Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Richard Ryan on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ryan is a professor at the Institute for Positive
Speaker 1: Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University, North Sydney and
Speaker 1: Professor Emeritus and Psychology at the University of Rochester. Doctor
Speaker 1: Ryan is a clinical psychologist and co developer of self
Speaker 1: determination theory, one of the leading theories of human motivation.
Speaker 1: He is among the most cited researchers in psychology and
Speaker 1: social sciences today, ranking among the top one percent of
Speaker 1: researchers in the field. Doctor Ryan has been recognized as
Speaker 1: one of the eminent psychologists of the modern era, listed
Speaker 1: among the top twenty most influential industrial organizational psychologists, and
Speaker 1: has been honored with many distinguished career awards. He's co
Speaker 1: author with Edward Deci of the book Self Determination Theory,
Speaker 1: Basic Psychological Needs and Motivation, Development and Wellness. So great
Speaker 1: to finally have a sit down and have a chat
Speaker 1: with you, Yes, Scott's great to be here. Thanks for
Speaker 1: inviting me. My pleasure. And you know, I want to
Speaker 1: just go back to kind of trace the development of
Speaker 1: your thinking and just who you are a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, how did you get into the field of
Speaker 1: psychology and the first place, Oh Scott, You know, those
Speaker 1: kinds of questions were always pretty complicated. It was a
Speaker 1: for me, it was a securitiust route. But I suppose
Speaker 1: this part would interest you a lot. I was a
Speaker 1: philosophy major when I was an undergraduate, and I had
Speaker 1: a strong interest in phenomenology in particular and issues of
Speaker 1: freedom and dialectics, and so that guaranteed that I was
Speaker 1: unemployed upon graduation. And so the result of that was
Speaker 1: that I was looking for a job and my wife
Speaker 1: was working in a local facility for developmental disability since
Speaker 1: she said, there's a job for an AID open there,
Speaker 1: and I went there. They sent me to the wrong
Speaker 1: interview and I ended up directing a program for helping
Speaker 1: people get out of the institution and live independently. And
Speaker 1: that got me really interested in the issues of motivation
Speaker 1: and intervention, and that led me to get back into psychology. Cool,
Speaker 1: and you did your PhD in what like? In what
Speaker 1: discipline of psychology? I'm a clinical psychological clinical. I got
Speaker 1: my PhD at the University of Rochester in clinical I
Speaker 1: was for many years the director of clinical training at
Speaker 1: Rochester until I went to Australia. Excellent, And what was
Speaker 1: your dissertation title? Hm, I was a really boring title.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what it was, but they all are.
Speaker 1: But I was basically testing the idea that ego involvement
Speaker 1: will undermine your intrinsic motivation. So the more your egos
Speaker 1: on the line, the less you'll be intrinsically motivated. So
Speaker 1: that was my dissertation. Now that's really interesting because I
Speaker 1: mean that's a great obvious precursor to the more modern
Speaker 1: day work that you've done on motivation. And so that
Speaker 1: really did start in grad school. So who's your advisor? Well,
Speaker 1: when I started grad school, my area was clinical neuropsychology,
Speaker 1: so I was doing a lot of work in about
Speaker 1: potential research and that was with Raphael Kloreman, who was
Speaker 1: a great advisor for me. But I converted, I guess ed.
Speaker 1: DC and I were running to stalk groups together around
Speaker 1: the city of Rochester at the time, and we were,
Speaker 1: you know, good friends as clinicians, and then we started
Speaker 1: a talk theory and he was already doing experiments on
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation and the two of us came together. So
Speaker 1: my dissertation really had moved over to our beginnings of
Speaker 1: self determination theory. So you've really known Edward DC a
Speaker 1: long time? Well, I didn't even realized it went back
Speaker 1: to grad school. Oh and I've been friends since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, so we have a long history together that
Speaker 1: is amazing. So, you know, the a lot of this,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, this research came after Abraham Masl's passing,
Speaker 1: as you know, as anyone who is in my podcast knows,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Abraham Maslow and the humanistics
Speaker 1: psychology era, and he, you know, really thought a lot
Speaker 1: about motivation, but he never used the expression intrinsic extrinsic, right,
Speaker 1: you know, he never he never talked about that distinction.
Speaker 1: When did that distinction start to crop up in psychology?
Speaker 1: And you know who were some of your major influencers
Speaker 1: early on in your career, Well, I'd say a big
Speaker 1: influencer and this also applies to DC is Richard du Charms.
Speaker 1: Richard de Charms wrote a book in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: called Personal Causation. In that book, he really describes the
Speaker 1: difference between feeling like an origin like you're behind and
Speaker 1: engaged in your behavior, versus a pawn like you're being
Speaker 1: pushed around by external forces. So he was an attribution
Speaker 1: theorist in the tradition of Hider. He was also a
Speaker 1: psychodynamic thinker. I would say he was a big influencer,
Speaker 1: and he did work on He discussed intrinsic motivation, and
Speaker 1: he even discussed the hypothesis that rewards and ego involvement
Speaker 1: would undermine it. Although he didn't do much work on
Speaker 1: that himself. It was really Ed who picked up that theme,
Speaker 1: so I would say it was around Robert White was
Speaker 1: a big influence on us. I once got the opportunity
Speaker 1: to meet with Robert White, and he's well known for
Speaker 1: his idea of affectance motivation and competence motivation. So i'd
Speaker 1: say between the Charms and his ideas about autonomy and
Speaker 1: Robert White and his ideas about competence, those are kind
Speaker 1: of the theoretical forerunners for our worker cool And because
Speaker 1: you did say you did mention you studied philosophy, So
Speaker 1: I am curious who are some of your philosopher influences,
Speaker 1: especially in your thinking about autonomy, because that's a topic
Speaker 1: that well, obviously philosophers have been thinking about for a
Speaker 1: really long time, with issues of free will, and I'm
Speaker 1: just curious of you. You immersed yourself in the philosophy
Speaker 1: of mind, you know, or the existential philosophy literature at all,
Speaker 1: before you got into the even into the field of psychology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that was there before my interest in psychology.
Speaker 1: So I was an that's awesome college a student of husserl.
Speaker 1: I was really interested in European phenomenology and existentialism, and
Speaker 1: in particular there was you know, there's an early phenomenologist
Speaker 1: who's name is Alexander Fonder, and he did a lot
Speaker 1: of work on the whole idea of what he called
Speaker 1: will or self determination from a phenomenological point of view,
Speaker 1: and so he was he was certainly an early influenced
Speaker 1: on me. I also was steeped in the philosophy of
Speaker 1: Paul Riccorr, who was a later phenomenological existential thinker. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of interest in the work of Sart,
Speaker 1: but also analytic philosophy to some extent, the work of
Speaker 1: Harry frankfurt On on free will and autonomy has been
Speaker 1: really important. So self determination theory, I think is always
Speaker 1: wanted to be well anchored and conversant with its with
Speaker 1: its philosophical underpinnings, and I think there's too few theories
Speaker 1: today that really explicitly state their ontologies and epistemologies. And
Speaker 1: I think that's something that we we strongly want to do.
Speaker 1: And this this has been there from the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's evident, and that's a great that's a great feature,
Speaker 1: so to say, so to speak of of of your
Speaker 1: self determination theory. Even before we get into the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of the theory and things surrounding that, I
Speaker 1: want to stay on the philosophy top for a second,
Speaker 1: because this is a topic that very much interests me.
