals have different behavioral and affectiveconsequences.

Like these other theories, self-determination theory(SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1980, 1985b, 1991) has differen-tiated the concept of goal-directed behavior, yet it hastaken a very different approach. SDT differentiates thecontentof goals or outcomes and theregulatory pro-cessesthrough which the outcomes are pursued, mak-ing predictions for different contents and for differentprocesses. Further, it uses the concept ofinnate psy-chological needsas the basis for integrating the differ-entiations of goal contents and regulatory processesand the predictions that resulted from those differentia-tions. Specifically, according to SDT, a critical issue inthe effects of goal pursuit and attainment concerns thedegree to which people are able to satisfy their basicpsychological needs as they pursue and attain their val-ued outcomes.

The concept of needs was once widely employed inempirical psychology to organize the study of motiva-tion. Although variously defined at the physiologicalor psychological levels and as innate or learned, theconcept of needs specified thecontentof motivation

Psychological Inquiry Copyright © 2000 by2000, Vol. 11, No. 4, 227–268 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

and provided a substantive basis for the energizationand direction of action. Beginning around the 1960s,however, the dramatic shift toward cognitive theoriesled to the concept of needs being repudiated and re-placed by the concept of goals as the dominant motiva-tional concept. The focus became the processes of goalselection and pursuit rather than the content of thegoals being selected and pursued. The concept of va-lence (or psychological value) of outcomes was de-fined functionally (and thus was not related to needsatisfaction), much as the concept of reinforcementhad been defined functionally in operant psychology(B. F. Skinner, 1953), ignoring the needs that had pro-vided the underpinning of reinforcements in drive the-ories (e.g., Hull, 1943).

Since the time of the shift toward cognitive theories,most motivation theorists remained unwilling to con-sider needs, focusing instead on goal-related efficacy.SDT has, in contrast, maintained that a full understand-ing not only of goal-directed behavior, but also of psy-chological development and well-being, cannot beachieved without addressing the needs that give goalstheir psychological potence and that influence whichregulatory processes direct people’s goal pursuits.Specifically, in SDT, three psychological needs—forcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy—are consid-ered essential for understanding thewhat(i.e., content)andwhy(i.e., process) of goal pursuits. Before outlin-ing the SDT perspective on the content and process ofgoal-directed behavior, however, we begin with an his-torical consideration of the concept of needs as a foun-dation for our subsequent discussion.

The Concept of Needs

Early Needs Theories

Two very different intellectual traditions in the em-pirical psychology of motivation employed the con-cept of needs. In experimental psychology, Hull(1943) suggested that the task of psychology is to un-derstand molar behavior by linking it to the organism’sprimary needs and the conditions in the environmentrelevant to them. He specified a set of innate physio-logical needs (e.g., for food, water, sex) that are basedin non-nervous-system tissue deficits, give rise to drivestates, push the organism into action, and must be satis-fied for the organism to remain healthy. The drivestates, when reduced, produce learning by linkingdrive stimulations to the responses that led to drive re-duction (e.g., Hull, 1943; Spence, 1956). Drive statesand the stimulus–response associations were used topredict subsequent behavior. This tradition produced arich array of findings based on the drive theory as-sumptions, but among its shortcomings was that itcould not provide a meaningful account of a large class

of behaviors such as curious exploration, investigatorymanipulation, vigorous play, and other spontaneousactivities that had no apparent ties to the dynamics ofdrive reduction. Indeed, it was partly the drive theo-rists’ attempts to account for such behaviors that gaverise to the recognition of intrinsic motivation (seeWhite, 1959) and ultimately led to specification of thepsychological needs.

The second tradition focusing on needs stemsfrom the work of Murray (1938). Murray addressedneeds at the psychological rather than physiologicallevel and viewed them primarily as acquired ratherthan innate. In this approach the concept of needswas very broadly construed, as we see here inMurray’s oft-cited definition:

A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothet-ical concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chem-ical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, aforce that organizes perception, apperception,intellection, conation and action in such a way as totransform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfy-ing situation. (pp. 123–124).

Indeed, this definition is so broad that one could substi-tute terms like motive, desire, or goal for need withoutlosing any meaning. By this definition, almost any-thing that moves one to action is a need, a fact that ishighlighted by Murray’s inclusion of such psychologi-cal needs as abasement (self-degradation), acquisitive-ness (greed), and dominance within his extensive list.We maintain, however, that, although motives such asthese may energize action, they are certainly not needsin either the Hullian or the SDT sense of specifyingnecessary nutriments for healthy functioning. Rather,Murray’s needs represent an array of salient motiveswhose pursuit may or may not conduce to optimalfunctioning: motives that reflect ambient social valuesand the dynamics of their transmission.

In the Murray tradition the focus of empirical stud-ies has been on individual differences in need strength,particularly those for achievement, power, and affilia-tion. These individual differences are the foci of the-matic (or implicit) and questionnaire (or explicit)methods of assessment (Ryan & Manly, in press) andare used as the basis for predicting affective and behav-ioral outcomes (e.g., McAdams, 1989; McClelland,1985).

The Nature of Needs in SDT

To explicate the meaning of needs in SDT, we con-sider not only the theoretical concept but also the or-ganismic-dialectical metatheory that underlies it. In sodoing, we contrast SDT with theories in the traditionsof Hull and Murray. Although these theories do not

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have a strong presence in current motivation research,they provide a useful contrast with SDT because, un-like most current theories, they are macrotheories ofmotivation that explicitly considered the concept ofneeds and clearly specified their metatheoretical foun-dations. Later in the article we examine the relation ofSDT to a number of current theories.

As in the Hullian tradition, we defineneedsas in-nate, organismic necessities rather than acquired mo-tives, and as in the Murray tradition, we define needs atthe psychological rather than physiological level.Thus, in SDT, needs specifyinnate psychological nu-triments that are essential for ongoing psychologicalgrowth, integrity, and well-being. As noted, we identi-fied three, the needs for competence, relatedness, andautonomy.

This definition can be considered in organismic andfunctional terms. It assumes a fundamental human tra-jectory toward vitality, integration, and health, and fur-ther assumes that this organismic tendency will beactualized so long as the necessary and appropriate nu-triments are attainable but will give way to the emer-gence of nonoptimal psychological outcomes underconditions of threat or deprivation. In other words, hu-man needs specify the necessary conditions for psy-chological health or well-being and their satisfaction isthus hypothesized to be associated with the most effec-tive functioning. A further claim is that each of thesethree needs plays a necessary part in optimal develop-ment so that none can be thwarted or neglected withoutsignificant negative consequences. This claim cannotbe made for most psychological needs that were stud-ied, for example, in the Murray tradition, because thereare countless instances in which people achieve psy-chological integrity and health without having theso-called needs for power, acquisitiveness, orself-abasement well satisfied. However, we assert thatthere are not instances of optimal, healthy develop-ment in which a need for autonomy, relatedness, orcompetence was neglected, whether or not the individ-uals consciously valued these needs. In short, psycho-logical health requires satisfaction of all three needs;one or two are not enough.

Functionally, we expect to observe optimal devel-opment and well-being under facilitating conditionsthat support need satisfaction, and to observe degrada-tion or ill-being under conditions that thwart basicneed satisfaction. Just as one can conclude that plantsneed water by noting that they flourish when they arehydrated but that impoverished growth and, ulti-mately, a breakdown of integrity results when they aresystematically deprived of water, SDT maintains that apsychological need can be identified by observing thatpositive psychological consequences results from con-ditions that allow its satisfaction and negative conse-quences accrue in situations that thwart it.Accordingly, if motives or goals were not linked di-

rectly to basic needs, their fulfillment versus thwartingwould not be expected to result invariantly in the en-hancement versus diminishment of growth andwell-being.

Our definition is congruent with Hullian thought inthat both approaches specify a set of innate or essentialnutriments and with Murray’s personologic approachin that his and ours focus at the psychological level, butour approach is quite different from those previous tra-ditions because it is embedded in an organismic-dia-lectical metatheory. Accordingly, as we will show, theconcept is used to address different issues and to pro-vide different types of interpretations.

The organismic dialectic. The starting point forSDT is the postulate that humans are active,growth-oriented organisms who are naturally inclinedtoward integration of their psychic elements into a uni-fied sense of self and integration of themselves intolarger social structures. In other words, SDT suggeststhat it is part of the adaptive design of the human organ-ism to engage interesting activities, to exercise capaci-ties, to pursue connectedness in social groups, and tointegrate intrapsychic and interpersonal experiencesinto a relative unity.

Our organismic-dialectical perspective further pro-poses that these natural organismic activities and theintegrative propensities that coordinate them requirefundamental nutriments—namely, ambient supportsfor experiencing competence, relatedness, and auton-omy. As such, the natural processes such as intrinsicmotivation, integration of extrinsic regulations, andmovement toward well-being are theorized to operateoptimally only to the extent that the nutriments are im-mediately present, or, alternatively, to the extent thatthe individual has sufficient inner resources to find orconstruct the necessary nourishment. To the degreethat these organismic processes are hindered bynonfavorable conditions—specifically when one’scontext is excessively controlling, overchallenging, orrejecting—they will, to that degree, be supplanted byalternative, often defensive or self-protective pro-cesses, which no doubt also have functional utility un-der nonsupportive circumstances. Such processeswould include, for example, the capacity to compart-mentalize rather than integrate psychological struc-tures, the tendency to withdraw concern for others andfocus on oneself, or, in more extreme cases, to engagein psychological withdrawal or antisocial activity ascompensatory motives for unfulfilled needs.

Accordingly, innate psychological needs for com-petence, relatedness, and autonomy concern the deepstructure of the human psyche, for they refer to innateand life-span tendencies toward achieving effective-ness, connectedness, and coherence. The presence ver-sus absence of environmental conditions that allow

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satisfaction of these basic needs—in people’s immedi-ate situations and in their developmental histories—isthus a key predictor of whether or not people will dis-play vitality and mental health. As we argue later, theexistence of these basic psychological needs and theirphenomenological salience appear to yield consider-able adaptive advantage at the level of individual andgroup selection (Ryan, Kuhl, & Deci, 1997). Further-more, basic needs play an essential role in culturaltransmission, helping to account for how memes areassimilated and maintained in and across diverse hu-man groups (Inghilleri, 1999).

A direct corollary of the SDT perspective is thatpeople will tend to pursue goals, domains, and rela-tionships that allow or support their need satisfaction.To the extent that they are successful in finding suchopportunities, they will experience positive psycho-logical outcomes.

Needs in SDT versus drive theories. We, likedrive theorists, consider needs to be innate rather thanlearned and therefore to give motivational content tolife. However, although we acknowledge physiologicaldrives, we give primacy to the core psychologicalneeds in our exploration of issues such as human learn-ing, interpersonal relations, and the general masteryand management of people’s physical and social envi-ronments. By positing a set of basic psychologicalneeds, SDT specifies psychological elements of humannature, much as Hull’s work specified physiological el-ements of human nature. Further, we suggest that thedrive-based behaviors that Hull (as well as Freud) de-scribed are typically regulated by psychological pro-cesses and therefore interface with the issues of auton-omy, competence, and relatedness.

Our focus at the psychological level within the or-ganismic-dialectical metatheory leads to a set of veryimportant differences between our approach and thatof drive theories. From the latter perspective, needs areunderstood as physiological deficits that disturb the or-ganism’s quiescence and push the organism to behavein ways that were learned because they satisfied theneeds and returned the organism to quiescence. Thus,in drive theories, the set point of the human organism isquiescence or passivity; need satisfaction is a processof replenishing deficiencies; and the purpose of behav-ior is need satisfaction. By contrast, in SDT, the setpoint is growth-oriented activity. That is, rather thanviewing people as passively waiting for a disequilib-rium, we view them as naturally inclined to act on theirinner and outer environments, engage activities that in-terest them, and move toward personal and interper-sonal coherence. Thus, they do not have to be pushedor prodded to act. Further, and importantly, their be-havior does not have to be aimed at need satisfactionper se, it may simply be focused on an interesting ac-

tivity or an important goal if they are in a context thatallows need satisfaction. If, however, need satisfactionis not forthcoming while they are acting, nonoptimal ordysfunctional consequences typically follow. Con-sider several important implications of this viewpoint.

From the perspective of drive theory, all behaviorsare based in drive reduction processes; in other words,the functional aim of all behavior can be understood asneed satisfaction. Hungry people act to get food,pained people act to get relief, and all behavior can betraced back to disequilibria. From the perspective ofSDT, however, innate life processes and their accom-panying behaviors can occur naturally, without theprod of a need deficit. Much as Piaget (1971) sug-gested that it is inherent in the assimilation schema tofunction, we suggest that it is inherent in people’s na-ture to act in the direction of increased psychologicaldifferentiation and integration in terms of their capaci-ties, their valuing processes, and their socialconnectedness. These inherent integrative tendenciesrequire the nutriments of need satisfaction to be sus-tained and for positive consequences to follow, butneed satisfaction is not necessarily the aim of these ac-tions. Thus, for example, it is adaptive for children toplay, but they do not play to feel competent. Similarly,curiosity-based exploration, openness to the sensoryexperiences of nature, and assimilation of values ex-tant in one’s social milieu—all natural activities—re-quire the nutriments of basic need satisfaction tooperate optimally, but these activities are not necessar-ily (indeed they may seldom be) consciously intendedto satisfy the basic needs.

Of course, we recognize that many behaviors arespecifically aimed at satisfaction of the basic needs,particularly when little satisfaction has been forthcom-ing. When lonely, people may explicitly seek out com-panionship; when controlled, people may explicitlyseek out autonomy; and when feeling ineffective, peo-ple may explicitly work to become more competent.But, when people are experiencing reasonable needsatisfaction, they will not necessarily be behaving spe-cifically to satisfy the needs; rather, they will be doingwhat they find interesting or important. As we arguelater, finding an activity either interesting (intrinsicmotivation) or important (well-internalized extrinsicmotivation) is influenced by prior experiences of needsatisfaction versus thwarting, but doing what one findsinteresting or important does not have the explicit in-tent of satisfying the basic needs in the immediate situ-ation. A man who, in the evening, sits at the keyboardand begins to play a piece of music, may become lost inits beauty and experience great pleasure. He would notexperience the pleasure if coerced to play, or if he feltunable to master the music. Thus, need satisfaction,which in this case means experiences of autonomy andcompetence, is necessary for the enjoyment of the ac-tivity, but his explicit purpose in playing the music is

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not likely to be need satisfaction. He would be doingwhat interests him, and he would experience spontane-ous pleasure as long as the activity was self-organizingand the task appropriately challenging.

There is another very important way that psycho-logical needs differ from physiological needs. When aphysiological need is thwarted, people typically stepup their efforts to satisfy it. Indeed, the longer they aredeprived, the more salient and consuming the need be-comes. When hungry enough, people are likely tothink of little else and to engage in few behaviors thatare not intended to satisfy the hunger. With psycholog-ical needs, lack of satisfaction may also tend to focuspeople’s efforts on getting the needs satisfied, but withpsychological need thwarting people more readilymake accommodations that lessen theirdirectattemptsto satisfy needs. For example, thwarting of psychologi-cal needs can promote the development of defensesand need substitutes that may, over time, lead to furtherthwarting of need satisfaction, as, for instance, when awoman becomes self-controlling in her eating behav-iors against the backdrop of having been controlled bythe contingent regard and evaluations of significantothers (Strauss & Ryan, 1987). Rather than staying onthe natural track toward healthy development, peoplemay instead become controlled (either complying ordefying) or amotivated (either being out of control oracting helpless). And these responses can, as we willsee later, become self-perpetuating. According toSDT, however, such defensive adaptations, regardlessof whether individuals claim to value them, will havesignificant negative consequences for the individuals’vitality, integrity, and health.

Needs in SDT versus personality theories. Bydefining needs at the psychological level we suggesteda commonality between SDT and some personality the-ories that use the concept of needs. However, becauseempirically based personality theories that investigateneeds (e.g., McClelland, 1985; Murray, 1938) tend toview them as learned, our conception of needs is, insome ways, closer to that of the less empirically derivedtheories that view psychological needs as innate (e.g.,Kohut, 1977; Maslow, 1943).

The most direct predecessor of our approach to psy-chological needs is the work of White (1959) who as-serted that an understanding of behavior anddevelopment requires that drive motivation be supple-mented with a different type of innate motivation, oneconceptualized at the psychological level. White spokeof a primary propensityfor competence, suggestingthat there is an energy source in humans (and othermammals) that operates between episodes ofhomeostatic crisis and does not follow deficit princi-ples. For White, this energy source was a direct mani-festation of a deeply structured effectance-focused

motivation—a propensity to have an effect on the envi-ronment as well as to attain valued outcomes within it.Although White used the termmotiveto describe thismotivational propensity, his formulation was fullyconsistent with our definition of apsychological need.Indeed, as noted, we consider competence oreffectance to be one of the three fundamental psycho-logical needs that can energize human activity andmust be satisfied for long-term psychological health.

As also noted, we further proposed the innate needsfor relatedness and autonomy. Relatedness refers to thedesire to feel connected to others—to love and care,and to be loved and cared for (Baumeister & Leary,1995; Bowlby, 1958; Harlow, 1958; Ryan, 1993). Likeus, Baumeister and Leary argued that relatedness is afundamental need, and the idea of relatedness as a needis central to, although not widely discussed in the fieldof attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall,1978). Indeed, many empirically based theories as-sume a desire or tendency for relatedness even if theydo not explicitly formulate it as a need.

Autonomy refers to volition—the organismic desireto self-organize experience and behavior and to haveactivity be concordant with one’s integrated sense ofself (Angyal, 1965; deCharms, 1968; Deci, 1980; Ryan& Connell, 1989; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). The con-cept of autonomy is far less prevalent in empirical psy-chology than are the ideas of competence andrelatedness. And indeed, when it is discussed it is oftenincorrectly equated with the ideas of internal locus ofcontrol, independence, or individualism (see, e.g.,Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999b; Ryan, 1995). For us,however, autonomy concerns the experience of inte-gration and freedom, and it is an essential aspect ofhealthy human functioning.

According to SDT, these three needs can be satis-fied while engaging in a wide variety of behaviors thatmay differ among individuals and be differentiallymanifest in different cultures, but in any case their sat-isfaction is essential for the healthy development andwell-being of all individuals regardless of culture.

Defining psychological needs as inherent to humannature has led to a research focus that is very differentfrom that of other empirical personality theorists suchas McClelland (1965) who maintained that needs arelargely learned and thus differ in strength as a functionof that learning. Specifically, McClelland (1985) andothers assessed individual differences in need strengthand used that as the primary basis for predicting behav-ior. Research in that tradition predicted variation inneed strengths from the social conditions theorized tocreated them, and then, even more importantly, usedneed strengths to predict various outcomes. Re-searchers, for example, examined the consequences ofdifferent levels of achievement motivation (Atkinson,1958) and power motivation (Winter, 1973), and theoutcomes that result form different combinations of

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need strengths. In so doing they have not made any im-plicit assumption that need satisfaction would be asso-ciated with healthier functioning.

We, on the other hand, viewing needs as universal,innate, and essential for well-being, do not generallyfocus on variation in need strength. Instead, our re-search has focused primarily on an examination of thedegree to which individuals experience basic psycho-logical need satisfaction in different social contextsand of the consequences of various degrees of satisfac-tion. We do assume that there are important individualdifferences that affect the degree to which people willexperience need satisfaction in different contexts, sowe use both characteristics of the social environmentand individual differences to predict people’s need sat-isfaction and, in turn, the quality of their experience,behavior, and health. However, these individual differ-ences do not concern need strength. Rather, the type ofindividual-difference concepts used in SDT and othertheories that assume innate, psychological needs areregulatory or interactive styles. These are regarded asoutcomes of the ongoing dialectic between people’sneeds and their ambient social contexts that have eitherfulfilled or frustrated the needs, and they describe theway people orient toward the social environment andthus affect its potential for providing them further needsatisfaction. In SDT, we refer to these ascausality ori-entations(Deci & Ryan, 1985a) at the broadest level ofgenerality, and asregulatory styles(Ryan & Connell,1989) at a more domain-specific level of generality(see also Vallerand, 1997).

