1. Self-Determination Theory: Self as a Moderator of Growth and Defense
Edward L. Deci
University of Rochester

2. The SDT Starting Place
People are proactive and work to master their environments
They have an inherent developmental tendency that is part of the nascent self and operates through integration
Self develops through integration
Internalized material is part of the self only to the degree that it has been integrated
Self is the basis for autonomy
When autonomous, people are aware and mindful
However, integration and healthy development require nutrients to operate effectively.

3. The First Theoretical Aspect of SDT
SDT is a motivational theory, that differentiates autonomous and controlled types of motivation
Being Autonomous
To fully endorse one’s actions with the experience of volition, choice, and awareness.
Being Controlled
To be coerced or seduced into behaving, with the experience of pressure and obligation.

4. Being Amotivated
Both autonomy and control are types of motivation. They energize behavior.
Amotivation refers to a lack of motivation. It involves little or no intentionality.

5. What Autonomy Is Not in SDT
Autonomy is not independence
People can be autonomously dependent but they can also be autonomously independent
As well, people can be controlled in their dependence or in their independence

6. What Autonomy Is in SDT
Autonomy involves acting with awareness and self-reflection—with relaxed attention and interest, with openness and receptivity to internal and external conditions. That is, awareness is a necessary function for optimal autonomy.

7. The Second Theoretical Aspect of SDT
SDT postulates three basic psychological needs:
competence
autonomy
relatedness
Satisfaction of these universal psychological needs provides the necessary nutrients for autonomy, for the active creation of self, for awareness, and for well-being
Thwarting of these needs leads to controlled motivation or amotivation, the impairment of self, and ill-being

8. SDT’s Basic Psychological Needs
Competence 
Sense of effectance and confidence
within one’s contexts
Autonomy 
Behave in accord with abiding
values and interests; actions would be
reflectively self-endorsed
Relatedness 
Feeling cared for by and connected to
others, and having a sense of belonging

9. Basic Psychological Needs
Defined as essential nutrients for psychological growth, integrity and wellness
Needs are evolved rather than acquired
Needs are universal rather than culturally specific
Needs are not necessarily consciously valued or pursued, but failing to satisfy them will still have negative consequences

10. The Concept of Autonomy as Motivation Based in the Self

11. Autonomous Motivation
Includes intrinsically motivated behaviors
Includes extrinsically motivated behaviors that have been fully internalized
Includes emotion-motivated behaviors whose regulations have been well integrated

12. Outcomes Associated With High Autonomous Motivation
Greater persistence
More flexibility and creativity
Better heuristic performance
More interest/enjoyment
Better mental health and well-being
Better physical health
Higher quality of close personal relationships
Clearly, support for autonomy has important functional effects
Across the Life Span
Across Genders
Across SES
Across Cultures

13. Intrinsic Motivation and the Factors that Enhance versus Diminish it?

14. Intrinsic Motivation
Doing an activity because it is interesting and enjoyable
Satisfies people’s basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness
It’s the prototype of autonomy

15. The First Studies
Monetary rewards to college students decreased intrinsic motivation for a puzzle-solving activity (Deci, 1971)
Awards to young children decreased intrinsic motivation for drawing pictures (Lepper et al., 1973)

16. Meta-analytic Results of the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation
Type of Rewards
Effect Size
# of Studies
Tangible Rewards
-0.34*
(92)
The negative effects of tangible rewards on intrinsic motivation are most likely to appear when the rewards are
contingent upon doing the task,
expected when doing the task, and
salient.
* Significant at p < .05 or greater. Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (1999)

17. Why Do Tangible Rewards Undermine Intrinsic Motivation?
Because people have a fundamental human need to be autonomous rather than controlled. Chasing the carrot is being controlled, and thwarts autonomy.

18. Other Extrinsic Motivators That Have
Negative Effects
Threats of Punishment (Deci & Cascio)
Deadlines (Amabile et al.)
Evaluations (Smith)
Competition (Deci et al.)
Why? Because they tend to control people
externally and thus undermine autonomy.

19. Some External Events with Positive Effects
Providing Choice (Zuckerman et al.)
Acknowledging feelings (Koestner et al.)
Why?
Because they enhance people’s experience of autonomy

20. Because we also have a fundamental psychological need to be competent
Positive Feedback
Increases intrinsic motivation
Negative Feedback
Decreases intrinsic motivation
Why?
Because we also have a fundamental psychological need to be competent

21. Extrinsic Motivation and Internalization Can It Become Autonomous?

22. Extrinsic Motivation
Doing an activity specifically because it leads to a separate consequence such as a reward or the avoidance of a punishment.

23. Because they have a need for relatedness
People tend to internalize aspects of the environment (e.g., extrinsic motivation) that are endorsed by important others.
Why?
Because they have a need for relatedness

24. Types of Extrinsic Motivation
External Regulation: No Internalization
* Pressured by external contingencies
Introjected Regulation: Partial Internalization
* Pressured by internal contingencies
* Not true self-regulation
Identified/Integrated Regulation: Full Internalization
* Feel a full sense of autonomy and choice

25. Autonomous Motivation
Intrinsic motivation + Identified/Integrated regulation
Controlled Motivation
External regulation + Introjected regulation

26. How Can We Foster Greater Internalization?

27. Basic Need Satisfaction
and Internalization
The social contextual factors that maintain intrinsic motivation are largely the same as those that promote internalization of extrinsic motivation
They are the conditions that facilitate satisfaction of the basics psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness

