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Psychological Inquiry

ISSN: 1047-840X (Print) 1532-7965 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpli20

The Darker and Brighter Sides of HumanExistence: Basic Psychological Needs as a UnifyingConcept

Richard M. Ryan & Edward L. Deci

To cite this article: Richard M. Ryan & Edward L. Deci (2000) The Darker and Brighter Sides ofHuman Existence: Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept, Psychological Inquiry, 11:4,319-338, DOI: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_03

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_03

Published online: 19 Nov 2009.

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AUTHORS’ RESPONSE

The Darker and Brighter Sides of Human Existence:Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept

Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. DeciDepartment of Psychology

University of Rochester

Few things are more intrinsically motivating than theopportunity to test one’s ideas against the challengesprovided by other theorists and researchers. In writingthe target article we invited such challenges by contrast-ing our work with other current theories and by makingclear, and sometimes controversial, claims. Accord-ingly, we looked forward to the commentaries withgreat excitement, mixed with a bit of anxiety, anticipat-ing strong and pointed arguments, which we believe tobe the best nutriment for continued theoretical growth.

After reviewing the range of comments, we feel ap-preciative. The comments are indeed pointed, and pro-voked us to specify our propositions and predictionseven further and to make even more direct comparisonswith the assumptions and foci of other theories thatwere used in the commentaries. In several instances thecomments suggested specific new ideas and testable hy-potheses that have the potential to spawn informativeresearch. Each of the 11 commentaries seriously en-gaged the self-determination theory (SDT) frameworkin the spirit of scientific dialog, at times critically andwith the fervor that often characterizes an active and so-cially relevant field of human inquiry. Among the majorthemes we address in our response are the following:

1. The adequacy of SDT in accounting for theso-called darker sides of human existence.

2. SDT’s eudaimonic (as opposed to hedonic)view of well-being.

3. Why we specify these three needs and not oth-ers such as security, meaning, and self-esteem.

4. The role of individual differences in needstrength and our critique of match hypotheses.

5. Issuesconcerning theconceptsofautonomyand in-tegration within SDT and the relation of autonomyto approach and avoidance motivational systems.

6. The interpretation and priority we give to theneed for relatedness.

7. The social relevance of our findings, which areclearly not palatable to some.

The Darker Side of HumanFunctioning

In their commentary, presented from the perspectiveof terror management theory (TMT), Pyszczynski,Greenberg, and Solomon mention that SDT serves as areminder of the potentials within the human species, butthe authors went on to suggest that SDT may be “far tooidealistic to bear the weight of the realities of life,” (thisissue), especially what they called the “dark sides” ofhuman behavior. In fact, SDT has historically dealt notonly with growth and well-being but equally with theundermining, alienating, and pathogenic effects of needthwarting contexts, and we believe it has a clearer andmore direct account of individual differences in expres-sion of the darker sides of human behavior than doesTMT. Perhaps even more importantly, SDT makes spe-cific suggestions about practical ways to reduce humanalienation and malevolence, which few other theories,including TMT, seem prepared to do. This does not,however, make us “pollyannaish”, nor particularly opti-mistic. To use an analogy, specifying that a plant needswater and sunlight does not imply a belief that a climateof sun showers is immanent. Instead, it makes one moreconcerned about dry spells and smog.

TMT, which is one of the few theories of human be-havior that is dynamically interesting and empiricallybased, was built around the invariant existence of exis-tential anxiety, the necessity of managing it so it willnot be wholly overwhelming, and the kinds of defi-cit-based behaviors and defenses that are prompted byit. From TMT’s perspective, this existential anxiety isan unavoidable consequence of two conditions: the ca-pacity of self-reflective awareness and the inevitabilityof death. When awareness of mortality is made salient,the consequence is a largely unconscious terror thatpushes people to adapt culturally endorsed beliefs, val-ues, and behavior patterns—that is, to conformautoplastically to in-group values in order to defendagainst terror.

Psychological Inquiry Copyright © 2000 by2000, Vol. 11, No. 4, 319–338 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

According to TMT, everyone has death anxiety,presumably of the same magnitude, and thus there is auniversal readiness to accept culture as a defenseagainst the anxiety. Because the anxiety postulated byTMT is largely a nonconscious, existential anxiety, itis theorized to operate regardless of whether it is expe-rienced, and thus it provides an account of the wide-spread readiness among people to accept values andpractices of groups and cultures, even those that are un-healthy or malevolent. However, the universality ofTMT’s account is its strength and its weakness. InTMT there is only one type of internalization, namely,a defensive type, and this is the reason that TMT failsto provide a meaningful account of individual differ-ences in the qualities of internalization and of whysome people take in the counterproductive or invidiousaspects of their surroundings whereas others do not.Furthermore, the TMT formulation implies that thereis nothing, even theoretically, that can be done aboutanxiety except to defend against it. Because SDT be-gins with different assumptions and foci, it is able todeal directly with each of these issues.

SDT is concerned, not with mortality anxiety, butwith the more phenomenologically salient anxieties,insecurities, ego involvements, and heartbreaks con-cerning threats to basic needs, which we suggest pro-vide more common and proximal sources ofphenomena expressing the darker sides of human na-ture such as depression, hate, violence, and the degra-dation of self and others. Thus, whereas TMT focuseson deathanxiety and the existential angst inherent inbeing mortal, SDT focuses onlife concerns, includingthe fears, angers, and frustrations associated with notfulfilling ongoing and central psychological needs. Toparaphrase Freud, we believe that the echo of deathanxiety is relatively mute next to the deafening roar at-tending the struggles of life.

From an SDT perspective, human behavior and ex-perience are understood in terms of the meaning ofevents to individuals, and the meaning of the prepon-derance of social events concerns their significance forpeople’s attempts to satisfy their basic psychologicalneeds for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.When these needs are met, growth and integration re-sult, but when they are not met, a variety of nonoptimaloutcomes accrue. For example, anxiety, grief, hostil-ity, and other such negative emotions are typically re-sponses to circumstances that are interpreted as threatsor diminishments to people’s need fulfillment. Whenbasic needs are threatened, emotions such as anxietyand anger will be central experiences, varying as afunction of the degree of threat, and of people’s innerresources for dealing with the threats (e.g., their cau-sality orientations).

Does all this mean that, as Pyszczynski et al. state,SDT’s “default state of the organism” (this issue) is in-tegration and thus that the negative emotions and be-

haviors are not inevitable? On the contrary. SDT fo-cuses on the ways in which the social world, includingits economic and political arrangements, cultural val-ues, and interpersonal dynamics inevitably, but tovarying degrees, obstructs or fails to afford opportuni-ties for fulfillment of the basic psychological needs. In-deed, social contexts often function in ways that pitone need against others, an issue we have researchedand written extensively about. In addition, as we showempirically, social contexts are also differentially aptat facilitating the development of people’s capacitiesto constructively regulate their emotions and behavior.As such, from an SDT perspective, neither the amountof negative emotions individuals have to manage, northeir responding defensively to it, will be universal orinvariant as in TMT, but instead will vary substantiallyas a function of the need-supportive versus need-fore-stalling character of their past and immediate socialcontexts.

SDT’s perspective on the experience and manage-ment of threats (and the resulting degree of negativeemotions and behavior) has another feature that isnoteworthy. SDT distinguishes between threats toone’s ego (i.e., to the introjected standards and needsubstitutes that are central to ego involvement) versusthreats to one’s integrated structures, basic needs, andprocesses of self. This distinction implies that the mul-titudinous experiences of anxiety and frustration thatare associated with ego threats would be avoidable tothe extent that one did the psychological work neces-sary to lessen one’s ego involvements, namely, (a) ei-ther integrating or, alternatively, jettisoning theintrojects that are the basis for the ego threats, and (b)developing greater awareness of one’s basic needs,which may have been covered over by need substitutessuch as extrinsic aspirations, so the basic needs willreemerge as a more central aspect of one’s self-regula-tion. Thus, the SDT account provides yet an additionalmeans of actually diminishing (as opposed to merelydefending against) anxiety and the other darker emo-tions, namely the active and self-transforming pro-cesses of organismic integration.

Which Dialectic?

As suggested by the title of the Pyszczynski et al.commentary, TMT proposes a dialectic within the per-son between growth motives and defensive motives, adialectic whose battleground is largely intrapsychic. Incontrast, the dialectic that is at the core of SDT is areal-world dialectic between integration-oriented hu-man beings and the nutriments provided, versus the ob-stacles posed, by the actual social contexts. Thisdialectic entails a proactive organism that is seeking toextend and integrate its own psychic elements and itsrelations to others, embedded in a social environment

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that can be either supportive or antagonistic to those ef-forts. Thus, in SDT the social context is viewed asplaying a crucial role in supporting individuals’ poten-tials versus stimulating their vulnerabilities. This led tocontrolled laboratory experiments concerning socialcontextual influences on psychological growth (intrin-sic motivation) and development (internalization) andalso to real-world investigations of the effects of thekinds of social forces people actually face—such ascontrolling or neglectful parents, alienating bosses,overchallenging coaches, evaluative teachers, doctorswho do not listen, and institutions that do not em-power, to name a few.

In contrast, TMT’s intrapsychic dialectic led re-searchers to amass substantial laboratory evidence forthe effects of mortality salience but to give little atten-tion to the processes of everyday motivation andwell-being. We do not question the depth and poi-gnancy of the mortality-salience phenomena; indeed,we have personally felt the press of existential anxietyand the dread that ensues from it. Nonetheless, al-though we have no doubt that mortality-salience in-ductions can catalyze defensive behavior, we believethat a vastly greater amount of human defensiveness,vulnerability, and psychopathology in the real world isaccounted for by the dialectic between basic humanneeds and the conditions that support versus thwartthem within families, institutions, and cultures. Buunkand Nauta object, on the basis of social and politicalvalues, to our having raised the issue of evaluating the-ories in part on the basis of their practical import, butfor us this is not just an issue of values, it is one of ex-planatory power.

