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Self-Determination Theory: Condensed

Basic Psychological Needs Theory

This is part of my “Self-Determination Theory: Condensed” series, based on Chapter 10 of Deci & Ryan’s “Self-Determination Theory”. See this page for background, and links to other articles in this series.

Basic Psychological Needs Theory relates the satisfaction and frustration of basic psychological needs to well-being and ill-being.

This chapter explains:

On Wellness

What exactly is meant by wellness or well-being has been a matter of considerable debate.

Some contemporary psychologists have equated well-being with happiness, or subjective well-being (SWB). These measures have the advantage that they are straightforward to measure, and free from “elitist” notions about what is valuable.

However there is a long history of critique of such an approach, dating back at least to Aristotle. Aristotle argued that true well-being consisted of doing well that which is worth doing. Rather than hedonic happiness, he encouraged people to seek eudaimonia (which roughly translates as “flourishing”), a life in which happiness is derived from the pursuit of worthwhile goals.

SDT has a eudaimonic view of well-being. Happiness (which is subjective) is understood as a symptom of well-being.

However well-being cannot be understood as whatever causes happiness, and the absence of happiness does not imply the absence of well-being. For example

So, while happiness is (frequently, though not always) a symptom of wellness, wellness is better understood not in terms of happiness, but in terms of thriving or being fully functioning.

Thriving consists of having vitality, awareness, the ability to exercise one’s human capacities, and true self-regulation.

Fully functioning individuals are well-connected to their inner needs and states, can non-defensively perceive circumstances in which they and others find themselves, and they are non-compartmentalized in their experience.

SDT posits the empirically testable hypothesis that when people are functioning in this healthy way, on average, they will exhibit more happiness (or SWB).

It also predicts that such people will exhibit lower levels of anxiety and depression, greater energy and vitality, more sense of coherence and meaning, less defensiveness, and fewer somatic symptoms. They will also have deeper relationships, greater clarity of purpose, and a sense of, and concern with, meaning.

Of course, many different factors in circumstances affect individuals’ well-being, including a wide range of individual biological, social, political and economic factors. However, a large part of the variation in well-being can be understood as being mediated by whether or not basic psychological needs are met.

Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Wellness

Many theories in psychology have used psychological need satisfaction (and thwarting) as a means to explain outcomes. However, prior to SDT, most theories have understood needs as varying substantially in strength from person to person.

SDT views all people as all having the same basic psychological needs. There may be individual variability in how salient those needs are (i.e. how aware of their needs people are), but regardless of their salience, these basic needs exist in all people.

This is formally expressed as:

BNPT Proposition 1a: There are three basic psychological needs, the satisfaction of which is essential to optimal development, integrity, and well-being. These are the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Failure to satisfy any of these needs will be manifested in diminished growth, integrity, and wellness. In addition, need frustration, typically due to the thwarting of these basic needs, is associated with greater ill-being and more impoverished functioning.

Psychological needs are a functional construct: they are psychological factors on which full functioning is dependent.

The wide range of research studies that support this view (of which we only review a small subset in this chapter) fall into two general types:

Within-person research has lead to a further formal proposition:

BPNT Proposition 1b: Psychological need satisfactions and frustrations vary within persons over time, contexts and social interactions. Any factor or event that produces variations in need satisfaction or need frustration will also produce variations in wellness, and this principle extends from highly aggregated levels of analysis down to moment-to-moment or situation-to-situation variations in functioning.

BPNT predicts that variability in need satisfaction will directly predict variability in well-being (in the fully functioning sense of well-being that we discussed previously).

Between-Person Studies of Need Satisfaction

At a general level, there is a strong correlation between need satisfaction, and a range of measurable wellness outcomes. This relationship has been shown to be robust across many cultures.

However, evidence for a clear causal relationship tends to come from domain-specific studies.

A 1993 study looked at the need satisfaction at work, of employees working in a shoe factory in the US. Need satisfaction predicted both job satisfaction, self-esteem and general mental health.

Other studies in 2001 showed similar results in Bulgarian state-owned industries, and a US data processing company. A 2004 study of workers at an investment bank showed that workplace need satisfaction led to enhanced vitality, and lower anxiety and somatization. A 2015 study showed that the positive effects of need satisfaction existed even in situations where participants were in relatively unsafe work environments.