In selecting this focus for examining individual dif-ferences, we do not maintain that there are no differ-ences in need strength. Rather, we suggest that a focuson the strength of innate needs does not get at the issueswe consider most important. In this regard, there is an-other similarity between our approach and that of thephysiological-need theories. Just as it is probable thatpeople have innate differences in the strength of theirneed for food, it is as well probable that there are innatedifferences in their needs for competence. Humancharacteristics tend to be normally distributed. None-theless, psychologists do not typically focus on innateindividual differences in hunger, instead treating suchdifferences as givens and focusing instead on the ef-fects of food deprivation versus availability on con-sumptive patterns. From that perspective, the criticalissue is not to identify innate differences in the strengthof hunger, but rather to see how hunger has been af-fected by the interaction of the basic need for food andthe environment in which it is or is not supported.

Similarly, although there may be individual differ-ences in the strength of people’s needs for competence,autonomy, and relatedness, we believe that these in-nate differences are not the most fruitful place to focusattention. Instead, greater benefits will be reaped fromfocusing on individual differences in motivational ori-

entations and in the importance of goal contents, thesebeing individual differences that result from the inter-action of the basic needs with the social world—that is,from past experiences of need satisfaction versusthwarting. As with the case of an unusually strong de-sire for food, we would consider an unusually strongdesire to be with other people not to be a reflection of astrong innate need for relatedness but instead to be a re-sult, in part at least, of previous experiences in whichthe basic needs were thwarted. Similarly, an unusuallystrong desire to be in control of a situation would beviewed as resulting not from a strong need for compe-tence or autonomy but rather from experiences of thoseneeds being thwarted. Like an unusually strong desirefor food, an unusually strong desire to be in control islikely to be compensatory.

Herein, lies one of the most important implicationsof proposing innate needs. They are the basis for—in-deed, they require—dynamic theorizing that links var-ied phenotypic desires and goals to underlying needsthat the person may not even be directly aware of at thetime. Without the concept of innate needs, all desiresare equal in functional importance if they are equal instrength. In other words, every set of closely relatedbehaviors would have its own need (e.g., achievementbehaviors would imply a need for achievement), andthere would be no basis for predicting the qualities ofperformance or the degree of well-being that would beassociated with different ones of these so-called needs.The concept of basic needs, in contrast, implies thatsome desires are linked to or catalyzed by our psycho-logical design, as it were, whereas others are not. Theseothers, often being derivative or compensatory, can bethe by-products of past need thwarting, and, as defen-sive adaptations, they may even form the basis for fu-ture need thwarting.

Needs, Goals, and RegulatoryProcesses

The specification by SDT of the three fundamentalneeds for competence, relatedness, and autonomy wasnot simply an assumptive or a priori process but in-stead emerged from inductive and deductive empiricalprocesses. We found that without the concept of needswe were unable to provide a psychologically meaning-ful interpretation and integration of a diverse set of re-search results in the areas ofintrinsic motivation,which we consider to be a basic, lifelong psychologicalgrowth function (Deci & Ryan, 1980), andinternaliza-tion, which we consider to be an essential aspect ofpsychological integrity and social cohesion (Ryan,Connell, & Deci, 1985). We now review the researchon intrinsic motivation that led to the postulate of psy-chological needs, and then we move on to review theresearch on internalization, discussing its relevance to

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needs. Then, having defined needs as essential nutri-ments for growth and integrity, we proceed to researchwhich has supported the view that satisfaction of thesethree needs is, indeed, associated withpsychologicalwell-being,whereas failure to satisfy the needs is asso-ciated with deficits in well-being and the developmentof need substitutes. Accordingly, we now addressthose three areas of research—those concerned withgrowth, integrity, and well-being, respectively—fo-cusing on the three needs as the basis for linking the so-cial contextual and individual difference antecedentsto the growth, integrity, and well-being outcomes.

Psychological Needs and IntrinsicMotivation

In the early 1970s, when operant theory was still arelatively strong force in empirical psychology, a fewinvestigators began to explore the concept of intrinsicmotivation (Deci, 1971, 1972a, 1972b; Kruglanski,Friedman, & Zeevi, 1971; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett,1973). Intrinsically motivated activities were definedas those that individuals find interesting and would doin the absence of operationally separable conse-quences. The concept of intrinsic motivation fit withWhite’s (1959) proposition that people often engage inactivities simply to experience efficacy or competence,and with deCharms’s (1968) assertion that people havea primary motivational propensity to feel like causalagents with respect to their own actions. Thus, Deci(1975) proposed that intrinsically motivated behaviorsare based in people’s needs to feelcompetent andself-determined.

In that early work, one finds two strands to the defi-nition of intrinsic motivation, which can be viewed asreactions to the two dominant behavioral theories ofthat time. In response to Skinner’s (1953) claim that alllearned behaviors are a function of reinforcements, onestrand of the definition emphasized that intrinsicallymotivated behaviors do not depend on reinforce-ments—that is, they do not require operationally sepa-rable consequences—because the doing of aninteresting activity is itself intrinsically rewarding. Inresponse to Hull’s (1943) claim that all acquired be-haviors derive from satisfaction of basicphysiologicalneeds, the other strand of the definition emphasizedthat intrinsically motivated behaviors are a function ofbasicpsychologicalneeds. These two strands to thedefinition are complementary: The idea that some be-haviors are interesting and do not require reinforce-ments provided useful operational definitions ofintrinsically motivated behaviors (Deci, 1971), and theidea of psychological needs gave content to the moti-vational processes involved with the maintenance ofthis important class of behaviors. Still, having thesetwo foci has led to some confusion about whether in-

terest or psychological needs is the more criticaldefining characteristic of intrinsic motivation.

Consider the following: The postulate of intrinsicmotivation begins with a proactive organism; it pre-supposes that humans are naturally active and thatthere are natural tendencies toward development thatrequire nutriments to function effectively. In particu-lar, intrinsic motivationconcerns active engagementwith tasks that people find interesting and that, in turn,promote growth. Such activities are characterized bynovelty, or what Berlyne (1971) called “collative stim-ulus properties,” and by optimal challenge(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Danner & Lonky, 1981;Deci, 1975). However, this active engagement, this in-volvement and commitment with interesting activities,requires the nutriments of need fulfillment, and, in-deed, people will become more or less interested in ac-tivities as a function of the degree to which theyexperience need satisfaction while engaging in thoseactivities. Thus, experiences of competence and auton-omy are essential for intrinsic motivation and interest,but the needs for competence and autonomy do notprovide a sufficient definition of intrinsic motivation.Intrinsically motivated activities are not necessarily di-rected at satisfaction of these needs per se, and behav-iors that are directed at satisfaction of these needs arenot necessarily intrinsically motivated. Intrinsicallymotivated behaviors are those that are freely engagedout of interest without the necessity of separable con-sequences, and, to be maintained, they require satisfac-tion of the needs for autonomy and competence.

Thus, a primary function served by specification ofthe needs for autonomy and competence (with respectto intrinsic motivation) is that it has allowed predictionof the social circumstances and task characteristics thatenhance versus diminish intrinsic motivation. Theoverarching hypothesis that has guided this work isthat intrinsic motivation will be facilitated by condi-tions that conduce toward psychological need satisfac-tion, whereas undermining of intrinsic motivation willresult when conditions tend to thwart need satisfaction.Because various studies confirmed that intrinsic moti-vation is associated with better learning, performance,and well-being (e.g., Benware & Deci, 1984; Deci,Schwartz, Sheinman, & Ryan, 1981; Grolnick & Ryan,1987; Valas & Sovik, 1993), considerable attentionhas been given to investigations of the conditions thatundermine versus enhance intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic Motivation and Autonomy

Initial experiments showed that monetary rewardsundermined people’s intrinsic motivation leading to alevel of postreward behavior that was below baseline(Deci, 1971, 1972b). These experiments supported theview that an understanding of human motivation re-

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quires a consideration of motivational processes otherthan just reinforcement and further highlighted a po-tential antagonism between reinforcement and thisother type of motivation.

In discussing the psychological meaning of intrinsicmotivation and its undermining by extrinsic rewards,Deci (1975) suggested that intrinsically motivated be-haviors represent the prototype of self-determined ac-tivities: They are activities that people do naturally andspontaneously when they feel free to follow their innerinterests. Such activities have what deCharms (1968),extending a concept introduced by Heider (1958), re-ferred to as an internal perceived locus of causality(I-PLOC). As studies by Deci and others (e.g., Lepperet al., 1973) suggested, when extrinsic rewards are in-troduced for doing an intrinsically interesting activity,people tend to feel controlled by the rewards, prompt-ing a shift in the perceived locus of causality for the be-havior from internal to external. People feel less likeorigins of their behavior and thus display less intrinsicmotivation. Although this phenomenon remains con-troversial, it has been firmly established and widelyreplicated. Indeed, a recent meta-analysis of 128 stud-ies spanning 3 decades confirmed that not only mone-tary rewards, but also all contingent tangible rewardssignificantly undermined intrinsic motivation (Deci,Koestner, & Ryan, 1999a). Parenthetically, thismeta-analysis repudiated a widely cited earliermeta-analysis by behaviorists Eisenberger andCameron (1996) who claimed to show that the under-mining effect of rewards was largely a myth, but whosemethods and conclusions turned out to be fatallyflawed.

Additional studies supported the view that auton-omy is essential to intrinsic motivation by showing thatother events such as threats (Deci & Cascio, 1972),surveillance (Lepper & Greene, 1975), evaluation(Harackiewicz, Manderlink, & Sansone, 1984), anddeadlines (Amabile, DeJong, & Lepper, 1976) also ledto the undermining of intrinsic motivation, presumablybecause they also prompted a shift toward a more ex-ternal perceived locus of causality (E-PLOC). In con-trast, providing choice (Zuckerman, Porac, Lathin,Smith, & Deci, 1978) and acknowledging people’s in-ner experience (Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt,1984) prompted more of an I-PLOC, enhanced intrin-sic motivation, and augmented people’s confidence intheir performance (Tafarodi, Milne, & Smith, 1999).Subsequent studies indicated that events such as evalu-ations, rewards, and choice, which had been shown toaffect intrinsic motivation in reliable ways, also hadcorresponding effects on creativity, cognitive flexibil-ity, and conceptual learning. For example, rewards andevaluations were found to decrease creativity(Amabile, 1982), complex problem solving (McGraw& McCullers, 1979), and deep conceptual processingof information (Grolnick & Ryan, 1987).

Although the idea of a shift in perceived locus ofcausality (PLOC) was descriptively useful with re-spect to the changes in intrinsic motivation and effec-tive performance, there was still the deeper question ofwhy PLOC would have such a significant impact onmotivation and behavior. Deci and Ryan (1980) tiedPLOC to people’s need to feel autonomous, suggestingthat contextual events affect intrinsic motivation andthe quality of functioning because they influence theextent to which people experience autonomy while en-gaged in an activity. Motivational strategies such as re-wards and threats undermine autonomy and thus leadto nonoptimal outcomes such as decreased intrinsicmotivation, less creativity, and poorer problem solv-ing. In contrast, providing choice and acknowledgingfeelings can enhance the sense of self-initiation—ofbeing an origin (deCharms, 1968)—thus providing sat-isfaction of the need for autonomy and resulting inmore positive outcomes.

Some recent intrinsic motivation studies show themediating role of perceived autonomy. For example,an experiment by Reeve and Deci (1996) examined theeffects of competition within a controlling versusnoncontrolling setting on participants’ intrinsic moti-vation for puzzle solving. Results indicated not onlythat pressuring people to win by establishing a compe-tition within a controlling context led to less intrinsicmotivation than competition within a noncontrollingcontext, but also that participants’ perceptions of theirown autonomy mediated this effect.

Field studies in schools (e.g., Deci, Schwartz et al.,1981; Ryan & Grolnick, 1986) and work organizations(Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989) complemented the lab-oratory experiments by showing in real-world settingsthat providing autonomy support, relative to control,was associated with more positive outcomes, includinggreater intrinsic motivation, increased satisfaction, andenhanced well-being.

Intrinsic Motivation and Competence

Other early experiments showed that positivefeedback enhanced intrinsic motivation relative to nofeedback (Boggiano & Ruble, 1979; Deci, 1971) andthat negative feedback decreased intrinsic motivationrelative to no feedback (Deci & Cascio, 1972). Deciand Ryan (1980) linked these results to the need forcompetence (White, 1959), suggesting that eventssuch as positive feedback that signify effectance pro-vide satisfaction of the need for competence, thus en-hancing intrinsic motivation, whereas events such asnegative feedback that convey ineffectance tend tothwart the need for competence and thus undermineintrinsic motivation. A study by Vallerand and Reid(1984) confirmed that felt competence mediated the

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effects of positive versus negative feedback on intrin-sic motivation.

Additional studies concerned with performance andpositive feedback revealed that positive feedback hasits enhancement effect on intrinsic motivation onlywhen individuals feel responsible for the competentperformance (Fisher, 1978) or when it is provided in away that does not eclipse their feelings of autonomy(Ryan, 1982). Thus, it appears that the optimal circum-stances for intrinsic motivation are those that allow sat-isfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence,circumstances that we labelinformational (Deci &Ryan, 1980, 1985b). More specifically, we suggestthat whereas perceived competence is necessary forany type of motivation, perceived autonomy is re-quired for the motivation to be intrinsic.

To summarize, intrinsic motivation involves peoplefreely engaging in activities that they find interesting,that provide novelty and optimal challenge. Researchon intrinsic motivation for initially interesting activi-ties has shown reliably that: (a) events such as rewardsthat foster an E-PLOC tend to undermine intrinsic mo-tivation, whereas events such as choice that foster anI-PLOC tend to enhance intrinsic motivation; (b)events such as negative feedback that foster perceivedincompetence tend to undermine intrinsic motivation,whereas events such as positive feedback that fosterperceived competence tend to enhance intrinsic moti-vation, although people must feel responsible for thecompetent performance in order for perceived compe-tence to have positive effects on intrinsic motivation.Thus, the concept of supporting versus thwarting ful-fillment of basic psychological needs for autonomyand competence worked well to provide an integratedaccount of this network of empirical results.

Intrinsic Motivation and Relatedness

Although autonomy and competence have beenfound to be the most powerful influences on intrinsicmotivation, theory and research suggest that related-ness also plays a role, albeit a more distal one, in themaintenance of intrinsic motivation. This became evi-dent, for example, in the serendipitous finding thatwhen children worked on an interesting activity in thepresence of an adult experimenter who ignored theirattempts to interact, the children displayed a very lowlevel of intrinsic motivation (Anderson, Manoogian, &Reznick, 1976). The idea that relatedness is importantfor intrinsic motivation is also implicit in attachmenttheory (Bowlby, 1979). During infancy, intrinsic moti-vation is observable as exploratory behavior, and at-tachment theorists suggested that exploration is morerobust when infants are securely attached to a parent.Studies of mothers and their young children show thatmaternal autonomy support as well as the security of

attachment presumed to be fostered by it (Bretherton,1987) are both associated with exploratory behaviors(e.g., Frodi, Bridges, & Grolnick, 1985).

Indeed, across the life span, SDT hypothesizes thatintrinsic motivation will be more likely to flourish incontexts characterized by a sense of secure relatedness(Ryan & La Guardia, 2000). For example, Ryan andGrolnick (1986) and Ryan, Stiller, and Lynch (1994)showed greater intrinsic motivation in students whoexperienced their teachers as warm and caring. None-theless, we believe that there are situations in which re-latedness is less central to intrinsic motivation thanautonomy and competence. People often engage in in-trinsically motivated behaviors (e.g., playing solitaire,hiking) in isolation, suggesting that relational supportsmay not be necessary as proximal factors in maintain-ing intrinsic motivation. Instead, a secure relationalbase appears to provide a needed backdrop—a distalsupport—for intrinsic motivation, a sense of securitythat makes the expression of this innate growth ten-dency more likely and more robust.

After more than a decade of detailing the so-cial-contextual factors that enhance versus diminishintrinsic motivation by allowing versus thwarting sat-isfaction of the needs for competence and autonomy,work guided by SDT turned to a fuller consideration ofthe concept of extrinsic motivation. Until that point,extrinsic motivation had been studied primarily interms of how it affected intrinsic motivation, beingviewed by many as invariantly controlling and thus asinvariantly antagonistic to intrinsic motivation (e.g.,deCharms, 1968). We hypothesized, however, that ex-trinsically motivated behaviors are not invariantly con-trolled but, instead, can vary in the degree to whichthey are self-determined versus controlled. To supportthat hypothesis we formulated a more differentiatedconception of extrinsic motivation, which we builtaround the concept of internalization.

The Internalization of ExtrinsicMotivation: Needs and IntegratedSelf-Regulation

Numerous theories utilize the concept of internal-ization as a central process in socialization (Kelman,1958; Lepper, 1983; Meissner, 1988; Schafer, 1968)providing differing perspectives that range from inter-nalization being something that gets done to individu-als by the socializing environment (e.g., Mead, 1934)to something that represents the individual’s activetransformation of external regulations into inner val-ues (Ryan, 1993; Schafer, 1968).

SDT, with its organismic-dialectical metatheory,proposes that, like intrinsic motivation,internalizationis an active, natural process in which individuals at-tempt to transform socially sanctioned mores or re-

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quests into personally endorsed values andself-regulations (Ryan et al., 1985). It is the meansthrough which individuals assimilate and reconstituteformerly external regulations so the individuals can beself-determined while enacting them. When the inter-nalization process functions optimally, people willidentify with the importance of social regulations, as-similate them into their integrated sense of self, andthus fully accept them as their own. In doing so, theywill become more integrated not only intrapsychically,but also socially. However, when the internalizationprocess is forestalled, regulations and values may ei-ther remain external or be only partially internalized toform introjects or unintegrated identifications. To dif-fering degrees, these forms of regulation—external,introjected, and identified—represent less than fullyself-determined behaving. We consider each of thesetypes of regulation in turn.

External regulation. This is the classic case ofextrinsic motivation in which people’s behavior is con-trolled by specific external contingencies. People be-have to attain a desired consequence such as tangiblerewards or to avoid a threatened punishment. This, inessence, is the only type of regulation recognized in op-erant theory (e.g., B. F. Skinner, 1953), and it is a typeof extrinsic motivation that has been extensively exam-ined and found to be undermining of intrinsic motiva-tion (Deci et al., 1999a). In SDT, external regulation isconsidered controlling, and externally regulated be-haviors are predicted to be contingency dependent inthat they show poor maintenance and transfer once con-tingencies are withdrawn (Deci & Ryan, 1985b).

Introjection. This entails individuals’ taking inexternal regulations and maintaining them in a formthat is relatively isomorphic with the external regula-tions (Ryan & Connell, 1989). Fittingly, Perls (1973)described introjection as swallowing regulations wholewithout digesting them. Whereas with external regula-tion the control of behavior comes from contingentconsequences that are administered by others, withintrojected regulation the contingent consequences areadministered by the individuals to themselves. The pro-totypic examples are contingent self-worth (pride) orthreats of guilt and shame. Introjection is often mani-fested as ego involvements (Ryan, 1982), publicself-consciousness (Plant & Ryan, 1985), or falseself-ascriptions (Kuhl & Kazen, 1994). Introjectionrepresents a partial internalization in which regulationsare in the person but have not really become part of theintegrated set of motivations, cognitions, and affectsthat constitute theself. Because introjected regulationshave not been assimilated to the self, the resulting be-haviors are not self-determined. As such, introjected

regulations are particularly interesting because theseregulations are within the person, but still relatively ex-ternal to the self. Unlike external regulations that havepoor maintenance and transfer, introjected regulationshave been partially internalized and are thus morelikely than external regulations to be maintained overtime, but they nonetheless remain a relatively unstableform of regulation (e.g., Koestner, Losier, Vallerand, &Carducci, 1996).