The Truly Darker Sides of HumanBehavior

As already noted, people display, to differing de-grees, personality and behavioral patterns that repre-sent the nonoptimal or darker sides of human existence(Ryan & Deci, 2000). SDT provides accounts of multi-ple, theoretically coordinated aspects of this variation,including considerations of (a) the development andamelioration of ill-being and psychopathology; (b) theacquisition and consequences of need substitutes (e.g.,materialism, ego involvements), (c) the antecedentsand regulation of negative mood states and stress; and(d) the experience of alienation and impoverished mo-tivation and vitality, within and across domains.

Research and theory based in SDT, for example,provides insights into how psychological needs, the so-cial conditions that support versus thwart them, and theresulting motivational processes and emotions are im-plicated in the etiology (as well as the treatment) ofmyriad forms of adjustment problems and mental ill-nesses. These include eating disorders such as an-

orexia, bulimia, and morbid obesity (e.g., Strauss &Ryan, 1987; Williams, Grow, Freedman, Ryan, &Deci, 1996); rigid character disorders such as paranoiaand obsessive–compulsive personality (e.g., Ryan,Deci, & Grolnick, 1995) and conduct disorders (T.Kasser, Ryan, Zax, & Sameroff, 1995). Further, we ap-plied the theory to general issues concerning well-be-ing versus ill-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001). In short,specific patterns of thwarted need satisfaction are keypsychological contributors to extreme as well as mildversions of these and many other mental disorders andtheir behavioral manifestations.

We maintain further that individual differences inthe more malevolent, heinous, and disheartening as-pects of human behavior can regularly be traced to se-rious thwarting of the basic psychological needsduring development, whereas we know of no evidencethat traces the etiology of these differences to mortal-ity-salience related events. For instance, strong evi-dence suggests that people who have become serialkillers have typically suffered severe overcontrol, hu-miliation, neglect, or all of these from the individualswho should have cared for them at an early age. All ofthese killers had self-awareness, and all were mortal.But those two factors, being invariant to all humans asTMT highlights, are therefore not explanatory. Simi-larly, clinical research on the self-infliction of violenceclearly implicates severe deficits regarding related-ness, autonomy, or both again showing the proximaland central role of these need deficits. Awareness ofexistential anxiety may have led Camus (1960) to raisethe questionof suicide, but people with whom we haveworked clinically who have actually been suicidalhave invariably been dealing with significant threats torelatedness, shame, or hopelessness concerning inef-fectiveness at central life goals, or with a deep sense oftheir agency having been vanquished. Further, thesethreats to the self have often been layered uponneed-related deficits experienced in earlier develop-mental epochs. Thus, in terms of what accounts for in-dividual differences in the darker sides of behavior, webelieve SDT has the principal issues in focus, onesmore proximal and more phenomenologically relevantthan those addressed in TMT.

Cultural Worldviews and TheirInternalization

TMT has, to its credit, an interesting perspective onthe type of violence that comes out ofgroup dynamicsand the tendency of individuals to identify with andconform to in-groups, even those that espouse inhu-man actions. According to TMT in an effort to staveoff existential terrors, people have a readiness to iden-tify with their in-groups regardless of the groups’ val-ues, and, under appropriate conditions, this could lead

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them to denigrate and do violence to out-groups in or-der to feel inclusion and psychological safety. There isno debate between SDT and TMT on the idea that in-ternalization of cultural values and practices is perhapsthe most significant problem of psychology, nor isthere debate that people can internalize just about any-thing under the right kind of pressures. But differencesare apparent concerning two issues: (a) whether all in-ternalization is defensive and conformist, and (b) whatare the primary sources of internalization.

As noted, TMT offers no distinctions concerningtypes of internalization. That is, TMT makes no quali-tative or quantitative distinctions between adoptingin-group values or practices in a way that results inwhat Pyszczynski et al. describe as “slavish confor-mity” (this issue) to outer pressures and integratingambient cultural values so that one experiences truevolition with respect to their enactment. In contrast, aprimary focus of SDT has been to examine how deeplypeople internalize the values and regulations endorsedby their culture. SDT’s distinction among external reg-ulators, introjects, identifications that are more or lesscompartmentalized, and well-integrated forms of valu-ing and self-regulation, as well as its account of thetypes of internalization being a function of the degreeof need satisfaction, yielded strong predictive value re-garding not only the quality of people’s adherence toadopted values, but also the mental health conse-quences of integrating ambient values versus merelyswallowing them whole. One of the very importantconsequences of the SDT perspective is that it can ex-plain how, if people allow internalized material tocome into contact with their integrated self and find thenew material to be too discordant or contradictory,they could actually reject the material, instead of align-ing themselves with the worldviews held by significantothers in their culture. Thus, contrary to the claimmade by Pyszczynski et al. that SDT has no account of“the development and maintenance of culturalworldviews” (this issue), we believe SDT offers amore exacting account than TMT. Indeed, SDT speci-fies the kind of value adoption that is unstable versusthat which is better anchored. It further specifies howvariations in social climate account for more or less in-ternalization.

Fostering internalization of worldviews. Be-cause SDT and TMT have different views of the funda-mental process of internalizing culture, they make dif-ferent predictions about how it is fostered. In line withthe organismic–dialectical perspectives, SDT suggeststhat the most powerful and primary source of the pro-pensity to internalize culture is the tendency to relate toand integrate oneself within an ambient social organi-zation (Ryan, Kuhl, & Deci, 1997). We believebelongingness and relatedness are strong needs that are

basic, nonderivative, and growth promoting. In SDT,this active tendency to connect with others can, how-ever, result in either introjecting or integrating aspectsof the culture, depending on whether the complemen-tary need for autonomy is supported versus thwarted inthe process. Thus, by considering the dynamics be-tween autonomy and relatedness, SDT offers a differ-entiated model of internalization in which cultural val-ues can be internalized in more defensive ways versusmore growth-oriented ways.

TMT also gives importance to relatedness, but re-ally only during infancy. The theory views relatednessor love not as a need in itself, but as a deficit-orientedand derivative means of obtaining comfort, safety, andsecurity (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997).Greenberg et al. suggested that children, under the ageof 3, before they become aware of their mortality, seekparental love in order to feel safe and secure, and thusbegin internalizing and displaying the cultural valuesand practices upon which their parent’s love is madecontingent. What TMT labels the animal needs forcomfort and security thus drives the desire for loveand, in turn, during infancy, the process of internaliza-tion. Subsequently, when children become aware oftheir mortality, at around age 3, internalization is rein-forced and, essentially, taken over by the press to de-fend against mortality terror.

This aspect of TMT highlights another interestingdivergence with SDT concerning the optimal pro-cesses that promote socialization. According to SDT,internalization and integration are optimized whenchildren are able to satisfy their basic psychologicalneeds. Thus, internalization would be maximizedwhen children feel the noncontingent love of theircaregivers, are provided optimal challenges, and arerelatively free from excessive control, all ingredientsof sensitive parenting (Ryan, 1993). In SDT’s view,the contingent provision of parental love is a primaryinstrument of control that serves to undermine auton-omy and to foster introjected regulation. As such, ittends to be a detriment to, rather than a facilitator of,more integrated internalization (Assor, Roth, & Deci,2000). In contrast, Greenberg et al. (1997) viewed con-tingent love as the essential facilitator of internaliza-tion, so it is the sense of contingent love amplified bydeath anxiety that drives adherence to cultural norms.Thus, whereas SDT suggests that more nurturing,noncontrolling conditions produce a greater tendencyto deeply internalize ambient values and that internal-ization following contingent love would likely be onlyintrojected, TMT’s account suggests that it is relativelycontrolling techniques that most effectively socializechildren.

Stated differently, because TMT uses a universalfear model and views all internalization as defensive, itoffers an account only of the relatively impoverishedforms of internalization, rather than addressing the

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more differentiated and fuller spectrum of internaliza-tion and regulatory styles captured by SDT. It is pre-cisely because SDT specifies the nutriments thatsupport variations in internalization that it is in a posi-tion to understand and predict individual differences inthe degree to which people take in cultural values andpractices and make them their own.

To summarize, TMT is a provocative formulationthat proposes that people are, at base, defensively seek-ing security and comfort, and subsequently, attemptingto buffer their mortality terror. Only when anxiety iskept well in check will growth occur, and Pyszczynskiet al. (this issue) propose that even that growth isspawned through mechanisms of reinforcement andincentive. We suggest, however, that, although deathanxiety is a meaningful concept that may explain im-portant phenomena, one cannot well explain the pro-cesses of life in terms of a running from death. SDT’stheoretical and empirical efforts focus on the organ-ism’s inherent tendencies toward life, and specificallythe living tendencies toward self-expansion and inter-personal integration as manifest in innate needs for au-tonomy, competence, and relatedness. By examiningthe facilitators and frustrators of these needs, SDT pro-vides an account of how people internalize culturalworldviews in more versus less healthy and effectiveways and of what can go wrong in the person-contextdialectic to result in the degradation and perversion oflife.

The Brighter Side of HumanFunctioning

One of the defining features of SDT is its emphasison the active, growth-orientednatureof the human or-ganism. SDT assumes that nature has well endowedthe human organism with tendencies toward health andwell-being, as well as a propensity to seek out the nec-essary nutriments. In our target article, we oftenmention well-being, although an extended discussionof the meaning of well-being was another of the fea-tures of SDT (in addition to a focus on the dark side)that we did not include. In anAnnual Review of Psy-chologychapter (Ryan & Deci, 2001), we specificallyaddressed the nature and promotion of well-being, andwe present a very brief synopsis of that topic here sowe can respond to points raised in the commentaries.

The Meaning of Well-Being

Like various other writers (e.g., Ryff & Singer1998; Waterman, 1993), we distinguish between twoviews of well-being—hedonic and eudaimonic. Thehedonic position views well-being as happiness or pos-itive mood (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999),

whereas the eudaimonic position characterizeswell-being in terms of a fully functioning person (Rog-ers, 1963). SDT subscribes to the eudaimonic view ofwell-being.