Similar effects have been seen in educational settings, and in sports training. Moreover, the more important the life domain is to the individual, the stronger an impact need satisfaction within that domain will have on overall wellness.

In sports research, psychologists have studied need satisfaction and need thwarting as independent factors. These studies have shown that need satisfaction is most strongly related to positive outcomes (vitality and enjoyment), while need thwarting is most strongly related to negative outcomes (disordered eating, burnout, negative moods, and physical symptoms). Need frustration in sports was also seen to lead to higher levels of secretory Immunoglobin (SIgA), a biomarker for stress.

Studies have also shown that priming or activating memories of need satisfaction can effect an individual’s well-being both in the present, and over time.

Within-Person Variation in Need Satisfaction

In a 1996 study, university students kept diaries, recording their day-to-day experiences of autonomy and competence, and various indicators of their well-being.

As well as showing that individual differences in need satisfaction led to greater well-being, the data showed that at the individual level, day-by-day fluctuations in need satisfaction predicted day-by-day fluctuations in well-being.

A follow-up study in 2000 extended the analysis to also include relatedness. This showed not only that greater need satisfaction predicted greater well-being, but also that variation in satisfaction of each of the individual needs predicted a unique variation in day-to-day well-being.

A 2010 study looked at similar considerations among the adult working population, covering both workdays and weekends. The study showed a similar effect. Weekend and non-work activities tended to be associated with significantly greater wellbeing, and this was substantially mediated by observed variations in need satisfaction.

A 2016 paper found evidence for leisure crafting whereby individuals choose leisure activities in a way that tends to support the basic psychological needs that they are failing to meet at work.

As well as these studies, which looked at variations over time, other studies have examined variations between domains (e.g. school, work, home and leisure settings) and between a person’s various interpersonal relationships (mother, father, siblings, spouse, friends etc.), each revealing similar effects.

Need Satisfaction and Top-Down versus Bottom-Up Effects

As we saw in earlier chapters, an individual’s interpretation of a particular set of circumstances can vary based on their causality orientation, which is in turn influenced by their need satisfaction.

This suggests the potential for both top-down effects (in which greater need satisfaction in general tends to lead to greater need satisfaction in specific situations) as well as bottom-up effects (in which need satisfaction in specific contexts contributes to an individual’s general need satisfaction).

A 2013 study found evidence for both bottom-up and top-down effects, although the bottom-up effects appeared to be stronger.

In spite of these effects, as discussed in Chapter 9, the strongest influence on well-being in a particular context, will be the need satisfaction and/or thwarting that occurs in that particular context.

Autonomy Support and Need Satisfaction

One important point that emerged from many of the studies mentioned above was the influence that autonomy support had on satisfaction of competence and relatedness needs, in addition to autonomy needs.

The reasoning behind this is that when managers, coaches, parents and teachers are autonomy-supportive, they are responsive to what is important to those that they are leading, guiding, caring for etc., with the result that they will facilitate the satisfaction of whatever needs that person has.

This is presented formally as follows:

BPNT Proposition II: Satisfaction of each of the three psychological needs is facilitated by autonomy support, whereas controlling contexts and events can disrupt not only autonomy satisfactions, but relatedness and competence need fulfillments as well.

Autonomy, competence and relatedness are understood to all be of equal importance as basic psychological needs. What is special about autonomy is that when autonomy is supported, this tends to create the conditions for all needs to be satisfied.

Proposition II has been supported by further studies over and above those already mentioned:

In summary, autonomy support is a critical element of any need-supportive environment.

Needs and Values: Not Always Congruent

In BPNT, needs are defined functionally, in terms of their objective effects on outcomes.

This sets BPNT apart from common ideas about wellness such as expectancy and expectancy-value theories, which hold that people will derive wellness when a person obtains outcomes that they value, regardless of what those outcomes are.

In BPNT, it is understood that outcomes valued by an individual may, or may not, be aligned with their basic needs. What impacts wellness is whether or not the basic needs are met, regardless of the value placed on these outcomes by the individual.

This is formally presented as:

BPNT Proposition III: Because basic psychological need satisfactions are functional requirements for full functioning and wellness, the effects of satisfaction versus frustration of these needs will be evidenced regardless of whether people explicitly desire or value the needs, and regardless of their sociocultural context.