28. Social Contexts
Comprised in part of specific events such as the offer of a reward, the opportunity for choice, or the provision of feedback, as already discussed
But social contexts can also be characterized as a kind of composite that conveys the general ambience or climate of a situation (e.g., home, classroom, work group)
Contexts can be need supportive, controlling, or amotivating

29. Need-Supportive Contexts
Relate from the others’ perspective
Encourage self-initiation & exploration
Offer relevant choices
Provide meaningful rationale
Provide positive and constructive feedback
Need support satisfies basic psychological needs; promotes autonomous motivation and awareness

30. Controlling Contexts
Pressure people (through coercion or seduction) to think, feel, or behave in particular ways
Often relying on
Threats
Rewards
Demanding Language
Evaluations and Criticism
Controlling contexts thwart autonomy and promote controlled motivation

31. Amotivating Contexts Convey incompetence and unlovability
Thwart all three needs
Amotivating contexts undermine all motivation and self-regulation

32. Regulating Emotions
Need Support versus
Conditional Regard

33. Types of Emotion Regulation
Dysregulation: feelings overwhelm and the person is not intentional (amotivation)
Suppressive regulation: push feelings out of awareness, and the behavior is controlled (controlled)
Integrated regulation: be aware of feelings and choose how to behave (autonomous)

34. Conditional Regard
Parents’ attention and affection varies depending of children behaving as the parents demand
A subtle form of control
Requires the child to give up autonomy to keep relatedness

35. Positive Conditional Regard
Parents give love and attention when their children do what the parents desire
Negative Conditional Regard
Parents withdraw love when their children do not do what the parents desire

39. Applied Relevance
The importance of support for the basic psychological needs, which promotes autonomous motivation, effective performance and well-being has been confirmed for
Parenting
Education across levels
Workplace and organizational behavior
Health behavior change and psychotherapy
Sports and physical education
Virtual worlds

40. Autonomy and Awareness as Moderators

41. Autonomy and awareness are highly correlated.
Awareness is a central component of autonomy, which is the motivation of self.
Autonomy and awareness are highly correlated.
Mindfulness and awareness are similar concepts that often function in similar ways.

42. SDT focuses on the dynamics between human potentials and human vulnerabilities
Autonomy, mindfulness, true self, interest, and flexibility
Control, defensiveness, ego-involvement, and rigidity
Much of social psychology focuses only on defense, control, self-deception, and lack of self-responsibility
Ego depletion (to be self-regulating is undermining)
TMT (everything is a defense from facing death)
Defend against negative past selves
Non-conscious processes (choice is an illusion) Implicit and explicit measures are largely unrelated
Autonomy or mindfulness moderate all these phenomena

43. Ego Depletion

44. Is Self-Regulation Depleting?
Baumeister et al. (1998) compared “no-choice” to “high choice” (i.e., to self-regulation), and found the latter more ego depleting.
But “high choice” was not true choice. “…it would help me a lot if you would do x”
virtually identical to an induction considered“controlling” by Pittman et al. (1980)
SDT views this as a prompt for introjection
Let’s compare it with true self-regulation

45. Means for Persistence on Unsolvable Puzzles in the Three Experimental Conditions
Condition Time (sec.) Attempts
True self-regulation (autonomy)
No-choice (control)
High “self” regulation
Note. Higher numbers indicate greater persistence.
From Moller, Ryan & Deci, PSPB, 2006

46. Terror Management

47. TMT proposes that the terror of death leads to a range of defensive processes such as suppression of death thoughts, self-esteem striving, and world-view defense, which includes derogating outgroup members.
Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski (1997)

48. Mortality Salience
Worldview defense was operationalized as pro-US bias
More positive evaluations by US participants of pro-US statements made by foreign authors who were writing essays about the US
Relative to evaluations of anti-US statements by the foreign authors
In general, in TMT research, mortality salience leads all in-group members (i.e., Americans) to display worldview defense

49. Half the participants in this study were low in mindfulness (i. e
Half the participants in this study were low in mindfulness (i.e., less aware) and half were high in mindfulness (i.e., more aware).
Participants low in mindfulness displayed typical worldview-defensive evaluations—that is, they evaluated the people making the pro-US evaluations more positively than those making the anti-US statements
Participants high in mindfulness did not show the defense—that is, they evaluated the pro-US and anti-US evaluators similarly
Niemiec et al. (2010)

50. Negative Past Selves

51. Negative Past Selves
In general, people tend to suppress or ignore negative past events in their lives and to reject characteristics they consider negative or undesirable.
In contrast, they are readily able to accept all past events and characteristics they consider positive.
They do not however make that differentiation when focusing on a close friend.
Weinstein et al. (2011)

52. Priming Moderation
In this study participants were primed with autonomy or with control to examine possible moderators of the phenomenon of accepting and integrating negative past identities.
They then thought about past events and characteristics that had been present in their lives in the previous three years.
Those primed with high autonomy accepted both positive and negative past selves, whereas those primed with low autonomy (i.e., control) accepted positive aspects of themselves but rejected negative ones.
Again, autonomy moderated the self. When autonomy was high people evidenced integration and self acceptance, but not when low autonomy was operative within them.
Weinstein et al. (2011)

53. Other Moderator Phenomena

54. Conscious and Nonconscious Processes
Conscious (i.e., explicit) and nonconscious (i.e., implicit) states and processes are typically unrelated, but when people are high on autonomy or awareness, the implicit and explicit variables are more positively related to each other.
Levesque and Brown (2007)

55. In short, it is possible to use SDT to integrate various models and research phenomena by specifying the moderators of autonomy or mindfulness that will lead to the positive (thriving) versus negative (defense).