Speaker 1: You know. I had a I had a two part
Speaker 1: series debate with Sam Harris for this podcast about free will,
Speaker 1: and do fall Sam Harris at all of you. I don't.
Speaker 1: That's fine, Well that's your excuse for that. But he he,
Speaker 1: He's very much believes we don't have free will, and
Speaker 1: it's usually a strong man argument. It's usually a definition
Speaker 1: of free will that no one would ever want anyway.
Speaker 1: So so I'm pretty skeptical about anybody who argues the
Speaker 1: free will idea because they usually set up some kind
Speaker 1: of ridiculous model of what free will would look like
Speaker 1: like there's no prior causes, there's no prior thought, there's
Speaker 1: no prior input, right, it has to come xnlio and
Speaker 1: of course no events in the universe happen that way.
Speaker 1: So they win. If that's what free will does, they win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear your brother. I hear your brother. Well, there
Speaker 1: there's a definition. There is a certain definition one could propose.
Speaker 1: As he does that. You know, he's right in the
Speaker 1: in that sense, in the sense he's talking about. But
Speaker 1: I do think there's a there's a free will worth wanting.
Speaker 1: I think that the kind of self determination you talk
Speaker 1: about in your research is a free will worth wanting.
Speaker 1: I think Daniel Dennett, you know, the phosphor of mind,
Speaker 1: who is is a compatibilist would would agree, you know
Speaker 1: with that is. So I do want to know like
Speaker 1: your conceptuization of self determination, like what is it? You know,
Speaker 1: before we get to the nuts and bolts of the
Speaker 1: needs and the nuances of the theory, let's just talk
Speaker 1: about self determination for a se because I think that's
Speaker 1: an interesting in its in and of itself of what
Speaker 1: does that mean among humans? What we could translate it
Speaker 1: into some other terms like self regulation, you know, self
Speaker 1: determination is when you know what you're doing is something
Speaker 1: that you feel that you're regulating. In other words, that
Speaker 1: you're also a behavior that you stand behind or self endorse.
Speaker 1: This is why it aligns with the phenomenological view of
Speaker 1: self determination, because when you act with self determination, you're
Speaker 1: acting where you're willing to do it, and you do
Speaker 1: it volitionally, and therefore you can be wholeheartedly engaged in
Speaker 1: what you're up to. So in in kind of that
Speaker 1: that briefest form, self determination is true volition, true volition.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things that can arise that
Speaker 1: can pull me away from or even fool me into
Speaker 1: thinking I'm I have volition when I when I really don't.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with the phenomenon of cults, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with the phenomena of mind control. So I
Speaker 1: guess you can have external coersion, and you can have
Speaker 1: you can have internal c and you know people with
Speaker 1: O c D, you know, people with lots of things,
Speaker 1: a lot of competing you know, psychopathologies and things that
Speaker 1: are there inner taking them away from you know, I
Speaker 1: would say the higher self. So so I think that
Speaker 1: you're there, Yeah, You're just right Scott, which is that
Speaker 1: it's not parallel to the distinction between internal and external,
Speaker 1: because you can have heteronomous forces that are within and
Speaker 1: you can have your own interject. You can have your
Speaker 1: own internalized stigmas and pressures and biases that actually take
Speaker 1: you away from self determination and autonomy. So the threats
Speaker 1: to autonomy or not just external, they're also internal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Carl and Carl Rodgers talked about that introjection I
Speaker 1: think is the phrase he used. Yeah, so I'm sorry. Awesome, No,
Speaker 1: that's awesome to use it as adapt adapting it from
Speaker 1: Carl Rodgers or just a coincidence. No, Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: Carl Rogers also adapted it from where I did, which
Speaker 1: is from psycho analytic theory. When we talk about an interject,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a partially assimilated internalization, and Rogers meant
Speaker 1: it in the same way. You know, if we if
Speaker 1: I was to trace it where I got the term from,
Speaker 1: it would be from my psychoanalytic training and particularly from
Speaker 1: the work of Roy Schaeffer, who really did talk about
Speaker 1: a continuum of motivations not too dissimilar from what we did.
Speaker 1: But you know, we adopted it without the same psychoanalytic assumptions.
Speaker 1: This is great. Okay, so can you tell our listeners
Speaker 1: a little bit? Can you go through the motivational continuum?
Speaker 1: Let's start with like just going through the motions. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean when you think about any action you have,
Speaker 1: when you ask people why are you doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: there's a whole variety of answers people might give. One
Speaker 1: answer might be I'm being forced to do it or
Speaker 1: compelled to do it by forces that are outside me,
Speaker 1: and that would be you know, coercion, and it would
Speaker 1: be a form of being externally regulated. They're making me
Speaker 1: do it. I could also be seduced into doing something
Speaker 1: with a carrot that's riding in front of me or
Speaker 1: a reward. I'm now doing it for the rewards, so
Speaker 1: it's still an external force that's driving me, but here
Speaker 1: it's an ampetitive force. We call both of those external regulation.
Speaker 1: That's when your motivation is dependent on either the external
Speaker 1: pressure or the external rewards that are out there, and
Speaker 1: if those weren't there, your motivation would go away. Another
Speaker 1: kind of motivation is why are you doing that? Well?
Speaker 1: Because I think I should or I'd feel bad about
Speaker 1: myself if I didn't or you know, I feel proud
Speaker 1: of myself if I do this thing. We call those
Speaker 1: things interjection because those are internal rewards and punishments that
Speaker 1: are driving your behavior. The fear of anxiety or shame,
Speaker 1: or the ego boost of you know, inflating yourself by
Speaker 1: feeling really great. Those things are also motivating for horses
Speaker 1: that we call interjection. And they're not very autonomous either,
Speaker 1: because we can be pushed around, just as you were
Speaker 1: just saying, by those introjects. You know, my shoulds can
Speaker 1: make me do a lot of things that are not
Speaker 1: really what I value. Still, again, we can do things
Speaker 1: because we're valuing them, we actually believe in them. So
Speaker 1: you know, I might do something like collect money for
Speaker 1: a cause I care about. It's no fun, it's not interesting,
Speaker 1: but I truly value it, so I volitionally and willingly
Speaker 1: do it. And we would call this identification because you're
Speaker 1: identified with your goal and your aim in that case,
Speaker 1: and that's also very evolitional and highly autonomous. And finally,
Speaker 1: you know, we talk about intrinsic motivation now we're doing
Speaker 1: this is when you do something just because it's inherently
Speaker 1: enjoyable and interesting to you to do so it's also
Speaker 1: fully evolitional. So you can see here we move from
Speaker 1: being externally controlled allthough we have to being fully evolitional.
Speaker 1: And this is why we call it a continuum of autonomy.
Speaker 1: But it has lots of way stations along the line
Speaker 1: of different types of motives. The further you up on
Speaker 1: that continuum in your motivation, the better the outcomes typically are.
Speaker 1: The higher your well being, the better your performance, the
Speaker 1: more congruent you are at action, the less conflicted. So
Speaker 1: many good things happen from being more on the more
Speaker 1: autonomous end of that motivation continuum. Cool, thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for explaining that. And you have like a test
Speaker 1: that like people like employees and companies can take to
Speaker 1: like or is it sort of Have you developed any instruments? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've developed a lot of instruments, and some of them
Speaker 1: are for research use, you know, because our research instruments
Speaker 1: tend to be longer and because they have to get
Speaker 1: through the gauntlet of the psychometrics journals demand. But then
Speaker 1: we do a lot of work in industry and there
Speaker 1: we use things that are really practical measures. You know.