Although there are many studies that support this proposition, a 2015 study provided particularly compelling cross-cultural evidence. The study examined need satisfaction and frustration in individuals from Belgium, China, the Unites States and Peru. It also gathered information about how highly individuals valued each of the needs. The results showed that satisfaction of each need predicted unique variance in well-being outcomes. The results also showed that the extent to which participants valued a particular need had no bearing on whether (or how much) meeting that need affected their well-being.

Need Satisfactions: Typically Interrelated and Often Balanced

SDT holds that all three basic psychological needs must be met for a person to be fully functioning.

However, it is also understood that the three basic needs are inter-related. Satisfaction of one need is likely to make it easier for other needs to be satisfied, and thwarting of one need is likely to make it harder to satisfy other needs.

This is formally presented thus:

BPNT Proposition IV: Basic need satisfactions of autonomy, competence and relatedness will tend to positively relate to one another, especially at an aggregated level of analysis (i.e. across domains, situations or times).

If this seems obvious, it is worth noting that many psychologists have actively maintained that this is not true. For example, cultural relativists and some feminists have argued strongly that autonomy and relatedness stand in opposition to each other. This view can often be traced back to the conflation of reactive and reflective autonomy (see chapter 9).

In fact, the correlations between basic needs are so strong that factor analysis of basic needs satisfaction often leads to an analysis in which total needs satisfaction is the highest order factor, and the satisfaction of individual needs is reported as lower order factors.

This strong correlation means that the three axes of need satisfaction are absolutely not orthogonal to each other.

Because satisfaction of these needs is correlated, this means there will be a tendency for them to be fairly well balanced. However there may be cases where they are unbalanced. A 2006 study looked at the importance of balance between satisfaction of the three basic needs, and found that those with well-balanced need satisfaction had higher well-being than those with an equivalent level of need satisfaction that was not balanced. This effect was seen at both the lower an upper ends of the needs satisfaction scale.

Another question of balance concerns balance across life domains. A 2009 study looked at this, and again found a significant negative effect on well-being arising purely from this kind of imbalance.

While the effects of these imbalances are lower than the effects that arise directly from needs satisfaction, they do point to the importance of all three of the needs, and make it clear that one cannot effectively compensate for a shortfall in satisfaction of one need simply by doubling down on the satisfaction of another need.

In summary, well-being is like a three-legged stool: if any one of the supports is missing, it will fall.

Are There Other Basic Psychological Needs?

Other theories in psychology have identified a range of other “needs”, which are not recognized as basic needs in SDT.

SDT is open to the identification of further needs, but has, from the start, upheld strict criteria that a candidate must meet in order to be classified as a basic psychological need in SDT.

The key criteria are as follows:

  1. The satisfaction of the need must be strongly positively associated with psychological integrity, health and well-being, and its frustration must be negatively associated with these outcomes. These effects must be over and above what can be accounted for by the other psychological needs.
  2. The need must specify content, i.e. specific experiences and behaviours that exemplify meeting the need. For autonomy, competence and relatedness, these could be (respectively): endorse their actions, do important activities well, and connect with others. Needs such as Maslow’s self-actualization fall short against this criterion. Meaning as a need also falls short against this criterion, and may be better understand as an output of well-being, rather than an input to it.
  3. The need must be essential to explain or interpret empirical phenomena. We have presented many such empirical phenomena that are explained by SDT’s three basic needs. Any “new need” would have to provide similar explanatory power.
  4. It must be a growth need, rather than a deficit need. It must operate on an ongoing basis to facilitate ongoing development. Deficit needs such as security only drive and energize behaviour when they are not satisfied. These needs can be understood as derivate of the basic needs: the ultimate driver is the threat to one or more of the three basic needs.
  5. Needs must be in the correct logical category: variables that when satisfied lead to outcomes. The outcomes themselves should not be understood to be needs, therefore SDT does not see well-being or vitality as needs, since they are outcomes.
  6. The candidate need must operate universally, i.e. for all people in all cultures. Typically this will occur if and only if the need can be plausibly explained in evolutionary terms: there must be some adaptive benefit of the need, which has led to its universality.

We will now look in detail at several variables that have been suggested as additional basic psychological needs, and review them against these criteria.