The difference between happiness and eudaimoniais important with respect to two bodies of research re-viewed in our target article, namely the research onregulatory styles and the research on aspirations. Forexample, Nix, Ryan, Manly, and Deci (1999) showedthat succeeding at an activity in a controlling conditionenhanced happiness but not vitality, whereas succeed-ing at an activity in an autonomy-supportive conditionenhanced both. Thus, in line with SDT, success undercontrolled regulation resulted in hedonic well-beingbut not eudaimonic well-being. Similarly, we haveshown that, when people who value extrinsic aspira-tions such as wealth and fame attain those outcomes,they may feel short-term happiness, but these pursuitsdo not typically yield eudaimonic well-being. In con-trast, the pursuit and attainment of aspirations such asmeaningful relationships, personal growth, and com-munity contributions—aspirations that are moreclosely aligned with basic psychological needs—tendto promote the fuller, more enduring, and deeper senseof well-being described by the term eudaimonia.

An understanding of the nature of eudaimonicwell-being is important for interpreting points made insome of the commentaries. For example, Buunk andNauta were simply incorrect in stating that we definewell-being tautologically as “experiences of auton-omy, competence, and relatedness” (this issue). Quiteto the contrary, we consider autonomy, competence,and relatedness to be necessary nutriments for well-be-ing, so we show that the experience of satisfaction ofthe three basic needs leads to well-being, with the latterbeing assessed, for example, as the presence of vitalityand self-actualization and the absence of anxiety, de-pression, and somatic symptoms.

Buunk and Nauta use the ideas of positive moodand well-being interchangeably, placing themselvessquarely in the hedonic camp. From that perspectivethey argue that social comparisons indicating superior-ity over others and goal contents symbolic of fame areimportant antecedents of well-being. From the SDTviewpoint, the use of social comparison information toindex one’s fame or to place oneself above others is acentral aspect of ego involvement (Nicholls, 1984;Ryan, 1982) and thus typically represents controlledregulation. As such, we expect it at times to yield hap-piness or positive mood, but not eudaimonia (e.g., Nixet al., 1999). Furthermore, SDT research shows howcompetition, contingent evaluation, ego involvement,and related phenomena in which social comparisonfigures heavily often yield quite negative affects andimpoverished forms of motivation. Buunk and Nautathus espouse ideas that fit well within a controlled,contingent reward-based social context, but do not to

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grapple with the possibilities we point to that can onlybe found by looking outside that box.

The commentaries by Kernis and Coleman refer towell-being and, implicitly, considered well-being froma eudaimonic perspective. Both Kernis and Colemandiscuss well-being as assessed by Ryff’s (1989) scale,which has six components, including autonomy, com-petence, relatedness, personal growth, life purpose,and self-acceptance. And, not surprisingly, both com-mentators discuss need satisfaction—in the case ofKernis, with respect to self-esteem and in the case ofColeman, among elderly people—with a sensitivity tothe idea of fully functioning individuals. We respectand agree with Ryff’s view of well-being as aeudaimonic process, but we note that we do not typi-cally use her measure because we view autonomy,competence, and relatedness to be the criticalanteced-entsof well-being rather than itsindicators.

Creativity

We focus on well-being or mental health as an im-portant, but by no means the only, brighter aspect ofhumanity. As well, we investigat and discuss the cre-ative, prosocial, and constructive tendencies of people,which we consider to be more normative than excep-tional under nurturing conditions. Hennessey pointsout in her commentary that the intrinsic motivation hy-pothesis articulated by Amabile (1982) confirmed thatthe factors specified by SDT as enhancing versus di-minishing intrinsic motivation seem also to predictcreative performance. Noting that the underminingversus facilitating effect is evident in young childreneven prior to the development of attributional mecha-nisms that undergirded early cognitive accounts of thephenomenon, Hennessey argues that the concept ofneeds provides a useful explanation that is relevant inthose early years as well as later ones. We agree withher interpretation of the undermining versus enhance-ment of creativity by various contextual events interms of the functional significance of the events—thatis, their meaning regarding psychological needs. It ap-pears indeed, that need fulfillment and creativity arelinked, in part, through intrinsic motivation.

Hennessey goes on, however, to discuss how extrin-sic motivation, with its various degrees of internaliza-tion is also highly relevant to understanding creativity.Studies suggest that extrinsic and intrinsic motivationcan, under some circumstance, be synergistic with re-spect to promoting creative engagement, and the ideaof differentiating extrinsic motivation in terms of thedegree to which it represents an aspect of the self,seems like a promising formulation for empirical ex-amination. To date little of this research agenda hasbeen accomplished.

Why Three Needs and Why NotOthers?

One primary reason that theorists employed theconcept of needs is that it allows them to draw togethera set of diverse phenomena in a parsimonious way. Forsuch an approach to be effective, it is necessary to use asmall number of needs to explain a large number ofphenomena. As the number of needs grows, the utilityof the approach diminishes. In fact, one of the reasonsthat some earlier need-related theories fell out of favorwas that their lists of needs became long and unwieldy.When, for example, experimental psychologists triedto deal with the challenge to drive theory posed by ex-ploratory behavior by positing a whole set of newdrives, such as the drive for visual exploration (e.g.,Butler, 1953), Hullian theory went into dramatic de-cline (White, 1959).

There is nothing magical about the number threewhen it comes to psychological needs, but there issomething extremely important about requiring thateach addition to the list be a true need and also that itexpand the scope of the phenomena that the list ofneeds encompasses. In this regard, althoughPyszczynski et al. in their commentary claim that ourneeds are far too general, we believe that their utilitycomes largely from the fact that they do apply so gen-erally and so aptly across multiple domains of humanexperience. Consider, for a moment, Bauer andMcAdams’ list of relatedness themes—namely,friendship and love, dialogue and sharing, group par-ticipation, and prosocial activity. We believe that thistypology is very useful for thinking about the variedinterpersonal arenas in which relatedness can be ex-perienced. Therefore, one might argue (although theydid not) that each of these should be considered a dif-ferent (i.e., more specific) need. We believe, how-ever, that the concept of a relatedness need is theappropriate level of generality for purposes of parsi-mony and that having these four be separate “related-ness needs” would be too specific and would thus nottake stock of the common, satisfying element in eachnor of the common elements in the conditions thatconduce toward that satisfaction. Accordingly, wemaintain that deconstructing the three general needswould detract from, rather than add to, an integrativeand parsimonious framework.

Of course, the stringent definition of a need assomething that, when fulfilled, promotes integrationand well-being and, when thwarted, fosters fragmenta-tion and ill-being does serve to keep the list short. Inthis regard, although we do not object to the list ofneeds being expanded, we thus far do not see a compel-ling argument for any need beyond the three we speci-fied. It is illustrative, then, to consider the additionalneeds proposed in various of the commentar-ies—namely, safety–security, meaning, and self-es-

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teem—and to address why we do not think they shouldbe added to the list.

Safety–Security

Andersen, Chen, and Carter are the most explicit intheir commentary in arguing that, although autonomy,competence, and relatedness are fundamental needs,there may be others. They suggest, first, that safety–se-curity is a need, and Pyszczynski et al. (this issue)would surely agree, as they portray safety–security asan even more basic need than the three we propose. Al-though we think there is some plausibility to the idea ofa need for safety–security, there are important reasonsnot to conceptualize it in that way.

First, it is important to differentiate betweensafety–security at the physical and psychological lev-els. Physical safety and security are certainly essentialfor survival, just as are food and oxygen. However, weare here dealing not with the health and growth of tis-sues and bones but rather with the health and growth ofthe self, just as, we believe, are Andersen et al. andPyszczynski et al. in their commentaries.

The question, then, is whether security and safetyconstitute a psychological need. Security and safetycan, indeed, be strong motives, but we view them asderivative, as motives that become salient in responseto insecurities concerning the meeting of basic needs.That is, people quickly come to desire psychologicalsafety–security when they experience thwarting of thebasic needs or, in other words, threats to the self. Thus,adapting a concept from Maslow (1943), we considersafety–security not as a basic need, but as adeficitmo-tive. In other words, it is an example of a compensatoryformation of the psyche in response to basic need defi-cits, so it is not a need in its own right but rather is a re-action to impoverished satisfaction of true needs.

Growth and defense. One of the guiding princi-ples of SDT is that it is important to distinguish be-tween psychological processes and structures that areproactive versus those that are reactive. In this regard,growth needs and deficit or defensive motives are qual-itatively different from each other and are best viewedas having a particular relation to each other. Spe-cifically, growth needs are conceptualized as funda-mental and are the means for promoting the human po-tential; whereas, defensive motives are derivative andcome into play following threats and thwarts to the ba-sic needs. Differentiating between such motivationalforces is more exacting in terms of theoretical and em-pirical specification than simply listing additionalneeds, for it places different types of motives in an or-ganized relation to one another, with the deficit motivesarising and attaining their salience from failures to sup-

port growth. The very termdeficit implies this. In asimilar vein, specifying fewer basic needs that have adynamic relation to derivative motives is more parsi-monious, because the alternative is to postulate anever-growing list of specific needs that explain vari-ance but have no underlying dynamic relation to oneanother. In short, distinguishing true needs from deficitmotives and need substitutes provides a richer andmore valid reflection of the darker and brighter sides ofhuman functioning.

Meaningfulness

The second additional need Andersen et al. (this is-sue) affirm is a need for meaning. Like various of ourcolleagues through the years, they suggest that peoplehave a fundamental desire to comprehend and makesense of their life experiences, including the tragediesof their lives.

First, let us say that meaning as Andersen et al. por-tray it falls squarely within the category of processesthat we consider to be growth oriented, as opposed todeficit oriented, and that there is no question that theexperience of meaning is an important aspect ofeudaimonic functioning, a fact supported by researchby McGregor and Little (1998). Still there are ques-tions concerning how the construct of psychologicalmeaning relates to the needs and integrative processesposited within SDT, and whether it is best conceptual-ized as a separate need.