Identification. This is the process through whichpeople recognize and accept the underlying value of abehavior. By identifying with a behavior’s value, peo-ple have more fully internalized its regulation; theyhave more fully accepted it as their own. For example,if people identified with the importance of exercisingregularly for their own health and well-being, theywould exercise more volitionally. The internalizationwould have been fuller than with introjection, and thebehavior would have become more a part of their iden-tity. The resulting behavior would be more autono-mous, although it would still be extrinsically motivatedbecause the behavior would still be instrumental (in thiscase to being healthier), rather than being done solely asa source of spontaneous enjoyment and satisfaction.Regulations based on identifications, because the selfhas endorsed them, are expected to be better main-tained and to be associated with higher commitmentand performance.

Integration. This is the fullest, most completeform of internalization of extrinsic motivation, for itnot only involves identifying with the importance ofbehaviors but also integrating those identificationswith other aspects of the self. When regulations are in-tegrated people will have fully accepted them by bring-ing them into harmony or coherence with other aspectsof their values and identity (Pelletier, Tuson, &Haddad, 1997; Ryan, 1995). As such, what was initiallyexternal regulation will have been fully transformedinto self-regulation, and the result is self-determinedextrinsic motivation.

Autonomous and controlled motivation. Whenthe process of internalization is differentially success-ful, such that external regulations are internalizedthrough the processes of introjection, identification, orintegration, the result will be different types of extrinsicmotivation that vary in the extent to which they are con-trolled versus autonomous. External regulation, whichis evident when no internalization has occurred, repre-sents the most controlled form of extrinsic motivation,for people’s behavior is regulated by others’ adminis-tration of contingencies. Introjected regulation, which

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involves internal prods and pressures and is character-ized by inner conflict between the demand of the intro-ject and the person’s lack of desire to carry it out is stillrelatively controlled even though the regulation iswithin the person. In contrast, by identifying with thevalue of the activity, internalization will be fuller, peo-ple will experience greater ownership of the behaviorand feel less conflict about behaving in accord with theregulation, and the behavior will be more autonomous.Finally, with integration, the most complete and effec-tive internalization, the person’s extrinsically moti-vated actions will be fully volitional.

The four regulatory styles, ranging from external tointegrated regulation and representing the four types ofextrinsic motivation, fall along a continuum anchoredby controlled and autonomous regulation. These fourtypes of regulatory processes are presented in the cen-ter section of Figure 1 and represent the outcomes of anongoing person–environment interaction in which theperson has been less versus more effective in internal-izing and integrating the regulation of an activity orclass of activities (see, e.g., Ryan & Connell, 1989;Vallerand, 1997).

At the far right end of Figure 1 is intrinsic motiva-tion. It is placed there because it is the prototype ofself-determined activity and as such represents a stan-dard against which the qualities of an extrinsically mo-tivated behavior can be compared to determine itsdegree of self-determination. However, the verticalline between integrated regulation and intrinsic moti-vation is intended to emphasize that fully internalizedextrinsic motivation does not typically become intrin-sic motivation. It remains extrinsic motivation be-cause, even though fully volitional, it is instrumentalrather than being what Csikszentmihalyi (1975) re-ferred to as autotelic.

To summarize, goal-directed activities can differ inthe extent to which they are autonomous or self-deter-mined—that is, in the extent to which they are enactedwith a full sense of volition and choice. Intrinsic moti-vation and well-internalized extrinsic motivation arethe bases for autonomous or self-determined behavior.In contrast, behavior is considered controlled ornon-self-determined to the extent that people feel pres-sured to do it. External and introjected regulations arethe processes through which behavior is controlled.Although many empirically based theories treat moti-vation as a unitary concept, variable only in amountrather than kind (e.g., Bandura, 1996; Locke &Latham, 1990), our approach focuses on the kind ofmotivation or regulation—specifically, the degree towhich it is self-determined versus controlled.

Autonomous and controlled activities involvedifferent types of regulatory processes, yet both areinstances of intentional (i.e., motivated) behavior.In contrast,amotivationis a state in which peoplelack the intention to behave, and thus lack motiva-tion as that term is defined in the cognitive-motiva-tional tradition. According to SDT, people arelikely to be amotivated when they lack either asense of efficacy or a sense of control with respectto a desired outcome—that is, when they are notable to regulate themselves with respect to a behav-ior (Pelletier, Dion, Tuson, & Green-Demers,1999). Amotivation is shown at the far left end ofthe continuum in Figure 1. All forms of extrinsicregulation, even the most controlled, involveintentionality and motivation, so amotivationstands in contrast to intrinsic and extrinsic motiva-tion, for it represents the lack of both types of moti-vation and thus a complete lack of self-determina-tion with respect to the target behavior.

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Figure 1. The self-determination continuum, showing the motivational, self-regulatory, and perceived locus of causalitybases of behaviors that vary in the degree to which they are self-determined.

Internalization and Need Satisfaction

The internalization and integration of values andregulations is assumed in SDT to be a natural develop-mental tendency. For example, Chandler and Connell(1987) showed that, increasingly with age, childrendisplayed internalized regulation of behaviors thatwere originally externally compelled. Yet internaliza-tion, like other natural processes such as intrinsic moti-vation, requires nutriments to function effectively; inother words, internalization does not happen automati-cally. The degree to which people are able to activelysynthesize cultural demands, values, and regulationsand to incorporate them into the self is in large part afunction of the degree to which fulfillment of the basicpsychological needs is supported as they engage in therelevant behaviors.

SDT proposes that people will tend naturally to in-ternalize the values and regulations of their socialgroups. This tendency is facilitated by feelings of relat-edness to socializing others, as well as feelings of com-petence with respect to the regulation beinginternalized. The latter includes the ability to under-stand or grasp the meaning or rationale behind the reg-ulation and an ability to enact it. Supports forrelatedness and competence thus facilitate internaliza-tion and can be sufficient to produce introjected valuesor compartmentalized (poorly integrated) identifica-tions. However, for a regulation to become more inte-gral to one’s self, supports for autonomy are alsorequired. That is, although support for relatedness andcompetence needs may promote the internalization ofa regulation or value, those supports alone will not besufficient to foster integration. For integration to occurthere must be an opportunity for the individual tofreely process and endorse transmitted values and reg-ulations (and to modify or transform them when neces-sary). Excessive external pressures, controls, andevaluations appear to forestall rather than facilitate thisactive, constructive process of giving personal mean-ing and valence to acquired regulations.

Field research and laboratory experiments providedsupport for our general hypothesis. For example,Grolnick and Ryan (1989) interviewed parents oflate-elementary students in their homes and then as-sessed the children’s motivation and internalization intheir classrooms. This study revealed that the degree towhich parents provided autonomy support, optimalstructure, and interpersonal involvement concerningtheir children’s school work directly affected the ex-tent to which the children valued and internalized theregulation of school-related activities. Parents whowere rated by the interviewers as more involved andautonomy supportive had children who displayed notonly more intrinsic motivation but also more internal-ized self-regulation for academic endeavors. In turnthis was associated with enhanced performance and

well-being. Subsequently, Grolnick, Ryan, and Deci(1991) showed that children’s perceptions of parentalinvolvement and autonomy support also predictedmore autonomous self-regulation.

Williams and Deci (1996) provided data showingthe generalizability of this model of internalization tomedical school settings. In a course emphasizing thathigh-quality health care involves attending not only tobiological and pharmacological factors but also to psy-chological and social factors in the patients, the re-searchers found that when the instructors were moreautonomy supportive, the students showed greater in-ternalization of the values presented in the course andthey became more autonomously motivated for learn-ing the course material. This internalization was evi-denced in corresponding behaviors a full 6 monthsafter the course ended.

A laboratory experiment by Deci, Eghrari, Patrick,and Leone (1994) complemented the interview andquestionnaire studies. In it, three factors theorized tofacilitate internalization of the regulation for uninter-esting activities were manipulated: a meaningful ratio-nale, so people will understand why the target behavioris important; an acknowledgment of their feelings thatthe activity is not interesting, so they will feel under-stood; and an emphasis on choice rather than control,so they will feel free to accept responsibility for the be-havior. After an experimental period of performing anuninteresting activity under one of the experimentalconditions, participants were given a free-choice pe-riod in which they had the option of continuing to en-gage the activity or do other things. They thencompleted a questionnaire concerning their experi-ence. Results indicated that the three factors did indeedfacilitate internalization, as each contributed to theamount of subsequent self-initiated behavior and to theself-reported value and enjoyment of the activity.Thus, the social conditions that were expected to allowgreater need satisfaction did lead to more internaliza-tion of the regulation for the target activity.

There was another important finding as well.Noting that even in conditions with a relative absenceof facilitating factors there was some internalization,the researchers examined the type of internalization invarious conditions. They found that in conditions withtwo or three facilitating factors the internalizationtended to be integrated as reflected by significant posi-tive correlations between the subsequent behavior andthe self-reports of valuing and enjoying the task andfeeling free while doing it, whereas in conditions withone or no facilitating factors the internalization that oc-curred appeared to be only introjected as reflected bynegative correlations between subsequent behaviorand the self-report variables. In the latter conditions,people who behaved more felt less free and enjoyed theactivity less. Thus, it appears that conditions providingsupports for psychological need satisfaction tend not

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only to promote more internalization but also to ensurethat the internalization will be integrated, relative toconditions less supportive of need satisfaction.

To summarize, research on internalization of ex-trinsic motivation highlights the human readiness tointernalize ambient values and regulations. Yet to fullyintegrate such values and regulations, and thus to be-come self-determined with respect to them, peoplemust grasp their importance and synthesize theirmeaning with respect to other values and motivations.Sheldon and Elliot (1998) described this state of inte-grated functioning asself-concordance, a state inwhich people’s needs are in harmony with their activ-ity. The holistic processing and self-compatibilitychecking (Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998) that is necessaryto act with self-concordance requires the experience offreedom from rejection by others, from indicators ofincompetence, and from excessive pressures. In thissense, supports for relatedness, competence, and au-tonomy allow individuals to actively transform valuesand regulations into their own, and thus to be moreself-determined. In short, to the extent that adoptingvalues and behaviors that are manifest in the socialworld garners acceptance by the social world and per-mits efficacious functioning in it, people will be in-clined to internalize the values and behavioralregulations. To the extent that they are able to experi-ence supports for autonomy, they will be more likely toactively integrate the values and regulations, and thusto volitionally or authentically carry out the behaviorsthey inspire.

The Process of (or Why) Goal PursuitsMakes a Difference

In the introduction to this article, we state that dif-ferentiating pursuit and attainment of goals in terms oftheir process (why) and content (what) is important forpredicting behavioral quality and mental health. Wefurther state that the concept of basic needs provides abasis for such assertions. After having clarified themeaning of basic psychological needs, we reviewedseveral studies concerning the relation of social con-texts to the natural processes of intrinsic motivationand integration of extrinsic motivation. It was our at-tempt to integrate the results of these various studiesthat led us initially to posit the existence of the threebasic psychological needs. We now turn to a review ofresearch indicating that the process of goal pur-suits—that is, whether pursuit and attainment of goalsis autonomous versus controlled—does indeed makean important difference in terms of effectiveness andwell-being because these different modes of regulationallow different amounts of need satisfaction. Subse-quently, we turn to a consideration of goal content.

Numerous studies in educational settings investi-gated the consequences of more autonomous self-reg-ulation for the quality of behavior and mental health.Most of these studies assessed self-regulation using anapproach developed by Ryan and Connell (1989) inwhich people are asked why they engage in various be-haviors (e.g., why students do their homework, whypatients take their medications, etc.) and are provideddifferent reasons that represent the different regulatorystyles, ranging from external regulation to the more au-tonomous forms of self-regulation. Respondents ratethe extent to which each reason is true for them, andthey get a score for each style that can then be used sep-arately to predict behavior and affect or, alternatively,can be combined algebraically to form an overall rela-tive autonomy index (RAI).

In a series of studies, elementary school studentsindicated the extent to which they did variousschool-related behaviors for external, introjected,identified, or intrinsic reasons (e.g., Grolnick &Ryan, 1987, 1989; Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991).As expected, the four subscales that were usedformed a simplex-like pattern in which the scales thatwere theoretically closer were more strongly corre-lated, indicating that these regulatory styles can beordered along an underlying dimension of autonomy.Although intrinsic motivation is innate and thus doesnot result from internalization, the fact that it corre-lated more strongly with identified regulation thanwith introjected or external regulation indicated, astheorized, that the more fully a student identifies witha regulation, the more closely the quality of regula-tion approximates that of intrinsic motivation.

Grolnick and Ryan (1987) found that students whowere more autonomous in reading text materialshowed greater conceptual understanding of the mate-rial than those who were more controlled. Grolnick,Ryan, and Deci (1991) found a positive relation be-tween children’s autonomous motivation (i.e., identi-fied and intrinsic reasons) for learning and objectivemeasures of achievement and teacher reports of thechildren’s competence. Miserandino (1996) foundthat, even controlling for prior achievement scores, au-tonomous self-regulatory styles and perceived compe-tence of third-grade and fourth-grade studentspredicted their positive school attitudes and perfor-mance (course grades and standardized test scores).Black and Deci (2000) showed that college studentswho were more autonomously motivated for organicchemistry enjoyed the course more and got highergrades than students who were more controlled in theirmotivation.

Ryan and Connell (1989) found that introjected reg-ulation (a relatively controlled style) and identifiedregulation (a relatively autonomous style) were corre-lated with children’s self-reports of trying hard inschool and with parents’ reports of their children being

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motivated for school work. However, introjection waspositively correlated with anxiety in school andmaladaptive coping with failures, whereas identifica-tion was positively correlated with enjoyment ofschool and proactive coping with failures. This findingis particularly important because it suggests that stu-dents who are relatively controlled may look as moti-vated as students who are more autonomous, but thestudents whose motivation is controlled are likely to bedoing less well in their performance and, even more so,in their well-being.

Vallerand and Bissonnette (1992) assessed the aca-demic motivation of Canadian junior college studentsat the beginning of a school year. Subsequently, the re-searchers compared these initial motivation scores ofstudents who had dropped out during the year andthose who had stayed in school. Results indicated thatthe dropouts had significantly lower scores on identi-fied, integrated, and intrinsic regulation than thosewho stayed in school. Vallerand, Fortier, and Guay(1997) did a follow-up study in which they used struc-tural equation modelling to examine antecedents andconsequences of autonomous motivation, finding thatautonomy support from parents and teachers led stu-dents to be more autonomously motivated and to feelmore competent for school work, which in turn re-sulted in less dropout.

Hayamizu (1997) and Yamauchi and Tanaka(1998) assessed external, introjected, identified, andintrinsic motives in Japanese students, showing a sim-plex-like structure to the relations among these regula-tory styles and also effects of these styles on attitudes,coping, and outcomes that are similar to the ones wefound in the United States and Vallerand and his col-leagues found in Canada. Even more recently, Chirkovand Ryan (in press) showed cross-cultural similaritiesin motive structures and in the effects of auton-omy-supportive versus controlling styles of teachersand parents upon the motive structures in Russian andU.S. high school students.

In a course on interviewing, Williams and Deci(1996) found that medical students who were more au-tonomous felt more competent at medical interviewingand subsequently behaved in ways that were more con-gruent with the values espoused in the course. Thisstudy suggested, therefore, that when students aremore autonomous in learning they will be more likelyto adopt the educationally transmitted behaviors (as-suming that the behaviors are not inconsistent withtheir integrated selves). Sheldon and Elliot (1998) re-ported that more autonomous reasons for pursingachievement goals among college students were asso-ciated with more personal dedication to the goals andmore goal attainment than were controlled reasons.Further, Sheldon and Kasser (1998) found that whenstudents were more autonomously self-regulating theydisplayed more goal-attainment progress and the goal

attainment was positively related to well-beingoutcomes. However, when the students’ behavior wasrelatively controlled, they did not display the large in-creases in well-being following goal attainment.

To summarize, studies of student motivation in ele-mentary through medical schools and in diverse cul-tures indicate that the SDT model of regulatory styleshas considerable generalizability. Students’ pursuit ofeducational goals for autonomous, relative toheteronomous, reasons has been positively associatedwith value endorsement, behavioral persistence, con-ceptual understanding, personal adjustment, and posi-tive coping. The “why” of goal pursuits does make adifference in terms of educational outcomes.

Additional studies show the applicability of theSDT model to other domains in which internalizationis implicated. For example, in a study of religious be-havior, Ryan, Rigby, and King (1993) assessed the rea-sons why various Christian samples engage inbehaviors such as going to church or praying regularly.Participants also completed various measures of psy-chological health and well-being. Results revealed thatparticipants’ scores on the introjection scale were neg-atively related to indicators of mental health whereastheir scores on the identification scale were positivelyrelated to those same indicators. In other words, reli-gious behaviors themselves did not relate to well-beingbut the reasons people engaged in those religious be-haviors did. Being more autonomous in their religiousbehaviors was associated with better mental health, butbeing more controlled was associated with poorermental health. Strahan and Craig (1995), using largelyAustralian samples, found further that religious par-ents who used a more autonomy-supportive as op-posed to authoritarian style were more likely toengender identified rather than introjected beliefs.

Several studies of health-related behaviors used theSDT model of internalization in assessing why patientsengage in physician-prescribed health-relevant behav-iors such as taking medications or improving their di-ets. Results of one study showed that morbidly obesepatients participating in a 6-month, medically super-vised, low-calorie diet program who experienced thestaff as more autonomy supportive also reported moreautonomous reasons for participating and, in turn, hadbetter attendance, lost more weight during the pro-gram, exercised more regularly, and had better main-tained weight loss at a 23-month follow-up (Williams,Grow, Freedman, Ryan, & Deci, 1996). In anotherstudy (Williams, Rodin, Ryan, Grolnick, & Deci,1998), patients reported reasons why they took theirlong-term medications, and results showed that themore autonomous their reasons the better their adher-ence. Williams, Freedman, and Deci (1998) found thatpatients with diabetes who experienced their providersas more autonomy supportive became more autono-mous in their reasons for following treatment regimens

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and showed greater physiologically indexed improve-ment in glucose control over a yearlong treatment pe-riod. Finally, Williams, Gagné, Ryan, and Deci (2000)found that the degree to which trained observers rateddoctors as more autonomy supportive predicted pa-tients’ level of autonomous motivation for smokingcessation, and that significantly predicted their6-month and 30-month biochemically validated cessa-tion rates.

Research on regulatory styles in several other be-havioral domains has revealed complementary find-ings. Greenstein and Koestner (1996) found that whenstudents’ reasons for making New Years’ resolutionswere more autonomous, the students were more likelyto have maintained their resolutions 2 months later.Koestner, Losier, et al. (1996) found that identifiedreasons for following political issues were associatedwith actively seeking relevant political information,holding more complex political positions, and actuallyvoting in the relevant elections, whereas introjectedreasons were associated with relying on the opinions ofothers, experiencing conflicted emotions about out-comes, and being vulnerable to persuasion.

Seguin, Pelletier, and Hunsley (1998) found thatpeople with autonomous (i.e., identified and inte-grated) reasons for protecting the environment soughtout more information about the environment and weremore persistent in carrying out behaviors that pro-tected the environment than were those with controlledreasons. Further, it appears that the positive relationbetween self-determined motivation and environmen-tally protective behaviors is stronger when the requi-site behaviors are more difficult (Green-Demers,Pelletier, & Menard, 1997), suggesting that autono-mous motivation is particularly important whengreater effort or persistence is required to carry out asocially valued action.