Speaker 1: I have a company that I started with Scott Rigby,
Speaker 1: that's called motivation works, and in there we measure we
Speaker 1: call motivation quality very quickly with employees, but it's basically
Speaker 1: asking them, what are the drivers of your work on
Speaker 1: your job. And to the extent that they're more external,
Speaker 1: you see lower quality, motivation, less, more absenteeism, more you know, less,
Speaker 1: less good organizational behavior, poorer performance. You see the opposite,
Speaker 1: the more people are really intrinsically motivated and identified with
Speaker 1: their work goals. Wonderful, wonderful. One question I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you on this about this motivational contoon was samra
Speaker 1: neuro Mohammad's work at Penn. He has found that a
Speaker 1: great motivating force and I have found this been personally
Speaker 1: in my life. A great motivating force is the underdog narrative,
Speaker 1: feeling like you have something to prove to someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't who doesn't believe in you, but you still believe
Speaker 1: in yourself, you know. And I was wondering, where is
Speaker 1: that on the motivational contuon. I mean, that's probably like
Speaker 1: an extra extrinsic I put it right in there with
Speaker 1: as an introject. I'm going to show them. So now
Speaker 1: you know you're being reactive. Plus you're also trying to
Speaker 1: live up to a standard that's really being externally defined.
Speaker 1: In that case, you know, this is like, but it
Speaker 1: feels so good, But it feels so good to crush
Speaker 1: your competition once who doesn't believe in you, It may
Speaker 1: it seems like a pretty empty goal. I mean, if
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of basis of somebody's overall motivation,
Speaker 1: I think then it's pretty limited as a goal. You know,
Speaker 1: Like I would rather not have somebody become a PhD
Speaker 1: in psychology because they want to prove to their mom
Speaker 1: that they're good. I'd rather they loved the field of
Speaker 1: psychology and cared about the content of that field, that
Speaker 1: they were more concerned with their understanding of the field
Speaker 1: than the grades that they got or the credentials they attained.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these kind of I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: those are not motivating goals, but they're kind of an
Speaker 1: impoverished form of motivation because the goal is pretty superficial,
Speaker 1: and then it can be pretty easily undermined. I think
Speaker 1: that I would push back of that for a little
Speaker 1: bit and say that maybe at certain points in people's
Speaker 1: lives it serves a really good purpose. You know, when
Speaker 1: I was younger. I was a special at as a kid,
Speaker 1: and you know, no, none of my teachers or anyone
Speaker 1: believed in my intellectual potential. And I had to generate
Speaker 1: this kind of f you attitude from within. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the only thing that saved me Ryan, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, It's the only thing that saved me
Speaker 1: to be like, you know what, I'm going to prove
Speaker 1: to them that I do have some kind of intelligence.
Speaker 1: Now I do agree that more mature, you know, intrinsic
Speaker 1: to the right of your continuum someday you know, you
Speaker 1: want a morph and and and which I did think. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: I don't still feel like I need to prove anything
Speaker 1: to anybody, but but I do think as a child,
Speaker 1: it served, it served its purpose. Well. You know again,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to argue that it's not a motivation.
Speaker 1: It is. It sits in the middle of our continuum.
Speaker 1: It's something that shows some some some energizing functions. But
Speaker 1: think about a Scott. Wouldn't it have been better had
Speaker 1: you had people who actually did care about where you
Speaker 1: were headed, believed in you, supported you for that growth.
Speaker 1: I mean, there would have been a much nicer motivational
Speaker 1: path to the same outcomes than the one that you outline.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that you had to compensate for
Speaker 1: some bad motivational circumstances. And honestly, I don't know because
Speaker 1: Samir's research and i'd love to I'd love to send
Speaker 1: you this paper that Samir just published, this paper he's
Speaker 1: at Warden. He actually contrasted too motivations narratives. One is
Speaker 1: the underdog, but the other is the favorite narrative, which
Speaker 1: is like people always believed in me, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then I made it. And he found that the
Speaker 1: underdog one like increased performance better than the other one.
Speaker 1: So that kind of like turns on its head a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, the narratives we tell ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe someone I can believe that in it, I can
Speaker 1: believe that in a short term experiment, I can believe that,
Speaker 1: or I totally get it as a dynamic. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a sustainable dynas sustainable making a living and
Speaker 1: being being really engaged in your field. If it's if
Speaker 1: it's all about your ego proving, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna not sustain itself. Did you see the last dance
Speaker 1: may A chance, No I did. Michael Jordan has is
Speaker 1: known for uh yeah, of course, you know Michael Jordan's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is known for creating imaginary foes to keep him sustained.
Speaker 1: So to him, I would I was to get I'd
Speaker 1: push back at certain context, maybe like NBA sports, you know,
Speaker 1: like it might be sustainable to like keep like you know,
Speaker 1: being like I'm gonna prove I'm gonna prove them wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, it might be, might be. Actually, I don't
Speaker 1: think you would explain Michael Jordan's persistence and success by
Speaker 1: that motive alone alone. Yeah, Michael, I'm not saying he
Speaker 1: doesn't create a game for himself and doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: pump himself up in these ways. Those sound like ways
Speaker 1: to get himself intrinsically motivated, to present himself with challenged.
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine that that would be a basis
Speaker 1: for the career Michael Jordan's. You'd be surprised. But I
Speaker 1: do think that like not maybe not that alone, Like
Speaker 1: he obviously does have intrinsic love for the game, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean without the intrinsic love for the game, you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like harder to be sustainable. I mean, can't
Speaker 1: you have like multiple of these motives at once. Actually
Speaker 1: our self to managed model says you almost always do.
Speaker 1: So you know, when I'm involved in my work, you know,
Speaker 1: to some extent, it's intrinsically motivated. To some extent it's
Speaker 1: coming out of value, which to some extent I'm interjected
Speaker 1: and need to do well, you know, beat myself up
Speaker 1: if I wrote a poor article. So you know, you
Speaker 1: have multiple motives always going. And what we look at
Speaker 1: is where's the relatives autonomy in that, you know, because
Speaker 1: it's a balance of those things. But they certainly co exist,
Speaker 1: and they co exist within every almost within every act.
Speaker 1: Are messy pure interns. Yeah, yeah, And we have multiple
Speaker 1: motives usually going, and but when some become predominant, it
Speaker 1: can undermine the quality of our overall actions. So yet
Speaker 1: I get back to I don't doubt that you know,
Speaker 1: people pump themselves up with little ego games like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's If that's where your main motivation
Speaker 1: is sitting, it's not going to end up in high
Speaker 1: quality motivation over time. M hmm. Okay, So let's go
Speaker 1: into some of your the needs, the major needs of
Speaker 1: self determination theory and how you selected them, you know,
Speaker 1: why'd they make the cut? Well, you know, we didn't
Speaker 1: start out with a theory of basic psychological needs. We
Speaker 1: started out with a narrower theory of what are the
Speaker 1: things that facilitate or undermine intrinsic motivation? And we found
Speaker 1: that context that supported people's autonomy and supported people's feelings
Speaker 1: of competence were the things that really drove intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: And then when we started to look at internalization and
Speaker 1: what are the things that lead people to deeply internalize
Speaker 1: the values of their culture the people around them, it
Speaker 1: was feeling of autonomy that they you know, reading autonomy
Speaker 1: supported that they could feel competent to do the things
Speaker 1: that were being asked of them, and then third that
Speaker 1: they felt closely connected to others. So autonomy, competence, and
Speaker 1: relatedness popped out really strongly for the basis of internalization.
