Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a personality theory developed by scholars Deci and Ryan through a series of studies that began in the 1980s. SDT is a comprehensive theory which consists of six sub-theories including:
- Cognitive Evaluation Theory: This addresses how external rewards influence motivation.
- Organismic Integration Theory: This explains the development of intrinsic motivation.
- Goal Content Theory: This looks at goal selection.
- Basic Psychological Needs Theory: This highlights the core psychological needs.
- Relationships Motivation Theory: This explores the role of environmental factors.
- Causality Orientations Theory: This focuses on individual differences.
In social psychology textbooks, SDT is often discussed in the “Social Self” section, especially when exploring the “Overjustification Effect.” However, due to other mainstream personality theories, SDT may not appear as frequently in personality psychology resources. On the other hand, positive psychology often dedicates more space to discussing SDT.
Recently, SDT has become a popular foundation for research hypotheses, showcasing a few unique strengths that make it irreplaceable in certain areas. These strengths include:
- Explaining how “extrinsic motivation” transforms into “intrinsic motivation”: SDT remains the best framework for understanding this process.
- Emphasizing three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Since SDT is highly applicable to personal well-being, we can use a simple diagram to introduce its core concepts and explore how applying this theory might make us happier.
Life Goals: Enhancing Well-Being
Well-Being: Being the Best Version of Yourself
To begin our story, let’s start with the ultimate goal of SDT: understanding and enhancing well-being. We all want to live a fulfilling life, so maximizing our well-being is a primary goal. But what does “well-being” actually mean? Here are some similar concepts and how SDT views them:
- Some scholars define well-being as experiencing more positive emotions and fewer negative ones. However, this view of well-being as mainly emotional is not fully aligned with SDT’s perspective and is more accurately described as “happiness.” For instance, substance abuse might increase feelings of happiness temporarily, but this is far from genuine well-being.
- Beyond positive and negative emotions, other scholars suggest that well-being includes a cognitive evaluation of life satisfaction, combining both emotional and cognitive satisfaction. This approach is called Subjective Well-Being (SWB).
- However, even including subjective well-being doesn’t always capture SDT’s full concept. For example, an entrepreneur may face many challenges and experience negative emotions along the way, but in pursuing their ideals, they may also feel fulfilled. True well-being, according to SDT, is not just about subjective feelings but also about whether a person’s actions reflect their best self.
In SDT, well-being is defined as “functions and process through which subjective states accrue.” Some positive psychology scholars call this thriving or flourishing, which can be simply explained as “being the best version of yourself.” For SDT, the highest level of well-being is when a person achieves their most optimal state and fulfills goals that truly matter to them.
Achievement: Accomplishing Tasks Within One’s Abilities
When we talk about achieving goals, what kinds of tasks are we actually completing? Since everyone has unique abilities and talents, there can’t be a single, universal standard of achievement. SDT recognizes that individual differences in intelligence, personality, and skills mean that people will have different levels of performance. For each person, there are tasks that align with their strengths and others that may be more challenging.
SDT emphasizes that individuals are naturally inclined to seek out and accomplish tasks that match their level of ability. When a task is far beyond someone’s capabilities, it’s likely to feel out of reach and therefore won’t motivate action. However, when a task aligns well with one’s abilities, the positive feedback from successfully completing it brings a sense of accomplishment, affirming the person’s abilities and building motivation to pursue similar challenges. Thus, SDT encourages finding goals that are challenging yet achievable within one’s skill set.
Factors Affecting Well-Being: Goal Selection
One key factor impacting well-being is the type of goals we choose to pursue. In SDT, goals are broadly categorized as either:
- Extrinsic Goals: These include financial wealth, fame, and outward appearance.
- Intrinsic Goals: These include close relationships, personal growth, and community involvement.
Since life presents many possible goals, it’s usually impossible to pursue all of them equally. People naturally prioritize based on what they find most valuable. According to SDT’s findings, here’s how goal choice affects well-being:
- Individuals who prioritize extrinsic goals over intrinsic goals tend to experience lower well-being.
- Even when extrinsic goals are achieved, they contribute less to well-being than intrinsic goals do.
This is the central idea of Goal Content Theory (GCT) within SDT, which suggests that choosing intrinsic goals over extrinsic ones leads to greater well-being. When we prioritize intrinsic goals like fostering close relationships, personal growth, and contributing to our community, our overall sense of well-being tends to be higher.
Motivation: Developing Intrinsic Motivation
While goals can be divided into intrinsic and extrinsic types, how are these goals chosen? For example, some people love learning new things and see it as personal growth, gaining satisfaction from mastering different skills. Others may dislike change and find situations requiring new learning bothersome. Since everyone has their own reasons for engaging in different activities, motivation naturally plays a central role.
