Richard Ryan || Self-Determination Theory & Human Motivation

He is among the most cited researchers in psychology and social sciences today, ranking among the top one percent of researchers in the field. Doctor Ryan has been recognized as one of the eminent psychologists of the modern era, listed among the top twenty most influential industrial organizational psychologists, and has been honored with many distinguished career awards. He's co author with Edward Deci of the book Self Determination Theory,

Basic Psychological Needs and Motivation, Development and Wellness. So great to finally have a sit down and have a chat with you, Yes, Scott's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. My pleasure. And you know, I want to just go back to kind of trace the development of your thinking and just who you are a little bit. You know, how did you get into the field of psychology and the first place, Oh Scott, You know, those kinds of questions were always pretty complicated. It was a

for me, it was a securitiust route. But I suppose this part would interest you a lot. I was a philosophy major when I was an undergraduate, and I had a strong interest in phenomenology in particular and issues of freedom and dialectics, and so that guaranteed that I was unemployed upon graduation. And so the result of that was that I was looking for a job and my wife was working in a local facility for developmental disability since she said, there's a job for an AID open there,

and I went there. They sent me to the wrong interview and I ended up directing a program for helping people get out of the institution and live independently. And that got me really interested in the issues of motivation and intervention, and that led me to get back into psychology. Cool, and you did your PhD in what like? In what

discipline of psychology? I'm a clinical psychological clinical. I got my PhD at the University of Rochester in clinical I was for many years the director of clinical training at Rochester until I went to Australia. Excellent, And what was your dissertation title? Hm, I was a really boring title. I can't tell you what it was, but they all are. But I was basically testing the idea that ego involvement will undermine your intrinsic motivation. So the more your egos

on the line, the less you'll be intrinsically motivated. So that was my dissertation. Now that's really interesting because I mean that's a great obvious precursor to the more modern day work that you've done on motivation. And so that really did start in grad school. So who's your advisor? Well, when I started grad school, my area was clinical neuropsychology, so I was doing a lot of work in about potential research and that was with Raphael Kloreman, who was

a great advisor for me. But I converted, I guess ed. DC and I were running to stalk groups together around the city of Rochester at the time, and we were, you know, good friends as clinicians, and then we started a talk theory and he was already doing experiments on intrinsic motivation and the two of us came together. So my dissertation really had moved over to our beginnings of self determination theory. So you've really known Edward DC a long time? Well, I didn't even realized it went back

to grad school. Oh and I've been friends since nineteen seventy seven, so we have a long history together that

is amazing. So, you know, the a lot of this, all of this stuff, this research came after Abraham Masl's passing, as you know, as anyone who is in my podcast knows, I'm a big fan of Abraham Maslow and the humanistics psychology era, and he, you know, really thought a lot about motivation, but he never used the expression intrinsic extrinsic, right, you know, he never he never talked about that distinction. When did that distinction start to crop up in psychology?

And you know who were some of your major influencers early on in your career, Well, I'd say a big influencer and this also applies to DC is Richard du Charms. Richard de Charms wrote a book in nineteen sixty eight called Personal Causation. In that book, he really describes the difference between feeling like an origin like you're behind and engaged in your behavior, versus a pawn like you're being pushed around by external forces. So he was an attribution

theorist in the tradition of Hider. He was also a psychodynamic thinker. I would say he was a big influencer, and he did work on He discussed intrinsic motivation, and he even discussed the hypothesis that rewards and ego involvement would undermine it. Although he didn't do much work on that himself. It was really Ed who picked up that theme, so I would say it was around Robert White was a big influence on us. I once got the opportunity to meet with Robert White, and he's well known for

his idea of affectance motivation and competence motivation. So i'd say between the Charms and his ideas about autonomy and Robert White and his ideas about competence, those are kind of the theoretical forerunners for our worker cool And because you did say you did mention you studied philosophy, So I am curious who are some of your philosopher influences, especially in your thinking about autonomy, because that's a topic that well, obviously philosophers have been thinking about for a

really long time, with issues of free will, and I'm just curious of you. You immersed yourself in the philosophy of mind, you know, or the existential philosophy literature at all, before you got into the even into the field of psychology. Yeah, I would say that was there before my interest in psychology. So I was an that's awesome college a student of husserl.

I was really interested in European phenomenology and existentialism, and in particular there was you know, there's an early phenomenologist who's name is Alexander Fonder, and he did a lot of work on the whole idea of what he called will or self determination from a phenomenological point of view, and so he was he was certainly an early influenced on me. I also was steeped in the philosophy of

Paul Riccorr, who was a later phenomenological existential thinker. I had a lot of interest in the work of Sart, but also analytic philosophy to some extent, the work of Harry frankfurt On on free will and autonomy has been really important. So self determination theory, I think is always wanted to be well anchored and conversant with its with its philosophical underpinnings, and I think there's too few theories

today that really explicitly state their ontologies and epistemologies. And I think that's something that we we strongly want to do. And this this has been there from the beginning. Yeah, it's that's evident, and that's a great that's a great feature, so to say, so to speak of of of your

self determination theory. Even before we get into the nuts and bolts of the theory and things surrounding that, I want to stay on the philosophy top for a second, because this is a topic that very much interests me. You know. I had a I had a two part series debate with Sam Harris for this podcast about free will, and do fall Sam Harris at all of you. I don't. That's fine, Well that's your excuse for that. But he he, He's very much believes we don't have free will, and

it's usually a strong man argument. It's usually a definition of free will that no one would ever want anyway. So so I'm pretty skeptical about anybody who argues the free will idea because they usually set up some kind of ridiculous model of what free will would look like like there's no prior causes, there's no prior thought, there's no prior input, right, it has to come xnlio and of course no events in the universe happen that way. So they win. If that's what free will does, they win. Yeah,