Studies have begun to look at internalization andtreatment motivation. Pelletier et al. (1997) developedan internalization measure for psychotherapy andshowed that more autonomous motivations were asso-ciated with greater satisfaction, less tension, more pos-itive moods during therapy, and greater intentions topersist in treatment. Ryan, Plant, and O’Malley (1995)found that patients in an alcohol treatment programwho reported more autonomous reasons for participat-ing attended more regularly and were more involved inthe treatment than were those reporting more con-trolled reasons. Finally, Zeldman, Ryan, and Fiscella(1999) found that patients in a methadone maintenanceprogram who had more self-determined treatment mo-tivation showed greater adherence, including fewerfailures at random urine tests for illicit drug use. Fur-ther, perceived autonomy-support from clinic staff wasalso related to better outcomes.

To summarize, research using regulatory styles hasbeen conducted in several behavioral domains ranging

from education to sport, and politics to health care. Re-sults of the studies showed consistently that more fullyinternalized regulation was associated with greater be-havioral persistence, more effective performance, andbetter mental and physical health.

Causality Orientations

This approach to studying different processes forregulating goal-directed behavior complements theregulatory-styles approach by examining individualdifferences in the general tendencies toward autono-mous, controlled, and impersonal causality in the regu-lation of behavior. The causality orientations methodcuts across domains by providing varied scenarios andassessing the degree to which people are (1)autonomyoriented, which involves regulating their behavior onthe basis of interests and self-endorsed values, (2)con-trol oriented, which involves orienting toward controlsand directives concerning how they should behave,and (3)impersonally oriented, which involves focus-ing on indicators of ineffectance and not behaving in-tentionally. These three orientations are representative,respectively, of general tendencies toward (1) intrinsicmotivation and well-integrated extrinsic motivation;(2) external and introjected regulation; and (3)amotivation and lack of intentional action. InVallerand’s (1997) hierarchical model of motivation,causality orientations are at the highest level of gener-ality, with domain-specific regulatory styles belowthem.

Autonomy and control. Respondents on theGeneral Causality Orientations Scale (Deci & Ryan,1985a) get a score for each orientation reflecting thestrength of that general tendency, although in this dis-cussion we focus primarily on autonomy and control.In the initial research by Deci and Ryan the autonomyorientation was found to relate positively to self-actual-ization, self-esteem, ego development, and other indi-cators of well-being. As expected, the controlled orien-tation was not positively associated with well-being butinstead was related to public self-consciousness and theType-A coronary prone behavior pattern, indicatingthat the focus tends to be outward and pressured.

In a set of studies, Koestner, Bernieri, andZuckerman (1992) explored the relation of the auton-omy and controlled orientations to integration in per-sonality. They first separated individuals according towhether the individuals tended to be more autonomousor more controlled as a function of which standardizedscore was higher, and then they examined the consis-tency among behaviors, traits, and attitudes. Resultsindicated that autonomy-oriented individuals dis-played a strong positive relation among behaviors and

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self-reports of traits or attitudes, whereas those whowere control-oriented displayed weak or even negativerelations among various aspects of their personalities.These studies therefore provided an empirical link be-tween the concepts of autonomy and integration in thatthose whose regulation was more autonomous showedgreater congruence among personality, awareness, andbehavior.

As would be expected, studies show that the generalautonomy and controlled orientations are predictive ofregulatory styles in various domains (Vallerand,1997). For example, a study by Williams and Deci(1996) found that causality orientations scores pre-dicted students’ regulatory styles for learning and Wil-liams, Grow et al. (1996) found that causalityorientations scores predicted patients’ regulatorystyles for weight loss and exercise.

Hodgins, Koestner, and Duncan (1996) examinedhow the autonomy and controlled orientations relate tointerpersonal functioning in different relationships.Results indicated that the autonomy orientation waspositively related to individuals’ experiencing satisfy-ing, honest, naturally occurring interactions with par-ents and friends, whereas the controlled orientationwas positively related to defensive functioning. Inother words, being more autonomous as a general ori-entation was associated with more positive and satisfy-ing personal relationships. This is particularlyinteresting in light of the frequently espoused positionthat autonomy and relatedness are incompatible orcompeting aspects of experience (e.g., Blos, 1979; Jor-dan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991).

Like Angyal (1965), we argue that there are two im-portant trajectories in human development, both ofwhich require competencies and are subserved by thebasic psychological needs (Ryan, 1993). It is in peo-ple’s nature to develop greater autonomy (as repre-sented by greater integration within the self) andgreater relatedness (as represented by the assimilationand integration of oneself within the social commu-nity). Not only are the two trajectories not antithetical,but the healthiest development involves both. The in-compatibility arises only when the social context isstructured in a way that turns the needs against eachother. For example, a recent study of late-adolescentchildren by Assor, Roth, and Deci (2000) shows thatgreater parental use of conditional love as a disciplin-ary technique (which requires children to subjugate au-tonomy to gain love) was associated not only with thechildren’s feeling compelled (rather than wanting) tocarry out the target behaviors but also with the chil-dren’s feeling less loved and experiencing more gener-alized anger and resentment toward their parents.

Detachment and independence are indeed incom-patible with relatedness, and the confusion about therelation between autonomy and relatedness may stemfrom the misinterpretation of autonomy as detachment

or independence. To be autonomous does not mean tobe detached from or independent of others, and in factRyan and Lynch (1989) showed how autonomy can bepositively associated with relatedness and well-being.Autonomy involves being volitional, acting from one’sintegrated sense of self, and endorsing one’s actions. Itdoes not entail being separate from, not relying upon,or being independent of others.

Impersonality and amotivation. Our research(Deci & Ryan, 1985a) on causality orientations alsoshowed that the impersonal orientation was associatedwith an external locus of control (i.e., the belief that onecannot control outcomes) and with self-derogation anddepression, implying a negative relation to generalwell-being. These finding were also consistent with re-search by Pelletier et al. (1999) on the beliefs associatedwith amotivation. Those researchers found that peo-ple’s general sense of amotivation with respect to en-gaging in recycling and other environmentally friendlybehaviors resulted from believing that they are not re-ally capable of carrying out the necessary behaviorsand that the behaviors do not make a difference to theenvironment anyway.

Amotivation and the impersonal causality orienta-tion result from and foster lack of basic need satisfac-tion. Not only do they imply lack of autonomy (as doescontrolled motivation) but they also imply lack ofcompetence and/or relatedness. Accordingly, they areassociated with the poorest performance and men-tal-health outcomes (Ryan, Deci, & Grolnick, 1995).

Need Satisfaction ThroughAutonomous Regulation

Individuals can engage in a variety of goal-directedbehaviors in an attempt to attain competence and relat-edness, behaviors that could be either controlled or au-tonomous. For example, an athlete might workrelentlessly to become more competent than others, ora fraternity member might behave in accord with socialnorms to feel related to the group. In both of thesecases, the behaviors could be either autonomous orcontrolled. That is, the athlete could feel competentwhether the practicing was autonomous or controlled,and the fraternity member could feel related to thegroup whether or not the regulatory basis of the mem-ber’s relational behavior was self-determined. Thus,autonomy occupies a unique position in the set of threeneeds: being able to satisfy the needs for competenceand relatedness may be enough for controlled behav-ior, but being able to satisfy the need for autonomy isessential for the goal-directed behavior to be self-de-termined and for many of the optimal outcomes associ-ated with self-determination to accrue.

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Various studies support this view. For example,Fisher (1978) found that being competent but not au-tonomous was not enough to sustain intrinsic motiva-tion, and Nix, Ryan, Manly, and Deci (1999) showedthat successful performance enhanced intrinsic moti-vation and subjective vitality only when people experi-enced autonomy as well as competence. Similarly,Blais, Sabourin, Boucher, and Vallerand (1990) dis-covered that being in a close relationship without asense of autonomy was associated with lower enjoy-ment, satisfaction, and well-being. Thus, as SDT pre-dicts, this research indicates that only when people’sfeelings of relatedness and competence result from be-haviors that are autonomous—behaviors that emanatefrom the self—will the people display optimal engage-ment and psychological well-being (Ryan, 1993). Itseems that when people are more able to satisfy allthree of their basic psychological needs the regulationof their behavior will be characterized by choice, voli-tion, and autonomy rather than pressure, demand, andcontrol, and the result will be higher quality behaviorand greater psychological well-being.

In Summary

The distinction between amotivation and motiva-tion appears in numerous motivational theories (undervarious terminologies), and there is little doubt aboutthe fact that amotivation is associated with a widerange of highly negative outcomes. The distinction be-tween autonomous and controlled types of motivation,which is relatively unique to SDT, is also a function-ally important distinction, as shown by research fo-cused at the general level of causality orientations andat the more domain-specific level of regulatory styles.When people’s goal-directed behavior is autonomousrather than controlled, the correlates and consequencesare more positive in terms of the quality of their behav-ior as well as their health and well-being. Thewhyofgoal pursuits does indeed matter, and we argue that thisis because autonomous regulation involves greaterneed satisfaction.

Psychological Needs as Innate orEssential Propensities

We have now seen that the postulate of three basicpsychological needs evolved because of the conceptutility for integrating the results of research on intrinsicmotivation and internalization of extrinsic motivation.As well, we saw that intrinsic motivation and well-in-ternalized forms of extrinsic motivation were associ-ated with better performance and greater well-being,suggesting that need satisfaction promoted those out-comes. However, given our definition of needs as be-

ing innate and essential, there are three additional is-sues that must be addressed. First, it is necessary to es-tablish a clear link between satisfaction of the needs forcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy and variousindicators of well-being. Second, it is important toshow that these needs are operative across cultures as away of providing evidence about their universality.And third, it is imperative to show that the concept ofneeds and its role in the theory are tenable from an evo-lutionary perspective. We address these issues in turn.

Basic Psychological Need Satisfactionand Well-Being

Recently, we have been engaged in diverse studiesto show that satisfaction of autonomy, competence,and relatedness needs are linked directly to well-being.Well-being, which has interested scholars through theages, concerns the experience of psychological healthand life satisfaction. However, in our view, well-beingis not simply a subjective experience of affectpositivity but is also an organismic function in whichthe person detects the presence or absence of vitality,psychological flexibility, and a deep inner sense ofwellness (Ryan & Frederick, 1997; Ryan, Deci et al.,1995). Accordingly, SDT predicts that fluctuations inneed satisfaction will directly predict fluctuations inwell-being. We briefly review studies concerned withthis prediction and then build on them to make the sec-ond important point in our overall argument, namely,that the content or “what” (as well as the “why”) ofgoal pursuits affects well-being because of its relationto need satisfaction.

One intriguing method to test the relation of needsto well-being over time employs diary procedures toexplore whether daily variations in need satisfactionpredict daily fluctuations in well-being. By using hier-archical linear modeling, between-person andwithin-person relations between perceived need satis-faction and indices of well-being can be examined. Inone study, Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996) examineddaily variations in autonomy and competence experi-ences. They found that, at the individual-differencelevel, trait measures of perceived autonomy and per-ceived competence were significantly correlated withindices of well-being—including positive affect, vital-ity, and the inverse of negative affect andsymptomatology—aggregated over a 2-week period.Then, after removing person-level variance, analysesshowed that daily fluctuations in the satisfaction ofneeds for autonomy and competence predicted fluctua-tions in daily well-being. It was on days when auton-omy and competence were experienced thatparticipants reported having a “good day.” In a subse-quent study, Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, and Ryan(2000) examined all three basic psychological needs,

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each of which was predicted to play a role in dailywell-being. They found first that trait measures of au-tonomy, competence, and relatedness, as well as ag-gregates of the daily measures of these three traitmeasures, were all associated with aggregate indices ofwell-being, thus confirming the between-person pre-dictions. As in the earlier study, after person-level vari-ance was removed, daily fluctuations in satisfaction ofthe three needs independently predicted daily fluctua-tions in well-being. Thus, both studies demonstrated alinkage between need satisfaction and well-being atthe within-person as well as between-person levels ofanalysis and, additionally, showed the independentcontributions of satisfaction of each basic need foreach day’s well-being.

Other studies examined the relation between needsatisfaction and well-being in specific settings, findingfor example that employees’ reports of satisfaction oftheir needs for autonomy, competence, and relatednessin the workplace were related to self-esteem and gen-eral health (Ilardi, Leone, Kasser, & Ryan, 1993) andto vitality and the inverse of anxiety and somatization(Baard, Deci, & Ryan, 2000), not only in the UnitedStates but also in Bulgaria (Deci, Ryan, Gagné, Leone,Usunov, & Kornazheva, in press). A study by V.Kasser and Ryan (1999), extending earlier work byVallerand and O’Connor (1989), conducted in an nurs-ing home, revealed that satisfaction of the needs for au-tonomy and relatedness in their daily lives werepositively related to well-being and perceived healthamong these nursing home residents.

To summarize, having found that the concept of thethree basic psychological needs was necessary for ameaningful integration of experimental results con-cerning intrinsic motivation and the internalization ofextrinsic motivation, we subsequently showed that theexperienced satisfaction of these three needs was di-rectly related to psychological health and well-being.

The Content of (or What) GoalPursuits Makes a Difference

Research on regulatory styles and causality orienta-tions has shown that the processes through whichgoal-directed behavior is regulated affect the outcomesthat accrue. In particular, behavior that was autono-mously regulated led to a variety of more positive out-comes, including higher quality performance,improved maintenance of behavior change, and bettermental health, relative to behavior that was controlled.These findings have been explained in terms of auton-omous regulatory processes providing greater satisfac-tion of the fundamental psychological needs.Moreover, as discussed in the previous section, oppor-tunities to experience autonomy, competence, and re-latedness were found to play a role in well-being not

only at the individual-difference level, between per-sons, but also at the daily level, within-persons, as aneeds theory would predict. Recent research has takenyet another tack in relating needs to well-being by ex-amining the differential association ofgoal contentstowell-being.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations

Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, and Deci (1996) argued thatthe pursuit and attainment of some life goals may pro-vide greater satisfaction of the basic psychologicalneeds than the pursuit and attainment of others, andthat those providing greater satisfaction would be asso-ciated with greater well-being. Specifically, T. Kasserand Ryan (1993, 1996) distinguished betweenintrinsicaspirations (i.e., goals such as affiliation, personalgrowth, and community contribution, which areclosely associated with basic need satisfaction) andex-trinsic aspirations(i.e., goals such as attaining wealth,fame, and image, which are more related to obtainingcontingent approval or external signs of worth, andthus are, on average, expected to be less likely to yielddirect need satisfaction and may even distract from it).Although use of the terms intrinsic and extrinsic to de-scribe these goal categorizations may be a bit confus-ing, the intention in using them was to convey that, ingeneral, some goals are expected to be more closelylinked to basic or intrinsic need satisfaction than areothers. T. Kasser and Ryan (in press) suggested that,because of these expected links to basic need satisfac-tion, pursuit and attainment of intrinsic aspirationswould be more strongly associated with well-beingthan would pursuit and attainment of extrinsic aspira-tions.

In this research, participants rate the importance tothemselves of various aspirations or life goals, and alsotheir beliefs about the likelihood of attaining thosegoals. An importance index is formed for each aspira-tion by partialling out a person’s overall mean of im-portance ratings from that person’ importance ratingfor each aspiration. This index thus reflects the impor-tance of each aspiration to that person,relative to theother aspirations. An alternative rank-order procedurehas also been used.

In the first of three studies, T. Kasser and Ryan(1993) found that the aspiration indexes (thesemipartials of importance ratings, with the person’smean for the importance of all aspirations removed)for the three intrinsic aspirations (personal growth,relationships, and community involvement) were sig-nificantly positively related to self-actualization(Jones & Crandall, 1986) and vitality (Ryan & Fred-erick, 1997), whereas the aspiration index for finan-cial success (the only extrinsic aspiration used in thestudy) was negatively related to those indicators of

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well-being. The higher the relative importance of fi-nancial success, the lower the subject’s self-actual-ization and vitality. In the second study, T. Kasser andRyan extended these results to the outcomes of anxi-ety and depression. The third study with the samethree intrinsic aspirations and the extrinsic aspirationfor wealth was conducted with a community sampleof 18-year-olds, heterogeneous with respect tosocio-economic status (SES), race, and educationalattainment. Well-being was assessed via ratings de-rived from a structured interview by a clinical psy-chologist, yielding indicators of global socialfunctioning (Shaffer et al., 1983), conduct disorder(Herjanic & Reich, 1982), and social productivity(Ikle, Lipp, Butters, & Ciarlo, 1983). Results showedthat whereas an emphasis on intrinsic aspirations re-lated positively to global social functioning and so-cial productivity and related negatively to conductdisorders, the opposite was true for an emphasis on fi-nancial success. Placing high relative importance onmaterial outcomes was again related to poorerwell-being.

In two subsequent studies, T. Kasser and Ryan(1996) added two more extrinsic aspirations,namely, image and fame. Higher order factor analy-ses revealed two clear factors, as expected, one forthe intrinsic aspirations and the other for the extrin-sic aspirations, thus supporting the theoreticallybased distinction. Analyses relating aspirations tomental health in both studies revealed results com-parable to those in the earlier studies, showing thathigh relative emphasis on intrinsic aspirations wasassociated with more self-actualization and vital-ity, as well as less depression and fewer physicalsymptoms, whereas high relative emphasis on ex-trinsic aspirations was associated with lowerself-actualization and vitality, and more physicalsymptoms.Whereas the studies thus far reviewedconsidered the relative value to a person of differ-ent aspirations or life goals, additional studiesshow that the perceivedattainmentof intrinsic ver-sus extrinsic aspirations is also differentially asso-ciated with well-being. For example, T. Kasser andRyan (in press) found that rated current attainmentof intrinsic aspirations was positively associatedwith well-being, but rated current attainment of ex-trinsic aspirations was not. Ryan, Chirkov, Little,Sheldon, Timoshina, and Deci (1999) showed simi-larly, in Russian and U.S. samples, that extrinsicgoal attainment generally did not enhance well-be-ing, whereas the attainment of intrinsic aspirationsdid. Further, in a short-term longitudinal study,Sheldon and Kasser (1998) found that well-beingwas enhanced by the actual attainment of intrinsicgoals, whereas success at extrinsic goals providedlittle benefit. Together, these results suggested thateven highly efficacious individuals may experience

less than optimal well-being if they pursue andsuccessfully attain goals with more extrinsic thanintrinsic contents.

Process and Content: More on theWhy and What

Sheldon and Kasser (1995) used Emmons’s (1986)approach to index the strivings (i.e., relativelyshort-term, semester-long, goals) of undergraduates.They also assessed the students’ reasons for pursuingeach striving (using the Ryan and Connell, 1989,self-regulation approach), and the helpfulness of eachstriving for attainment of intrinsic versus extrinsic lifegoals (i.e., long-term aspirations). Analyses showed,first, that the degree to which the regulation of strivingpursuits was autonomous versus controlled predicted avariety of well-being outcomes, supplementing nu-merous findings reviewed earlier. Further, the extent towhich the students believed the strivings would lead tothe attainment of long-term intrinsic aspirations waspositively related to well-being, whereas the extent towhich the strivings were expected to lead to long-termextrinsic attainments was unrelated to well-being butwas related to the controlled orientation on the GeneralCausality Orientations Scale. Thus, it seems that whenpeople value intrinsic aspirations, they also tend to bemore autonomous in pursuing them, whereas there is atendency for people to be controlled in their pursuit ofextrinsic aspirations. Nonetheless, different goal con-tents can vary in their relative autonomy.