Speaker 1: And as we were studying these things that feed into
Speaker 1: high quality motivation, and all of our studies were showing
Speaker 1: that when you had autonomy, competence, and relatedness, you also
Speaker 1: had high well being, all the indices of flourishing. And
Speaker 1: that's when we started to move toward a theory of
Speaker 1: basic needs that a full functioning person has their volition,
Speaker 1: has that sense of efficacy, and feel socially connected and
Speaker 1: proposive in what they're doing. So those things congeal in
Speaker 1: a full functioning person, so they seem like necessary conditions
Speaker 1: for wellness. And so you know, as we've looked in
Speaker 1: settings like we're places, classrooms, health clinics, psychotherapy settings, we
Speaker 1: see all three of those needs really being potent drivers
Speaker 1: of the wellness outcomes that are there. So I can say,
Speaker 1: really empirically we came to these as three basic needs,
Speaker 1: but there's also a deductive portion of it. STT is
Speaker 1: what we call an organismic theory. It grows out of
Speaker 1: the organismic psychological tradition and in that, you know, when
Speaker 1: you think about what is a healthy organism, it's organism
Speaker 1: that's moving in the direction of differentiation and integration, which
Speaker 1: means that it's moving in a direction of greater self regulation,
Speaker 1: of autonomy, and greater effectiveness in its environment. And if
Speaker 1: it's a social organism, greater integration. So those three concepts autonomy, competence,
Speaker 1: and relatings fall deductively out of organismic thinking as well
Speaker 1: as inductively out of what we found in all of
Speaker 1: our research on motivation. How much did you sort of
Speaker 1: consult maslows writings on basic the basic needs? And you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's no self actualization as a specific need in
Speaker 1: your theory, and I just wonder did you consider any
Speaker 1: of his Well, I think organismic theory says that there's
Speaker 1: an inherent propensity towards integration, which is very close to
Speaker 1: the self actualization idea, and certainly Rogers idea of self
Speaker 1: actualization was also an integrative ideas, so I think there
Speaker 1: were some parallel ideas over there, you know, for myself,
Speaker 1: you know, Maslow was an author I read as a kid,
Speaker 1: so you know, because I was, I'm so much older.
Speaker 1: Except for me, he was like a person I read
Speaker 1: as a teenager. And I wouldn't say he wasn't influential,
Speaker 1: but he was influential more in the sense of like
Speaker 1: pointing to possibilities in the field than in terms of
Speaker 1: formal theory. You know, I very much think that the
Speaker 1: humanistic spirit in focusing on self actualization has some kinship
Speaker 1: with the SDTS idea of an active individual who's moving
Speaker 1: in a direction of integration all the time. So there
Speaker 1: are similarity spirituals? Well, I agree, and I think the
Speaker 1: integration piece is so essential. I was wondering how you
Speaker 1: incorporate the integration piece into self determination theory, because one
Speaker 1: could have, you know, could score high in the needs
Speaker 1: for relatedness, competence, autonomy, but still not be particularly integrated
Speaker 1: as a whole human right. I can think that's so,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're thinking about need satisfaction, if I
Speaker 1: think about a setting in which somebody has all three
Speaker 1: of those needs setting, it's almost by definition that they're
Speaker 1: integrated in their functioning there. Because if I have those
Speaker 1: that needs satisfied, that means I'm pursuing the things that
Speaker 1: matter to me, that I value, that it interests me.
Speaker 1: So I have volition, I have connection and social support
Speaker 1: because I have the relatedness, and I'm feeling efficacious. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't see in that anything other than a pretty
Speaker 1: integrated person. Are there any needs that you're considering adding
Speaker 1: to the picture. Yeah, I'll just ask that question. I
Speaker 1: have you Well, you know, we've always had an open list,
Speaker 1: so you know, we came out with a tendative theory
Speaker 1: of three basic needs. By the early nineties, we were
Speaker 1: sort of in that place, and we've always kept the
Speaker 1: list open for people to nominate other things. One of
Speaker 1: my former students, Tim Kasser, at one time tried to
Speaker 1: put security into the list, but as we looked at
Speaker 1: the need for security, we found it kind of in
Speaker 1: line with Maslow's thinking here, it's really a deficit need.
Speaker 1: It's really something that rears its head when you don't
Speaker 1: have it, but if you have it, it's not very
Speaker 1: prominent and it's not all that enhancing, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: predict wellness. It's kind of like a necessary but not
Speaker 1: sufficient condition for some things to happen in your life.
Speaker 1: So security was one that we tried to bring in
Speaker 1: to meet criteria, but didn't meet those criteria. More recently,
Speaker 1: Frank Martella from Finland joined our group in Rochester when
Speaker 1: I was still there and often was interested in benevolence
Speaker 1: and altruism as a possible basic psychological need. And I
Speaker 1: will say, you know, exploring that the evidence has shown
Speaker 1: really how much of a wellness enhancer benevolence is. When
Speaker 1: people act with benevolence, they are typically doing so autonomously,
Speaker 1: so they're satisfying their autonomy need. They're typically feeling effective,
Speaker 1: so they're getting some competence needs, they're connecting with people,
Speaker 1: but they're also getting some kind of warm glow of benevolence,
Speaker 1: which has its own unique effect on wellness. And we
Speaker 1: found that over and over again. So although benevolence doesn't
Speaker 1: fit all the criteria we have for what a basic
Speaker 1: need is, it certainly is an enhancement, a wellness enhancer,
Speaker 1: and it's a big part of how people find meaning
Speaker 1: in life. So yeah, I would agree with that. I
Speaker 1: support adding that to your list. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you if you have heard about my book Transcend that
Speaker 1: came out recently. I have. I'd love to send you
Speaker 1: a copy and perhaps we could compare a contrast and
Speaker 1: really nerd out someday and get in the weeds in
Speaker 1: a way that our listeners probably don't want to listen
Speaker 1: to right now, but but is always to nerd out.
Speaker 1: My tendency is always to nerd out. So you know
Speaker 1: you have to stop me when I go there. Oh
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh no, I mean that's my that's
Speaker 1: my tendency too. And I'd love to, uh maybe just
Speaker 1: discuss with you some needs that I've added that that
Speaker 1: aren't in your theory and maybe, uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: have good reasons for that, and you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: need to rethink things. Maybe you need you need to
Speaker 1: rethink things. Who knows. But one thing that I was
Speaker 1: really excited about the benevolence thing, is I did add
Speaker 1: that as a separate need from the need for connection.
Speaker 1: I did separate those out in my in my revised
Speaker 1: hierarchy of needs. And I've been developing a scale with
Speaker 1: my colleagues called the light Triad scale. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've come across that at all. That's a great
Speaker 1: idea as opposed to the dark Dad, Yeah, exactly, have
Speaker 1: you come across that at all? In the you'll I'll
Speaker 1: send you, I'll send you that, I'll send you that paper.