I hear your brother. I hear your brother. Well, there there's a definition. There is a certain definition one could propose. As he does that. You know, he's right in the in that sense, in the sense he's talking about. But I do think there's a there's a free will worth wanting. I think that the kind of self determination you talk about in your research is a free will worth wanting. I think Daniel Dennett, you know, the phosphor of mind, who is is a compatibilist would would agree, you know

with that is. So I do want to know like your conceptuization of self determination, like what is it? You know, before we get to the nuts and bolts of the needs and the nuances of the theory, let's just talk about self determination for a se because I think that's an interesting in its in and of itself of what does that mean among humans? What we could translate it into some other terms like self regulation, you know, self determination is when you know what you're doing is something

that you feel that you're regulating. In other words, that you're also a behavior that you stand behind or self endorse. This is why it aligns with the phenomenological view of self determination, because when you act with self determination, you're acting where you're willing to do it, and you do it volitionally, and therefore you can be wholeheartedly engaged in what you're up to. So in in kind of that that briefest form, self determination is true volition, true volition.

So there's a lot of things that can arise that can pull me away from or even fool me into thinking I'm I have volition when I when I really don't. I'm fascinated with the phenomenon of cults, you know, and

I'm fascinated with the phenomena of mind control. So I guess you can have external coersion, and you can have you can have internal c and you know people with O c D, you know, people with lots of things, a lot of competing you know, psychopathologies and things that are there inner taking them away from you know, I

would say the higher self. So so I think that you're there, Yeah, You're just right Scott, which is that it's not parallel to the distinction between internal and external, because you can have heteronomous forces that are within and you can have your own interject. You can have your own internalized stigmas and pressures and biases that actually take you away from self determination and autonomy. So the threats

to autonomy or not just external, they're also internal. Yeah, and Carl and Carl Rodgers talked about that introjection I think is the phrase he used. Yeah, so I'm sorry. Awesome, No, that's awesome to use it as adapt adapting it from Carl Rodgers or just a coincidence. No, Actually, you know, Carl Rogers also adapted it from where I did, which is from psycho analytic theory. When we talk about an interject, you're talking about a partially assimilated internalization, and Rogers meant

it in the same way. You know, if we if I was to trace it where I got the term from, it would be from my psychoanalytic training and particularly from the work of Roy Schaeffer, who really did talk about a continuum of motivations not too dissimilar from what we did. But you know, we adopted it without the same psychoanalytic assumptions. This is great. Okay, so can you tell our listeners a little bit? Can you go through the motivational continuum?

Let's start with like just going through the motions. Sure. I mean when you think about any action you have, when you ask people why are you doing what you're doing, there's a whole variety of answers people might give. One answer might be I'm being forced to do it or compelled to do it by forces that are outside me, and that would be you know, coercion, and it would be a form of being externally regulated. They're making me

do it. I could also be seduced into doing something with a carrot that's riding in front of me or a reward. I'm now doing it for the rewards, so it's still an external force that's driving me, but here it's an ampetitive force. We call both of those external regulation. That's when your motivation is dependent on either the external pressure or the external rewards that are out there, and if those weren't there, your motivation would go away. Another

kind of motivation is why are you doing that? Well? Because I think I should or I'd feel bad about myself if I didn't or you know, I feel proud of myself if I do this thing. We call those things interjection because those are internal rewards and punishments that are driving your behavior. The fear of anxiety or shame, or the ego boost of you know, inflating yourself by feeling really great. Those things are also motivating for horses

that we call interjection. And they're not very autonomous either, because we can be pushed around, just as you were just saying, by those introjects. You know, my shoulds can make me do a lot of things that are not really what I value. Still, again, we can do things because we're valuing them, we actually believe in them. So you know, I might do something like collect money for a cause I care about. It's no fun, it's not interesting, but I truly value it, so I volitionally and willingly

do it. And we would call this identification because you're identified with your goal and your aim in that case, and that's also very evolitional and highly autonomous. And finally, you know, we talk about intrinsic motivation now we're doing this is when you do something just because it's inherently enjoyable and interesting to you to do so it's also fully evolitional. So you can see here we move from being externally controlled allthough we have to being fully evolitional.

And this is why we call it a continuum of autonomy. But it has lots of way stations along the line of different types of motives. The further you up on that continuum in your motivation, the better the outcomes typically are. The higher your well being, the better your performance, the more congruent you are at action, the less conflicted. So many good things happen from being more on the more autonomous end of that motivation continuum. Cool, thank you, Thank

you for explaining that. And you have like a test that like people like employees and companies can take to like or is it sort of Have you developed any instruments? Well, yeah, we've developed a lot of instruments, and some of them are for research use, you know, because our research instruments tend to be longer and because they have to get through the gauntlet of the psychometrics journals demand. But then we do a lot of work in industry and there

we use things that are really practical measures. You know. I have a company that I started with Scott Rigby, that's called motivation works, and in there we measure we call motivation quality very quickly with employees, but it's basically asking them, what are the drivers of your work on your job. And to the extent that they're more external, you see lower quality, motivation, less, more absenteeism, more you know, less,

less good organizational behavior, poorer performance. You see the opposite, the more people are really intrinsically motivated and identified with their work goals. Wonderful, wonderful. One question I wanted to ask you on this about this motivational contoon was samra neuro Mohammad's work at Penn. He has found that a great motivating force and I have found this been personally

in my life. A great motivating force is the underdog narrative, feeling like you have something to prove to someone who doesn't who doesn't believe in you, but you still believe in yourself, you know. And I was wondering, where is that on the motivational contuon. I mean, that's probably like an extra extrinsic I put it right in there with as an introject. I'm going to show them. So now

you know you're being reactive. Plus you're also trying to live up to a standard that's really being externally defined. In that case, you know, this is like, but it feels so good, But it feels so good to crush your competition once who doesn't believe in you, It may it seems like a pretty empty goal. I mean, if that's that's the kind of basis of somebody's overall motivation,

I think then it's pretty limited as a goal. You know, Like I would rather not have somebody become a PhD in psychology because they want to prove to their mom that they're good. I'd rather they loved the field of psychology and cared about the content of that field, that they were more concerned with their understanding of the field than the grades that they got or the credentials they attained.