Variables That Have Been Suggested as Candidate Needs

The three variables most frequently argued for as “needs” are: meaning, self-esteem, and security.

Meaning

In psychological literature, the term meaning has been used in two distinct ways.

SDT sees intrinsic motivation, and organismic integration (see chapters 6, 7 & 8), as processes through which people create meaning. Therefore meaning (under either of the above definitions) is an outcome of a natural growth process, that is supported by the satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs.

This SDT view of meaning breaks down into three key postulates:

  1. People will experience meaning in their lives, to the extent that their basic psychological needs are met on an ongoing basis.
  2. That life purposes, or goals are not necessarily experienced as meaningful, unless they satisfy basic psychological needs.
  3. That meaning is better viewed as an outcome of basic needs satisfaction, rather than a need in its own right.

The following arguments and evidence can be presented for these postulates.

  1. A 2012 paper by Ryan reviewed a range of historical and contemporary accounts of meaning, and highlighted the fundamental role that need satisfaction played in each of these accounts. Further quantitative research in 2016 has shown that satisfaction of basic psychological needs can largely account for one’s sense of meaning in life.

  2. A 2006 study distinguished between intrinsic aspirations and purposes (which involve need satisfaction) and extrinsic aspirations and purposes (which do not). The study found that intrinsic aspirations were associated with wanting, searching for and having meaning, and also with overall well-being. In contrast, extrinsic aspirations were associated with wanting and searching for meaning, but not having meaning, and were also associated with overall ill-being. This implies that pursuing purposes that do not promote need satisfaction does not tend to lead to meaning or well-being in one’s life.

  3. Particularly important here is the observation that meaning does not specify content (criterion 2 above): it is not clear what specifically people need to do to achieve meaning.

Deficit Needs: Self-Esteem and Safety

Deficit needs are needs which only become salient in situations of threat and need-thwarting.

Although a healthy unthreatened person has safety and self-esteem, these only become salient as needs when their needs are thwarted, or they are under threat.

The Security Need

The concept of security exists in many psychological theories, including attachment theory, and emotional security theory.

However, SDT does not view security as a basic need, since:

Self-Esteem as a Need

There are two ways to consider self-esteem:

Some consider self-esteem to be a fundamental need. For example terror management theory (TMT) sees self-esteem as a basic human need.

According to TMT, people seek self-esteem in order to defend against the otherwise debilitating awareness of their mortality. People feel self-esteem by defending their beliefs and worldview against those who oppose them. In this view, self-esteem is a defensive need that must be satisfied before people can turn their attention to growth motivation.

Aside from TMT, it is clear that some people put significant effort into boosting their sense of self-esteem and approval of others. In SDT’s view, this contingent self-esteem is not a basic need, but rather an outcome of conditional regard. When parents, or other important people, only positively regard a person when they live up to certain standards, this conditional regard can be introjected, only loving or esteeming themselves when they meet these criteria. On this view, this striving for self-esteem is a sign of ill-being, rather than a universal requirement for well-being.

This doesn’t mean that having self-esteem is problematic. Self-esteem is an outcome that results when basic needs are met. But needing it is an indication of ill-being, likely resulting from basic needs not being met.

The above is presented formally in BPNT as follows:

BPNT Proposition V: Deficit needs (such as security and self-esteem) become salient under circumstances of threat, distress, or thwarting of growth needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Satisfaction of deficit needs can stave off aspects of ill-being but do not typically contribute to enhanced wellness or flourishing. That is, deficit need emerge as most salient under adverse conditions (threat, deprivation, exclusion, etc.) but they are not aspects of ongoing thriving, and their satisfactions may set the stage for, but do not necessarily promote, optimal human functioning.

The Universality of the Basic Psychological Needs

As mentioned previously, SDT views the basic psychological needs as universal - that is they exist across all humans, in all cultures.

Some cultures and some individuals may report that they do not desire a particular need. However the SDT view is that they will not thrive unless the need is met, whether or not they feel that they desire it.

Cross-cultural evidence for the universality of the basic psychological needs identified in SDT is an extremely important topic, which is covered in detail in chapter 22.

Vitality, Basic Needs, and Well-Being

As discussed earlier, while happiness is often a symptom of fully-functioning well-being, it is not the best indicator.