Motivation is one of the most intriguing aspects of SDT. The Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) within SDT addresses the effects of external rewards, while the Organismic Integration Theory (OIT) explains how intrinsic motivation develops.
External Rewards Can Diminish Intrinsic Motivation
To encourage behavior change, people often use rewards and punishments. For instance, the common assumption is that:
- Rewards: When given a reward, a person is encouraged to continue or behave more the desired behavior to gain more benefits. For example, if a student receives money for getting the top score, they may stay motivated to earn high grades.
- Punishments: When punished, a person is discouraged / less behave from repeating the unwanted behavior. For example, getting a fine for running a red light may prevent someone from breaking traffic rules in the future.
These assumptions align with behavioral theories that focus on rewards and punishments but do not consider how people interpret rewards or punishments and what they mean personally. SDT’s Cognitive Evaluation Theory brings cognitive assessment into the core of motivation.
Surprisingly, CET finds that:
- While external rewards can immediately promote a behavior, they tend to reduce intrinsic motivation. In other words, a reward can spark a behavior short-term, but when the reward stops, so does the behavior.
This finding is important because we may believe rewards encourage others, but in reality, rewards can sometimes reduce genuine interest in the activity. What could have developed into intrinsic motivation instead becomes a behavior driven only by superficial rewards.
Further, SDT shows that two main factors affect how external rewards impact motivation:
- Perceived Competence: Feedback about how well a person is doing provides a sense of their abilities.
- Sense of Control: Not feeling in control over a task decreases intrinsic motivation.
These two cognitive factors in how a person evaluates a task’s meaning result in a different outcome than initially expected. The phenomenon where intrinsic motivation is undermined by external rewards is known in SDT as the overjustification effect.
From Extrinsic to Intrinsic Motivation: Internalization and Integration
In SDT, we’ve learned that external rewards don’t foster intrinsic motivation; in fact, they can undermine it. So, how can intrinsic motivation develop? The Organismic Integration Theory(OIT) in SDT explains how motivation evolves from being external to becoming internalized and self-sustained.
Here is the continuum of how external motivation can be internalized and transformed into intrinsic motivation:
- External Regulation: In this initial stage, motivation is fully external, based on rewards or punishments. A person’s actions are dictated by the outcomes provided by the environment, and their goal is simply to meet external demands to gain rewards or avoid punishment.
- Introjected Regulation: As internalization begins, motivation shifts slightly inward. At this stage, a person may still act based on rewards and punishments, but the presence of reward or punishment is not necessary. For instance, someone might avoid running a red light not because they’re always fined, but because they fear getting fined if they do.
- Identified Regulation: Here, the person starts recognizing and valuing the reasons behind their actions. External rewards and punishments no longer drive their choices; instead, they understand the value of their actions. For example, they may avoid running a red light because they recognize the value of keeping others safe.
- Integrated Regulation: In the final stage, the individual’s values become fully integrated with their sense of self. These values align with their identity and personal beliefs, and actions are performed because they reflect the person’s core values.
This continuum illustrates how external rewards and punishments gradually step aside, allowing intrinsic values and personal meaning to become the primary motivation. Through this process, motivation transforms from being externally driven to genuinely self-endorsed, aligning with a person’s own values and identity.
Developing Intrinsic Motivation: Meeting the Needs for Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness
Through SDT’s Organismic Integration Theory, we see how motivation transforms from external to internal when it meets three fundamental psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these core needs are fulfilled, motivation becomes internalized, setting the foundation for personal change within the SDT framework.
Let’s use a sports example to illustrate how autonomy, competence, and relatedness support this transformation:
- Suppose someone is initially uninterested in exercise, but they have a family member who loves sports and invites them to join. Although they may not feel motivated at first, they join to spend time with this family member. This shows how relatedness—a meaningful, supportive relationship—can be the first step in initiating change, as close connections encourage participation in shared activities.
- As they continue to train, they start noticing improvement in their performance. Beginning with shorter distances, they gradually work up to longer runs, eventually completing a marathon. This achievement provides competence feedback—they realize they’re capable of running well and even outpacing some other runners. Competence reinforces their sense of skill and satisfaction through progress and accomplishment.
- With a solid sense of competence, they begin making autonomous choices, such as signing up for marathons in different countries or committing to a personal fitness goal. Autonomy allows them to freely choose and plan their future in alignment with their interests, taking ownership of their pursuits.
At this stage, running a marathon isn’t about external rewards. It’s driven by enjoyment, personal ability, and the support of meaningful connections. The satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness has created a pathway for genuine, intrinsic motivation. This illustrates a key point in SDT:
The development of intrinsic motivation is no related with external rewards or punishments. If rewards play any role, it’s typically in reinforcing competence by recognizing skills. However, intrinsic motivation grows primarily through fulfilling relationships, autonomy, and personal ability.