I mean, these these kind of I'm not saying that those are not motivating goals, but they're kind of an impoverished form of motivation because the goal is pretty superficial, and then it can be pretty easily undermined. I think that I would push back of that for a little bit and say that maybe at certain points in people's lives it serves a really good purpose. You know, when I was younger. I was a special at as a kid, and you know, no, none of my teachers or anyone

believed in my intellectual potential. And I had to generate this kind of f you attitude from within. I mean, it's the only thing that saved me Ryan, you know what I mean, It's the only thing that saved me to be like, you know what, I'm going to prove to them that I do have some kind of intelligence. Now I do agree that more mature, you know, intrinsic to the right of your continuum someday you know, you

want a morph and and and which I did think. Thankfully, I don't still feel like I need to prove anything to anybody, but but I do think as a child, it served, it served its purpose. Well. You know again, I'm not going to argue that it's not a motivation. It is. It sits in the middle of our continuum. It's something that shows some some some energizing functions. But

think about a Scott. Wouldn't it have been better had you had people who actually did care about where you were headed, believed in you, supported you for that growth. I mean, there would have been a much nicer motivational path to the same outcomes than the one that you outline. And I'm not saying that you had to compensate for

some bad motivational circumstances. And honestly, I don't know because Samir's research and i'd love to I'd love to send you this paper that Samir just published, this paper he's at Warden. He actually contrasted too motivations narratives. One is the underdog, but the other is the favorite narrative, which is like people always believed in me, and you know, and then I made it. And he found that the underdog one like increased performance better than the other one.

So that kind of like turns on its head a little bit. You know, the narratives we tell ourselves. You know, maybe someone I can believe that in it, I can believe that in a short term experiment, I can believe that, or I totally get it as a dynamic. I don't think it's a sustainable dynas sustainable making a living and being being really engaged in your field. If it's if it's all about your ego proving, I think it's it's gonna not sustain itself. Did you see the last dance

may A chance, No I did. Michael Jordan has is known for uh yeah, of course, you know Michael Jordan's right, Yeah, he is known for creating imaginary foes to keep him sustained. So to him, I would I was to get I'd push back at certain context, maybe like NBA sports, you know, like it might be sustainable to like keep like you know, being like I'm gonna prove I'm gonna prove them wrong.

You know, it might be, might be. Actually, I don't think you would explain Michael Jordan's persistence and success by that motive alone alone. Yeah, Michael, I'm not saying he doesn't create a game for himself and doesn't you know, pump himself up in these ways. Those sound like ways to get himself intrinsically motivated, to present himself with challenged. But I can't imagine that that would be a basis

for the career Michael Jordan's. You'd be surprised. But I do think that like not maybe not that alone, Like he obviously does have intrinsic love for the game, and yeah, I mean without the intrinsic love for the game, you know, it seems like harder to be sustainable. I mean, can't you have like multiple of these motives at once. Actually our self to managed model says you almost always do. So you know, when I'm involved in my work, you know,

to some extent, it's intrinsically motivated. To some extent it's coming out of value, which to some extent I'm interjected and need to do well, you know, beat myself up if I wrote a poor article. So you know, you have multiple motives always going. And what we look at is where's the relatives autonomy in that, you know, because it's a balance of those things. But they certainly co exist, and they co exist within every almost within every act.

Are messy pure interns. Yeah, yeah, And we have multiple motives usually going, and but when some become predominant, it can undermine the quality of our overall actions. So yet I get back to I don't doubt that you know, people pump themselves up with little ego games like that. I don't think it's If that's where your main motivation is sitting, it's not going to end up in high

quality motivation over time. M hmm. Okay, So let's go into some of your the needs, the major needs of self determination theory and how you selected them, you know, why'd they make the cut? Well, you know, we didn't start out with a theory of basic psychological needs. We started out with a narrower theory of what are the

things that facilitate or undermine intrinsic motivation? And we found that context that supported people's autonomy and supported people's feelings of competence were the things that really drove intrinsic motivation.

And then when we started to look at internalization and what are the things that lead people to deeply internalize the values of their culture the people around them, it was feeling of autonomy that they you know, reading autonomy supported that they could feel competent to do the things that were being asked of them, and then third that they felt closely connected to others. So autonomy, competence, and relatedness popped out really strongly for the basis of internalization.

