Extrinsic Life Goals and Health‐Risk Behaviors in Adolescents1

Guided by self‐determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), two studies examined adolescents' risk behaviors as a function of their extrinsic aspirations for wealth, fame, and image relative to their intrinsic aspirations for growth, relationships, and community; and as a function of their perceptions of their parents' autonomy support. In the first study, adolescents who reported using cigarettes had significantly stronger relative extrinsic aspirations than did adolescents who reported not smoking. In the second study, a composite risk behavior index for adolescents' use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, and their having had sexual intercourse was significantly predicted by their relative extrinsic life goals, and both students' health‐compromising behaviors and their relative extrinsic goals were significantly negatively predicted by their perceptions of their parents' autonomy support.     

Motivation and anxiety for dental treatment: Testing a self-determination theory model of oral self-care behaviour and dental clinic attendance

The present study: (1) developed a Self-Regulation Questionnaire for Dental Treatment (SRQDT) based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan, Psychol Inq 11:227–268, 2000), and (2) used it to test a SDT process model of oral self-care behaviours and dental clinic attendance. Patients’ perceptions of autonomy supportive (relative to controlling) dental professionals were expected to be positively associated with patients’ psychological needs satisfaction in treatment, which was expected to be positively related to relative autonomous motivation for dental treatment and perceived dental competence, and negatively related to anxiety for dental treatment. In turn, relative autonomous motivation for dental treatment and perceived dental competence were expected to be positively associated with oral self-care behaviours and dental clinic attendance. Anxiety for dental treatment was expected to be negatively related to dental clinic attendance and positively linked to putting off making a dental clinic appointment. Confirmatory factor analysis of the 5 factor SRQDT model fit the data very well, and a structural equation model supported the hypothesized process model.     

Avoiding death or engaging life as accounts of meaning and culture: comment on Pyszczynski et al. (2004)

Terror management theory emphasizes that self-esteem consists of a sense of meaning and significance, which serves mainly to defend against death awareness. The current authors counter that people's search for meaning and significance cannot be wholly reduced to defensive processes because it also reflects intrinsic developmental processes. Sociometer theory similarly offers a mainly defensive account of self-esteem, and its exclusive focus on belongingness versus exclusion ill equips it to deal with the multiple needs underlying self-esteem. The current authors suggest that self-esteem resulting from defenses against anxiety (whether about death or exclusion) is akin to contingent self-esteem, whereas true self-esteem is based in ongoing satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.     

Facilitating Internalization: The Self-Determination Theory Perspective

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) posits that (a) people are inherently motivated to internalize the regulation of uninteresting though important activities; (b) there are two different processes through which such internalization can occur, resulting in qualitatively different styles of self-regulation; and (c) the social context influences which internalization process and regulatory style occur. The two types of internalization are introjection, which entails taking in a value or regulatory process but not accepting it as one's own, and integration, through which the regulation is assimilated with one's core sense of self. Introjection results in internally controlling regulation, whereas integration results in self-determination. An experiment supported our hypothesis that three facilitating contextual factors—namely, providing a meaningful rationale, acknowledging the behaver's feelings, and conveying choice—promote internalization, as evidenced by the subsequent self-regulation of behavior. This experiment also supported our expectation that when the social context supports self-determination, integration tends to occur, whereas when the context does not support self-determination, introjection tends to occur.     

Mediators of the associations between parents’ conditional regard and the quality of their adult-children’s peer-relationships

Motivation and Emotion - Parental conditional regard (PCR) involves parents providing or withdrawing affection to motivate children to do what the parents want. Numerous studies have demonstrated...     

Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: an introduction

Research on well-being can be thought of as falling into two traditions. In one—the hedonistic tradition—the focus is on happiness, generally defined as the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect. In the other—the eudaimonic tradition—the focus is on living life in a full and deeply satisfying way. Recognizing that much recent research on well-being has been more closely aligned with the hedonistic tradition, this special issue presents discussions and research reviews from the eudaimonic tradition, making clear how the concept of eudaimonia adds an important perspective to our understanding of well-being.     

促进工作动机的有效路径:自我决定理论的观点

自我决定理论是关于人类行为的动机理论。本文通过分析阐述了自我决定理论的哲学基础,从有机辩证的视角梳理了自我决定理论的基本思想,并对组织背景中以自我决定理论为指导框架的工作动机研究进行了综述,结论认为满足胜任、关系和自主三种心理需要的组织环境因素是增加内部动机并促进外部动机的内化,进而促进员工的工作绩效与心理健康的有效路径。     

Basic psychological needs and work motivation: A longitudinal test of directionality

Most work-related studies of self-determination theory (SDT) have focused either on satisfaction of basic psychological needs or on types of work motivation when studying motivational processes at work. The few studies that have considered both mechanisms have usually assumed that satisfaction or frustration of basic psychological needs is a prerequisite of different types of work motivation. Nevertheless, the directionality of this relation has not been explicitly tested in previous studies of the workplace. The current study explored the relations among managerial need support, basic psychological need satisfaction at work, and work motivation. It tested competing sets of hypotheses regarding the directionality of these three core constructs within SDT’s model of work motivation. A longitudinal analysis suggested that managerial need support was positively directly related to basic psychological need satisfaction but not directly related to work motivation. Further, results indicated that basic psychological need satisfaction was related to work motivation over time and not the other way around. In addition, it was found an indirect relation between in managerial need support and in work motivation through in basic psychological need satisfaction. These findings have important implications for future SDT research testing process models in the workplace.