Consider first the issue of meaning in structuralterms. When people experienced meaning they willlikely have achieved a sense of coherence, integrity,and congruence within the self. Researchers such asAntonovsky (1987) and Korotkov (1998), for exam-ple, reported that meaning is a core component of thesense of coherence (SOC). For us, meaning or SOCcan be quite exactingly understood in terms of the pro-cesses of internalization and integration, which in-volve assimilating values, regulations, emotions, andinitiatives to one’s self. Thus, the structural aspect ofmeaning is for us an aspect of the more general issue ofintegrity, which we address with our model of the or-ganismic integration process. There, we specify theconditions under which something becomes meaning-ful and coherent with respect to the self, as well as theconditions under which social values and meanings areonly partly internalized, winding up as introjects orcompartmentalized identifications. As such, we be-lieve in the importance of meaning and SOC, but arguethat it is achieved, structurally, through the movementtoward greater integrity or autonomy—that is, towardgreater integration of a value, idea, or practice withinthe self.

Now consider meaning not as a structural feature ofself but as a set of contents. The search for meaning is,

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in a sense, the search for certain basic truths or essen-tial experiences. Here, too, SDT’s basic needs figuresaliently. We believe that when the most unassailablecontents of human meaning are inspected one will findamong them: (a) a sense of connection to loved ones, torelevant groups, to culture, and to humanity more gen-erally; (b) a sense of effectance in negotiating the ter-rain of life, which concerns the potency of one’spurposive actions; and (c) a sense of personal agencyin relating to others and accomplishing goals that re-flect one’s core values. In short, when people reflect onaspects of life that convey meaning, they are often fo-cused on experiences of relatedness, competence, andautonomy (or freedom) in a deep and personalway—that is, on their relative fulfillment of basic psy-chological needs.

Self-Esteem

There has recently been some controversy withinsocial-personality psychology about whether there is aneed for self-esteem. Maslow (1943) was quite defini-tive in positing it, and others such as Steele (1988) im-plied it. Heine, Lehman, Markus, and Kitayama(1999), in contrast, argued that there is not a universalneed for self-esteem. Two commentaries within this is-sue take positions that are relevant to the controversyand to the question of human needs.

Kernis, both here and in various other publications,distinguished between secure high self-esteem andfragile high self-esteem. In his commentary, he notesthat this concept bears considerable similarity to ourdistinction between true self-esteem and contingentself-esteem (Deci & Ryan, 1995), although that is an-other aspect of SDT that we did not address in the tar-get article. As Kernis notes, secure self-esteem reflectspositive feelings of worth that are well anchored anddo not require promoting oneself or feeling superior toothers (the feeling that Buunk and Nauta claim to be soimportant). In contrast, fragile self-esteem involvespositive feelings about oneself, but these feelings arecontingent upon specific outcomes and are easilythreatened. As such, people with fragile high self-es-teem are continually seeking evidence of their worth.

In light of this important distinction that Kernis soclearly articulates here and has supported in past re-search, let us consider whether there is a fundamentalneed for self-esteem. We are very much in agreementwith Kernis that “the quest for high self-esteem mayreflect a substitute need, rather than a fundamentalone” (this issue). In other words, insofar as the searchfor self-worth is a strong motive or a “prime directive”the self-esteem being sought will almost certainly becontingent or fragile rather than true or secure. If, onthe other hand, the self-esteem under discussion is trueor secure, people would not likely be pursuing it, and

we believe that it, like meaningfulness, is best thoughtof as an indicator of eudaimonic well-being rather thana need. Thus, secure self-esteem is, for us, an elementof well-being that results from satisfaction of the basicneeds and is not itself a need. To say that there is a needfor self-esteem would be equivalent to saying there is aneed for well-being, a clearly tautological proposition.The important feature of specifying needs as we havedone is that it allows one to address the necessary con-ditions (viz., autonomy, competence, and relatedness)that will lead to high secure self-esteem,meaningfulness, and various other indicators ofeudaimonic well-being.

This discussion also points to a convergence and adivergence with TMT. Pyszczynski et al., over the pastseveral years, illuminated a phenomenon in whichmortality anxiety can drive people to become preoccu-pied with self-esteem as well as leading to prejudice,hostility, and self-deception. Although, as noted ear-lier, our own view places the roots of anxiety in threatsto the self and its innate needs rather than in mortalityawareness, we nonetheless agree, as just outlined, thatif there is a quest for self-esteem it is likely to be a defi-cit process. Thus, we converge on the postulate that,when self-esteem is a salient motive, it is largely defen-sive, but we diverge on the matter of there being a formof self-esteem that is not defensive (and is not a need)but instead represents an attribute of the fully function-ing person.

The Three Basic Needs

Our theory of psychological needs defines them in ahighly specific manner that differentiates them fromgoals, desires, and other motivationally relevant forcesin human behavior and development. The concept ofneed, classically and as used within SDT, pertains tothose nutriments that must be procured by a living en-tity to maintain its growth, integrity, and health(whether physiological or psychological). We proposeautonomy, competence, and relatedness as psychologi-cal needs because they appear to satisfy the criteria forneeds that we and others (e.g., Baumeister & Leary,1995) enumerated and because we found it necessaryto consider them needs in order to integrate, at a mean-ingfully dynamic level, a wide variety of phenomenaranging from the undermining of intrinsic motivationby rewards, to the alienation associated with feelingcontrolled at work, to the benefits of fully integratingthe values extant in one’s reference group, to the draw-backs of a materialistic lifestyle, to the development ofsecure attachments within specific relationships,among others. Consideration of basic needs is thus im-portant in providing explanatory utility for a largenumber of seemingly disparate phenomena across a

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wide range of human endeavors, developmental ep-ochs, and domains of activity.

The meaning of need satisfaction. One of thethings we noticed in some of the commentaries was thetendency to interpret the concept of need fulfillment ina relatively superficial way, as if we were proposingthat every behavior must beaimedat satisfying thethree needs for a person to display well-being. Al-though we state clearly that the crucial issue concernspeople feeling a sense of competence, autonomy, andrelatedness whether or not a particular behavior is in-tended to promote those feelings, we found, for exam-ple, that Buunk and Nauta (this issue) attempt acounterargument with the seemingly absurd exampleof a man on vacation who is not satisfying his compe-tence need but is displaying greater well-being than ifhe were. Leaving aside the obvious fact that he mightvery likely be engaging optimal challenges and feelingcompetent with respect to his golf, body surfing orcrossword puzzles, it should go without saying that aman on vacation is not there to prove his competencewith respect to hiswork. The point, however, is that ifhe were feeling incompetent and ineffective with re-spect to his work, recreation, or life more generally, wewould certainly detect the negative effects. Furtherwere he to engage in no challenges, even for fun, hemight quickly become bored and dysphoric.

In another such hypothetical example, Buunk andNauta portray a movie star who was completely ful-filled with respect to autonomy, competence, and relat-edness, yet fell into depression upon failing to win anOscar. Apart from the clinical implausibility of a per-son who feels loved, competent, and volitional beingso easily rendered incapacitated by failing to receivean award, our response is to ask, what must have beenthe meaning of the Oscar to an individual who had sucha reaction? For it to have had such an impact, must itnot have been a significant symbol of her being lovedor accepted, or of her being competent or accom-plished? Could Buunk and Nauta possibly have beenproposing that the Oscar is somehow valuable in itsown right without reference to deeper psychologicalneeds?

Do basic needs conflict? Pyszczynski et al. (thisissue) point out that SDT’s three basic needs often con-flict. As noted earlier in this response, we, of course,agree and have written extensively on this matter (e.g.,Deci & Ryan, 1991; Ryan, 1993). We described howthe needs for autonomy, competence, and relatednessare not inherently contradictory—indeed, they can becomplementary—but the social world is often struc-tured to pit one need against another, as when a man be-lieves he has to act against his own autonomously held

values to gain his peers’ regard, or an adolescent girlbelieves she must give up competence strivings inmathematics so as not to feel geeky or get rejected. Thefact that people’s basic needs are cast against each otherto some, although varying, degrees within social con-texts is thus not in any sense a problem for SDT. On thecontrary, it has allowed SDT to predict, for example,that contingent parental love would result inintrojection rather than integration (Assor et al., 2000)or why excessive focus on performance comparisons sooften detracts from motivation and well-being (Ryan &La Guardia, 1999).

Do needs change? A strong version of SDT sug-gests that across all domains and developmental peri-ods fulfillments of all three psychological needs arenecessary for integrity, growth, and well-being. Our fo-cus developmentally has largely been on children, ado-lescents, college students, and working-age adults.Coleman (this issue) rightfully points out that morestudy of the dynamics and impact of needs in geronto-logical studies is sorely needed. As Coleman suggests,many frameworks on aging (e.g., Baltes, 1997), em-phasize the plasticity and flexibility of people’s invest-ments, goals, and concerns under changing life circum-stances. He correctly underscores, however, that inSDT’s view, this flexibility is constrained by underly-ing psychological needs. Not only is it possible, asColeman states, that “basic human needs for autonomy,competence, and relatedness become harder to satisfy”(this issue) in old age but that the means through whichindividuals do satisfy them becomes tailored accord-ingly. His commentary contains several ideas that wefind intriguing. For instance, he suggests that what isoften called generativity may in fact represent a ten-dency toward forming a broader sense ofconnectedness. He also suggests that perhaps some ofthe loss of meaning and well-being faced by some olderpeople may be related to cultural structures that leadpeople to identify too exclusively with their careers asthe source of life’s purpose.

In recent work, we too have begun to outline anagenda for considering how aging and need satisfac-tion relate to each other (V. Kasser & Ryan, 1999;Ryan & La Guardia, 2000). In line with SDT’s centralprinciples, we argue that although the challenges to,supports for, and means available to satisfy basic needschange with age, the importance of basic need satisfac-tion does not. We specifically suggest that individualresources and cultural contexts can be examined fortheir adequacy with respect to needs in old age, andthis adequacy predicts the meaning, vitality, andwell-being that can be experienced in later life.