And as we were studying these things that feed into high quality motivation, and all of our studies were showing that when you had autonomy, competence, and relatedness, you also had high well being, all the indices of flourishing. And that's when we started to move toward a theory of basic needs that a full functioning person has their volition, has that sense of efficacy, and feel socially connected and

proposive in what they're doing. So those things congeal in a full functioning person, so they seem like necessary conditions for wellness. And so you know, as we've looked in settings like we're places, classrooms, health clinics, psychotherapy settings, we see all three of those needs really being potent drivers of the wellness outcomes that are there. So I can say, really empirically we came to these as three basic needs, but there's also a deductive portion of it. STT is

what we call an organismic theory. It grows out of the organismic psychological tradition and in that, you know, when you think about what is a healthy organism, it's organism that's moving in the direction of differentiation and integration, which means that it's moving in a direction of greater self regulation, of autonomy, and greater effectiveness in its environment. And if

it's a social organism, greater integration. So those three concepts autonomy, competence, and relatings fall deductively out of organismic thinking as well as inductively out of what we found in all of our research on motivation. How much did you sort of

consult maslows writings on basic the basic needs? And you know, yeah, like there's no self actualization as a specific need in your theory, and I just wonder did you consider any of his Well, I think organismic theory says that there's an inherent propensity towards integration, which is very close to the self actualization idea, and certainly Rogers idea of self actualization was also an integrative ideas, so I think there were some parallel ideas over there, you know, for myself,

you know, Maslow was an author I read as a kid, so you know, because I was, I'm so much older. Except for me, he was like a person I read as a teenager. And I wouldn't say he wasn't influential, but he was influential more in the sense of like pointing to possibilities in the field than in terms of formal theory. You know, I very much think that the humanistic spirit in focusing on self actualization has some kinship with the SDTS idea of an active individual who's moving

in a direction of integration all the time. So there are similarity spirituals? Well, I agree, and I think the integration piece is so essential. I was wondering how you incorporate the integration piece into self determination theory, because one could have, you know, could score high in the needs for relatedness, competence, autonomy, but still not be particularly integrated

as a whole human right. I can think that's so, you know, when we're thinking about need satisfaction, if I think about a setting in which somebody has all three of those needs setting, it's almost by definition that they're integrated in their functioning there. Because if I have those that needs satisfied, that means I'm pursuing the things that matter to me, that I value, that it interests me. So I have volition, I have connection and social support

because I have the relatedness, and I'm feeling efficacious. You know, I can't see in that anything other than a pretty integrated person. Are there any needs that you're considering adding to the picture. Yeah, I'll just ask that question. I have you Well, you know, we've always had an open list, so you know, we came out with a tendative theory of three basic needs. By the early nineties, we were sort of in that place, and we've always kept the

list open for people to nominate other things. One of my former students, Tim Kasser, at one time tried to put security into the list, but as we looked at the need for security, we found it kind of in line with Maslow's thinking here, it's really a deficit need. It's really something that rears its head when you don't have it, but if you have it, it's not very prominent and it's not all that enhancing, so it doesn't

predict wellness. It's kind of like a necessary but not sufficient condition for some things to happen in your life. So security was one that we tried to bring in to meet criteria, but didn't meet those criteria. More recently, Frank Martella from Finland joined our group in Rochester when I was still there and often was interested in benevolence and altruism as a possible basic psychological need. And I will say, you know, exploring that the evidence has shown

really how much of a wellness enhancer benevolence is. When people act with benevolence, they are typically doing so autonomously, so they're satisfying their autonomy need. They're typically feeling effective, so they're getting some competence needs, they're connecting with people, but they're also getting some kind of warm glow of benevolence, which has its own unique effect on wellness. And we

found that over and over again. So although benevolence doesn't fit all the criteria we have for what a basic need is, it certainly is an enhancement, a wellness enhancer, and it's a big part of how people find meaning in life. So yeah, I would agree with that. I support adding that to your list. I don't know if you if you have heard about my book Transcend that

came out recently. I have. I'd love to send you a copy and perhaps we could compare a contrast and really nerd out someday and get in the weeds in a way that our listeners probably don't want to listen to right now, but but is always to nerd out. My tendency is always to nerd out. So you know you have to stop me when I go there. Oh I love it. Oh no, I mean that's my that's

my tendency too. And I'd love to, uh maybe just discuss with you some needs that I've added that that aren't in your theory and maybe, uh, you know, you have good reasons for that, and you know, maybe I need to rethink things. Maybe you need you need to rethink things. Who knows. But one thing that I was really excited about the benevolence thing, is I did add that as a separate need from the need for connection. I did separate those out in my in my revised

hierarchy of needs. And I've been developing a scale with my colleagues called the light Triad scale. I don't know if you've come across that at all. That's a great idea as opposed to the dark Dad, Yeah, exactly, have you come across that at all? In the you'll I'll send you, I'll send you that, I'll send you that paper. And yet I think that really does capture more well, we call it a benevolent orientation, you know, towards others.

I don't know if you've seen. We have a meta analysis that shows that pro social behavior and anti social behavior are strongly predicted in meta analysis by autonomy and control. So when people have autonomy, they tend to be pro social. We think of that as the default in human nature, and under controlled circumstances, they tend to be more anti social, and I think it fits with this this overall idea.

I won't even go there about the COVID masks, people who people who don't want to controlled for having to wear masks or having to get vaccinations, and what that controlling does to those people's personalities. We'll just not talk about that at all. But but yeah, I hear what you're saying. Yeah, so there's I would I would propose

humble and I say this humbly. I have the utmost of respect for your work, but I think maybe it magnites to consider adding the need for explorations, as I add in my revised higher kid needs in your model, because we do find that is a separate need. Let me just say a couple of things about that though.

I mean, I'm happy to consider all needs, but problem with calling something like exploration a basic need is that it's really something that happens in certain domains and times that it doesn't kind across all of the types of things we typically explain with basic needs. When people are in an exploratory mode, they're typically getting a high satisfaction

of the need for competence. When they're truly an exploratory mode, they have a lot of volition behind that, and so there's all a lot of our ready basic need satisfaction going on in exploration, and so to have it be its own, basically, you'd have to say, well, exploration is part of all the different behaviors people engage in, and think it is all of those, and I think that's I think I could make a case that it is.