Environmental Factors and Individual Differences
So far, we’ve explored the core ideas of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). However, a complete personality theory must address both environmental factors and individual differences, as well as the interaction between these two. Individual personality traits and the environment people find themselves in can influence behavior, often interacting dynamically. Similar to the Diathesis-Stress Model, we can use this perspective to examine how personal characteristics and environmental factors work together to shape behavior.
Environmental Factors: Meeting Needs for Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness
Everyone has fundamental psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, different environments fulfill these needs to varying degrees. Experiences in workplaces, schools, and other social settings can help people discover whether or not they feel supported in their current environment.
Here’s how we can recognize if an environment fulfills these basic needs:
- Relatedness – This is essential to fostering intrinsic motivation. In environments where close, supportive relationships exist, people are more likely to experience a sense of safety and belonging. Indicators of a supportive environment for relatedness include:
- Others showing genuine interest, care, understanding, and empathy.
- Emotional support for the individual.
- Unconditional positive regard.
- Time and attention from others.
- Encouragement to participate in teamwork.
- Expressions of warmth, friendliness, and support.
- Competence – Once relatedness is established, environments should ideally support individuals’ skills and abilities. Effective environments provide feedback, gradually helping individuals develop their competencies. Signs of a competence-supporting environment include:
- Helping individuals clarify their goals and expectations.
- Offering consistent rules and guidance.
- Providing informational feedback on abilities and skills.
- Expressing confidence in individuals’ abilities.
- Recognizing and encouraging personal progress.
- Autonomy – Finally, a supportive environment respects and nurtures autonomy by enabling people to make their own choices. Signs of an autonomy-supportive environment include:
- Providing options and choices.
- Avoiding behavior control through external rewards and punishments.
- Offering meaningful, sufficient reasons when making requests.
- Recognizing and accepting individual emotions.
- Supporting individuals in making their own decisions.
Individual Differences
Even within the same supportive environment, people may experience different levels of need satisfaction due to personal differences. Personality traits, preferences, and individual interpretations affect how people respond to their surroundings. For example, siblings raised in the same family may develop completely different personalities, showing the impact of individual differences.
To address individual differences within SDT, Deci and Ryan (1985) introduced Causality Orientation Theory (COT). COT suggests that individuals interpret and respond to environmental cues differently, resulting in three distinct orientations:
- Autonomy Orientation: Individuals with this orientation interpret external events and stimuli through a personal, internal lens. They focus on whether activities interest them or align with their personal values, shaping their choices based on internal motivations.
- Controlled Orientation: These individuals place more emphasis on external controls, rewards, and societal expectations. They interpret events through the lens of others’ judgments or what is expected of them, often responding to cues from authority figures or social norms.
- Impersonal Orientation: Characterized by feelings of helplessness, this orientation arises when individuals feel unable to achieve goals or meet expectations, leading to anxiety and a lack of motivation. People with this orientation may feel they lack control over their outcomes.
Recognizing these orientations can help us realize why people react differently in same environments that don’t support their basic psychological needs. For example, when autonomy is lacking, some may turn to extrinsic motivations or social expectations, while others can still find enjoyment and maintain a sense of choice. Personality traits help explain these responses, illustrating how individuals maintain motivation and navigate challenges differently based on their causality orientation.
Conclusion
In Self-Determination Theory, the ultimate goal is to enhance happiness and well-being, maximize life experiences, and enable individuals to function optimally and fulfill their potential. Achieving this requires a foundation of intrinsic motivation. SDT highlights that meeting three basic psychological needs—relatedness, competence, and autonomy—is essential for driving this internal motivation and fostering well-being.
When environments support these core needs, they play a vital role in promoting personal growth and self-development. Therefore, finding or creating an environment that aligns with these needs is key to realizing one’s full potential and well-being.
For Those Interested in Learning More About Self-Determination Theory
If you, like me, are interested in SDT, here are a few possible reasons why you might want to dive deeper:
- You have a strong interest in SDT and want to understand both its theoretical foundation and practical applications.
- You’re currently writing a thesis and would like to use SDT as a broad theoretical basis, particularly within the field of positive psychology.
- You’re comfortable reading original academic texts in English.
The book Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness by Ryan and Deci, published in 2017, is considered one of the most comprehensive resources in this field. While important research continues to emerge (including post-2018 meta-analyses), this book is necessary for gaining a quick yet thorough understanding of SDT’s framework. If you’re a graduate student looking to construct a complete thesis, this book would be an excellent reference. If you click via the link, the website (maybe) will receive some sponsored. Thanks for supporting the site and content—every little bit helps! 😊