Do needs explain everything? We believe theconcept of basic psychological needs has substantial

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heuristic utility, and we focused more on what the con-cept can accomplish than what it can not. We make noclaim that the three needs explain everything, and weoften have considered the influence of other factorssuch as genetics and neurobiological processes in shap-ing people’s behavioral vulnerabilities and resources.Nonetheless, we think that most significant events insocial life relate to basic psychological needs and thatneed dynamics explain sequelae to the events. This canbe illustrated by considering some examples from ourcritics who attempt to cite non-need-related factors thataffect well-being.

Buunk and Nauta’s suggest that there are manystressors in the workplace that do not relate to the threeneeds, citing as examples the fact that workers face is-sues such as role ambiguity, loss of status, and workoverload. We agree that such factors can indeed havenegative consequences, but their links to thwarted needsatisfaction are also readily apparent. An employeewho is unclear about what the job entails is unlikely tofeel competent at performing the job and is likely to behesitant about self-initiation. Similarly, it is hard toimagine a case in which loss of job status would notthreaten feelings of competence, autonomy, and relat-edness, and indeed we would argue that it is preciselythis need thwarting that gives the loss of job status itspsychological sting. Finally, workers experiencingwork overload would no doubt find it hard to self-orga-nize and experience choice in contexts where superiorsare insensitively heaping on work, as the term overloadimplies. The possibility that work overload would di-minish the workers’ sense of competence is also high,as is the likelihood of being unable to experience asense of connectedness with others (e.g., their fami-lies) under such circumstances. It seems that eventhese examples, offered as contradictions to ourmodel, are easily connected to psychological needs,and they readily illustrate how positing such needscan link diverse phenomena, and how psychologicalneeds figure centrally in motivation and well-beingwithin organizations.

Needs, Motives, Individual Differences,and Matches

In the target article, we state that although we be-lieve there are individual differences in the strength ofneeds, we do not think that need strength is the mostfruitful place to focus empirical attention. In contrast,we indicate that the individual differences in thestrength of one’smotivescan be an important issue, be-cause different motives are, in SDT’s view, eithermore or less effective as vehicles to need fulfillment.Some commentators took exception to our stand onthat issue. For example, Vallerand, in his commentary,maintains that measuring need strength allows one to

match people’s needs with opportunities to satisfythem and thus to predict the effects of need satisfac-tion. He then refers to a measure of need strength basedon self-reports of what people want, raising two relatedpitfalls with his and similar interpretations by othercommentators, namely, a failure to differentiate theo-retically between needs and motives, and between psy-chological needs and their representation in consciousawareness and self-reports.

Needs are, by definition, essential and univer-sal—they are the nutriments without which people’spsychological health will not flourish—so SDT arguesthat the three needs are important whether or not peo-ple report wanting them. Consider, for example,Buunk and Nauta’s statement that “employees preferto receive close supervision and clear instructionsrather than autonomy” (this issue). Even if that weretrue, although there is no evidence that it is, it does notmean that autonomy is not a need. Indeed, SDT wouldpredict that even if employees stated this preference,there would still be meaningful motivational and psy-chological costs if those employees were denied auton-omy, or were forced to choose between havingautonomy and receiving meaningful competence feed-back, as the example implies. People may at times ac-commodate to blocked need satisfaction by sayingthey do not want the satisfaction, but we assert that,even if they say they do notwant autonomy, compe-tence, or relatedness, their well-being will be dimin-ished if they do not get it.

Part of the problem with assessing need strength asa moderator of the effects of satisfying the need also re-sults from confusion between needs and their con-scious representations. There is the strong possibilitythat what is measured in self-reports will not be needstrength but will instead reflect the strength or salienceof a loosely related motive.

Vallerand’s discussion (this issue) of an “eatingdrive” serves well to illustrate our point. People do nothave an eating drive, they have a need for sustenance.Eating behaviors may satisfy that need or drive, buteating can also satisfy a variety of other motives orneed substitutes as anyone who has worked with pa-tients with eating disorders knows. Similarly, the de-sire to interact with others or to be part of a group isbased to some extent in the need for relatedness, but itcan also reflect motives that are not aligned with thisneed. The point, simply, is that the measurement ofconscious motives is not identical with the measure-ment of needs; in fact, self-reports are themselves be-haviors that require dynamic interpretation. No doubtthis confusion is part of the reason that the evidence formeaningful moderation of need satisfaction effects byneed strength is quite scant, particularly with depend-ent measures that concern well-being and effectivefunctioning. In our own attempts to find evidence thateven the personal salience of need-related motives

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might moderate the impact of need satisfaction onworkers’ well-being, we have typically come upempty-handed (e.g., Leone, 1995).

In our research on life goals, we measured individualdifferences in people’s relatedness motives (e.g., T.Kasser & Ryan, 1993; Ryan, Chirkov, Little, Sheldon,Timoshina, & Deci, 1999) and found that having strongrelatedness motives, relative to, say, strong financialmotives, predicts greater well-being. In line with SDT,we assumed thatall of our participants needed related-ness, regardless of how much they consciously valuedit, but we also reasoned that people whose motives forintimacy and closeness were strong relative to their de-sire for money were expressing a pattern of motives thatwould be more likely to support their basic need fulfill-ment, and the evidence concerning well-being out-comes strongly supported this view. In short, SDT takesthe view that people’s motives can be better or worseservants of needs, and that is why the study of individualdifferences in motives and goals is of interest. However,that interest depends upon clearly distinguishing be-tween needs and either motives or goals.

Sansone and Smith, in their commentary, provide atelling example of what can happen when goals andneeds are confused. They argue that, whether interest willbe facilitated by competence and autonomy inputs “maydepend on whether achieving competence or autonomy isthe primary goal of the individual’s engagement of thetask” (this issue). However, this goal-based formulationis incongruent with phenomenological accounts of intrin-sically motivated behavior, for people seldom say that thereason they are doing an intrinsically motivated activity isto feel competent or autonomous. The statement is alsoinconsistent with decades of research on intrinsic interestin which external conditions that facilitate versus forestallfeelings of competence and autonomy have been shownto affect intrinsic interest regardless of people’s con-scious goals. For example, children do not typically playgames with a primary goal of achieving competence, theyplay for fun (White, 1959). However, if the games theyplay are ones that they cannot master, they move to othersthat are more engaging—namely, ones where moreeffectance can be experienced. Similarly, children in anexperiment by Koestner, Ryan, Biernieri, and Holt(1984) were not doing artwork with the goal of experi-encing autonomy, but when the experimenter was con-trolling with respect to the task, they lost their sense ofbeing origins, and their interest, intrinsic motivation, andcreativity were undermined.

The statement that goal facilitation enhances inter-est also requires that one be precise about what it is thatpeople become interested in. For example, if people’sinterest in going to exercise class is dependent on relat-ing to others, then it seems that their level of intrinsicmotivation forexerciseis probably not sufficient to getthem to attend. Thus, it would be inappropriate to saythat the relatedness satisfaction attained in class adds

to their interest for exercise, as opposed to their interestin going to that exercise class (where they can interactwith the others). The fact that goals are often bundledtogether in everyday discourse may have practical im-portance, for example for getting people to attend ahealth club, but it does not imply that we should allowthem to stay bundled in our scientific discourse. It istheoretically and empirically important to specify ex-actly what it is that someone is interested in, if one is tostudy how goals relate to interest.

In spite of our disagreement with the utility of thegoals-match hypothesis, we do not want to lose trackof what we think is an important point made bySansone and Smith in their commentary. They claim,and we agree, that to stay motivated and engaged nomatter what the activity, people try to generate someinterest in their behavioral field. If it is not in the be-havior itself, at least it can be in related or contextualelements, as when the factory worker invents mentalgames on the assembly line or an exerciser arranges tobe at the health club when particular others are alsothere. As such, SDT does not suggest that matches be-tween goals and outcomes can notadd interest or en-joyment to an activity, but this increment neithercontradicts nor captures the functional importance ofautonomy, competence, and relatedness for motiva-tion, growth, and well-being. The problem with en-dorsing the idea of a goals-match hypotheses that isnot constrained by an understanding of the impor-tance of basic need satisfaction, is that, at least im-plicitly, it is endorsing a standard social-sciencemodel in which the content of people’s nature is sim-ply ignored and the functional inputs that are requiredto sustain interest, self-motivation, and well-beingare not being considered.

Need Compensation

We use the term compensatory motives attemptingto convey that when basic needs are not satisfied, peo-ple will often compensate by developing need substi-tutes that can have immediate and long-term negativeconsequences. Vallerand suggests in his commentarythat compensation is a healthier process than we indi-cate because, he says, when needs are thwarted peoplewill go elsewhere to satisfy them. It is true, of course,that people often gravitate toward domains in whichthey are better able to satisfy their needs—a point wemade explicitly in the target article—and this can attimes represent a healthy organismic tendency towardequifinality with respect to need satisfaction. Nonethe-less, there is a problem with Vallerand’s formulationthat went unrecognized. He cites a study in which stu-dent athletes who failed in the academic domainshowed a slight, and presumably compensatory, in-crease in their autonomous motivation for sports. That

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is certainly intriguing, and it attests to the dynamic na-ture of needs. But this does not address how these ath-letes may have been impacted by the need thwarting atschool. To what degree was their perceived cognitivecompetence and self-esteem decreased, their alien-ation from school exacerbated, their general well-be-ing diminished, and so on? Failure to get one’s needsmet within a domain as central as school will surelyhave costs for well-being and growth, and turningaway from school towards sports may or may not be atruly healthy response to this thwarting.

Autonomy as a Need: Critiques andReactions

The need for autonomy is a unique and a controver-sial focus of SDT research. Whereas relatedness andcompetence are widely researched within psychology,and the idea of needs for relatedness and competence isrelatively acceptable to many theorists, SDT research-ers are essentially alone in their empirical explorationof the concept of autonomy. Thus, in spite of manifolddemonstrations by numerous SDT researchers of thefunctional importance of autonomy, several critics ar-gued that autonomy is not important, that autonomy isnot a need, or that autonomy is merely a product ofWestern ideology.