My colleague Colin de Young and Eric are rang a paper, Well, it's taking a long time to finish it, but how why the need for exploration is? I mean, it's it's aimless. It's aimless in a lot of ways, and a goalless. And I would actually, I would actually argue that it's separate, clearly distinct from the need for competence and mastery and and I would even go so far. And I know you're going to totally disagree with me on this, and it's totally fine. Please feel free to disagree in anything

I say. But I would actually make the case that the need for competence is tied to to ego and self esteem. Uh, and it is if it's controlled competence, m you could distinguish what's having my confidence is the kind of ego involvement we were talking about before then indeed, indeed, but there can be a more so you think so you could distinguish between a more exploratory form of mastery competence from an ego form, do you think? Yeah? I think so, you know, get it gets back to what

what's motivating your your activity? There? Very interesting and yeah, so well let's talk about self estek because I do actually posit the need for self esteem as its own thing. And I've read I've read great papers you've you've written on this arguing why you didn't include self esteem in your model, and I think you've meet great points. You know, they're very wise and very Buddhist way of thinking about it.

And I was wondering if you could unpack a little bit why you didn't include self esteem in your model, and then maybe I could try to defend way why I did in my model. But i'd i'd love to

hear some of your thinking about that. Well. Self esteem gets used in some different ways when you but typically you measure self esteem, you're asked, you're you're getting it's a positive self concept that people have and there's no doubt that you know it's good to have that positive view of yourself and your social relations that gets measured

with self esteem measures. But if you have if you're engaged in life in a way that has autonomy, if you feel connectedness with other people, if you feel effective at what you're doing, you have self esteem. But that means it's a derivative. It's an outcome of these other satisfactions that we have in life. But if you're motivated to get self esteem, we call that ego involvement. I mean, why am I concerned about how I'm being evaluated or

how I'm Am I good? Or am I bad? Just a very fact of entering into those questions and those comparisons has moved me, you know, away from a more autonomous kind of functioning. But when I'm functioning well, I'm not one. I mean, when a person is functioning well, they're not wondering how how am I doing? How do I compare to the others? Am I great? Those questions don't even come up because you are feeling good. So self esteem is a is a evaluative stance with respect

to yourself. I mean, this is one view of it, and that's not a basic need. It grows out of certain kind of social situations, and sometimes it's actually a harmful problem to be focused on self esteem. Yeah, this is a really interesting question motivation versus need. I mean, I think I try to make the case that I do believe self esteem is a need. It is a fundamental need. You see, you see a catastrophic failures, depression,

et cetera with very low levels of self esteem. So certain certain minimum threshold it seems to be required of a healthy self esteem versus a narcissistic self esteem. But also I include need for safety in my model because I think it's a need. But I actually I very much take your point. I think it's an excellent point about if your if your primary motivation is self asiat steam and that that does maybe connote a sense of

disintegration in the system to a certain degree. So I'd absolutely agree with that, And it actually you raise an interesting question about individual difference is something I'm interested in very much. You know, people have even in all three of your needs. Some people people very dramatically the extent to which they want connections, you know, their lives, or

people very dramatically extent they want autonomy and competence. So you know what what have you found from individual difference perspective? Are there think ones that like are the better better predictors of of things in life than others? You know from a variation perspective. Well, the first thing is is that people will vary in terms of their self reported preference or care about autonomy related to their competence. One of the good things about STT is it's a functional theory.

It says it doesn't matter whether you like or care about those things. If you don't have them, you should show the deterioration functioning associated that the theory predicts or and when you do have them, even if you say it doesn't matter to me, having them enhances your wellness. So this is a functional theory rather than a preference theory. And I mean even show that preferences don't really change

those results much. There's no interaction between getting your needs in that and predicting wellness and whether that's what you thought you wanted. So, you know, I think that's really important because when we're thinking about needs, we're not talking about people's values. We're talking about the requirements they have to be full functional. By the way, just side, can I tell you one quick side story. Oh please, yeah, of course, of course it was somewhere around nineteen. I'm

going to say seventy two. That you know, because you asked me about Maslow. I had read some of his books at the time. I had dropped out of college and I was living up in Cambridge and just reading a lot, and you know, work in factories. I was a factory wrecker at the time, and I read one of Masow's books and I thought, oh, he's at Brandeis. I will go see him, because you know, I was

a kid and I didn't know any better. So I went to over to Brandeis and I went to his office and I had knocked on his door and somebody saw me knocking on his door and they said, oh, you know, doctor Maslows passed away. So I never got to talk to him. And recently somebody said to me, you know, if you had gotten in, what would you have asked? I thought, you know, I wonder I have no idea what my young twenty one year old mine would have asked at the time, but I clearly had

questions for him. So you know, he was that, he was a figure. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that your twenty one yearself you liked Abraham Maso, Uh, and I that's wonderful. You know what about the higher needs? Well, how come there weren't higher needs in your in your model, like like the need for self transcendence or all or maybe it's because they're not needs, you know they're not They can be outcomes of integration. However, other was you know,

STT and organismic theory. It says that the fullest functioning organism is an integrated one, and a lot of these things that we see in what you're you're calling higher needs are really highly integrated people who you know, are pursuing the things that matter to them. But you have you certainly have a lot of people who are high in competence, autonomy, and relatedness who aren't motivated by transcendence.