In accord with this reasoning, Carver and Baird(1998) posited that the effects of aspiration contents onwell-being may be primarily a function of why the goalis being pursued—that is, of the regulatory processrather than the content of the goal. If so, it would meanthat when people pursue extrinsic aspirations for au-tonomous reasons there would not be negative effects,and, further, it would imply that because pursuit of ex-trinsic aspirations has consistently been found to relatenegatively to well-being, extrinsic aspirations are usu-ally pursued for nonautonomous reasons. The re-searchers assessed the relative importance participantsplaced on the aspiration for wealth, and also thestrength of their autonomous reasons and the strengthof their controlled reasons for pursuing wealth. Analy-ses indicated that autonomous reasons for pursuingwealth were positively related to self-actualization andthat controlled reasons for pursuing wealth were nega-tively related to self-actualization, as predicted. How-ever, the relative importance of wealth was alsosignificantly negatively related to self-actualizationeven after controlling for the effects of reasons. Thus,although pursuing any aspiration for autonomous rea-sons seems to be advantageous relative to pursuing itfor controlled reasons, the negative effects of extrinsic

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aspirations on well-being appear to remain even whenthe effects of the regulatory styles has been removed.SDT predicts that the content of goals and the reasonswhy people pursue them can affect well-being, andthat, because content and process relate to underlyingsatisfaction versus thwarting of basic needs,covariation between content and process will typicallyoccur.

Need Satisfaction, Culture, andWell-Being

According to SDT, the three basic psychologicalneeds are universal and thus must be satisfied in all cul-tures for people to be optimally healthy. Unlike severalsocial-learning and cognitive theories that are in themainstream of current, empirically based psychologi-cal thought, SDT does not abide by the so-called stan-dard social science model (see, e.g., Tooby &Cosmides, 1992), but rather posits that people have anevolvedhuman naturethat includes basic psychologi-cal needs and integrative propensities. Nonetheless,there is considerable variability in the values and goalsheld in different cultures, suggesting that some of theavenues to basic need satisfaction may differ widelyfrom culture to culture. For example, in a collectivistculture, people may resonate to group norms so actingin accord with them might lead them to experience re-latedness and autonomy insofar as they have fully in-ternalized the collectivist values of their culture. Bycontrast, in an individualistic culture, acting in accordwith a group norm might be experienced as conformityor compliance and thus as a threat to autonomy ratherthan an expression of it, so behaviors that conform togroup norms could have a different meaning and im-pact. This implies that, when investigating issues re-lated to basic needs in different cultures, it is necessaryto take a dynamic perspective, to go deeply enoughinto psychological processes to find linkages betweenthe underlying needs and phenotypic behaviors that aredifferent in different cultures, indeed, that may evenappear on the surface to be contradictory. Cross-cul-tural research connecting needs with motivational pro-cesses and contents is relatively new, but initial resultsare promising.

Hayamizu (1997) used the self-regulation question-naire to assess the motivation of junior high school stu-dents in Japan and found that the autonomous forms ofmotivation were associated with positive copingwhereas the controlled forms were associated withmaladaptive coping. These results suggest similar mo-tivational dynamics in the children of the United Statesand Japan (see also Yamauchi & Tanaka, 1998).

A recent study of Bulgarian workers in state-ownedcompanies that still operated largely by central-plan-ning principles examined the relations among so-

cial-context variables, need satisfaction on the job, andwell-being (Deci et al., in press). Results of this studyindicated construct comparability between Bulgarianand U.S. samples and confirmed, consistent with re-sults from previous studies (e.g., Baard et al., 2000;Ilardi et al., 1993), that contextual supports predictedsatisfaction of the basic needs for competence, auton-omy, and relatedness, which in turn predicted work en-gagement and well-being. Employees who reportedgreater need satisfaction on the job were more moti-vated and psychologically better adjusted.

In another study, we examined the relation of aspi-rations to well-being in Russia (Ryan et al., 1999).Russian college students completed an assessment ofaspirations as well as several indicators of well-being,and the results indicated that those individuals whoselife goals were focused more on relationships, growth,and community than on wealth, image, and fame evi-denced greater well-being. Another study (Schmuck,Kasser, & Ryan, 2000) examined aspirations within asample of German college students. The results gener-ally replicated those of T. Kasser and Ryan (1993).Such findings support our inferences concerning theconnections between certain goal contents and basicneed satisfaction, at least within these cultures.

Although this cross-cultural work on intrinsic andextrinsic goals appears fruitful, we reiterate that be-cause specific goal contents will not necessarily havethe same meaning or function in different cultures, wedo not necessarily expect these goal contents to haveinvariant relations to well-being in all cultures. The is-sue, theoretically, concerns the specific relation be-tween a value and its impact on basic need-relatedoutcomes. Additional tests of the relations of goals,needs, and well-being will be required in cultures inwhich there are substantially different cultural values,socialization practices, or both, and in which variousaspirations may have different meanings than theyhave in western cultures such as the United States.

Furthermore, it will be important to investigatewithin cultures the extent to which values, such as indi-vidualism versus collectivism, have been well inte-grated rather than merely introjected. Such researchwould confirm that the autonomous versus controlledprocesses through which cultural values are enactedwill have differential effects on well-being (presum-ably by having differential effects on need satisfac-tion). Only when values have been fully integratedwould people be expected to enact them with the high-est order reflection and volition, and it is then that wewould expect the values to be associated with the mostpositive outcomes.

An interesting recent study by Iyengar and Lepper(1999) emphasized how the means through whichneeds are satisfied may vary by culture. The study ex-amined the effects of decisional choice, which in theUnited States has been found to support autonomy and

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enhance intrinsic motivation (Zuckerman et al., 1978).Specifically, the investigators examined the effects onintrinsic motivation for Americans and Asians of (1)making choices individually, (2) accepting the choicesmade by trusted in-group members, and (3) having thechoices imposed by distant or nontrusted others. Re-sults indicated, first, that, in both groups, having goalsimposed by others led to the lowest level of intrinsicmotivation, as would be straight-forwardly predictedby SDT. In addition, within the American sample, forwhom culture stresses individualism, the individualdecisions led to the highest level of intrinsic motiva-tion, with decisions made by trusted others being sec-ond; whereas within the Asian sample, for whomculture stresses collectivism, these two groups were re-versed—those accepting decisions made by the trustedin-group had the highest level of intrinsic motivationand those making individual decisions had the secondhighest level. Our interpretation of these results is thatthe means through which autonomy is expressed candiffer across cultures. Within the American culture,people tend to feel volitional and autonomous whenthey are making their own decisions, for that is consis-tent with values that have been well internalized. How-ever, in some East Asian cultures, people may feelmore volitional and autonomous when endorsing andenacting values of those with whom they identify. Inboth types of cultures autonomy, relative to control, iscrucial for intrinsic motivation and well-being, but theforms that autonomy takes can nonetheless vary in ac-cord with what is culturally meaningful.

Thus, although cultures vary greatly in the goalsand values they transmit and in the opportunities theyprovide to developing individuals, SDT’s focus is onthe relations of these goals, values, and opportunitiesto psychological needs. The varied cultural values andgoals provide greater or lesser satisfaction of the innatepsychological needs, depending on the degree to whichindividuals have been able to integrate the values andgoals with their own sense of self. Cultures (and cul-tural subgroups such as families, clubs, and workgroups) provide tools, practices, and values that can al-low people to satisfy basic needs, to feel volition andchoice as well as cohesion and relatedness. Insofar asthis occurs, we would expect to find human health andwell-being. However, if the values and goals are notwell integrated, for example because the cultural orsubcultural context is chaotic and pressuring ratherthan optimally challenging and supportive, we wouldexpect to find not only constituents who evidence lesswell-being but cultures themselves that are less stableand more fragmented. In short, the processes throughwhich group goals and values are enacted will affectthe outcomes for the individuals and the group.

Furthermore, although there may be considerablevariability in the goals and values that become inte-grated in different cultures and subcultures, we main-

tain, in linewithourorganismic-dialecticalmetatheory,that some cultural goals and values are themselves notintegrateable because they are inconsistent with the ba-sicneedsandprocessesofself.Asexamples,wesuspectthatacultural value forgenitalmutilation,andaculturalmoré that boys should not cry, are practices that, be-causetheyare inherently incompatiblewithbasicneeds,can at best become introjected or compartmentalized asvalues. They cannot be integrated within the self. Thus,unlikesometheories inwhich thecontentsofall culturalgoals are deemed equally good and equally satisfying ifpeoplesucceedat them,SDTdealswith theharderques-tion of “good for what?” We maintain not only that cul-turalgoalsmustbe integrated toprovide full satisfactionof the basic needs, but also that some goals are notintegrateable because they are inherently inconsistentwith human nature. Accordingly the enactment ofneed-incongruent goals will engender costs in terms ofpsychological growth, integrity, and well-being.

An additional speculation from this viewpoint con-cerns the relation of needs to cultural internalizationand stability. Cultures transmit an array of values,some more compatible and some less compatible withbasic needs. We maintain that the more a culture,through its typical style of socialization and the con-tents of the regulations it transmits, promotes inte-grated internalizations, the more its members will be inharmony and the more stable will be the culture. Incontrast, cultures that either use controlling forms ofsocialization or endorse goals and values that areunintegrateable tend to foster alienation and anomieand, thus, are inherently less stable. In this way, needsconstrain the dynamics of cultural evolution and thememes associated with it.

A Summary of Basic Needs and theEffects of Goal Pursuits

SDT hypothesizes that the process and content ofgoal pursuits make a difference for performance andwell-being. An emphasis within one’s life on intrinsicgoals, defined as goals that, on average, might be ex-pected to yield greater basic psychological need satis-faction, is positively associated with mental health;whereas an emphasis on extrinsic life goals, defined asthose that are either unrelated or antagonistic to basicneeds, is negatively associated with mental health.Further, whereas the attainment of intrinsic life goals isassociated with enhanced well-being, the attainment ofextrinsic life goals (once one is above poverty level)appears to have little effect on well-being. Finally, theautonomous regulation of goal pursuits is associatedwith better performance and mental health than is thecontrolled regulation of goal pursuits, because inte-grated regulation allows fuller satisfaction of the three

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basic psychological needs. However, we also maintainthat some goals are not integrateable.

Thus, the evidence does indicate that the processand content of goal pursuits make a difference to thequality of life, and it is the relation of motivated behav-ior to satisfaction of the basic needs for autonomy,competence, and relatedness that allows a meaningfulintegration of these findings. Although the basic needsare theorized to be universal and thus relevant in allcultures, SDT suggests that it is important to focus onthe relation of salient goals to needs at between-cultureand within-culture levels.

Need Satisfaction and the Self

In reviewing research on the autonomous regulationof goal-directed behavior, we made passing referenceto the fact that autonomous regulation, either in theform of intrinsic motivation or fully integrated extrin-sic motivation, emanates from theself and that themeans through which extrinsic motivation becomesself-determined is integration of regulations and val-ues into theself. Implicit in those comments is a defini-tion of self, which deserves specification, even if onlybriefly, for it is very different from the view of self inmost current empirically based personality and so-cial-psychological theories (Deci & Ryan, 1991).

The Self in SDT

Our concept of self, because of its organismic basis,begins with intrinsic activity and the organismic integra-tion process—that is, with the innate tendencies of hu-man beings to engage in interesting activities and toelaborate and refine their inner representation of them-selves and their world. The activity and integrative ten-dency move the organism toward a more unified set ofcognitive, affective, and behavioral processes and struc-tures (Deci & Ryan, 1991; Ryan, 1995). This innate inte-grative tendency, which is manifest in internalization,functions in concert with the fundamental psychologicalneeds. In other words, the inherent tendency for activity,the integrative process, and the fundamental needs are allaspects of one’snascent self, and gradually the self iselaborated and refined through the integrative process.Inherent activity and the intrinsically motivated behaviorthat is its manifestation are part of the nascent self, andcultural values, extrinsic motivations, and emotional reg-ulations can become part of the self through the integra-tive process. As such, behaviors that are motivated byregulations that have not been fully integrated into theself are not consideredself-determined. As already noted,introjected regulation represents a prime instance of be-havior that is motivated by processes internal to the per-son but relatively external to the self.

Other Views of Self

Our concept of self is, of course, very different fromthe more common view of self as a set of internalizedschemata that are cued by contextual variables and ac-tivate behaviors (e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Thus,for example, in our view, the “ought self” (Higgins,1987) is a set of introjected values or standards that canaffect the self and motivate behavior but is not the basisfor self-determined action. Ought-based behaviorshave, according to SDT, a relatively external perceivedlocus of causality, as confirmed by experiments on egoinvolvement or should-oriented inductions (e.g., Ryan,1982). Similarly, from our perspective, schemata re-lated to possible selves (Markus & Sentis, 1982), per-sonal strivings (Emmons, 1986), personal projects(Little, 1983), or self-aspects (Linville, 1987) can varyin the degree to which they are well assimilated into theself, and thus would vary in the degree to which theyare the basis for self-determined versus controlled be-havior, producing dramatically different experientialand behavioral outcomes. For aself-schemato be thebasis for self-determined action, it would have to be in-tegrated into the set of flexible, unified regulatory pro-cesses, values, and structures that allow people toengage volitionally in activities, whether sociallyprompted, emotionally energized, or simply pursuedout of interest. Such integration is most likely to occurin social contexts that allow people to satisfy basic psy-chological needs.

When Needs Are Not Satisfied

Equifinality is one of the basic properties of needs,whether somatic or psychological, which is to say thatpeople are persistent in their attempts to satisfy pri-mary needs, devising new paths when old routes nolonger work. Nonetheless persistent deprivation of anyneed has costs for health and well-being. As noted ear-lier, thwarting of basic psychological needs may morereadily lead to investment in compensatory activitiesor substitute fulfillments than will thwarting of basicsomatic needs in which perseveration toward directdrive satisfaction is typically evident. Thus, in spite ofpeople’s persistent attempts to satisfy the fundamentalneeds for competence, relatedness, and autonomy, ifthe social world provides no reliable paths that allowfulfillment of these critical needs, and if people have tostay in situations that consistently block need satisfac-tion (e.g., children often have to stay in nonnurturinghomes and schools), SDT predicts significant psycho-logical costs and accommodations. Indeed, the etiol-ogy of various forms of psychopathology residesprimarily in developmental deprivations concerningbasic psychological needs (Ryan, Deci et al., 1995).Controlling, chaotic, punishing, and neglecting

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parenting and teaching environments make autono-mous regulation and need satisfaction less possible andresult in costs such as inner conflict, alienation, anxi-ety, depression, and somatization, as well as accom-modations in the form of controlling regulatoryprocesses and compensatory goals.

Consider, for example, an environment in whichchildren must do (orbe) what the parents want them todo (or be) in order to get their parents’ love. As dis-cussed earlier, this motivational strategy of contingentlove is a case in which the social world has essentiallypitted the need for relatedness against the need for au-tonomy. The children are thus in the uncomfortable po-sition of being controlled, of having to relinquishautonomy (and thus not be who they really are) in orderto gain parental love. Accordingly, we would expectaccommodations and emotional costs, and as the studyby Assor et al. (2000) showed, children who experi-enced their parents as providing contingent love dis-played accommodation (e.g., introjected regulation)and emotional costs (e.g., feeling unloved and resent-ful toward their parents). Having behaved to gain pa-rental love (external regulation), their behaviorbecame increasingly aimed at feeling self-worth(introjected regulation), and, as we have seen, externaland introjected regulation of behavior have a variety ofnegative mental health consequences relative to moreautonomous regulation of behavior.

The environments offering contingent love would,however, lead to less serious maladaptation thanwould more hostile environments such as those inwhich the children are neglected or abused, receivinginfrequent, inconsistent, and punishing attention(Cicchetti, 1991). In those cases, the children wouldexperience little or no satisfaction of the three needs,and they would likely display a high level ofamotivation and impersonal causality with their un-fortunate concomitants (Ryan, Deci et al., 1995). Infact, in a recent study of maltreated children andwell-matched comparisons, it was found that havingrepresentations of parents that were less autonomysupportive, less positive, and less coherent was asso-ciated with more emotional and behavioraldisregulation, as observed during peer interactions(Shields, Ryan, & Cicchetti, in press).

Our active-organism starting point suggests that in sit-uations in which need satisfaction cannot be achieved,people’s inherent tendency toward activity and organiza-tion will lead to protective responses—that is, to the bestaccommodation possible. Accordingly, people developsubstitute motives, nonautonomous regulatory styles, andrigid behavior patterns that serve to protect them from thethreat and preserve as much satisfaction as seems possi-ble in the nonsupportive situations. These compensatoryprocesses are expected to result not only in the defensive-ness that protects them from the pain associated withneed deficits but also in goal processes and contents that

are associated with less than optimal performance andwell-being. Thus, although the accommodation is as pos-itive as possible, it has the unfortunate consequence ofcontinuing to thwart need satisfaction, even in situationswhere satisfaction might be available.

Need Thwarting and CompensatoryMotives

As suggested, one component of the accommoda-tion to a lack of need satisfaction involves developingneed substitutes(Deci, 1980) orcompensatory motivesthat do not really satisfy the thwarted basic needs butprovide some collateral satisfaction. For example, ifpeople’s need for relatedness is substantially thwartedwhen they are young, they might compensate by at-tempting to gain approval or sense of worth by pursu-ing image-oriented goals, such as accumulating moneyor material possessions. In other words, a lack of basicneed satisfaction can lead people to develop need sub-stitutes, which can in turn have the ill-fated conse-quence of continuing to interfere with attainment of thenutriments they really need.

Kasser, Ryan, Zax, and Sameroff (1995) used asample of mixed-SES teenagers and their mothers todo an initial test of this general reasoning. They inves-tigated the developmental antecedents of placing highimportance on the extrinsic aspiration for wealth, rela-tive to intrinsic aspirations such as growth, relatedness,and community. The adolescents provided their per-ceptions of the degree to which their mothers weredemocratic, noncontrolling, and warm in theirparenting practices, and the mothers also providedself-reports on these same variables. In addition, clini-cal interviewers made their own ratings of maternalnurturance. Low scores on these dimensions, ofcourse, represent the types of social environments thatthwart satisfaction of the children’s basic psychologi-cal needs. T. Kasser et al. (1995) found that whenmothers were low on democracy, noncontrollingness,and warmth, as indexed by any of the three ratingsources, the adolescents placed significantly higherrelative importance on the extrinsic aspiration forwealth. The results thus suggest that parenting envi-ronments that thwart children’s need satisfaction facil-itate the development of extrinsic aspirations such aswealth that are visible indicators of “worth” and mayrepresent substitutes for basic need satisfaction.

T. Kasser et al. (1995) also examined archival datafrom the mothers of these teenagers that had been col-lected more than a decade earlier when the childrenwere only 4 years old. A variable labelled risk, derivedfrom ratings by trained observers, represented moth-ers’ coldness in interactions with their children and ri-gidity in parenting beliefs. This risk index significantlypredicted higher relative extrinsic aspirations for

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money in the teenagers, assessed more than a 12 yearslater. These analyses provide initial support for our de-velopmental speculations that psychological need de-privation can foster overly strong extrinsic aspirationsas need substitutes.

One ramification of the development of strong com-pensatory motives such as extrinsic aspirations is thatthey not only result from lack of basic need satisfactionbut they also tend to perpetuate the lack of need satis-faction because they are likely to keep people focusedon the need substitutes or extrinsic goals, thus strength-ening the “wrong” goals and exacerbating the nega-tive, ill-being consequences.

We already reviewed considerable evidence show-ing that thereareavarietyofnegativementalhealthcon-sequences of extrinsic aspirations, and these can bestraight-forwardlyunderstoodasexamplesof the ill-be-ing consequences of having one’s basic needs thwarted.Inotherwords, thedevelopmentofstrongextrinsicaspi-rations represents the development of compensatorymotives that (1)mediatebetweenthe initialneedthwart-ing and negative mental health consequences, and (2)support behavior patterns that are risky and can furtherinterfere with basic need satisfaction.