Speaker 1: And yet I think that really does capture more well,
Speaker 1: we call it a benevolent orientation, you know, towards others.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen. We have a meta
Speaker 1: analysis that shows that pro social behavior and anti social
Speaker 1: behavior are strongly predicted in meta analysis by autonomy and control.
Speaker 1: So when people have autonomy, they tend to be pro social.
Speaker 1: We think of that as the default in human nature,
Speaker 1: and under controlled circumstances, they tend to be more anti social,
Speaker 1: and I think it fits with this this overall idea.
Speaker 1: I won't even go there about the COVID masks, people
Speaker 1: who people who don't want to controlled for having to
Speaker 1: wear masks or having to get vaccinations, and what that
Speaker 1: controlling does to those people's personalities. We'll just not talk
Speaker 1: about that at all. But but yeah, I hear what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, so there's I would I would propose
Speaker 1: humble and I say this humbly. I have the utmost
Speaker 1: of respect for your work, but I think maybe it
Speaker 1: magnites to consider adding the need for explorations, as I
Speaker 1: add in my revised higher kid needs in your model,
Speaker 1: because we do find that is a separate need. Let
Speaker 1: me just say a couple of things about that though.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm happy to consider all needs, but problem
Speaker 1: with calling something like exploration a basic need is that
Speaker 1: it's really something that happens in certain domains and times
Speaker 1: that it doesn't kind across all of the types of
Speaker 1: things we typically explain with basic needs. When people are
Speaker 1: in an exploratory mode, they're typically getting a high satisfaction
Speaker 1: of the need for competence. When they're truly an exploratory mode,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of volition behind that, and so
Speaker 1: there's all a lot of our ready basic need satisfaction
Speaker 1: going on in exploration, and so to have it be
Speaker 1: its own, basically, you'd have to say, well, exploration is
Speaker 1: part of all the different behaviors people engage in, and
Speaker 1: think it is all of those, and I think that's
Speaker 1: I think I could make a case that it is.
Speaker 1: My colleague Colin de Young and Eric are rang a paper, Well,
Speaker 1: it's taking a long time to finish it, but how
Speaker 1: why the need for exploration is? I mean, it's it's aimless.
Speaker 1: It's aimless in a lot of ways, and a goalless.
Speaker 1: And I would actually, I would actually argue that it's separate,
Speaker 1: clearly distinct from the need for competence and mastery and
Speaker 1: and I would even go so far. And I know
Speaker 1: you're going to totally disagree with me on this, and
Speaker 1: it's totally fine. Please feel free to disagree in anything
Speaker 1: I say. But I would actually make the case that
Speaker 1: the need for competence is tied to to ego and
Speaker 1: self esteem. Uh, and it is if it's controlled competence,
Speaker 1: m you could distinguish what's having my confidence is the
Speaker 1: kind of ego involvement we were talking about before then indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: but there can be a more so you think so
Speaker 1: you could distinguish between a more exploratory form of mastery
Speaker 1: competence from an ego form, do you think? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think so, you know, get it gets back to what
Speaker 1: what's motivating your your activity? There? Very interesting and yeah,
Speaker 1: so well let's talk about self estek because I do
Speaker 1: actually posit the need for self esteem as its own thing.
Speaker 1: And I've read I've read great papers you've you've written
Speaker 1: on this arguing why you didn't include self esteem in
Speaker 1: your model, and I think you've meet great points. You know,
Speaker 1: they're very wise and very Buddhist way of thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you could unpack a little
Speaker 1: bit why you didn't include self esteem in your model,
Speaker 1: and then maybe I could try to defend way why
Speaker 1: I did in my model. But i'd i'd love to
Speaker 1: hear some of your thinking about that. Well. Self esteem
Speaker 1: gets used in some different ways when you but typically
Speaker 1: you measure self esteem, you're asked, you're you're getting it's
Speaker 1: a positive self concept that people have and there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that you know it's good to have that positive
Speaker 1: view of yourself and your social relations that gets measured
Speaker 1: with self esteem measures. But if you have if you're
Speaker 1: engaged in life in a way that has autonomy, if
Speaker 1: you feel connectedness with other people, if you feel effective
Speaker 1: at what you're doing, you have self esteem. But that
Speaker 1: means it's a derivative. It's an outcome of these other
Speaker 1: satisfactions that we have in life. But if you're motivated
Speaker 1: to get self esteem, we call that ego involvement. I mean,
Speaker 1: why am I concerned about how I'm being evaluated or
Speaker 1: how I'm Am I good? Or am I bad? Just
Speaker 1: a very fact of entering into those questions and those
Speaker 1: comparisons has moved me, you know, away from a more
Speaker 1: autonomous kind of functioning. But when I'm functioning well, I'm
Speaker 1: not one. I mean, when a person is functioning well,
Speaker 1: they're not wondering how how am I doing? How do
Speaker 1: I compare to the others? Am I great? Those questions
Speaker 1: don't even come up because you are feeling good. So
Speaker 1: self esteem is a is a evaluative stance with respect
Speaker 1: to yourself. I mean, this is one view of it,
Speaker 1: and that's not a basic need. It grows out of
Speaker 1: certain kind of social situations, and sometimes it's actually a
Speaker 1: harmful problem to be focused on self esteem. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a really interesting question motivation versus need. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I try to make the case that I
Speaker 1: do believe self esteem is a need. It is a
Speaker 1: fundamental need. You see, you see a catastrophic failures, depression,
Speaker 1: et cetera with very low levels of self esteem. So
Speaker 1: certain certain minimum threshold it seems to be required of
Speaker 1: a healthy self esteem versus a narcissistic self esteem. But
Speaker 1: also I include need for safety in my model because
Speaker 1: I think it's a need. But I actually I very
Speaker 1: much take your point. I think it's an excellent point
Speaker 1: about if your if your primary motivation is self asiat
Speaker 1: steam and that that does maybe connote a sense of
Speaker 1: disintegration in the system to a certain degree. So I'd
Speaker 1: absolutely agree with that, And it actually you raise an
Speaker 1: interesting question about individual difference is something I'm interested in
Speaker 1: very much. You know, people have even in all three
Speaker 1: of your needs. Some people people very dramatically the extent
Speaker 1: to which they want connections, you know, their lives, or
Speaker 1: people very dramatically extent they want autonomy and competence. So
Speaker 1: you know what what have you found from individual difference perspective?
Speaker 1: Are there think ones that like are the better better
Speaker 1: predictors of of things in life than others? You know
Speaker 1: from a variation perspective. Well, the first thing is is
Speaker 1: that people will vary in terms of their self reported
Speaker 1: preference or care about autonomy related to their competence. One
Speaker 1: of the good things about STT is it's a functional theory.
Speaker 1: It says it doesn't matter whether you like or care
Speaker 1: about those things. If you don't have them, you should
Speaker 1: show the deterioration functioning associated that the theory predicts or
Speaker 1: and when you do have them, even if you say
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter to me, having them enhances your wellness.
Speaker 1: So this is a functional theory rather than a preference theory.