An important, and more directly relevant concept than happiness, is vitality - the feeling of having energy for action. This seems to be the most general characteristic of a fully-functioning person.

While the energetic component of motivation was important in early studies (e.g. Hull in the 1940s), later theories of psychology have often neglected this component. One contemporary area of study that does consider energy levels is the study of ego depletion, which seems to be an opposite phenomenon to the experience of vitality. The fact that exercising certain forms of self-control seems to diminish vitality is of great interest to SDT.

The feeling of having energy is familiar to people, and they can readily and reliably report how much vitality they are experiencing. Many factors influence vitality, including time of day, rest, nutrition and physical health. However vitality is also strongly affected by psychological influences: a depressed person will typically experience low vitality even when they are well-nourished and well-rested; and even someone who has physically exerted themselves, with little rest or nourishment can nevertheless be energized by a creative insight or a powerful conversation.

Ryan and Frederick began studying subjective vitality in 1997. Unsurprisingly, physical fatigue and illness resulted in lower subjective vitality. So did uncontrollable pain. However psychological factors that influenced subjective vitality were also found.

Subjective vitality was found to be related to satisfaction of all three of the basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Subsequent laboratory studies confirmed these relations, and established evidence for causality. In a 1999 study, participants successfully working on self-directed or autonomously motivated tasks displayed greater vitality than those successfully working on tasks that were other-directed or motivated by controlling forces. Another 1999 study showed that vitality in elderly care home residents was predicted by the degree to which the residents experienced autonomy support from their carers.

Further studies in 2004 and 2006 have found similar results in the workplace, and in interpersonal friendships.

Based on this accumulating evidence, Deci and Ryan presented the thesis that autonomous activities would maintain or enhance vitality, while controlled activities (including self-controlled activities) would deplete it.

Generalized to all the basic psychological needs, this thesis is formally presented as follows.

BPNT Proposition VI: Subjective vitality is based on more than physical nutrients; it also reflects satisfaction versus thwarting of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Therefore, both externally controlling and self-controlling states are expected to deplete vitality, whereas basic psychological needs satisfactions are expected to enhance it.

A competing contemporary theory of vitality, developed concurrently by Baumeister and others, is based on a different model, known as the strength model of self-control, and also sometimes the ego depletion model. In this model, self-regulation is understood as a limited resource. It is understood to be “like a muscle”, both in that using it depletes energy reserves, and in that it can be trained and developed to enable greater levels of self-control.

These two different models make overlapping predictions, but differ in that the ego depletion model does not distinguish between self-control (which BPNT predicts will reduce vitality) and autonomous self-regulation (which BPNT predicts will increase vitality).

One consequence of Baumeister’s theory is that the process of making any choice will deplete energy, in comparison to not making a choice. Whereas BPNT predicts that making a meaningful choice should not deplete energy.

A 1998 study by Baumeister involved participants arguing one side of a controversial issue. The study appeared to show that participants who were invited to choose which position to argue for showed greater ego depletion than participants who were not given a choice. However, when asked to make their choice in this study, participants were not in fact given a completely free choice, but rather were told that it would be “helpful” if they chose a particular side of the debate, since another participant had already chosen the other side.

A 2006 study repeated the 1998 Baumeister experiment, but with three groups. Two were identical to the Baumeister experiment, while a third group was given a completely free choice, with no pressure to pick one side or the other. This study showed the same results as the Baumeister study for the first two groups, but did not find any effects of ego depletion in the group that was actually given a completely free choice.

This suggests that the ego depletion arose not from the participant having to make a choice, but rather from the experience of being controlled, by being told which choice would be the “helpful” one.

Contrary to the ego depletion theory, there does not seem to be any evidence that true choice is ego depleting.

Autonomy, Control and Depletion

A range of further studies have shown that experiencing autonomy reduces the magnitude of depletion effects.

A 2008 study showed that participants who were tasked with “not thinking about a white bear” exhibited less depletion when they were given an autonomy-supportive rationale for the task, than when they were treated “like a cog in a machine”.

A 2007 study found that a self-control task was more depleting when participants were given performance-contingent rewards, than when they received task-noncontingent rewards. Recall from CET (chapter 6) that performance-contingent rewards are typically experienced as more controlling than noncontingent rewards.