Williams, Cox, Hedberg, and Deci (2000) investi-gated these hypotheses with high school students. Resultsshowed that adolescents who perceived their parents asless autonomy supportive had significantly stronger rela-tive extrinsic aspirations than those who perceived theirparents as more autonomy supportive, and further thatthose with less autonomy supportive parents and strongerextrinsic aspirations reported more health-compromisingbehaviors, including the use of tobacco, alcohol, andmarijuana. It seems that social environments that inter-fere with need satisfaction can turn individuals towardgoals and activities that serve to compensate for the lackof need satisfaction but may involve serious risks forphysical and psychological health.

Acquired motives and motive strength. Earlierin thearticle,weemphasized that,withour focuson innatepsychological needs, we do not assess individual differ-ences in need strength. We contrasted our approach withthe tradition of personality theorists who view needs asacquired and therefore focus on the strength of the ac-quired needs. Here, we can see a partial convergence ofthe two approaches. Specifically, because we distin-guished between the innateneedsfor competence, auton-omy, and relatedness and the variety of acquiredmotivessuch as abasement, acquisitiveness, achievement, anddominance (motives that are not needs according toSDT’s definition), the concept ofmotive strength(as op-posed to need strength) does become relevant. In our re-search on life aspirations such as wealth, image, and fame(which fit in the category of acquired motives) it is pre-cisely the importance or strength of those aspirations that

we used as the basis for making negative predictionsaboutwell-being.And, inour theory, it is thedegreeofba-sic need thwarting that will predict the strength of motivesthat are acquired to provide substitute satisfaction. Thus,motivational forces that are innate—namely, the intrinsicneeds—are assumed to be essential for everyone, but mo-tivational forces that are acquired will vary in strength as afunction of the circumstances in which they were ac-quired. It is the strength of these latter motivational forcesthat are important for predicting their consequences.

Although we argued that learned or acquired motivescan be derivative attempts to gain satisfaction, we be-lieve that some of the central “needs” studied in theMurray tradition have innate and learned components.For example, consider the need for achievement (nAch),which we would refer to as the achievement motive. Theachievement motive is to a substantial degree based inwhat we consider the innate need for competence(Koestner & McClelland, 1990), yet if one were to de-fine the need for achievement restrictively to representonly what we call the need for competence it is likelythat the need would encompass little more than thoseachievement behaviors that are intrinsically motivated.However, what is coded as evidence for the achieve-ment motive also includes behaviors or ideations basedin ego involvements or approval motives. Indeed, theoriginal instructions used to orient people to the the-matic apperception test (TAT) from which nAch is of-ten assessed were ego involving by design (Ryan &Manly, in press). In short, drawing all achievement be-haviors together under one so-called need for achieve-ment creates problems because people achieve to satisfyvarious needs and motives, and, in fact, when achieve-ment is powered by compensatory motives it can inter-fere with satisfaction of the basic needs.

Similarly, the affiliation motive (nAff) is, in ourview, based in the need for relatedness, but what iscoded as affiliation can also be quite instrumental,aimed for example at acquiring wealth or fame fromthe people with whom one affiliates. McAdams’s(1989) need for intimacy comes closer to our idea of arelatedness need, particularly for adults. The importantpoint is that although the so-called needs for achieve-ment and affiliation may have innate components, theyalso include attempts to gain substitute or derivativefulfillments. Thus, in SDT, they are considered mo-tives rather than needs, motives that may stem more orless directly from needs and will accordingly leadmore or less effectively to need fulfillment.

Need Thwarting and Regulatory Styles

A second component of the accommodation result-ing from thwarted need satisfaction is the developmentof nonoptimal regulatory styles and motivational ori-entations. Throughout this article we argued that social

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environments that block satisfaction of the need for au-tonomy promote controlled motivation, that environ-ments that also block satisfaction of the needs forcompetence and relatedness tend to promoteamotivation, and that the controlled and amotivationalorientations, relative to the autonomous orientation,have negative effects on performance and well-being.The strengthening of controlled or amotivational ten-dencies, like the strengthening of relative extrinsic as-pirations, can thus be viewed as a mediator betweenthwarted need satisfaction and various negative out-comes. As such, it is also a means through which basicneeds are further thwarted and negative consequencesare compounded.

An interesting series of studies by Hodgins and hercolleagues (Hodgins & Liebeskind, 1998; Hodgins,Liebeskind, & Schwartz, 1996) examined how peoplewith strong controlled or amotivational orientationstend to behave in ways that further thwart basic needsatisfaction. Specifically, they investigated the de-gree to which perpetrators of difficult social predica-ments respond to those predicaments by trying to saveface, blaming the others, and aggravating the distressrather than trying to mitigate the awkwardness. Theresearchers analyzed accounts of the events given bythe perpetrators and found that those high on the con-trolled and impersonal orientations (orientations thatare theorized to result from thwarted need satisfactionduring development) tended to behave more defen-sively to protect themselves and in so doing aggra-vated the discomfort of the others. Such behaviors, ofcourse, would only further frustrate the relatednessneed and would also be likely to frustrate the compe-tence and autonomy needs, for although these peoplemay have saved face, their behavior would not consti-tute true social competence nor would it be autono-mous because the individuals were being controlledby their own ego involvements.

Need Thwarting and BehaviorPatterns

A third and intertwined component of the responsesto need thwarting that are associated with ill-being isthe development of rigid behavior patterns that are asadaptive as possible under the hostile circumstancesand that help protect people from the inner hurts result-ing from the thwarted needs. However, these patternshave the maladaptive features of tending to keep peo-ple from dealing with their inner experiences and oftending to persist into new situations in which they arenot needed and have negative consequences.

Eating disorders represent an interesting instance ofrigid behaviors that result from need thwarting. Clini-cal accounts suggest that anorexia nervosa is a re-sponse to thwarted satisfaction of the needs for

competence and autonomy (e.g., Bruch, 1973). Eating,or more precisely, not eating, represents one domain inwhich individuals can have control over their own be-havior and outcomes and can thus feel effective and incontrol. Short of being restrained and fed intrave-nously, persons maintain de facto control over this areaof their lives. According to Bruch (1973), seriously re-stricted eating represents a “struggle for control, for asense of identity, competence, and effectiveness” (p.251). In this quote, one sees that body control repre-sents, in part, substitute satisfaction prompted by defi-cits in perceived competence and autonomy and in theexpression of one’s true self (Ryan, Deci, & Grolnick,1995).

A study by Strauss and Ryan (1987) provided sup-port for this general dynamic reasoning. They foundthat women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa had sig-nificantly higher scores on the impersonal subscale ofthe general causality orientations scale (signifyinggeneral feelings of ineffectance and lack of agency)and on depression, as well as significantly lower scoreson intrapsychic autonomy and mutuality of autonomyand on cohesion, expressiveness, and independence infamily relations, relative to a matched control group.These findings thus suggest a link between this rigidbehavior pattern and lack of satisfaction of the threefundamental psychological needs.

An extensive review by Baumeister and Scher(1988) of research on self-destructive behavior pat-terns among nonclinical adults concluded that there isconsiderable evidence that normal adults engage in avariety of self-defeating behaviors, often ones that in-volve some gain, but at serious cost. According toBaumeister (1997), such behaviors result either fromthreats to egotism or breakdowns of self-regulationthat entail emotional distress. In terms of SDT, theseprocesses can be understood in terms of controlledregulation and amotivation. Egotism is related tointrojected regulation, which, particularly whenthreatened, is likely to have highly negative conse-quences. A breakdown of self-regulation is similar toamotivation. The behavior patterns discussed byBaumeister and Scher, which include health care neg-ligence (Sackett & Snow, 1979), face saving(Goffman, 1955), and learned helplessness(Seligman, 1975) are also related to controlled moti-vation and amotivation. In fact, research has shownthat patients are less adherent to medical regimenswhen their motivation is controlled rather than auton-omous (Williams, Rodin et al., 1998), that individualsengage in more face saving when they have a strongercontrolled causality orientation (Hodgins et al.,1996), and that people become helpless or amotivatedwhen their needs for competence, autonomy, and re-latedness are thwarted (Boggiano, 1998). Thus, thefrustration of psychological needs often appears to liebehind various self-defeating behaviors that then un-

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doubtedly serve only to cause further need thwartingand to exacerbate the problem.

Needs, Regulation, and Evolution

SDT is a theory of the proximal causes of motiva-tional states and processes formulated in terms of im-mediate social contexts, developmental histories, andindividual differences. We nonetheless suggest thatour theory of needs, and of human nature, is consistentwith the belief that the distal causes of human psycho-logical functioning lie in evolutionary history. Indeed,SDT’s postulate that the needs for autonomy, compe-tence, and relatedness are innate and universal stand insharp contrast to the standard social science model (seeTooby & Cosmides, 1992) in suggesting that humannature is not wholly plastic or malleable but instead hasa deep structure that includes basic psychologicalneeds. Of course, SDT recognizes that there is consid-erable variation in surface behaviors, rituals, and ex-pressed values across cultures and developmentalepochs—variation that is often used by behaviorists,social learning theorists, and symbolic interactioniststo argue in favor of the standard social science model.However, SDT maintains that underlying these variedcharacteristics and behavioral expressions are univer-sal psychological needs that subserve developmentand well-being, thus representing part of the commonarchitecture of human nature. In arguing for psycho-logical needs as universal aspects of human nature,SDT fits broadly in an adaptationalist perspective thatemphasizes how our common evolutionary heritageproduces such regularity.

Still, our definition and understanding of humanneeds place us at odds with some currently prominentapproaches to behavioral evolution (e.g., Buss, 1996;Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) that focus exclusively onhighly modular and context-specific mechanisms, tothe neglect of more broadly designed motivationalstructures and propensities that are central to the over-arching organization of the psyche. For example, Bussargued against principles and processes that operateacross content domains, stating that “psychologicalmechanisms are likely to be domain-specific” (1996,p. 5). Without denying that a rich repertoire of do-main-specific psychological functions resulting fromnatural selection would necessarily be available in thepsychic architecture, we argue that fundamental psy-chological needs do indeed operate across domainsand represent broad motivational propensities or func-tions that are essential for effectively acting and relat-ing in social contexts. Furthermore, regulatoryprocesses that are closely aligned with need satisfac-tion activate and inhibit evolved, domain-specific ca-pacities. As such, a consideration of the relation of

evolutionary processes to SDT’s concept of basic psy-chological needs is warranted.

Psychological Needs and AdaptiveAdvantage

SDT proposes fundamental needs: (a) to engage op-timal challenges and experience mastery or effectancein the physical and social worlds; (b) to seek attach-ments and experience feelings of security,belongingness, and intimacy with others; and (c) toself-organize and regulate one’s own behavior (andavoid heteronomous control), which includes the ten-dency to work toward inner coherence and integrationamong regulatory demands and goals. These three ba-sic psychological needs serve, under appropriate con-ditions, to guide people toward more competent, vital,and socially integrated forms of behavior. Further, thecapacity to be aware of these need satisfactions is, ofcourse, important for attaining them. The general pro-pensities associated with the three needs also conveyadaptive advantage, as we now briefly discuss.

Competence. The adaptive consequences of arelatively generalized need for competence are perhapsthe most straightforward, because an interested, open,learning organism can better adapt to new challenges inchanging contexts. The need for competence, which isprototypically manifest in intrinsically motivated ac-tivity, spurs on cognitive, motor, and social growth(Elkind, 1971; White, 1959). Beginning with early mo-tor play, manipulation of objects, and exploration ofsurroundings, the general competence tendency ex-tends and differentiates toward activities and practicesthat are specifically relevant to effective social interac-tion and physical survival, even without making eithersurvival or reproductive skills a proximal aim. If peopledid not experience satisfaction from learning for itsown sake (but instead needed to be prompted by exter-nal reinforcements) they would be less likely to engagethe domain-specific skills and capacities they inherited,to develop new potentialities for adaptive employment,or both. They would thus be ill prepared for new situa-tions and demands in the physical world, and moreover,they would be less adaptable to the extremely variedcultural niches into which a given individual might beborn or adopted. Specifically, during the era of evolu-tionary adaptation (EEA) interest in challenge and ex-ploration no doubt conveyed advantages, for instance,by aiding in the discovery of alternative food sources,mapping the complexities of game migrations, or tak-ing interest in skills, rituals, and social rules transmittedby other group members.

Effectance motivation and the need for competencethat energizes it thus represents a clear instance of a

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cross-domain behavioral tendency that, in interactionwith the environment, becomes more focused and spe-cialized. Competence propensities, in fact, would fa-cilitate individuals’ employment of molecular adaptivecapacities, aiding the elaboration, coordination, andapplication of these capacities. Interestingly, it is pre-cisely the open and yet interactive nature of the needfor competence that makes it such an adaptive anddeeply structured feature of human nature. It appearsthat the broadly open (rather than domain-specific)character of competence motivation is shared, to alarge extent, by other mammals evidencing protracteddependency periods and significant postnatal brain de-velopment. That is, competence motivation fuels ac-tivity important to experience-dependent andexperience-expectant forms of learning (Greenough,Black, & Wallace, 1987), as well as to the associatedstructural changes in neural development they entail.

This broad tendency also has functional advantagesinsofar as it allows the unique talents of individuals in agroup to become maximized in niche-relevant ways,and this differentiation may in turn produce benefitsfor all group members. Indeed, the striving for compe-tence as a relatively general propensity can thus beseen as the route to actualizing specific adaptive com-petencies and to the flexible functioning of humangroups in the context of changing environmental de-mands. But more pointedly, competence motivation,which has as its proximal aim the pleasure in being ef-fective (White, 1959), is not a content-specific mecha-nism, but rather is a relatively nonspecific tendency ofhumans, for whom a curious, assimilative nature is adefining feature.

Relatedness. Similar to competence, the ten-dency toward relatedness reflects a deep design featureof social organisms rather than a simple gene-behaviorlink that was added atop other modular mechanisms. Inthe sweep of evolution the tendency toward social co-herence or homonomy has representation in speciesranging from slime molds to primates, so much so infact that the line between individuals and aggregates inmany species is difficult to draw (Ryan, 1993). In hu-mans, the need for relatedness has its own species-spe-cific forms of expression, forms that are clearly under-going continual elaboration over biological andcultural evolution, but it is our view that the need itselfremains relatively constant throughout these changes.

During the EEA, human relatedness was not a novelemergent trait but was instead an element of a deepstructure that became increasingly elaborated and re-fined under selective pressures. The tendency towardrelatively broad connectedness with others was an out-growth of the already existing tendencies to care forand protect one’s offspring. For primates, who alreadyhad a prolonged dependency period and a preexisting

tendency toward reciprocal altruism, the emergence ofthe hunter-gatherer society, and the new challenges itpresented, required an extension of the basic sensibili-ties of attachment and relatedness to nonkin groupmembers (Wilson, 1993). That is, the tendencies to co-here with one’s group, to feel connection and caring, tointernalize group needs and values in order to coordi-nate with others appear to have become selected forwhen coordination of activity and specialization of la-bor would have been highly advantageous for groups’becoming dependent on hunting and foraging for sus-tenance. Under such circumstances, a cohesive groupwould clearly have provided considerably more pro-tection than a less cohesive social organization(Stevens & Fiske, 1995). In addition to the adaptivevalue of resource sharing and mutual protection thatrelatedness affords, the need for belongingness or re-latedness provides a motivational basis for internaliza-tion, ensuring a more effective transmission of groupknowledge to the individual and a more cohesive so-cial organization. Thus, the adaptive advantages of re-latedness are clear at the individual level ofevolutionary analysis and may also be relevant at thelevel of group adaptation and survival (Sheldon, Shel-don, & Osbaldiston, 1999).

From the organismic perspective of SDT, related-ness is part of a more general organization tendencyevident in animate life because, as social organisms,individuals, when optimally functioning, are organizedby and organize themselves with respect to the largersocial entity (Ryan, Kuhn et al., 1997). What is dynam-ically interesting and is the focus of many clinical pre-sentations is the fact that the need for relatedness can attimes compete or conflict with self-organizational ten-dencies, that is, with the need for autonomy. Thus,much of the rich fabric of the human psyche is foundedupon the interplay of the deep adaptive tendencies to-ward autonomy (individual integration) and related-ness (integration of the individual into a larger socialwhole) that are part of our archaic heritage and will,under optimal circumstances, be complementary butcan, under less optimal circumstances, become antago-nistic.

Autonomy. SDT makes a strong claim about theuniversality of a tendency toward self-organization, aview in keeping to a considerable degree with main-stream (e.g., Mayr, 1982), and perhaps not so main-stream (Edelman, 1987), evolutionary thought. Hardlyunique to humans, the basic tendency towards inte-grated functioning is perhaps the most fundamentalcharacteristic of living things (Jacob, 1973). Auton-omy, as a human characteristic, is an extension of thisdeeply evolved tendency in animate life, describing asit does the propensities toward self-regulation of actionand coherence in the organism’s behavioral aims.

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At a phenomenological level, human autonomy isreflected in the experience of integrity, volition, andvitality that accompanies self-regulated action (Ryan,1993). This autonomous regulation contrasts with reg-ulation based on coercive forces or compelling seduc-tions that override important inner functions,sensibilities, and processes. Heteronomous regula-tions, too, have a phenomenal aspect; namely, the ex-periences of pressure and control. The fact thatautonomy as a functional property of humans can bedescribed in phenomenal as well as structural terms isnot a contradiction. Rather, it is quite consistent withan organismic viewpoint that conceptualizes aware-ness of perceived causality not as an epiphenomenonbut as a sensitivity that subserves adaptation. Whenawareness is blocked or inhibited, the person is typi-cally less able to engage in the effective self-regulationof action, which is one of the reasons that awarenessplays such a key role in the process of healthy, inte-grated functioning.

Autonomy, as used in SDT to refer to self-organi-zation and self-regulation, conveys considerableadaptive advantage. As Maturana and Varela (1992)pointed out, the more autonomous an individual’s ac-tions, the more the individual has specified, pro-cessed, and hierarchicalized in an unfettered mannerpersonal needs in relation to environmentalaffordances. When autonomous, individuals’ actionsare self-organized with respect to their inner and outercircumstances, instead of being merely cued up orprompted by nonintegrated processes or exogenouspressures. In other words, for humans to function ef-fectively in changing contexts, specific mechanismscannot simply be elicited automatically by contextualfactors but must be brought to bear in relation to a hi-erarchically organized set of processes, needs, andmechanisms. In fact, when behavior is regulated bynonintegrated, heteronomous processes, disadvan-tages can be manifold. Consider, for example, thenow classic research by Olds (1958) who showed thatrats, when their behavior had been entrained by theexogenous application of rewards based in electricalbrain stimulation, worked themselves to exhaustionand starvation, thus neglecting important organismicneeds and satisfactions. The dominance of behaviorby unintegrated forces, such as external coercions andseductive rewards can thus preclude holistic process-ing (Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998) and self-coherence(Ryan & Deci, 2000). Put differently, the evolved ca-pacity for autonomy is the means by which humanscan avoid having their behavior easily entraineddown maladaptive, even disastrous, paths. Moreover,through autonomy individuals better regulate theirown actions in accord with their full array of feltneeds and available capacities, thus coordinating andprioritizing processes toward more effectiveself-maintenance.

In a broad sense, then, autonomy conveys adaptiveadvantage because it is the very basis of effective be-havioral regulation across domains and developmentalstages. As such, autonomy cannot be meaningfullyviewed as a narrow or domain-specific mechanism. In-deed, the very charge of self-regulatory functions in-cludes coordination of multiple demands from varieddomains. Autonomy is thus a broadly applicable de-sign feature that has been elaborated and complexifiedover our species’ history, particularly as the enhance-ment of the neocortex and its symbolic capacities(Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997) has been realized.The development of an integrated self is thus a reflec-tion of a deep inner design of the human organism to-ward self-cohesion and the avoidance ofself-fragmentation.