And this is Maslow's point. He actually the end of his life he distinguished between two kinds of self actualizers, transcending self actualizers and non transcending self actualizers. You probably won't like this, Scott, but I actually think that that part of the era of humanistic psychology did humanistic psychology in the split were transpersonal and transcendence versus mainstream humanistic psychology,

I think really hurt that field. And that's not to in any way dis value devalue the idea of transcendence, but it became so central in some people's minds that they kind of kicked out the rogarians and the other non transcendent humanistic psychologist time. I don't know if you know about the fights at the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and all of that stuff that happened at that time, but it was a sad moment I think for the movement of humanistic psychology, which you know, I was not

a part of. I'm only saying this as a historical number. It wasn't just a pretty picture what he was doing at the end of his career. Okay, well there goes my book book trans No, it didn't take away at all from the importance of that topic. I'm only saying that, you know, it's a it's a piece of a larger

puzzle of a healthy organism. But when you may and I agree, and I think that they put so much stress on that and there were some more empirically minded psychologists who just couldn't go there, and they lost them from the movement. Yeah, I see, I really do see what you're saying, and yeah, I try to go to the great pains to distinguish between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence.

And healthy transcendence is very much about integrating all the other needs before you try to kind of jump jump to you know, being enlightened. You know the I'm enlightened and you're not effect that's narcissism, not transcendence. But you know, I've done a lot of work, and not just me, but people in STT have done a lot of work on the issue of mindfulness and how mindfulness makes to full functioning people. I don't think of mindfulness as transcendence.

I think of it as being here now. I think of mindfulness as really being deeply aware of what's going on in the current moment and in touch with both your interstates and with what's going on outside. Transcendence doesn't describe that. Awareness describes that. I think awareness is hugely important to autonomy. You cannot be autonomous unless you first have awareness. And so mindfulness, you know, for us plays that kind of is the ground out of which autonomy

best grows. I like that, you know, It's like it's definitely a grounding skill to have and it definitely does ground me and has been a saver, a life saver for me in many instances for me too. You know, I've had my own involvement in the Zen practice now for some thirty years, and I'm really happy when I met Kirk Brown, who brought mindfulness into the STT framework in a pretty direction. So I think it's been important

for our theorizing, I agree. And self termination theory, I mean, these are kudos the extent to which has pervided many other areas of psychology and has shown its implications in wide swaths of society. So I thought, for this latter part of our interview, can I go down some demeans of life and kind of talk to me about the implications. So one relationships, I mean, this is one right now. During COVID, I think that people are very much lacking in that need to feel like that need is frustrated.

You know, can you talk a little about some work you've done on self termination theory in that domain. The first thing I want to say is we've been collecting a lot of data I need satisfaction during COVID. A lot of this work grows out of the group that's in Ghent, Belgium. So we have a lot of work on the Belgian population around needs satisfaction on a day to day basis really over the pandemic and the relatedness. Need is really hurting in a lot of people, with

particularly young people. And so when you look at you know you asked before about why are people kind of breaking out not following social distancing rules? A lot of it is related to need frustration, and particularly in a group of people in a period of life where relatedness is huge. And so you know, first we've seen that a lot. So but anyway, what was what was your question? That was a side? Well, no, how does SDT deal with relationships? You know, what are the implications of of

std in the demeanor of relationships? We know STT is organized a series of mini theories. The latest of those mini theories, the sixth of them, is called relationship motivation theory, and so it's really an explanation of what what are the ingredients of a high quality of relationship And one of the things we argue in STT is you can it's not just warmth, closeness, being nice, being supple. If

those things don't make for an intimate relationship. There also has to be autonomy support There has to be a care about the self of the other and an interest in the promotion of This has got to be a kind of a Gothic theme within a relationship for it to be super high quality. And that's what our data shows, which is that it's only in autonomy support of relationships

that you have true intimacy. And you know, this is kind of suggested in some other theories of relationships, but STT makes it explicit and looks at the way in which controlling motives are controlling tendencies and ego involvements really really do create problems in relationships. This is why credit here, particularly Chip Knees work at University of Houston, because he's

done a lot of great work in this area. This idea of autonomy supportive environments has really prevailed the literature greatly, especially in the workplace. I see it everywhere in the workplace literature, which is exciting. You know that more people are talking about that. Did you what did you think of Dan Pink's book Drive? Well, you know, Dan came when he wrote Drive, he came to Rochester to interview ed and me. He spent a few days wonderful. That's

how he got the basis for that book. You know, the book basically explicates autonomy, competence, and he uses the term purpose as opposed to relatedness, So he has autonomy. I think his autonomy, mastery, purpose are the three things he comes away with. But you know he took away relationships. Yeah, but I you know, it's become a very popular view. People oftentimes will sort of say, Pink's theory of this, that's ridiculous. So I get a little tweaked on that.

But I actually really appreciate Dan's work on this because he helped popularize and he helped bring some of the message of this research to the organizational field, and we want that, you know. So I think popular writers play a huge role in helping translate nerdy academic work like our and self determination theory into the practical world. So I totally appreciate the book Drive, Yeah, because it's really it's become a it was a popular book that was

had a lot of implications for the workplace. A lot of people adopt in the workplace. I'm just wandering in your own, your own world, your own research. You know, how much do you intersect with the workplace. Do you do you do consulting personally? Oh? Yeah, ongoing. They Actually I started a company in two thousand and three with Scott Rigby, who was a former PhD stool and we still write together on issues in mindfulness or human relations kind of things. But Scott and I started a company

called Motivation Works. We measure the motivational climate, but the work climate within companies. We do interventions to help managers become more autonomy supportive. So, you know very much, we were always on the front lines of that kind of work. It's and it's hugely important because you know, we and so much of our time in our workplaces and they should be places for thriving and they can be under

the right right circumstances. Yeah, I feel like a lot of I fear that a lot of workplace is still have a very outdated model of what it takes to motivate people intrinsically. They're not they're not thinking how can we motivate people intrinsically. I feel like they're not a lot of a lot of companies aren't even even thinking of that question. There's like how do we motivate people? I think this relates to some of the findings we