Speaker 1: And I mean even show that preferences don't really change
Speaker 1: those results much. There's no interaction between getting your needs
Speaker 1: in that and predicting wellness and whether that's what you
Speaker 1: thought you wanted. So, you know, I think that's really
Speaker 1: important because when we're thinking about needs, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about people's values. We're talking about the requirements they have
Speaker 1: to be full functional. By the way, just side, can
Speaker 1: I tell you one quick side story. Oh please, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course it was somewhere around nineteen. I'm
Speaker 1: going to say seventy two. That you know, because you
Speaker 1: asked me about Maslow. I had read some of his
Speaker 1: books at the time. I had dropped out of college
Speaker 1: and I was living up in Cambridge and just reading
Speaker 1: a lot, and you know, work in factories. I was
Speaker 1: a factory wrecker at the time, and I read one
Speaker 1: of Masow's books and I thought, oh, he's at Brandeis.
Speaker 1: I will go see him, because you know, I was
Speaker 1: a kid and I didn't know any better. So I
Speaker 1: went to over to Brandeis and I went to his
Speaker 1: office and I had knocked on his door and somebody
Speaker 1: saw me knocking on his door and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, doctor Maslows passed away. So I never got
Speaker 1: to talk to him. And recently somebody said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had gotten in, what would you
Speaker 1: have asked? I thought, you know, I wonder I have
Speaker 1: no idea what my young twenty one year old mine
Speaker 1: would have asked at the time, but I clearly had
Speaker 1: questions for him. So you know, he was that, he
Speaker 1: was a figure. Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that your twenty one yearself you liked Abraham Maso, Uh,
Speaker 1: and I that's wonderful. You know what about the higher needs? Well,
Speaker 1: how come there weren't higher needs in your in your model,
Speaker 1: like like the need for self transcendence or all or
Speaker 1: maybe it's because they're not needs, you know they're not
Speaker 1: They can be outcomes of integration. However, other was you know,
Speaker 1: STT and organismic theory. It says that the fullest functioning
Speaker 1: organism is an integrated one, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: things that we see in what you're you're calling higher
Speaker 1: needs are really highly integrated people who you know, are
Speaker 1: pursuing the things that matter to them. But you have
Speaker 1: you certainly have a lot of people who are high
Speaker 1: in competence, autonomy, and relatedness who aren't motivated by transcendence.
Speaker 1: And this is Maslow's point. He actually the end of
Speaker 1: his life he distinguished between two kinds of self actualizers,
Speaker 1: transcending self actualizers and non transcending self actualizers. You probably
Speaker 1: won't like this, Scott, but I actually think that that
Speaker 1: part of the era of humanistic psychology did humanistic psychology
Speaker 1: in the split were transpersonal and transcendence versus mainstream humanistic psychology,
Speaker 1: I think really hurt that field. And that's not to
Speaker 1: in any way dis value devalue the idea of transcendence,
Speaker 1: but it became so central in some people's minds that
Speaker 1: they kind of kicked out the rogarians and the other
Speaker 1: non transcendent humanistic psychologist time. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know about the fights at the Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff that happened at that time,
Speaker 1: but it was a sad moment I think for the
Speaker 1: movement of humanistic psychology, which you know, I was not
Speaker 1: a part of. I'm only saying this as a historical number.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a pretty picture what he was doing
Speaker 1: at the end of his career. Okay, well there goes
Speaker 1: my book book trans No, it didn't take away at
Speaker 1: all from the importance of that topic. I'm only saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a piece of a larger
Speaker 1: puzzle of a healthy organism. But when you may and
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think that they put so much
Speaker 1: stress on that and there were some more empirically minded
Speaker 1: psychologists who just couldn't go there, and they lost them
Speaker 1: from the movement. Yeah, I see, I really do see
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and yeah, I try to go to
Speaker 1: the great pains to distinguish between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence.
Speaker 1: And healthy transcendence is very much about integrating all the
Speaker 1: other needs before you try to kind of jump jump
Speaker 1: to you know, being enlightened. You know the I'm enlightened
Speaker 1: and you're not effect that's narcissism, not transcendence. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of work, and not just me,
Speaker 1: but people in STT have done a lot of work
Speaker 1: on the issue of mindfulness and how mindfulness makes to
Speaker 1: full functioning people. I don't think of mindfulness as transcendence.
Speaker 1: I think of it as being here now. I think
Speaker 1: of mindfulness as really being deeply aware of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the current moment and in touch with both
Speaker 1: your interstates and with what's going on outside. Transcendence doesn't
Speaker 1: describe that. Awareness describes that. I think awareness is hugely
Speaker 1: important to autonomy. You cannot be autonomous unless you first
Speaker 1: have awareness. And so mindfulness, you know, for us plays
Speaker 1: that kind of is the ground out of which autonomy
Speaker 1: best grows. I like that, you know, It's like it's
Speaker 1: definitely a grounding skill to have and it definitely does
Speaker 1: ground me and has been a saver, a life saver
Speaker 1: for me in many instances for me too. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had my own involvement in the Zen practice now
Speaker 1: for some thirty years, and I'm really happy when I
Speaker 1: met Kirk Brown, who brought mindfulness into the STT framework
Speaker 1: in a pretty direction. So I think it's been important
Speaker 1: for our theorizing, I agree. And self termination theory, I mean,
Speaker 1: these are kudos the extent to which has pervided many
Speaker 1: other areas of psychology and has shown its implications in
Speaker 1: wide swaths of society. So I thought, for this latter
Speaker 1: part of our interview, can I go down some demeans
Speaker 1: of life and kind of talk to me about the implications.
Speaker 1: So one relationships, I mean, this is one right now.
Speaker 1: During COVID, I think that people are very much lacking
Speaker 1: in that need to feel like that need is frustrated.
Speaker 1: You know, can you talk a little about some work
Speaker 1: you've done on self termination theory in that domain. The
Speaker 1: first thing I want to say is we've been collecting
Speaker 1: a lot of data I need satisfaction during COVID. A
Speaker 1: lot of this work grows out of the group that's
Speaker 1: in Ghent, Belgium. So we have a lot of work
Speaker 1: on the Belgian population around needs satisfaction on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis really over the pandemic and the relatedness.
Speaker 1: Need is really hurting in a lot of people, with
Speaker 1: particularly young people. And so when you look at you
Speaker 1: know you asked before about why are people kind of
Speaker 1: breaking out not following social distancing rules? A lot of
Speaker 1: it is related to need frustration, and particularly in a
Speaker 1: group of people in a period of life where relatedness
Speaker 1: is huge. And so you know, first we've seen that
Speaker 1: a lot. So but anyway, what was what was your question?