A 2008 study in which people were tasked with resisting eating cookies from a plate in front of them, showed that the relative autonomy of people’s reasons for exerting self-control (determined by a questionnaire) predicted the level of depletion that would result, with the more autonomous motivations resulting in less depletion.

A 2015 study went further, and looked at glucose allocation and expenditure during effortful tasks. They found that blood glucose levels fell for participants who were externally controlled, while they actually rose for participants in an autonomy-supportive condition. These glucose levels also corresponded to observable depletion effects in the participants’ performance on subsequent tasks.

Enhancing Vitality and Energy through Need-Satisfying Activity

The studies mentioned so far have focussed on satisfaction of autonomy needs. However there is also evidence that satisfaction of the other basic psychological needs also increases one’s available energy.

A 2009 study of 400 Greek exercise participants found that both autonomy and competence had significant effects on subjective vitality.

A 2010 study showed that when participants helped others for autonomous reasons, they showed enhanced vitality, and a 2006 study showed that providing autonomy support to a friend was associated with enhanced vitality for the giver, as well as the receiver.

A 2010 study of work life found that each of the psychological needs had an independent positive experience on subjective vitality.

In summary, contrary to ego depletion theory, activities that satisfy basic psychological needs can in fact boost vitality, and increase the amount of energy available to the self.

Vitality is increasingly being linked to a range of positive outcomes, beyond simply “feeling good”. It has been linked with more productive coping with stress and challenge, and seems to also render people less vulnerable to physical and viral stressors, and less vulnerable to illness.

independently of the three basic psychological needs, a further factor that has been found to influence vitality is exposure to nature.

Nature and Vitality

Humans evolved within the natural environment, and there is clear widespread evidence that people value nature, for example in the ways in which we choose to spend our time in the natural environment, and our money on preserving it, or having access to it. At the same time, many aspects of modern life result in us being separated from nature, and one might wonder whether humans might pay some organismic cost for this separation.

Research in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that immersion in nature might have a positive effect on subjective wellbeing.

A 2010 study looked at this question in more detail. The study used two different measures of the positive energy that might be boosted by the natural environment. One was a scale of subjective vitality. The other was a 2-dimensional model of mood, developed by Thayer in 1987, which assesses both energy (vs. fatigue) and tension (vs. calmness).

This study used both experimental and diary methods, and controlled for variables such as levels of physical exercise and social interaction. Across these studies, there was clear evidence that being outdoors, or in the presence of natural elements, was associated with greater subjective vitality, greater energy, and greater calmness. The more natural the environment, the stronger the effect.

Various factors in the natural environment may come into play here. A 2016 study found that visualizing a desert environment reduced confidence in one’s ability to change bad habits, compared to visualizing landscapes containing water and living plants. A 2013 study showed that exposure to daylight boosted subjective vitality, especially in those experiencing low levels of vitality prior to exposure. Interestingly, exposure to daylight did not influence levels of tension or overall hedonic tone (i.e. positive or negative affect).

Further empirical research is needed to better understand the specific mechanisms by which exposure to nature boosts vitality and wellbeing, but the general principle has been appreciated for well over a century, and lies behind the decisions to include parks in city plans, and to protect national parks.

This principle is formally presented in BPNT as follows:

BPNT Proposition VII: Other factors aside, meaningful exposure to living nature has a positive effect on subjective vitality relative to exposure to non-natural built environments without living elements, and this relation is mediated in part by basic psychological needs.

Research in 2009 looked at the influence of the natural environment on relational and prosocial attitudes and tendencies. This revealed several interesting results:

Finally, a 2015 study in the UK found that people with access to views of nature, or the ability to spend time in nature, experienced a greater sense of community cohesion, which in turn predicted lower crime and greater well-being.

Awareness as a Foundation of Autonomous Motivation and Basic Need Satisfaction

Social and contextual factors have important effects on individuals’ ability to function autonomously, and these have been extensively studied in SDT.

However, acting with autonomy depends not only on the social context, but also on the capacities of the individual. Individuals can be capable of self-regulation even when the social context is not optimal - and the strength of this capacity varies between individuals.

The concept of awareness is important in this regard. Awareness is understood as open, relaxed, interested attention to oneself, and to the ambient social and physical environment.