Our use of the term autonomy is informed not only byour ongoing empirical findings but also by traditions inphenomenological and analytic philosophy (Ryan,1993). Our use of the concept is also internally consistent.However, we find that many of the criticisms levied atSDT, including those by commentators in this issue, arebased on definitions of autonomy that we neither endorsenor employ in either our theoretical or operational defini-tions. For example, rather than addressing volition andintegrated self-regulation, which is central to SDT’s con-cept of autonomy, our critics focused on independence,individualism, detachment, or selfishness.

In terms of the present commentaries, Carver andScheier forward a relatively strong, and in many respectsinaccurate, critique of our concept of autonomy, but theywere not alone. We use their comments as a platform fordiscussing what autonomy is and what it is not. Some ofthis discussion reiterates a prior dialogue on this matter(Carver & Scheier, 1999a, 1999b; Ryan & Deci, 1999),and although their current critique seems to have been al-tered somewhat by the prior debate, it is clear that theycontinue to wrestle with the meaning of autonomy.

Autonomy Is Neither IndependenceNor Free Will

Repeatedly we argue that when we use the term au-tonomy what we are referring to is self-governance.

Autonomy is, as Carver and Scheier suggest,“self-direction, self-determination—plain and simple”(this issue). However, in no way does the idea ofself-governance imply, either logically or practically,that people’s behavior is determined independently ofinfluences from the social environment (which is thestraw man that Bandura, 1989, used to criticize theconcept of autonomy), or that autonomy is “true inde-pendence of action…in effect, …free will” (which ishow Carver & Scheier herein characterize it).

We know of no real-world circumstances in whichpeople’s behavior is totally independent of external in-fluences, but, even if there were, that is not the criticalissue in whether the people’s behavior is autonomous.Autonomy concerns the extent to which people au-thentically or genuinelyconcurwith the forces that doinfluence their behavior. The issue is whether they arepawns (deCharms, 1968) to those forces, or, alterna-tively, perceive the forces as being valuable, helpful,and congruent sources of information that support theirinitiative. The functional differences in experience,quality of behavior, and outcomes that result from thisdifferentiation are clear and were reviewed at length inthe target article. Although a controversial point, wesee this basic motivational truth as applicable acrosscultures, whether they are collectivistic or individual-istic. Indeed, even the stability of a collective dependson people being relatively willing to adhere to itsnorms, practices, and values; and the health and perfor-mance of the participants involved depend on their ex-perience of autonomy or volition in that adherence.

In a similar vein, we do not believe there is free will,even though there is autonomy. Free will, as the term istypically used, means essentially that behavior defiescausation, that it is not lawful (see Deci, 1980). But,SDT is a scientific framework that assumes a lawful,causal determination of behavior, so the critical ques-tions concern the nature of the causation and the princi-ples by which behavior is lawful. SDT describes andpredicts the occurrence of distinct processes by whichbehavior is determined or regulated, some of which arecharacterized as autonomous and some as controlled oramotivational. We assume not only that these forms ofregulation differ experientially, but they also differ intheir antecedents, their consequences, and theirneuropsychological underpinnings (e.g., Ryan, Kuhl etal., 1997).

Autonomy Requires Integration

Carver and Scheier (this issue) assert that our use ofthe term autonomy to encompass the ideas of self-de-termination, coherence within the self, and the experi-ence of freedom is quite different from common usageand that the issue of self-determination should be keptdistinct from the issue of integration within the self.

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For us, the fit is quite simple and straightforward, but itrequires a shared understanding of the meaning of keyterms or concepts.

Autonomy does mean self-determination as wenoted earlier, and we have used the terms more or lessinterchangeably for 2 decades. Integration is the meansthrough which the self develops, so integration is thebasis of self-determination (i.e., of autonomy). If a be-havioral regulation is well integrated into the self, thebehavior is something with which the person fully con-curs and the person experiences freedom. As such, thethree notions are fully consistent and represent a uni-fied and extensive portrayal of autonomy.

A possible basis for confusion in this portrayal, andone which Carver and Scheier acknowledge, concernsthe meaning ofself, which is the organizer or directorof autonomous action. We briefly address this issue inthe target article and discussed it at great length else-where (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1991; Ryan, 1993). WithinSDT, self is the set of integrated processes and struc-tures that begins with the nascent self, composed of in-trinsic motivation, the innate psychological needs, andthe organismic integration process. Over time, addi-tional material becomes integrated into the developingself, but the crucial point is that not all aspects of one’spsychic makeup become part of the self. When a per-son is regulated by an introject, for example, one as-pect of that person’ personality dominates over others.Introjected regulation is not representative of true au-tonomy, and the demonstrated experiences of pressure,tension, and ambivalence, as well as the diminishedquality of performance that accompanies introjects areall indicative of this fact. Thus, our definitions are notjust philosophically informed, they are also empiri-cally supported. Most social-cognitive theories, incontrast, consider self to consist of any and all internalregulatory schema and self-relevant cognitive struc-tures. Thus, for example, controlling introjects wouldbe part of the self, as would compartmentalized identi-ties, addictive regulatory schema, and ruthless, relent-less self-derogatory evaluations. All of those aspectsmay well be parts of one’s psychic makeup that ener-gize or direct action, but in SDT they are not consid-ered integrated aspects of the self and therefore do notrepresent autonomy.

Consider this example, which is drawn from a clini-cal case we encountered. A soldier, entering a villagefrom where shots had been fired, was ordered to kill aninnocent person. He was of two minds: as a loyal sol-dier he believed in the importance of following orders;at the same time he knew that he ought not kill an inno-cent person. The clash of values suggests that his mo-tive to kill (to follow the order) could not be integratedwithin the self, so it could not be done autonomously.He did kill the victim, but the action entailed one partof him dominating over other parts—a phenomenoneasily recognizable to clinicians and, we suggest, to

anyone who takes interest in inner dynamics. Subse-quently, this individual suffered post-traumatic stresscaused by memories of such actions that he had beenneither able to integrate nor to adequately repress.

Pyszczynski et al.’s example of Germans autono-mously committing genocide begs for a similar analy-sis. In the SDT view, the perpetrators of those actswere sometimes acting from external regulations (aphenomenon documented by Milgram, 1965), fromintrojects (a formulation consistent with Arendt, 1971,and Browning, 1992), out of unintegrated, compart-mentalized identifications (a view consistent withGoldhagen, 1996), or from all of them. To make andcarry out their decisions to act required that they makeexternal attributions for their actions or that they iso-late their actions from their sensibilities as Christiansor as compassionate human beings. Historical evi-dence for all three regulatory processes being at workis manifold, and it shows the necessity of understand-ing the multiple forms of internalization that may sup-port cultural adherence. Importantly, although thesethree types of regulation do differ in their degree of au-tonomy, none of them represents full autonomy orself-determination as we use those terms.

Although these examples are extreme and involve apowerful inner conflict that must be defended against,there are many familiar and less potentially explosiveexamples in everyday life that also show the inexora-ble relation of integration to autonomy. When peoplebuy environmentally destructive sport utility vehicles(SUVs) to impress their friends, they may experiencepleasure with their purchase. But the behavior betraysa lack of mindfulness of themselves and their sur-roundings. In other words, it requires some amount ofshutting out of information about the hazards to theearth and to people’s health. The very process of shut-ting out rather than processing information, of defend-ing against awareness, suggests a “divided self” that isacting without full endorsement. This is not to say thatthe act of buying an SUV is necessarily non-self-deter-mined, for it is the underlying processes rather than thebehaviors or outcomes themselves that are the definingfeatures of autonomy. In other words, a person whoneeds the SUV for hauling in rough terrain, is mindfuland regretful about the hazard, and has made a choicein light of the pros and cons could well be integratedwith respect to owning the vehicle. To the extent thatthe potentially conflicted act was self-determined, itwould likely have resulted from a meaningful consid-eration of the costs and benefits to themselves and toothers of their engaging in the behavior.

Autonomy and Culture

There is another issue that represents a point of fun-damental disagreement between SDT and the perspec-

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tive of Carver and Scheier, who state in theircommentary that “people in Western culture do seemto like to feel autonomous” but who “wondered howuniversal this desire really is…” (this issue). The issue,again, concerns the difference between needing some-thing and wanting something. We maintain that allpeople need autonomy (whether they report wanting itor not), but we have no doubt that there are cultural dif-ferences in the explicit valuing or desiring of auton-omy. In spite of the fact that several critics have made asimilar argument, we have seen no evidence to indicatethat autonomy is not important in other cultures (nota-bly, collectivist cultures). In fact, we cite studies in ourtarget article (e.g., Hayamizu, 1997; Yamauchi &Tanaka, 1998) showing relations between autonomyand well-being outcomes among Japanese school chil-dren. Hennessey, in her commentary, similarly offersevidence of undermining of creativity by rewards inSaudi children.

Carver and Scheier take issue with our interpreta-tion of the Iyengar and Lepper (1999) study and asks,“why the Asian-American children who chose forthemselvesapparently didnot feel autonomous” (thisissue). Carver and Scheier’s question was based on aninaccurate presumption, as a careful examination ofthe results of the study indicates that the Asian-Ameri-can children who chose for themselves did indeed feelautonomous. Specifically, the Iyengar and Lepper re-sults showed that, in the first study, Asian-American(as well as Anglo-American) children who chose forthemselves were highly significantly more intrinsi-cally motivated (and thus, presumably, felt more au-tonomous) than Asian-American (andAnglo-American) children who were assigned a taskby the experimenter. Thus, this study replicated ex-actly, with Asian-American as well as Anglo-Ameri-can children, the initial study by Zuckerman, Porac,Lathin, Smith, and Deci (1978) that showed that partic-ipants who chose their activities were more intrinsi-cally motivated than those assigned them by theexperimenter. In their second study, Iyengar andLepper similarly showed that tasks chosen by partici-pants led to significantly more intrinsic motivationthan tasks chosen by out-groups for Asian-Americanand Anglo-American participants, again showing re-sults consistent with those of Zuckerman et al.