Speaker 1: That was a side? Well, no, how does SDT deal
Speaker 1: with relationships? You know, what are the implications of of
Speaker 1: std in the demeanor of relationships? We know STT is
Speaker 1: organized a series of mini theories. The latest of those
Speaker 1: mini theories, the sixth of them, is called relationship motivation theory,
Speaker 1: and so it's really an explanation of what what are
Speaker 1: the ingredients of a high quality of relationship And one
Speaker 1: of the things we argue in STT is you can
Speaker 1: it's not just warmth, closeness, being nice, being supple. If
Speaker 1: those things don't make for an intimate relationship. There also
Speaker 1: has to be autonomy support There has to be a
Speaker 1: care about the self of the other and an interest
Speaker 1: in the promotion of This has got to be a
Speaker 1: kind of a Gothic theme within a relationship for it
Speaker 1: to be super high quality. And that's what our data shows,
Speaker 1: which is that it's only in autonomy support of relationships
Speaker 1: that you have true intimacy. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: kind of suggested in some other theories of relationships, but
Speaker 1: STT makes it explicit and looks at the way in
Speaker 1: which controlling motives are controlling tendencies and ego involvements really
Speaker 1: really do create problems in relationships. This is why credit here,
Speaker 1: particularly Chip Knees work at University of Houston, because he's
Speaker 1: done a lot of great work in this area. This
Speaker 1: idea of autonomy supportive environments has really prevailed the literature greatly,
Speaker 1: especially in the workplace. I see it everywhere in the
Speaker 1: workplace literature, which is exciting. You know that more people
Speaker 1: are talking about that. Did you what did you think
Speaker 1: of Dan Pink's book Drive? Well, you know, Dan came
Speaker 1: when he wrote Drive, he came to Rochester to interview
Speaker 1: ed and me. He spent a few days wonderful. That's
Speaker 1: how he got the basis for that book. You know,
Speaker 1: the book basically explicates autonomy, competence, and he uses the
Speaker 1: term purpose as opposed to relatedness, So he has autonomy.
Speaker 1: I think his autonomy, mastery, purpose are the three things
Speaker 1: he comes away with. But you know he took away relationships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I you know, it's become a very popular view.
Speaker 1: People oftentimes will sort of say, Pink's theory of this,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. So I get a little tweaked on that.
Speaker 1: But I actually really appreciate Dan's work on this because
Speaker 1: he helped popularize and he helped bring some of the
Speaker 1: message of this research to the organizational field, and we
Speaker 1: want that, you know. So I think popular writers play
Speaker 1: a huge role in helping translate nerdy academic work like
Speaker 1: our and self determination theory into the practical world. So
Speaker 1: I totally appreciate the book Drive, Yeah, because it's really
Speaker 1: it's become a it was a popular book that was
Speaker 1: had a lot of implications for the workplace. A lot
Speaker 1: of people adopt in the workplace. I'm just wandering in
Speaker 1: your own, your own world, your own research. You know,
Speaker 1: how much do you intersect with the workplace. Do you
Speaker 1: do you do consulting personally? Oh? Yeah, ongoing. They Actually
Speaker 1: I started a company in two thousand and three with
Speaker 1: Scott Rigby, who was a former PhD stool and we
Speaker 1: still write together on issues in mindfulness or human relations
Speaker 1: kind of things. But Scott and I started a company
Speaker 1: called Motivation Works. We measure the motivational climate, but the
Speaker 1: work climate within companies. We do interventions to help managers
Speaker 1: become more autonomy supportive. So, you know very much, we
Speaker 1: were always on the front lines of that kind of work.
Speaker 1: It's and it's hugely important because you know, we and
Speaker 1: so much of our time in our workplaces and they
Speaker 1: should be places for thriving and they can be under
Speaker 1: the right right circumstances. Yeah, I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of I fear that a lot of workplace is still
Speaker 1: have a very outdated model of what it takes to
Speaker 1: motivate people intrinsically. They're not they're not thinking how can
Speaker 1: we motivate people intrinsically. I feel like they're not a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of companies aren't even even thinking
Speaker 1: of that question. There's like how do we motivate people?
Speaker 1: I think this relates to some of the findings we
Speaker 1: have an STT though. When people are put under controlling pressures,
Speaker 1: they often respond with controlling solutions for the people who
Speaker 1: are around them. And so you see within organizations a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you have a controlling manager, they'll
Speaker 1: even say, well, it's not the way I want to be,
Speaker 1: but they're making me and they point up them if
Speaker 1: you see this kind of downhill control thing go on. So,
Speaker 1: you know, changing company climate not as a big task
Speaker 1: because you have to do it at multiple levels of
Speaker 1: the company. It can't just be go in here and
Speaker 1: tweak one manager. It's it's about a whole climate, an atmosphere,
Speaker 1: whole culture. Mm hmm, Well this segues into a topic
Speaker 1: I'm very much interested in education and uh and educational
Speaker 1: culture talk about, you know, designing a system to get
Speaker 1: the worst out of people. We've that's what we've done
Speaker 1: in our American education system and around the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you sorry what are you saying? I said, really
Speaker 1: around the world? I mean, yes, yes, elsewhere to Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, for sure. But there's so many clear implications
Speaker 1: of your theory for the young adulthood, identity development, self esteem,
Speaker 1: and their authenticity. You know all things that we don't
Speaker 1: focus on developing was in students that we we we should.
Speaker 1: So what are some of your thoughts on those linkages?
Speaker 1: Just the first thing is is that you know, if
Speaker 1: we had a goal for schools their context of development,
Speaker 1: and you'd want them to be places where children are
Speaker 1: helped to flourish, to become all that they can be
Speaker 1: later and to be able to discover what matters to
Speaker 1: them and to develop the tools so they can pursue it.
Speaker 1: That's not at all the way schools are framing their goals.
Speaker 1: They're talking about get more stem students, get high achievement
Speaker 1: scores out of the standardized tests. You know, they've really
Speaker 1: lost the threat of what what are the values and
Speaker 1: the goals that we should have in a place where
Speaker 1: we put our children for multiple hours every day? And
Speaker 1: you know, to me, the goal of school is to
Speaker 1: create an interested, engaged and enabled, an empowered student and
Speaker 1: the factors that would go into that are quite different
Speaker 1: than the ones that we're currently using. What you're focused
Speaker 1: around evaluations, grades and social comparisons. That's for darn shore.
Speaker 1: I mean, what can we do, you know, how can
Speaker 1: what we promote this more in schools Now, I think
Speaker 1: one of the values of psychological research is we are
Speaker 1: looking at the techniques that teachers can do within classrooms
Speaker 1: that can make them more motivating and engaging places for students.
Speaker 1: But then you know, teachers can only do that if
Speaker 1: they themselves have the support and the room for autonomy
Speaker 1: to create those kind of engaging atmospheres. So that, you know,
Speaker 1: the research really shows and when you've got autonomy support
Speaker 1: from your principle, you can be a more engaging teacher.
Speaker 1: When that principle has autonomy support from their superintendent, they
Speaker 1: can have a better school climate. And superintendents need a course,
Speaker 1: the support from their boards and from their governments. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of dumb policies in place in the
Speaker 1: United States and Australia and a lot of countries that
Speaker 1: have high stake standardized testing being that gauge by which
Speaker 1: schools are judged, and this drives the worst kind of
Speaker 1: classroom behavior because it has everybody focused on a very
Speaker 1: narrow outcome and then they have to use controlling means
Speaker 1: to get students to meet those outcomes, and everybody loses
Speaker 1: in that task. So what can we do. We can
Speaker 1: change policy, We can get rid of high stake standardized
Speaker 1: testing right now, there's no value to it in any school.
Speaker 1: Pearson should be embarrassed that they do these things, because
Speaker 1: what's happening with high stake standardized testing is that it
Speaker 1: by putting high stakes behind these outcomes, it leads schools
Speaker 1: to be more pressuring of students in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't help them learn. So we're spoiling the very ingredients
Speaker 1: of positive learning by having these imposed score goals STEM.
Speaker 1: This focus on STEM everyone must be a STEM student. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but if you look around the world, humans
Speaker 1: are a diverse lot, and we need all kinds of
Speaker 1: people with all kinds of different skills, and driving everybody
Speaker 1: down a narrow road for college prep and science courses
Speaker 1: is really a way of damage the self esteem and
Speaker 1: the motivation and the engagement of so many of our students.