have an STT though. When people are put under controlling pressures, they often respond with controlling solutions for the people who are around them. And so you see within organizations a lot of times when you have a controlling manager, they'll even say, well, it's not the way I want to be, but they're making me and they point up them if you see this kind of downhill control thing go on. So, you know, changing company climate not as a big task because you have to do it at multiple levels of

the company. It can't just be go in here and tweak one manager. It's it's about a whole climate, an atmosphere, whole culture. Mm hmm, Well this segues into a topic I'm very much interested in education and uh and educational culture talk about, you know, designing a system to get the worst out of people. We've that's what we've done in our American education system and around the world. Yeah, have you sorry what are you saying? I said, really

around the world? I mean, yes, yes, elsewhere to Yeah, for sure, for sure. But there's so many clear implications of your theory for the young adulthood, identity development, self esteem, and their authenticity. You know all things that we don't focus on developing was in students that we we we should. So what are some of your thoughts on those linkages?

Just the first thing is is that you know, if we had a goal for schools their context of development, and you'd want them to be places where children are helped to flourish, to become all that they can be later and to be able to discover what matters to them and to develop the tools so they can pursue it. That's not at all the way schools are framing their goals. They're talking about get more stem students, get high achievement

scores out of the standardized tests. You know, they've really lost the threat of what what are the values and the goals that we should have in a place where we put our children for multiple hours every day? And you know, to me, the goal of school is to create an interested, engaged and enabled, an empowered student and the factors that would go into that are quite different than the ones that we're currently using. What you're focused

around evaluations, grades and social comparisons. That's for darn shore. I mean, what can we do, you know, how can what we promote this more in schools Now, I think one of the values of psychological research is we are looking at the techniques that teachers can do within classrooms that can make them more motivating and engaging places for students. But then you know, teachers can only do that if they themselves have the support and the room for autonomy

to create those kind of engaging atmospheres. So that, you know, the research really shows and when you've got autonomy support from your principle, you can be a more engaging teacher. When that principle has autonomy support from their superintendent, they can have a better school climate. And superintendents need a course,

the support from their boards and from their governments. We have a lot of dumb policies in place in the United States and Australia and a lot of countries that have high stake standardized testing being that gauge by which schools are judged, and this drives the worst kind of classroom behavior because it has everybody focused on a very narrow outcome and then they have to use controlling means to get students to meet those outcomes, and everybody loses

in that task. So what can we do. We can change policy, We can get rid of high stake standardized testing right now, there's no value to it in any school. Pearson should be embarrassed that they do these things, because what's happening with high stake standardized testing is that it by putting high stakes behind these outcomes, it leads schools to be more pressuring of students in a way that

doesn't help them learn. So we're spoiling the very ingredients of positive learning by having these imposed score goals STEM.

This focus on STEM everyone must be a STEM student. Well, I'm sorry, but if you look around the world, humans are a diverse lot, and we need all kinds of people with all kinds of different skills, and driving everybody down a narrow road for college prep and science courses is really a way of damage the self esteem and the motivation and the engagement of so many of our students. You know, we have to get off of these fetishes. So there's not enough STEM jobs for all the people

we graduate now. But even more so, there's a lot of things that students aren't learning in school that would really help them navigate life better, and instead of we're focused on giving on yet another calculus course before they leave high school. I don't see these things as being well thought through in terms of social policy. Yeah, it's

a good point. I do think that that statistic basic statistics should be mandatory for everyone, though, because you see a lot of people with no training in STEM whatsoever, making lots of outlandish claims and that does impact everyone you know in this climate today. Well, it's a good thing because we face them every day. So that's a practical skill. You're reading statistics and in the newspaper learning about basic financial skills would be great in high school.

I'm learning about things that you actually use in mathematics would be great for students who aren't going that same college STEM route. We're forgetting about the fact that school should be places that help students grow and develop the skills they need in life, and instead we're focusing them on the things that industry told somebody at some point

they wanted. That's not a way to organize our educational worlds. Yeah. Yeah, so we could probably agree on the basics, like basic scientific reasoning I think is important to a certain degree, But now I hear you, we're robbing people, these kids of their autonomy, and that's in the purpose of trying to get them the highest scores on their STEM test. We're driving out the arts, we're driving out the music, We're driving out the things right bring kids to school

and have them feel at home and engaged. You know, we're overtesting them, we're drilling. We're just doing all the things that motivation research now for three decades or four decades has been telling us backfiring, and the results are are clear. I mean, this experiments been going on for thirty years, the high stake standardized testing experiment, and it's

an utter failure by anybody's measurement. I challenge anybody who hears this broadcast to tell me any positive evidence they have for how high stake standardized testing has helped our schools, our children, our teachers, or anybody. There is no evidence. There is no value. There's just a way of testing companies making money and spoiling the cultures of our schools. I don't have a well, the man there, look, I'm right there with you. There needs to be a major overhaul.