Awareness allows a greater level of contact with one’s needs, feelings, interests and values, and with the conditions surrounding them. This means that awareness supports congruence and self-regulation. A low level of awareness (of either self, or environment, or both) will diminish a person’s ability to act with autonomy.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is an open, receptive awareness of what is happening both internally and externally in the present moment.

Mindfulness comes from a deep tradition of Buddhist thinking. Because of its focus on the present moment, mindfulness is distinct from awareness, which may also include active thought and analysis, the holding of particular beliefs or philosophies, compassion, kindness of empathy. These may be consequents of mindfulness, but they are not constituents of mindfulness itself.

Self-Regulation, Autonomy, and Mindfulness

Autonomy is dependent on integration, which in turn depends on people processing and finding grounds for the endorsement of particular actions.

Mindfulness is supportive of greater levels of insight and self-reflection, that can increase the likelihood that a person’s perceptions and values are congruent with their behaviour. Consequently, mindfulness could be expected to facilitate greater autonomy and satisfaction of basic psychological needs.

A 2003 study looked at this matter. The authors developed the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale which measured mindfulness as a trait. They also developed ways of measuring within-person variations in mindful attention (i.e. that person’s state of mindfulness at a particular moment in time).

Over a series of 2 and 3 week diary studies, people with higher trait mindfulness exhibited more autonomy than, and greater general need satisfaction (i.e. also relatedness and competence) than those with lower trait mindfulness.

However, independently of this effect, experiencing a mindful state at a point in time, was also correlated with the level of autonomy exhibited at that time. This suggests that even momentary experiences of mindfulness will lead to greater volitional self-regulation, and therefore improved well-being.

BPNT Proposition VIII: Mindfulness, defined as the open and receptive awareness of what is occurring both within people and within their context, facilitates greater autonomy and more integrated self-regulation, as well as greater basic psychological need satisfaction, which contributes to greater well-being.

We now look at some mechanisms by which these effects might occur

Decreased “Automatic” Behaviours

in the 1980s, Deci and Ryan drew a distinction between automatic behaviours (which are controlled by forces that lie outside awareness) and automatized behaviours (which are volitional behaviours, but ones that have become so well integrated that they can be done without consciousness).

Since then, much research has shown that much of our day-to-day behaviour does not require conscious awareness and attention.

However, while automatic behaviours allow for quick responses, with minimal cognitive load, they are frequently incongruent with one’s self-endorsed goals or values. Some of these actions are actions that we would not take if we reflected more carefully.

The heightened observation of what is currently occurring, which arises from mindfulness, can enable people to exercise greater control over these automatic responses, resulting in more of their behaviour being self-endorsed.

A 2007 study showed that the behaviour of an individual with low dispositional mindfulness was more strongly influenced by nonconscious processes (as measured by the Implicit Association Test), compared to individuals with higher dispositional mindfulness.

A 2003 study showed that individuals more disposed towards mindfulness exhibited greater congruence between their self-reported emotional states and their nonconscious emotional states, and greater clarity of emotional experience.

In summary, mindfulness promotes autonomous behaviour by freeing individuals from controlling forces, both internal and external.

Mindfulness and Terror Management

Terror Management Theory has built strong evidence that humans often respond defensively, and automatically, to reminders of mortality and death. These defensive responses will typically include prejudicial acts towards cultural outgroups, or people who hold values different to their own.

A 2010 series of laboratory studies showed that high levels of trait mindfulness mitigated these defensive reactions.

This effect, whereby mindfulness decreases automatic defensive reactions and promotes capacity for autonomous regulation, has also been seen in other domains, such as with conflicts in romantic relationships, ego threats and emotional threats

Decreasing Threat Appraisal and Enhanced Coping

A 2009 study showed that individuals high in mindfulness were less likely to respond to challenges with feelings of stress, and more likely to show positive coping with the stress that they did experience.

A 2015 study looking at mindfulness and autonomy support in the workplace found that both managerial autonomy support, and mindfulness led to greater employee wellbeing. However employees who were higher in mindfulness experienced less need frustration as a result of controlling management styles.

Mindfulness Summary

The awareness fostered by mindfulness leads to fewer automatic reactions, and a greater level of self-endorsed behaviour.

Mindfulness can also be a critical component in the integrative processes that lead to basic need satisfaction, vitality and wellness.