When Needs are Thwarted

One of the foundations of modern evolutionary theo-rizing is that many of our behavioral and affective pro-pensities are contingently displayed because differentcharacteristics have supported fitness and reproductiveopportunity in different contexts. Thus, under some cir-cumstances one type of behavioral and affective patterntends to be emitted, whereas under other circumstances,other patterns are likely to be in evidence.

The idea of multiple regulatory systems emergedclearly from studies of the effects of rewards and othercontextual events on intrinsic motivation, internaliza-tion, affect, and performance, and indeed has alwaysbeen implicitly crucial for the differentiation of moti-vation in SDT. That is, soon after the first studies dem-onstrating the undermining of people’s intrinsicmotivation by extrinsic rewards (Deci, 1971), it be-came increasingly clear that other internally consistentpatterns of behavioral regulation and experience oc-curred under such controlling conditions. In conditionsthat thwart need satisfaction, people have, for example,been found to be more prone to introject regulations(Deci, Eghrari et al., 1994; Kuhl & Kazen, 1994), actincongruently (Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne, & Ilardi,1997), or become amotivated (Boggiano, 1998). Simi-larly, when parents experience threatening and uncer-tain environments they tend to become morecontrolling with offspring (Grolnick & Apostoleris, inpress). Thus, need-thwarting conditions lead tospecifiable patterns of behaviors, regulations, goals,and affects that do not represent the optimal develop-ment and well-being that would occur in supportiveenvironments but which would have had some adap-tive value under adverse conditions.

An excellent example of how broad need-related is-sues might catalyze or inhibit specific mechanisms issuggested by recent work on social logic. Cosmides(1989) suggested that humans implement certain

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forms of “if-then” logic in social situations, and thatsuch logic represents a cognitive module that evolvedto deal with exchange situations, specifically to detectpotential cheaters. In support of that view, researchshowed that greater logical accuracy in if-then think-ing was facilitated in social-exchange situations thanin abstract problem situations. However, recent workby Dorrity and Aron (1999) suggests that whether ornot this module is activated may depend on people’sassessment of whether they are relatively close to theself of the other who is involved in the exchange. Themore the other person is a stranger, the more the if-thenlogic becomes important. That is, whether or not thisspecific mechanism is activated may be a function ofexperienced relatedness.

Although humans innately tend toward autonomy,competence, and relatedness, these tendencies are notthe only determinants of behavior, and they can be con-strained or subverted by other factors such as rewards,punishments, and rituals of specific cultures. What isuniversal is not the behavioral outcomes, but rather therelation between affordances for need satisfaction andthe expression of motivational tendencies. We furthersuggest that the very concept of well-being, which hasbeen associated with experiences of autonomy, com-petence, and relatedness (Ryff, 1995), bespeaks anevolved preference for functioning in ways that areconsistent with the satisfaction of psychological needs,as opposed to functioning in controlled or compensa-tory modes.

General Tendencies and SpecificMechanisms

As noted, much current evolutionary theorizing fo-cuses on modular, domain-specific mechanisms, typi-cally hinged to particular environmental inputs (Buss,1989; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). We, however, considerthree types of broad tendencies that we characterize ascross-domain aspects of the human functional designthat influence, act as constraints on, and even mediatethe evolution of more specialized, narrow mecha-nisms. These general tendencies, themselves, appear toprovide reproductive advantage, but, unlike narroweradaptations, they have considerable openness or plas-ticity in focus and expression even within individu-als—they are displayed in different ways at differentperiods in the life span and in different social environ-ments. The existence of general tendencies that can berefined during ontogeny is, in fact, one of the featuresof human nature that separates it from organismswhose brain development and response patterns areless experience dependent. Additionally, considerableevidence suggests common factors by which the variedexpressions of common needs are supported or under-mined across domains and developmental epochs.

These invariant patterns further justify considering ba-sic psychological needs as molar constructs.

We further argue that one can consider the generalfunctions we ascribe to needs as part of the architectureof mind that helps coordinate and activate lower orderadaptations (see also Midgley, 1995). In this regard,Tooby and Cosmides (1992) stated that, “emotions ap-pear to be designed to solve a certain category of regu-latory problems that inevitably emerges in a mind fullof disparate, functionally specialized mechanisms” (p.99). Although they did not elaborate this point, it doesreveal a recognition of the importance of some higherorder self-regulation of behavioral propensities. Still,we argue that needs rather than emotions better servethis function because emotions themselves must beself-regulated for effective functioning, and the basicpsychological needs are centrally involved in the pro-cesses by which this self-regulation occurs. Emotions,when not brought under regulatory management by theself, can be associated with a variety of maladaptiveconsequences.

In sum, we agree with Mayr (1982) that the searchfor adaptive mechanisms must include a concern withgeneral structures and functions that play a central rolein the organization of behavior, as well as with specificbehavior-gene links that may support them. An analy-sis of the general functions that we refer to as basicpsychological needs cannot be engaged at the samelevel as more specific mechanisms such as the infants’tendencies to smile (which subserves relatedness) orthe capacity to detect coercion (which subserves au-tonomy). In fact, basic psychological needs may evenmediate the adaptive value of many specific gene-be-havior links. As such, new mechanisms could gain re-productive advantage through their impact on primaryneed satisfaction and the functional outcomes it pro-motes. In other words, specific mechanisms may en-hance or detract from the fulfillment of needs, and,because of that, the mechanisms may yield more or lessreproductive advantage to the individuals and groupsthat express them.

The postulation of needs coordinates and organizesobserved, systematic dynamics concerning the centraltrends and requirements of optimal human develop-ment and well-being. Without resolving here the con-ceptual issues of what properly counts as an adaptationor how specific modules become regulated during on-togeny, we believe the empirical study of psychologi-cal needs raises important questions about how toconceptualize the organized, evolved, universal, andyet flexible design underlying human nature. An ex-clusive focus on modular and highly specific mecha-nisms leaves us with an accretive, “heap of stones”model of the psyche, analogous to the earlybehavioristic theories that viewed ontogenetic devel-opment as merely an accretion of arbitrary learnings.The psychological system is better characterized as an

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organized system, in which selective pressures havesystematically favored organisms that, through multi-ple means, could attend to and satisfy needs. Amongother things, this means that insofar as stones (i.e., spe-cific mechanisms) do pile up, they do so in an orga-nized way, and the needs for competence, autonomy,and relatedness provide a means for describing at leastpart of that organization.

In sum, SDT focuses on human needs in its explica-tion of the proximal (i.e., life-span) causes of motiva-tion, experience, and behavior, rather than their distal(i.e., evolutionary) causes, yet in this discussion we ar-gued that SDT’s concept of universal human needswould make sense in an evolutionary psychology thatgrappled meaningfully with the deep issues of organi-zation and regulation of the adapted elements of hu-man functioning.

A Note on Cultural Evolution

Although we focused this discussion on biologicalevolution, psychological needs are also highly relevantto the processes by which cultural contents are shapedand retained. That is, psychological needs play a sig-nificant role in the creation and selection of novel cul-tural memes(Csikszentmihalyi and Massimini, 1985)and, in turn, the needs are themselves differentiallysupported or disrupted by existing memes. As we pre-viously suggested (Ryan & Deci, 1985; Ryan et al.1997), to the extent that a culture, in the process andcontent of its socialization, transmits memes that arecongruent with basic needs, then internalization willmore fully occur and the anchoring of culture withinthe individual will be more stable. Contents or strate-gies of socialization that are antithetical to basic needsatisfaction produce more impoverished forms of in-ternalization, resulting not only in poorer well-beingamong group members, but also more instability incultural forms and greater pressure for change. In thisway, evolved psychological needs interface with (andconstrain) the rapidly changing forces ofcultural evo-lution (see also Inghilleri, 1999).

The Relation of SDT to Some OtherCurrent Theories

Hilgard (1987), in an essay on the history of motiva-tion that, in spite of being published in 1987, virtuallyignored all of the motivation research on intrinsic mo-tivation, goals, and self-regulation that was done in the1970s and early 1980s, concluded that motivation wasessentially dead as a separable topic in psychology. Hedid, however, comment that the lack of focus on moti-vation “may turn out to have been only a brief interludein the history of psychology” (p. 379). In fact, little

more than a decade after Hilgard’s comment was pub-lished, it is clear that the near death of motivation as afield of psychology was not a death at all. Rather, itwas merely a brief interlude in which the field of moti-vation was being reborn. A resurgence in motivationresearch and motivation-related theories is very muchin evidence, and this vigorous new field is very muchin line with White’s (1959) and deCharms’s (1968)contentions that a new kind of motivational thinkingwas necessary. As such, it is dramatically different innature from the field of motivation of the 1940s and1950s upon which Hilgard was focusing when he madehis comment.

In this section we take a very brief look at some ofthe newer theories, attempting to draw out some of thecommonalities and distinctions between them andSDT. The list of theories we consider is by no meansexhaustive. Further, our consideration of these theoriesis also far from exhaustive and does not do justice tothe theories. Nonetheless, our aim in discussing thetheories is to further explicate SDT by highlightingsome interesting issues that represent points of conver-gence and divergence between our theory and the oth-ers. In this discussion, we focus primarily on therelation of the various theories to the three basic needseven though most current theories have not specifiedor emphasized needs and some have explicitly es-chewed them.

Social-Learning Theory

In the 1950s, as theories of behavior control werechanging focus from a history of past reinforcements(B. F. Skinner, 1953) to expectations about future rein-forcements (Rotter, 1954, 1966), the social-learningapproach began to emerge. Social-learning theories, ofwhich Bandura’s (1996) self-efficacy theory is cur-rently the most popular, are examples of the so-calledstandard social science model (e.g., Tooby &Cosmides, 1992), for they view people’s behavioralrepertoires and self-concepts as being largely acquiredfrom the social world.Self-efficacy theory has focusedspecifically on the extent to which people feel capableof engaging in behaviors that will lead to desired out-comes (Bandura, 1977). Given their capacity to altertheir environment, establish incentives, and createcognitive self-inducements, people can, Bandura(1989) argued, motivate themselves and be agentic. Assuch, Bandura proposed that feeling competent tocarry out behaviors that are instrumental for attainingdesired outcomes is the central mechanism of humanagency.

Self-efficacy theory evolved from incentive theo-ries—that is, theories that focused on people’s strivingto attain desired reinforcements. However, the theoryhas at times been described as an active-organism the-

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ory and a theory of human agency, creating confusionwith respect to its actual metatheoretical underpin-nings. As noted earlier, the theory contains only oneclass of motivated behaviors, and the determinants ofthese behaviors are desiring outcomes and feeling ableto attain them. All motivated activity is consideredagentic because it involves individuals’ acting whenthey feel able to attain desired outcomes. Because thetheory does not distinguish between autonomous andcontrolled behaviors, it maintains, at least implicitly,that people who are pawns to reward contingencies orto other controlling events are agentic so long as theyfeel able to carry out the activities they feel coerced orseduced into doing. It is here that inconsistencies in theapparent metatheory of self-efficacy become apparent,because without acknowledging intrinsic activity andan inherent growth tendency, self-efficacy theory isnot equipped to deal with a more complex and mean-ingful conceptualization of agency.

As for autonomy, Bandura (1989) stated that auton-omy would be evident only if “humans serve as en-tirely independent agents of their own actions” (p.1175), a characterization that allowed him to dismissthe concept out of hand. Clearly, this characterizationbears no relation to the concept of autonomy containedin SDT and is inconsistent with the way the concept istreated by modern philosophers (e.g., Dworkin, 1988;Ricoeur, 1966). By using this characterization, self-ef-ficacy theory has avoided dealing with the importanthuman issue of autonomy. By contrast, other perceivedcontrol theories addressed the concept of autonomyand acknowledged that it cannot be reduced to per-ceived control (e.g., Little, Hawley, Henrich, &Marsland, in press; E. A. Skinner, 1995).

In terms of our three needs, self-efficacy theory isconcerned almost exclusively with competence, butthe theory explicitly shuns White’s (1959) postulate ofan innate effectance motivation. In self-efficacy the-ory, perceived competence or self-efficacy is said to beacquired domain specifically, and self-efficacy hasvalue in specific domains because it leads to desiredoutcomes. Although self-efficacy theorists have beenvague on this point, any value that self-efficacy mighthave in its own right is apparently acquired throughprocesses that are essentially analogous to secondaryreinforcement. Thus, the self-efficacy theory viewstands in sharp contrast to our idea of aneedfor com-petence, which implies that the experience of compe-tence in and of itself is a source of satisfaction and acontributor to well-being over and above any satisfac-tion resulting from the outcomes that competencemight yield.

In terms of SDT, the important implication of view-ing efficacy as an instrument for goal attainment, andthus paying no attention to the need for competence orto the other psychological needs, is that one loses themeaningful basis provided by the needs concept for

differentiating the processes and contents of goal pur-suits. Thus, as already noted, there is no distinction insocial learning theory between efficacious behaviorthat is autonomous versus controlled. Similarly, thereis no basis for predicting that different goal contents, ifequally valued and efficaciously pursued, would havedifferent well-being consequences.

Terror Management Theory

For more than a dozen years, the team ofGreenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski (1997) hasbeen exploring phenomena such as acquiring self-es-teem and values from one’s culture. Their Terror Man-agement Theory (TMT), which builds on the ideas ofBecker (1973), suggests, in brief, that humans areunique in their capacity to experience an awareness ofdeath, an awareness that left unmodulated would leavethem terrified. According to TMT, avoidance of thisprofound, often nonconscious, form of anxiety is acentral human motive, leading people to adopt thepractices, beliefs, and values of their cultural world. Bycloaking themselves in the standards of society andstriving to match those standards, people obtainself-esteem and ward off the terror associated withtheir inevitable degradation and death. By attachingthemselves to ambient social meanings people canmaintain a sense of continuity and avoid feelings ofisolation and despair.

TMT shares a critical element with the social learn-ing and symbolic interactionist theories, namely theproposition that values, behaviors, and self-esteem areadopted from the ambient culture. However, TMT pro-vides a particularly rich and interesting account bymaking their adoption a function of a deeply seatedmotivational dynamic—namely, the need to defendagainst the potentially paralyzing terror of mortality.

Central to TMT is the process of anxiety reduction,and in this sense TMT has parallels with aspects ofHull’s drive-reduction theory which maintained thatmany behaviors are acquired as a function of anxietyreduction (i.e., reduction of the drive to avoid pain).And, much as drive theory was unable to explain curi-osity and exploration in terms of anxiety reduction(White, 1959), TMT has had difficulty reducing suchgrowth-motivation phenomena to terror managementdynamics, especially because intrinsic motivation andother tendencies toward competence, autonomy, andrelatedness are evidenced well before infants developthe capacity to be aware of their own future nonexis-tence. Accordingly, drawing on the work of Rank(1989), recent statements of TMT suggested adual-process model, in which defensive and growthmotives are postulated (e.g., Greenberg, Pyszczynski,& Solomon, 1995). This creates a greater possibilityfor compatibility between TMT and SDT.

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From the SDT perspective, cultural internalizationcan vary in its degree of assimilation to the self, withintrojection (which encompasses contingent self-es-teem) being a more defensive form of internalizationand integration being a more authentic form. We be-lieve that many phenomena such as prosocial behavioror striving to live up to cultural standards that havebeen observed following mortality-salience manipula-tions could be controlled, resulting from introjection,or, alternatively, could be autonomous, stemming fromthe idea that awareness of mortality can reawakenone’s focus on intrinsic needs, such as that for intimaterelationships. Thus, the enactment of these behaviorsmay, though need not, be based in defensive processes.

Grappling with death is indeed a major challenge inpeople’s lives, a challenge that, in a certain sense, is in-evitably far beyond optimal. As such, many peoplemay in fact deal with the issue of death in a primarilydefensive way. Yet the awareness of death can, as well,bring people into a more authentic engagement withlife, which in essence means integrating their mortalityinto their sense of self and functioning more autono-mously with a focus on satisfying their intrinsic needs.There is no shortage of literary and philosophical ac-counts of people becoming more autonomous or au-thentic in their lives as a function of scrapes with death.

As another point of comparison, when the etiology ofbehaviors that are defensive, controlled, or inauthentic,are examined, SDT’s principle account concerns thethwarting of the three basic psychological needs. Theanxiety associated with death is viewed by SDT as anemotion to be managed and regulated by processes thatare energized by the three basic needs, so we have seenno necessity for considering the avoidance of death anx-iety as a basic need. In fact, in a sense, the mortality-sa-lience manipulations could stimulate various threats topersonal identity, prime among them being the threatsof losing one’s relatedness to loved ones, or the cessa-tion of autonomously valued personal projects. Afterall, death represents the cessation of all need satisfac-tions and the termination of self-organization.

Finally, we raise an issue that McCall (1977) re-ferred to as thecan versus doproblem. Specifically,work in SDT has involved many experimental labstudies demonstrating how conditions that facilitateversus forestall need satisfactionscanaffect outcomessuch as persistence, the quality of experience, creativ-ity, and well-being. However, to ascertain whetherthese processesdohave relevance in the real world, weexamined them in such venues as schools (e.g., Ryan& Grolnick, 1986), clinics (Williams, Grow, et al.,1996), and the workplace (Deci, Connell et al., 1989).These field studies show clearly that when people aredeprived of opportunities for autonomy, competence,or relatedness they suffer in terms of motivation andwell-being. Similarly, TMT has demonstrated in myr-iad experimental studies that mortality saliencecan,

under specific conditions, spawn particular types ofbehaviors. Yet, TMT-based research has less clearlyestablished the degree to which mortalitydoesimpactpeople in their ongoing lives, or even more impor-tantly, what social-contextual interventions could bedone to facilitate positive and ameliorate negative ef-fects of death salience. Although we agree that existen-tial anxiety may be a built in feature of humanity, weargue that knowing this fact and even knowing whatdefensive processes it may initiate does not supply uswith clear directions for facilitating positive socialchange (i.e., those that promote human growth andwell-being).

Control Theory

Carver and Scheier’s (1998) control theory ofself-regulation is cybernetic in orientation, focusing asit does on an auto-correcting mechanism, like Miller,Galanter, and Pribram’s (1960) Test, Operate, Test,Exit (TOTE) unit, that keeps organisms directed to-ward valued goals. As noted earlier, theirs is primarilya theory of the mechanisms through which people stayengaged with goals as a function of effectance-relevantfeedback. Thus, Carver and Scheier have been moreconcerned with thehowof goal pursuit once a goal hasbeen selected, whereas SDT has been more concernedwith the what andwhy of goal selection and pursuit.Still, this attempt to characterize the theories is notwholly exacting because Carver and Scheier attemptedto explain the why of behavior with their cybernetictools and we addressed the processes of persistence oreffort maintenance using our need-based theory.

Contrasts between control theory and SDT were re-cently highlighted when Carver and Scheier (1999b),after suggesting that the concept of autonomy may be il-lusory, attempted to reinterpret the issue of autonomyversus control using control theory concepts (see alsoCarver & Scheier, 1999a; Ryan & Deci, 1999). Spe-cifically, their theory involves two types of regulation,organized with the concepts of approach versus avoid-ance and BAS (i.e., behavioral activation system) versusBIS (i.e., behavioral inhibition system) (Gray, 1990),and they argued that when goals involve avoidingdisfavored outcomes the nature and quality of regula-tion is different from when goals concern approachingfavored outcomes. Carver and Scheier (1999b) thenproposed that SDT’s distinction between autonomousand controlled regulation can be understood in ap-proach-avoidance terms, with autonomous motivationrepresenting an approach mode in which the BAS domi-nates, and controlled motivation representing an avoid-ance mode in which the BIS dominates.