Carver and Scheier ask what evidence there is thatthe Asian Americans in the “trusted-others” conditionsfelt autonomous in accepting the trusted-others’choices. There is no evidence on the issue in Iyengarand Lepper’s (1999) article, but it is a very importantissue about which we are currently collecting data. Be-cause we often argue that autonomous interdepen-dence is at least as common a human state asautonomous independence, findings that some individ-uals are well integrated in their reference group wouldnot, form an SDT point of view, be problematic. What

would be problematic is to find that children whowillingly followed parental advise and displayed highintrinsic motivation felt forced or heteronomous in do-ing so. We know of no such evidence.

Autonomy Is Not Selfishness

Another source of confusion and disagreement aboutautonomy is that some people tend to align it with self-ishness, power, and getting what you want. This showedup in Buunk and Nauta’s seeming equation of autonomywith dominance and in Pyszczynski et al.’s seemingequation of being autonomous and powerful. Domi-nance and power do allow control over outcomes (andmight lead to the feeling of competence), but they cer-tainly do not represent autonomy; indeed, the exertingof dominance and power are, we submit, much morelikely to be energized by need substitutes and to be regu-lated controllingly rather than being energized by basicneeds and regulated autonomously.

The same general issue appeared in Carver andScheier’s suggestion that sociopaths could be auton-omous in their deceitful or selfish actions. A wealth ofclinical observations attests to the fact that the behav-iors of antisocial personalities are not typically auton-omous in the sense of being volitional, integratedexpressions of the self—indeed they are often impul-sive, poorly coordinated, and relatively unregulatedby self-reflection. Further, evidence is clear that mostpersons with antisocial personality have histories in-volving serious need thwarting during their develop-ment. Indeed, it shows, consistent with SDT, thatteenagers diagnosed with conduct disorders are likelyto have come from homes characterized by excessivecontrol, and low nurturance and warmth (T. Kasser etal., 1995). TheDiagnostic and Statistical Manual ofMental Disorders(4th ed. [DSM–IV] American Psy-chiatric Association, 1994) specifically cites parentalabuse, neglect, and inconsistent discipline as etiologi-cal factors, attesting to the need deficits antisocial in-dividuals have typically faced. Thus, as was the casewith Buunk and Nauta’s examples, this example fromCarver and Scheier turns out, when carefully exam-ined, to support rather than contradict SDT’s position.

The sense of autonomy as selfishness is also im-plicit in Buunk and Nauta’s question about one per-son’s autonomy conflicting with another’s and inPyszczynski et al.’s example of one person wantingautonomously to jam while another wants autono-mously to nap. For us, such a conflict representsone of the challenges of life, and people’shomonomous tendency—their need for related-ness—involves a readiness to make adaptations asthey work toward a meaningful integration with thesocial system. This is not to say that it is easy; whatchallenge is? Surely, there will be times of diffi-

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culty as people work to feel autonomous while re-solving the conflict to feel homonomous. Still, theneeds to feel autonomy and relatedness are thebases through which the mutual solution can beachieved, for the irreparable antagonism betweenautonomy and relatedness that some commentatorsseem to suggest is not inevitable.

If, however, the individual jams despite the neigh-bor’s request for quiet, there exists a strong possibilitythat the personal decision in that situation is not wellintegrated and thus lacks autonomy. For the person tojam autonomously would require two things: (a) thatthe individual truly wants to jam (that part is easy), and(b) that the individual truly concurs with the idea eitherthat the neighbor does not have the right for quiet atthat time or that the neighbor’s concerns and goals arewithout merit. If the timing of the jam is 2a.m., the factof jamming while the neighbor wants to nap implies alack of mindfulness, a lack of integration, and leads usto ask about the meaning of shutting out the neighbor.If it is 2 p.m., the person could, perhaps, in an integratedway, decide to jam despite the neighbor’s desires, butthat would require further analysis. Our point, simply,is that many behaviors that are “selfish” are not auton-omous but are, indeed, quite the opposite.

As an illustrative empirical result, Sheldon andMcGregor (2000) recently demonstrated that auton-omy seems to predict less rather than more selfishness.In two studies, they examined the behavior of peopleespousing extrinsic versus intrinsic value orientationsusing the “Tragedy of the Commons” paradigm. Theyfound that groups characterized by more extrinsicallyoriented individuals, who are typically characterizedby less autonomy as Carver and Baird (1998) showed,behaved more acquisitively despite the fact that thiscompetitive, selfish, strategy dearly cost themselvesand the existing common.

Is Autonomy Illusory?

Another issue that was raised concerned whetherautonomy is real or illusory. We believe that autono-mous versus controlled regulation is a real distinction,not only functionally, but also in terms of neurologicaldynamics and processes (see Kuhl & Fuhrmann,1998). Additional work of this sort will be importantfor understanding better what it means to say that au-tonomous regulation is actually different from con-trolled regulation. However, we also believe that thereis already substantial psychological evidence indicat-ing that autonomy is functionally real. Carver andScheier state in their commentary that, “Perhaps theuniversal need is actually the need to screen awayenough of the controlling pressures tofeelthe sense ofself-direction, even if it happens to be illusory” (this is-sue). But from the point of view of a psychological em-

piricist, research indicating that the experience of au-tonomy (or, in their words, feeling the sense of self-di-rection) has a variety of specifiable consequences suchas improving conceptual learning and flexible infor-mation processing and enhancing mental health andwell-being is,ipso facto,evidence that it is more thanjust illusory. What would be necessary psychologicalcriteria for autonomy to be real if not that the empiricalspecifications of autonomy versus control lead reliablyto predictable consequences?

Approach and Avoidance MotivationsWithin SDT

A final issue concerning autonomy involves the rela-tion of control theory’s emphasis on approach–avoid-ance motivational systems and processes ofself-regulation as described within SDT. In a previousexchange (Carver & Scheier, 1999a, 1999b; Ryan &Deci, 1999) we emphasized that autonomy could not beequated with approach behaviors, and controlling regu-lation could not be equated with avoidance behaviors, asCarver and Scheier attempted to do. For instance, thefact that behavior regulated by contingent rewards rep-resents control according to SDT (and accordingly hasbeen found to have negative consequences) contradictsany proposed isomorphism between approach and au-tonomy. We also presented compelling examples ofavoidance behaviors that could be autonomous, as whenan athlete wants to avoid further injury and thus decidesto avoid certain risky behaviors in practices.

We do, however, agree that there is a certain amountof asymmetry, as was suggested by Carver and Scheier intheir commentary. For example, there does appear to be agreater tendency for autonomous behaviors to be ap-proach oriented. Still, the alignment is not a simple one.For example, being externally regulated, which we cate-gorize as controlled, can be either approach (behaving toget a reward from a superior) or avoidance (behaving soyour teacher won’t get angry at you). Introjected regula-tion, in contrast, would likely be more closely alignedwith avoidance; avoiding guilt is obvious, but seekingself-aggrandizement, although seeming to be approach,would require only the slightest scratching of the surfaceto reveal its true (avoidance) nature. We believe, in fact,that the major motivation underlying introjection is a fearof losing relatedness or love. Identified and integratedregulations, like external regulations, can concern eitherapproach or avoidance goals. For instance one could beidentified with the goal of avoiding fatty foods to de-crease one’s risk of heart attack. Still, many if not mostidentified and integrated regulations are approach ori-ented. Finally, we believe that intrinsically motivated be-havior is nearly always approach in character, as one ishard pressed to think of examples of intrinsically moti-vated avoidance.

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Relatedness as a Need:How Important Is It?

We postulate that fulfillment of all three basic needsis essential and necessary for growth, integrity, andwell-being. Indeed, the point of some of our recentstudies (e.g., Deci, Ryan, Gagné, Leone, Usunov, &Kornazheva, 2000; Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, &Ryan, in press) has been to show that well-being suf-fers whenever circumstances are such that people donot experience satisfaction of all three needs. Accord-ing to SDT, satisfaction of all three needs is requiredfor developing and maintaining intrinsic motivation,facilitating the integration of extrinsic motivation, fos-tering intrinsic aspirations, and becoming integratedwith respect to the regulation of one’s emotions. Whenwe first introduced the concept of relatedness (Deci &Ryan, 1985; Ryan, Connell, & Deci, 1985) we were, asfar as we know, the first to bring the idea of relatednessto bear in discussions of the underlying determinantsof intrinsic motivation and the internalization of ex-trinsic motivation.

In the target article, we state that relatedness is im-portant for intrinsic motivation, although with sometasks and some circumstances, a distal sense of related-ness is all that is required. On the other hand, weinterpretted a study by Anderson, Manoogian, andReznick (1976) as indicating that, for other tasks andcircumstances, proximal relational supports facilitateintrinsic motivation. The reason for making this pointwas simply to acknowledge that there are many in-stances in which people experience interest and vitalitywhile engaging in intrinsically motivated activities bythemselves. In contrast, we emphasize that proximalfeelings of relatedness are even more important for in-ternalization and integration than for intrinsic motiva-tion, because the desire to belong and feel connected isan absolutely essential contributor to people’s willing-ness to take in and endorse values and behavioral regu-lations that are held by significant others. In otherwords, it is really people’s homonomous ten-dency—that is, their desire to be integrated within a so-cial sphere—that provides the principal impetus forinternalization. In line with this view, our researchshows repeatedly that relational supports do promoteinternalization and autonomous regulation (e.g.,Grolnick & Ryan, 1989).