As we will discuss further in chapter 17, mindfulness is an trait that can be actively cultivated.

People can therefore make the decision to become more mindful, more aware, and more autonomous.

Key Concepts from this Chapter

Subjective well-being: A person’s own sense of whether or not they are happy. SDT considers this to be a common symptom of psychological well-being, but not in itself adequate as a definition of well-being.

Eudaimonia (or Flourishing): Living a life in which happiness is derived from the pursuit of worthwhile goals.

Thriving: Having vitality, awareness, the ability to exercise one’s human capacities, and true self-regulation.

Full functioning: Fully functioning individuals are well-connected to their inner needs and states, can perceive circumstances in which they and others find themselves non-defensively, and they are non-compartmentalized in their experience.

BNPT Proposition 1a: There are three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Meeting them leads to well-being and full functioning. Frustrating them leads to ill-being.

BPNT Proposition 1b: A person’s basic need satisfactions vary over time and between contexts. This leads to corresponding variations in the person’s well-being.

BPNT Proposition II: Autonomy support/thwarting has a strong influence on whether or not competence and relatedness needs are met.

BPNT Proposition III: The effects of basic psychological needs being met or thwarted will manifest whether or not the individual values these needs.

BPNT Proposition IV: The three basic psychological needs are all positively correlated with each other.

Deficit Needs: Needs that only drive and energize behaviour when they are not satisfied. For example, security. These needs can be understood as derivate of the basic needs: the ultimate driver is the threat to one or more of the three basic needs.

Criteria for Basic Psychological Needs: In SDT, basic psychological needs are those that satisfy 6 key conditions:

1. it must positively impact well-being 2. it must specify content 3. it must have explanatory power 4. they are growth need (not a deficit need), 5. it must be an input, not an outcome 6. it must be universal.

Based on these criteria, and the evidence gathered, SDT holds that there are only 3 Basic Psychological Needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Meaning: Either the degree to which people, when reflecting on their lives, feel that they have been living in a fulfilling and satisfying way, or a person’s central and significant agenda or purpose that they are trying to accomplish in their life. By either definition, SDT understands meaning as an outcome that derives from a person meeting their basic psychological needs (and therefore not a basic need in itself).

Self-esteem: The extent to which a person holds themselves in high esteem or regard. SDT understands this to be a deficit need, which only becomes salient when basic psychological needs are thwarted, or are under threat.

BPNT Proposition V: Deficit needs are highly relevant under conditions of threat or distress, but outside of these conditions, satisfying them does not contribute to wellness or flourishing.

Vitality: The feeling of having energy for action. This seems to be the most general characteristic of a fully-functioning person.

BPNT Proposition VI: Subjective vitality reflects satisfaction versus thwarting of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Externally controlling and self-controlling states deplete vitality, whereas meeting basic psychological needs enhances it.

Self-control: Control of one’s own actions or behaviours that is other-directed or motivated by controlling forces. This tends to deplete vitality.

Autonomous self-regulation: Control of one’s own actions or behaviours that is self-directed or autonomously motivated. This tends to increase vitality.

Ego Depletion Model: A model of vitality (not part of SDT), in which self-regulation is understood as a limited resource. It is understood to be “like a muscle”, both in that using it depletes energy reserves, and in that it can be trained and developed to enable greater levels of self-control. From a BPNT point of view, the ego depletion model falls short, in failing to discriminate between self-control (which will reduce vitality) and autonomous self-regulation (which will increase vitality).

BPNT Proposition VII: Exposure to living nature has a positive effect on subjective vitality (in part because of the support it provides for psychological needs).

Awareness: Open, relaxed, interested attention to oneself, and to the ambient social and physical environment. Unlike mindfulness, awareness is understood to also include active thought and analysis.

Mindfulness: An open, receptive awareness of what is happening both internally and externally in the present moment.

BPNT Proposition VIII: Mindfulness facilitates autonomy and integrated self-regulation, which leads to greater well-being.

Automatic Behaviours: Behaviours of a person that occur without that person’s awareness, and may not be well-aligned with a person’s self-endorsed goals or values. One of the mechanisms by which mindfulness promotes autonomy, is by bringing some automatic behaviours into the sphere of awareness, and therefore back under that person’s control.