There is, however, ample evidence that the ap-proach-avoidance distinction cannot encompass theautonomy-control distinction, nor can it account for

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different types of approach behavior that are differenti-ated in SDT. The most notable instance concerns thephenomenon out of which the field of self-determina-tion evolved, namely, the frequently replicated findingthat pursing tangible rewards undermined autonomyand intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koestner et al., 1999a).Behavior that is oriented toward attaining rewards is, atleast in many cases, clearly approach oriented, and yetit is typically accompanied by an external perceived lo-cus of causality (Reeve, Nix, & Hamm, 1999) and isthus not autonomous. However, because negative ef-fects on interest and free-choice persistence wouldhave to be attributed to avoidance rather than ap-proach, the approach-avoidance model cannot providea satisfactory account of the phenomenon. Similarlyour more subtle distinctions between types of approachmotivation (such as intrinsic motivation versus identi-fied regulation) cannot be deduced from an under-standing of the motivations simply being approachoriented (see, e.g., Koestner & Losier, in press).

We can, as well, identify autonomous avoidance be-haviors, as when a person fully endorses and thus au-tonomously follows a physician’s admonition to stopsmoking and avoid the accompanying health risks(Williams et al., 2000). Although Carver and Scheier(1999a) would presumably argue that the patient is“approaching health,” there is little compelling indica-tion that people who are autonomously motivated tostop smoking do so to approach health rather than toavoid disease and death. Thus, one can find instancesof controlled approach and controlled avoidance goalsand of autonomous-approach and autonomous-avoid-ance goals.

Although autonomy and control cannot be reducedto approach and avoidance, we do not dispute that con-trolled behaviors will often, and perhaps frequently,have an avoidance-motivation character in so far ascontingent punishments and negative consequencesare often the conditions under which controlled behav-iors are acquired. Still, the fact that there are clear in-stances of approach- and avoidance-controlledmotives suggests that the relation between autonomyand approach, and between control and avoidance, arenot identities at all, but rather correlations.

Similarly, another difference between Carver andScheier’s theory and ours concerns the issue of goalcontents. Our work has begun to document how differ-ent goal contents can be more versus less conducive tohealth and well-being as a function of the relation ofgoals to basic psychological needs. Yet cybernetic ap-proaches are inherently bereft of need concepts and, in-deed, seem to suggest that what lies at the top of goalhierarchies is not organismically determined, so thereis no basis for interpreting the findings that differentgoal contents have different consequences. Indeed, in arecent response to comments about SDT and other the-ories, Carver and Scheier (1999a) stated that they see

our psychological needs simply as another set of goals,and they expressed doubt about whether there are anyuniversal needs. In this sense, they specify no contentsto human nature and place themselves squarely in thestandard social science model of a relatively empty andhighly programmable organism.

Still, there have been many points of convergencebetween control theory and SDT, in the past (e.g., Plant& Ryan, 1985) and more recently (see, e.g., Sheldon &Kasser, 1995), and the richness of their framework andits metatheoretical consistency make it an excellentone for comparing and iterating ideas. Cyberneticmodels can aptly capture aspects of goal regulation,and Carver and Scheier’s work, specifically, has a par-ticular aptness for dealing with the hierarchical natureof goal-related regulations. By incorporating the con-cepts of innate needs, they would be able to deal withthe fact that humans are not optimally focused on justany goals but rather are most fully functioning whenthey pursue goals that fulfill needs—needs which, overeons of time, have furthered their self-organization, ef-fectiveness, and interrelatedness and, thereby, theiroverall adaptability.

Achievement Goals

As noted earlier, Nicholls (1984) and Dweck (1986)outlined theories that differentiated goal pursuits interms of the contrast between demonstrating compe-tence and developing competence. Nicholls referred tothese asego involvementandtask involvement, respec-tively, and Dweck referred to them asperformancegoalsand learning goals. Nicholls characterized egoinvolvement as entailing an external, self-evaluativefocus in which individuals seek to demonstrate highability, whereas task involvement pertains to peoplebeing less concerned with self-evaluation and theirstanding relative to others. When task involved, peoplework to improve their mastery and competence.Dweck added that performance goals involve contin-ual tests of people’s abilities, especially relative to oth-ers, whereas learning goals involve opportunities tolearn new things. Thus ego involvement or perfor-mance goals involve attempts to gain positive or avoidnegative judgments about one’s abilities, whereas taskinvolvement or learning goals concern improvingone’s abilities and expanding one’s competencies.

When people hold performance goals, Dweck(1999) suggested, they are proud of easy successes,base their self-esteem on whether they have been ableto demonstrate to others that they are competent, andtend to become helpless when they face possible fail-ure. Dweck and Reppucci (1973) found that peoplewith performance goals tend to blame themselves (i.e.,their abilities) for failures, and Nicholls (1984) sug-gested that such people sometimes engage in

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self-handicapping strategies so that, if they fail, theywill have an attributional basis for face saving. In con-trast, when people have learning goals, they seek chal-lenges, gain self-esteem from being fully engaged in anactivity or using their skill to achieve something val-ued, and tend to focus on how to improve in the face ofpossible failure.

Dweck (1985) proposed that when children are ori-ented toward learning goals, the intrinsic motivationsystem is involved in initiating, sustaining, and re-warding the activity, whereas performance goals cansupplant or undermine intrinsic motivation. In so do-ing, she was drawing a link between intrinsic motiva-tion and learning goals on one hand, and extrinsicmotivation and performance goals on the other.Nicholls (1984) made a similar point about task in-volvement and ego involvement. We, too, think thattask involvement and learning goals bear considerablerelation to intrinsic motivation when applied to theachievement domain. As such, Ryan (1982) showedthat ego involvement, relative to task involvement,when experimentally induced, undermined intrinsicmotivation, a finding that has been confirmed by recentmeta-analyses using free-choice behavior(Rawsthorne & Elliot, 1999) and performance (Utman,1997) as outcomes.

However, although the concepts of learning goalsand task involvement appear to align well with intrin-sic motivation, the concepts of performance goals andego involvement do not align well with the construct ofextrinsic motivation. Specifically, according to SDTthere is a full array of extrinsic motivations that differgreatly in their relation to self-determination and, ac-cordingly, have different effects on performance andaffect. As we argued, extrinsic motivation can be inter-nalized to differing degrees, and the more fully it is in-ternalized and integrated the more positive are itsconsequences. This means that a performance goalcan, according to SDT, be pursued for relatively con-trolled reasons (with an E-PLOC) or for relatively au-tonomous reasons (with an I-PLOC). Knowing thatone has performance goals is not enough to predict thequality of performance and experience. Ego involve-ment is thus only one type of extrinsic motivation (spe-cifically it is a form of introjected regulation), yetperformance goals could also be enacted out of identi-fications or external regulations, each of which has itsown unique character.

This theoretical issue, although important, does notnegate the general convergence of evidence fromachievement goal theories and SDT concerning the op-timal design of learning environments. Both bodies ofwork suggest that the use of salient performance-basedrewards, social comparisons, and normatively basedgoal standards as motivational strategies yield mani-fold hidden costs. Both bodies of work also suggestthat classroom environments that are less evaluative

and more supportive of the intrinsic desire to learn pro-vide the basis for enhanced achievement and students’well-being.

In sum, we believe it is necessary not only to con-sider what goals people pursue but alsowhy they pur-sue them (i.e., the PLOC of the goal pursuits) in orderto understand the goals’ effects. The effects of the per-formance goals are likely to be quite different depend-ing on whether they are pursued for relativelyautonomous or relatively controlled reasons. Further-more, because the learning versus performance goalsand ego versus task involvement formulations are spe-cific to performance issues, they do not directly speakto the influence of other goal contents such as social orrelatedness goals that can affect achievement (see, e.g.,Wentzel, 1999). A consideration of the needs that aresubserved by goal pursuits (whether oriented towardachievement or other human endeavors) would afforda broader examination of the correlates of goal-di-rected behavior.

Flow Theory

Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), like SDT,began with a focus on intrinsic motivation. The con-cept of flow concerns the experiences of total absorp-tion in an activity and the non-self-consciousenjoyment of it. When people experience flow, theiractivity is said to be autotelic, which means that thepurpose of the activity is the activity itself, and we of-ten spoke of flow as the prototype of intrinsically moti-vated activity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, peoplewill experience flow when the demands of the activityare in balance with individuals’ capacities. Thus, likeDeci (1975), Csikszentmihalyi suggested that intrinsi-cally motivated behavior requires optimal challenge.Too much challenge relative to a person’s skills leadsto anxiety and disengagement, whereas too little leadsto boredom and alienation. The postulate of optimalchallenge is fully consistent with SDT’s specificationof the competence need as a basis for intrinsic motiva-tion (Deci & Ryan, 1980), for it is success at optimallychallenging tasks that allows people to feel a true senseof competence.

Another area of correspondence between the twotheories is the importance both place on phenomenol-ogy. As Csikszentmihalyi (1990) pointed out, althoughmany theories focus on distal causes of motivation, hisown focus is on the proximal causes of motivation, sohis emphasis is on the inherent satisfaction or enjoy-ment that accompanies efficacious action. The viewthat being competent at challenging activities yieldsenjoyment is, of course, quite different from that of thetheories in which competent engagement with chal-lenging activities is valued only because of its instru-mentality for incentives or other desired outcomes.

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Accordingly, Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of a phenome-nal experience being a sufficient reason for action isquite consistent with SDT, and specifically with ourfocus on thefunctional significanceof events as a de-terminant of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985b).

Despite these and other points of convergence,there are several interesting points of divergence. Per-haps the most important is that flow theory does nothave a formal concept of autonomy, instead basing in-trinsic motivation only in optimal challenge (which, asa concept, is relevant primarily to competence ratherthan autonomy). SDT, on the other hand, has alwaysmaintained that even optimal challenges will not en-gender intrinsic motivation or flow unless people ex-perience themselves as autonomous in carrying themout—that is, unless the behaviors have an I-PLOC. Al-though Csikszentmihalyi has at times referred to theidea of autonomy, it has not been represented as a for-mal element in the theory.

Another difference concerns the relevance of theneeds concept itself. As we understand it, flow theorydoes not endorse the idea of a need for competence (or,obviously, a need for autonomy), instead viewing theconcept of needs as a distal explanation that is notneeded. As emphasized throughout this article, how-ever, the concept of needs is a central unifying basis forSDT’s explanations and interpretations, and we arguethat it serves effectively to specify the contexts inwhich optimal challenges will and will not lead to flowand to the vitality that accompanies it. It is for this rea-son, we believe, that flow theory, although it providesan account of intrinsic motivation, has not been in-voked in the literatures concerning, for example, thepotential undermining effects of rewards or controllingenvironments on intrinsic motivation. An exclusive fo-cus on optimal challenge cannot address the dimensionof perceived locus of causality.

Additional points of divergence fall primarily in thecategory of phenomena and processes that are con-tained in SDT but are not well addressed by flow the-ory. For example, flow theory does not deal with moreversus less volitional forms of extrinsic motivation thatresult from the degree to which external regulationshave been internalized and integrated with the self.

This is particularly at issue when flow theory getsextended to the problem of cultural change and varia-tion (see, e.g., Inghilleri, 1999), which in our view is aproblem that necessitates a consideration of the needfor relatedness and the concept of internalization, aswell as the concepts of challenge and flow. To theircredit Csikszentmihalyi and Massimini (1985) wereamong the earliest theorists to use a psychologicalviewpoint in attempting to account for cultural trans-mission and the survival of memes, and our critique ofthat work (Ryan & Deci, 1985) was not so much point-ing to errors of commission as it was suggesting thatflow does not, by itself, provide a satisfactory account

of how cultures pass on nonintrinsically motivatedpractices and values. The dynamics of integration, asmanifest in internalization of extrinsic motivation,must be considered to deal effectively with this prob-lem (Ryan, 1995).

In sum, although the theoretical convergence isconsiderable, we believe that a consideration of theneeds for autonomy, competence, and relatednesswould allow a fuller account of flow and would pro-vide a basis for addressing phenomena such as inter-nalization and volition that have been only in theperipheral vision of flow theory.

Attachment Theories

In the fields of social, personality, and developmen-tal psychology, there has been a great deal of researchon the importance of intimate relationships (Reis &Patrick, 1996). Much of this work has been done in theattachment framework (Ainsworth et al., 1978;Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988), although therehave been many other approaches as well (e.g., Blais etal., 1990; Rusbult & van Lange, 1996). The attachmentframework in particular posits that the relationshipsbetween infants and their primary caregivers has be-come the prototypes for subsequent relationships withothers and that secure attachments with caregivers arecrucial for establishing healthy relationships in laterlife and for experiencing health and well-being moregenerally. Although most attachment researchers donot typically discuss people’s having an innate needfor relatedness, the early formulations (Bowlby, 1958)did assume a fundamental need for close connectionswith others, and the recent formulations have the ideaof a need for relatedness as an implicit aspect. Further,the findings that proximity seeking appears to be uni-versal and to lead to ill-being when thwarted arewholly consistent with the idea of a need for related-ness.

As noted, in SDT, which assumes innate needs, thecentral individual difference concept is not needstrength but rather is causality orientations that are as-sumed to be developmental outcomes resulting froman interaction between individuals’ needs and the so-cial context that supports versus thwarts them. In a par-allel fashion, in attachment theory, the centralindividual difference concept is not the strength ofpeople’s need to be attached (everyone is assumed tohave this propensity) but rather is attachment stylesthat are theorized to result from an interaction betweenchildren’s attempts to be related and the nature of thesocial context (i.e., caregivers) that supports versusthwarts those attempts.

Thus, the self-determination and attachment ap-proaches use individual differences in regulatory or in-teractive styles to predict behavior, affect, and

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well-being, and because these styles are outcomes ofthe developmental interaction between people’s innateneeds and the degree to which the social environmentallows their satisfaction, different styles in each ap-proach can be viewed as a central predictor of the indi-viduals’ well-being. Within self-determination theory,a strong autonomy orientation has been found to bestrongly associated with psychological health, andwithin attachment theory, a secure attachment style hassimilarly been associated with strong psychologicalhealth.

There is, however, one important issue aroundwhich attachment theory and SDT differ, and that con-cerns the proximal causes of insecurity versus secu-rity—that is, of one’s sense of relatedness—in socialinteractions. Attachment theory has traditionally em-phasized that people’s attachment styles (workingmodels) are developed in interactions with primarycaregivers and show a high degree of stability overtime and generality across partners. SDT’s approach,however, gives more emphasis to the immediate socialcontext. Although we believe that security versus inse-curity in a particular relationship is influenced by earlyor distal models, we also consider proximal supportsfor basic psychological needs in any relationship toplay a crucial role in predicting feelings of attachmentin that relationship. Thus, we argue, people show sig-nificant within-person variations in attachment secu-rity across relationships, and this variation is a directfunction of the partners’ responsiveness to and supportof the person’s basic psychological needs.

In support of this view, La Guardia, Ryan,Couchman, and Deci (2000) recently used a hierarchi-cal linear modelling approach to examine between-and within-person variations in attachment style. Re-markably, when looking across multiple attachmentfigures, considerably less than one-half the variation inattachment scores was attributable to the typicallystudied between-person differences in security of at-tachment. People showed substantial variability intheir attachment styles to mothers, fathers, romanticpartners, and best friends, for example, and thiswithin-person variability in security was shown to be afunction of the degree to which the various social part-ners were responsive to the individuals’ needs for au-tonomy, competence, and relatedness. Thus, evengiven individual differences due to early caregiver ef-fects, people fluctuate in attachment styles as theymove among more or less nurturant social partners.

Summary and Integration

Self-determination theory is concerned primarilywith explicating the psychological processes that pro-mote optimal functioning and health (Ryan & Deci,2000). It employs an organismic-dialectical

metatheory in which humans are assumed to be active,growth-oriented organisms who are naturally inclinedtoward the development of an organized coherenceamong the elements of their psychological makeup andbetween themselves and the social world. However,these natural developmental tendencies toward auton-omy (i.e., internal integration) and homonomy (i.e., so-cial integration), like other natural tendencies such asintrinsic motivation, are assumed to require nutrimentsor supports from the social environment to function ef-fectively.

More specifically, the natural human propensitiestoward self-organization and an organized relation to alarger social structure are understood to require satis-faction of the three innate or fundamental psychologi-cal needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.Thwarted satisfaction of these needs results invariantlyin negative functional consequences for mental healthand often for ongoing persistence and performance.Accordingly, needs are the linking pin between theaffordances and demands of the social world on onehand and either people’s natural tendencies towardgrowth and well-being or their accommodative ten-dencies toward self-protection with the accompanyingpsychological costs on the other hand.

We define needs as innate rather than learned, thuscreating a similarity between our approach and that oflearning theorists such as Hull. However, unlike thelearning theorists, we are concerned primarily withneeds defined at the psychological level rather than thephysiological level. As such, there is a similarity be-tween our approach and that of personality theoristssuch as Murray (1938), who, however, consideredneeds as largely acquired or learned and thus focused onindividual differences in need strength. Conceptualizingneeds as innate propensities at the personality level ofanalysis leads to the definition of needs in terms of thepsychological nutriments (viz., competence, autonomy,and relatedness) that are necessary for healthy develop-ment and effective functioning. This definition not onlygives content to human nature by detailing what is es-sential for natural processes to operate optimally, but, ofeven more empirical importance, it allows for predictionof the social conditions that promote high quality devel-opment and performance and of the person factors that,at any given time, contribute to that high-quality devel-opment and performance.

The concept of basic psychological needs hasserved as a means of organizing and integrating a widerange of research related to social contexts, motiva-tional orientations, goal contents, healthy develop-ment, high-quality performance, maintained behaviorchange, and mental health. The concept of needs, al-though once prevalent in empirical psychology, is nowlargely ignored in favor of the concept of goals. Our re-search shows, however, that a consideration of basicpsychological needs provides a basis for predicting

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when the efficient pursuit and attainment of goals willbe associated with more positive versus more negativeperformance and well-being outcomes.

Specifically, the research reviewed in this article hasshown that social contexts supportive of the needs forcompetence, autonomy, and relatedness: (a) maintain orenhance intrinsic motivation; (b) facilitate the internal-ization and integration of extrinsic motivation resultingin more autonomous motivational or regulatory orienta-tions; and (c) promote or strengthen aspirations or lifegoals that ongoingly provide satisfaction of the basicneeds. In turn, intrinsic motivation, autonomous regula-tion of extrinsic motivation, and intrinsic aspirationswere associated with positive affective experiences;high-quality performance, particularly on heuristic ac-tivities; maintained change of healthy behaving; andbetter mental health. The findings appeared with respectto persons (i.e., individual difference) and contexts (i.e.,differences in the quality of the social environment).Conversely, research showed that the frustration of ba-sic needs was associated with less intrinsic motivation,more controlled regulation and amotivation, and stron-ger extrinsic aspirations, which in turn lead to dimin-ished experience, performance, and wellness.

Specification of the basic psychological needs forcompetence, relatedness, and autonomy has thus al-lowed us not only to explain specific phenomena buthas provided a framework for integrating these find-ings and for deriving additional diverse hypotheses.This framework, which is built upon the dialectical re-lation between people, as innately active organisms,and the social environment in which they attempt tosatisfy their basic needs, suggests that the degree of ba-sic psychological need satisfaction influences develop-ment, performance, and well-being. In short, needsspecify the conditions under which people can mostfully realize their human potentials.

Notes

This work was supported by a research grant fromthe National Institute of Mental Health (MH-53385)and a sabbatical award from the James McKeen CattellFoundation.

Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Departmentof Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester,NY 14627. E-mail: deci@psych.rochester.edu andryan@psych.rochester.edu

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