Oh man, you have you made contact with the field of positive education. You know there's these yeah, and and you know, I'd love to get your thoughts. What do you think of positive psychology in the field because you're not actually you know, you didn't like start off in like positive psychology, yet you've found yourself in the field

of positive psychology. I mean people in the field love you, you know, and they talk about you all the time, and they incorporate what you're doing into the work they were doing. So I was just wondering, you know what what you're thinking is of that the emergen that field for positive psychology in Sydney you're at. Is that right? Is that right? The Institute at Australiacastic University is called

the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education. That's our Okay, oh that's cool, Well you did, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah, STT was around before the movement called positive psychology began, so we were I think we already had as our central question what are the things that help people flourish? And that is the same central question that positive psychology asks. And so indeed, I think we have a lot of relationships to the scholarship and the

activities of people who were in positive psychology. I don't identify as a positive psychologist because I'm also a clinician. I'm interested in psychopathology and human aggradation and human oppression both sides of this coin, not just the flourishing, but also what are the harms? How are we doing harms to people? And self determination theory is really a theory about both aspects of that. It gives explanations for the

ideology of various mental distress and disorders. It also gives a map of how to help people flourish and what they need to be at their best. Absolutely, you talk about the factors that promote healthy psychological and behavioral functioning. How can self determination help bring peace to the world,

reduce aggression, increase altruism, and bring out the best in humans. Well, we've moved a lot recently in the direction of looking at what we call pervasive environments and their effect on people. So how do the political structures and economic structures of the world have an impact on people's well being through their basic psychological needs. So just an instance of this is that if you have a country where the wealth is distributed really unequally, we find that well being is

lower controlling even for overall wealth. And we see that in there. That's because wealth inequality has an impact on people's perceptions of autonomy and competence and relatedness. It directly impacts their sense of the people around them, their competitiveness with them, and it has an impact on well being. So we're asking the question a lot now, what kind of political and economic structures are the best as fulfilling people's basic psychological needs and therefore producing a well being.

And you know, some of the findings have to do with the perception that you have rights and privileges within a society, and that you're not stigmatized and you're not excluded. These things matter a lot to people's well being again through their basic psychological needs. Again, the distribution of wealth matters a lot. So I think, you know, I think when we're trying to look at how can we create a good society, we have to look at both macro

structures and family structures both. It's not just you know, the local proximal influences on that and so changing the world, yeah, I mean, it's by trying to hold public policies and forms and structures to the criteria of are they good at meeting basic psychological needs? Man, the world needs this so much right now. Help save the world, rich, Help save the world. Yeah, Well, I think we're all trying to do that, and I think it does matter. You know.

Stt is is a theory about change, and it's we've always aimed to be very practical. So one of the good things about the theory is it's not just how these are things predict outcomes, but we also have interventions to help increase relatedness, to help increase autonomy, to help increase feelings of confidence, and you know, and ideas about how to make that actually happen in life. And of course, you know, if a theory doesn't really make a difference

to society, then why have it. I mean, I've had some professors who are very pure scientists who argue the opposite. They'll say, a good scientist actually shouldn't get involved in applying their work. They should just try to do the best science that they can do. So I've heard it from both ends. I can get that if you're an astrophysicist, But if you're a medical scientist, don't you care about the implications of your findings. Aren't you trying to find

a cure to this problem or that problem? If you're a psychological scientist, isn't it about the state of human beings? That your inquiry is concerned. So it's not a neutral science. Even if you think you're being neutral when it has no practical value, then you're using up societies resources for something that may have no practical value. So I can't

agree with that. I think in the human sciences, we're asking questions that have import for human humanity, and we don't have all that much time to be fooling around either. Yeah yeah, I mean, and look, oh we're leaving that next generation, so we have to solve some of these problems now. And I definitely feel that urgency for that. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely feel that urgency too. And I mean that's

my own bent as well. But I'm just telling you, like in grad school and various points in my life when I've wanted to apply my work, I've gotten pushback from you know, from academics, you know, saying that that's not my business. So I mean it's refreshing to hear what you're saying, but I'm just letting you know that's not the pervasive view. Well, the place that you leave your values out is when you're doing that basic research. You try and bring a dispassionate critical eye to that

and I believe that in STT we do that. It's not that we judge everything with a value lens. It's in your basic research you apply the scientific method, which means you think seriously about your data, yourself critical in it. But when you think about the purposes of why we do any of our work, you're going to leave values out of it. I don't understand that as a life position. Yeah, I hear you. Look, you've done so much and you've

applied this STD theory to such diverse environments. We already talked about work, organizations, education, but you've also applied to health, sport and exercise domain, video games, virtual environments. Can you tell me what you're really excited about right now that you're working on I know that you have a neurolab, so you really get into neuroscience work. Tell me whatever

to ending this interview that you're really excited about right now. Well, you know, as you say, you know, we work on both mechanistic and so interested in the neurological underpinnings of autonomy, behavior and of close relationships. So that's what we're doing in our labs at Sydney. But on the other end, Birge in the macro structures now economic structures and how wealth distribution, social policies affect people's well being too so

and everything in between. So you know, one of the things I think the Values have a broad theory like STT, is it allows you to ask questions at every level of analysis, but it also then demands that you find evidence at every level of analysis that can be coordinated with the spirit of concilience. And I think that's our drive. So I think my problem, Scott, is I'm interested in too much in my problem too. Brother. I'm pretty passionate

about a lot of things within within the field. But right now we're just finishing the new Oxford Handbook of Self Determination Theory Research. I'm just finishing with all the chapters in it. There's fifty five chapters in that book, all on diff for topics associated with self determination theory.

Reading those over on, what I'm really excited about is that there's a community out there of you know, hundreds and hundreds of psychologists who are using SDT and ERNEST and who are becoming better experts in all the subject areas than me or Ed or anybody else who's been there. So what I'm excited about is that there's a new generation of self determination theories who are a lot smarter

than me. I love that. I really appreciate your humility, and I appreciate just your legendary work in the field. There's no there's no other way of putting it. It was a true honor and delight for me to child with you today, and I just want to thank you so much for being only podcasts for having me. I'd love to come back sometime, especially after I read the Transcendence book. Then we then we can have a discussion in detail and nerd out about all that. Now. Now,

that would be so much fun. So yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna get that shipped on to you and we can really nerd out. Thanks. Thanks rich No, that's great. Thanks Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast

dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.