Despite this emphasis, four sets of commentators(Andersen et al.; Sansone et al.; Vallerand; Van Lange)either take issue with our statement that relatedness isnot proximally necessary for intrinsic motivation insome situations or suggested that relatedness is moreimportant than we indicated. Consider first the proxi-mal necessity of relatedness for intrinsic motivation.Countless studies of intrinsic motivation, some evendone by Sansone and colleagues and by Vallerand andcolleagues, show high levels of intrinsic motivation in

situations in which people worked alone on interestingactivities experiencing no relatedness with peers andprobably little with the experimenter. It is perhaps be-cause these were the types of studies that dominatedthe field during the 1970s and early 1980s that related-ness was not linked to intrinsic motivation until later.Our point is that, although we have seen instances ofhigh levels of intrinsic motivation in situations inwhich there were not proximal supports for related-ness, we have never found instances of people sustain-ing a high level of intrinsic motivation when they donot experience competence and autonomy. Thus, al-though some studies indicated that interacting withothers and feeling related to them can contribute to in-trinsic motivation in various situations, it is also impor-tant to recognize that, although people are indeedsocial animals, they can also have moments of cen-teredness, excitement, and flow, when engaged in soli-tary activities.

Van Lange, referring to the example of a boy beingpaid to mow the lawn (Deci, 1971), argues in his com-mentary that it might be relatedness rather than auton-omy that is undermined by rewards if the boy’s intenthad been to contribute to his family. We have no objec-tions to that as a potential explanation of the undermin-ing of autonomous motivation in this example, as VanLange’s scenario was quite plausible. Paying people toget them to do something you want them to do withouttaking account of their perspective could very wellconvey, as Van Lange suggests, a mistrust and lack ofrespect. We think it would be interesting to explorehow rewards, threats, deadlines, and other events thatundermine autonomous motivation affect people’sfeelings of relatedness. In fact, there is considerableevidence that prosocial behavior, which is frequentlyautonomously motivated, is readily undermined by re-wards, which shift the perceived reasons of acting fromrelational ones to extrinsic ones (Fabes, Fultz,Eisenberg, May-Plumlee, & Christopher, 1989).

The Importance of Relatednessfor Well-Being

The evidence is manifold that secure attachmentsand feelings of relatedness are associated with psycho-logical well-being (see, e.g., La Guardia, Ryan,Couchman, & Deci, 2000; Ryan, Stiller, & Lynch,1994). Not only we, but countless other investigatorsdocumented the importance of relatedness and pro-vided evidence that we interpret as supportive of thenotion that relatedness is a basic psychological need.Indeed, Baumeister and Leary (1995) made the casevery convincingly that there is a psychological needfor relatedness.

Thus, we believe strongly that relatedness is essentialfor growth and well-being. Andersen et al., in their com-

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mentary, indicate that they give even greater emphasisto relatedness than we do. Although they, like Sansoneand Smith and Vallerand, appear to misconstrue our po-sition about the importance of proximal relational sup-ports for intrinsic motivation, we nonetheless agree withthem that relatedness is a primary need and an importantmotivator across the life span (Ryan & La Guardia,2000). Still, we emphasize, as explained in what fol-lows, that focusing on relatedness without also takingaccount of autonomy and competence can lead tosuboptimal outcomes and prescriptions.

In real-life circumstance, there will be many in-stances in which people who feel relational supportsfrom others will also feel supports for their autonomy.In such situations, they will likely experience satisfac-tion of the relatedness and autonomy needs simulta-neously. Nonetheless, there will also be circumstancesin which supports for one need without the other arepresent, and in those situations we predict diminishedoutcomes. For example, if a teacher provides choicesand encourages self-initiation but does so in a way thatis experienced as cold and rejecting, the studentswould likely evidence some decrements in motivationand well-being, just as they would if the teacher werewarm and friendly but used controlling rewards andcontingencies to ensure compliance. In other words,although Andersen et al. suggest that we do not give re-latedness “independent status in well-being” (this is-sue), we do maintain that each need is independentlynecessary for well-being, and some of our studies, suchas that by Reis et al. (2000) show that each of the threeneeds does make an independent contribution to theprediction of daily well-being. Moreover, research byLa Guardia et al. (2000) showed that satisfaction ofeach of the three needs within relationships separatelypredicted security of attachment within those relation-ships. In other words, to feel securely attached to oth-ers, individuals had to feel a sense of autonomy,competence, and relatedness in their relationships withthose others. Indeed, even when we controlled for re-latedness, analyses showed that the experience of au-tonomy with relational partners was a robust predictorof security of one’s attachment to those partners. How-ever, although acknowledging the independent func-tional value of each basic need, we still do not ignoretheir dynamic interactions.

As noted earlier, our work focuses more on auton-omy dynamics than on relatedness (or competence) dy-namics because, of the three needs, that is the one thathas been most neglected by empirically oriented psy-chologists. Still, we attempt to make clear that that doesnot mean we consider it more important for well-being,it simply means that our research tends to focus on theimportance for mental health and effective functioningof the one need that so many other motivational psy-chologists have not only ignored in their own research,but have even eschewed as a meaningful concept.

Motivation and Social Cognition

Andersen et al. state that “most information pro-cessing models are silent on matters central to self-de-termination theory” (this issue) suggesting both thatthat may be the reason we assume such models are notrelevant to SDT and that it would be interesting andimportant to work toward a rapprochement.

We of course believe that cognitive processes arecentral to motivation, and we agree that more researchon social-cognitive processes represents an importantfuture direction for research. However, before sayingmore about that, it is important to clarify one point. Thefield of social cognition contains a set of empiricaltechniques and a set of specific processes or mecha-nisms that describe how information is processed, de-cisions are made, and behaviors are prompted. We findthe methods and processes compelling and provoca-tive. Further, however, the field of social cognition hasoperated from a metatheoretical starting point that wedescribed as relatively mechanistic, and as a result thefield as a whole has made little attempt to consider cru-cial distinctions such as those captured by autonomyversus control, by growth motives versus deficit mo-tives, or by rigid and defensive versus flexible and ac-tualizing processes. Thus, as empiricists, we stronglyendorse the use of social-cognitive methods and con-cepts to explore motivational phenomena, but at thesame time, as organismic theorists, we strongly dis-agree with many of the metapsychological assump-tions and formulations that characterized that field.Thus our differences will be located not in the realm ofmethods, but in the realm of interpretation.

We see many opportunities for integrating so-cial-cognitive methods into the study of motivation, asAndersen et al. call for in their commentary and someinvestigators have already done. For instance Baldwin,Carrell, and Lopez (1990) showed how subliminalpriming of authority figures affected the extent towhich students experienced the figures as controllingand were in response more self-critical, a study that wethink is informative regarding the nonconscious influ-ence of introjects. More recently, Levesque andPelletier (2000) primed participants for either intrinsicmotivation or extrinsic motivation and found, subse-quently, different levels of attitudes, affects, and intrin-sic motivation (behaviorally assessed). Further, theydeveloped an implicit measure of intrinsic versus ex-trinsic academic motivation to complement the ex-plicit measure of intrinsic versus extrinsic academicmotivation developed by Vallerand, Pelletier, Blais,Brière, Senécal, and Vallières (1992). Importantly theresearchers found that the two measures of intrinsicversus extrinsic motivation predicted different behav-iors. The continuation of such research will undoubt-edly yield important insights into the cognitiveprocesses involved in the regulation of autonomous

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versus controlled forms of motivation, and the rela-tions of implicit and explicit cognitive processes to ba-sic needs. Similarly, more research using thematicmethods, as suggested by Bauer and McAdams in theircommentary, may help shed light on how individualneeds and integrative processes are expressed in lifestories and spontaneous narratives, and how differingapproaches to measurement converge with the experi-mental, self-report, and personal strivings approachesthat have been more commonly used in SDT research.

Psychology, Social Responsibility, andPolitics

As psychologists, we believe strongly that it is ourresponsibility not only to undercover and detail basicpsychological phenomena but also to consider the rele-vance of these phenomena for improving the humancondition. That belief does not lead us to value-appliedresearch over basic research; indeed, quite the con-trary. Nonetheless, we do place value on knowledgethat has implications for structuring social circum-stances to facilitate wellness or prevent illness, for in-tervening with oneself through processes such asawareness to accomplish one’s goals or to feel more vi-tal, or for informing public policy concerning thewell-being of cultures. In part this is simply Baconianlogic—the proof of a theory’s validity lies in its predic-tive and practical value.

This belief was the basis for a somewhat criticalcomment we made about TMT in the target article andfor some similar comments herein. Our commentabout TMT, in turn, prompted Buunk and Nauta tostate that they are “somewhat concerned about the po-litical agenda that researchers working on intrinsic andextrinsic motivation sometimes seem to have” (this is-sue), apparently interpreting our agenda as anticapital-ist. They cite our calling for research that can be usedto facilitate “positive social change” and “promote hu-man growth and well-being” (this issue) as examplesof the political agendas they find distasteful. Remark-ably, after they suggest that it was inappropriate for usto judge a theory in part on the basis of whether it haspotential relevance for positive change, they go on tosing the praises of “rigidly following extrinsic motiva-tion, that is, the desire to make money” (this issue) asthe route to “people’s well-being,” basing their com-ments, as near as one can tell, only on their opinions.Apparently they do not object to political agendas afterall.

One aim of SDT is, indeed, to specify necessaryconditions for promoting growth (intrinsic motiva-tion), integrity (integration), and well-being. There canbe no doubt that in doing that we endorsed the value ofgrowth, integrity, and eudaimonic well-being and thatour social or political agenda has, in fact, been to spec-

ify basic processes that have implications for promot-ing those values. SDT thus provides tools for question-ing any and all interpersonal, social, and culturalstructures. It asks the same questions about capitalismthat it does about central planning economies andabout fascist states; namely, in what ways do these sys-tems facilitate or obstruct the fulfillment of psycholog-ical needs and promote human well-being? SDT can becritically applied with equal ease to individualistic ar-rangements and collectivist ones; to vertical organiza-tions and horizontal ones; to competitive contexts andto cooperative ones. If the charges are that SDT takesits mission to be the explication of conditions that mostoptimally support human development and well-being,and that doing so is value laden, we plead guilty ascharged. We invite more people in the field to commitsuch crimes.

Note

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

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