Speaker 1: You know, we have to get off of these fetishes.
Speaker 1: So there's not enough STEM jobs for all the people
Speaker 1: we graduate now. But even more so, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that students aren't learning in school that would
Speaker 1: really help them navigate life better, and instead of we're
Speaker 1: focused on giving on yet another calculus course before they
Speaker 1: leave high school. I don't see these things as being
Speaker 1: well thought through in terms of social policy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a good point. I do think that that statistic basic
Speaker 1: statistics should be mandatory for everyone, though, because you see
Speaker 1: a lot of people with no training in STEM whatsoever,
Speaker 1: making lots of outlandish claims and that does impact everyone
Speaker 1: you know in this climate today. Well, it's a good
Speaker 1: thing because we face them every day. So that's a
Speaker 1: practical skill. You're reading statistics and in the newspaper learning
Speaker 1: about basic financial skills would be great in high school.
Speaker 1: I'm learning about things that you actually use in mathematics
Speaker 1: would be great for students who aren't going that same
Speaker 1: college STEM route. We're forgetting about the fact that school
Speaker 1: should be places that help students grow and develop the
Speaker 1: skills they need in life, and instead we're focusing them
Speaker 1: on the things that industry told somebody at some point
Speaker 1: they wanted. That's not a way to organize our educational worlds. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we could probably agree on the basics, like basic
Speaker 1: scientific reasoning I think is important to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: But now I hear you, we're robbing people, these kids
Speaker 1: of their autonomy, and that's in the purpose of trying
Speaker 1: to get them the highest scores on their STEM test.
Speaker 1: We're driving out the arts, we're driving out the music,
Speaker 1: We're driving out the things right bring kids to school
Speaker 1: and have them feel at home and engaged. You know,
Speaker 1: we're overtesting them, we're drilling. We're just doing all the
Speaker 1: things that motivation research now for three decades or four
Speaker 1: decades has been telling us backfiring, and the results are
Speaker 1: are clear. I mean, this experiments been going on for
Speaker 1: thirty years, the high stake standardized testing experiment, and it's
Speaker 1: an utter failure by anybody's measurement. I challenge anybody who
Speaker 1: hears this broadcast to tell me any positive evidence they
Speaker 1: have for how high stake standardized testing has helped our schools,
Speaker 1: our children, our teachers, or anybody. There is no evidence.
Speaker 1: There is no value. There's just a way of testing
Speaker 1: companies making money and spoiling the cultures of our schools.
Speaker 1: I don't have a well, the man there, look, I'm
Speaker 1: right there with you. There needs to be a major overhaul.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you have you made contact with the field
Speaker 1: of positive education. You know there's these yeah, and and
Speaker 1: you know, I'd love to get your thoughts. What do
Speaker 1: you think of positive psychology in the field because you're
Speaker 1: not actually you know, you didn't like start off in
Speaker 1: like positive psychology, yet you've found yourself in the field
Speaker 1: of positive psychology. I mean people in the field love you,
Speaker 1: you know, and they talk about you all the time,
Speaker 1: and they incorporate what you're doing into the work they
Speaker 1: were doing. So I was just wondering, you know what
Speaker 1: what you're thinking is of that the emergen that field
Speaker 1: for positive psychology in Sydney you're at. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Is that right? The Institute at Australiacastic University is called
Speaker 1: the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education. That's our Okay,
Speaker 1: oh that's cool, Well you did, but you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, STT was around before the movement called
Speaker 1: positive psychology began, so we were I think we already
Speaker 1: had as our central question what are the things that
Speaker 1: help people flourish? And that is the same central question
Speaker 1: that positive psychology asks. And so indeed, I think we
Speaker 1: have a lot of relationships to the scholarship and the
Speaker 1: activities of people who were in positive psychology. I don't
Speaker 1: identify as a positive psychologist because I'm also a clinician.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in psychopathology and human aggradation and human oppression
Speaker 1: both sides of this coin, not just the flourishing, but
Speaker 1: also what are the harms? How are we doing harms
Speaker 1: to people? And self determination theory is really a theory
Speaker 1: about both aspects of that. It gives explanations for the
Speaker 1: ideology of various mental distress and disorders. It also gives
Speaker 1: a map of how to help people flourish and what
Speaker 1: they need to be at their best. Absolutely, you talk
Speaker 1: about the factors that promote healthy psychological and behavioral functioning.
Speaker 1: How can self determination help bring peace to the world,
Speaker 1: reduce aggression, increase altruism, and bring out the best in humans. Well,
Speaker 1: we've moved a lot recently in the direction of looking
Speaker 1: at what we call pervasive environments and their effect on people.
Speaker 1: So how do the political structures and economic structures of
Speaker 1: the world have an impact on people's well being through
Speaker 1: their basic psychological needs. So just an instance of this
Speaker 1: is that if you have a country where the wealth
Speaker 1: is distributed really unequally, we find that well being is
Speaker 1: lower controlling even for overall wealth. And we see that
Speaker 1: in there. That's because wealth inequality has an impact on
Speaker 1: people's perceptions of autonomy and competence and relatedness. It directly
Speaker 1: impacts their sense of the people around them, their competitiveness
Speaker 1: with them, and it has an impact on well being.
Speaker 1: So we're asking the question a lot now, what kind
Speaker 1: of political and economic structures are the best as fulfilling
Speaker 1: people's basic psychological needs and therefore producing a well being.
Speaker 1: And you know, some of the findings have to do
Speaker 1: with the perception that you have rights and privileges within
Speaker 1: a society, and that you're not stigmatized and you're not excluded.
Speaker 1: These things matter a lot to people's well being again
Speaker 1: through their basic psychological needs. Again, the distribution of wealth
Speaker 1: matters a lot. So I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: when we're trying to look at how can we create
Speaker 1: a good society, we have to look at both macro
Speaker 1: structures and family structures both. It's not just you know,
Speaker 1: the local proximal influences on that and so changing the world, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's by trying to hold public policies and
Speaker 1: forms and structures to the criteria of are they good
Speaker 1: at meeting basic psychological needs? Man, the world needs this
Speaker 1: so much right now. Help save the world, rich, Help
Speaker 1: save the world. Yeah, Well, I think we're all trying
Speaker 1: to do that, and I think it does matter. You know.
Speaker 1: Stt is is a theory about change, and it's we've
Speaker 1: always aimed to be very practical. So one of the
Speaker 1: good things about the theory is it's not just how
Speaker 1: these are things predict outcomes, but we also have interventions
Speaker 1: to help increase relatedness, to help increase autonomy, to help
Speaker 1: increase feelings of confidence, and you know, and ideas about
Speaker 1: how to make that actually happen in life. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, if a theory doesn't really make a difference
Speaker 1: to society, then why have it. I mean, I've had
Speaker 1: some professors who are very pure scientists who argue the opposite.
Speaker 1: They'll say, a good scientist actually shouldn't get involved in
Speaker 1: applying their work. They should just try to do the
Speaker 1: best science that they can do. So I've heard it
Speaker 1: from both ends. I can get that if you're an astrophysicist,
Speaker 1: But if you're a medical scientist, don't you care about
Speaker 1: the implications of your findings. Aren't you trying to find
Speaker 1: a cure to this problem or that problem? If you're
Speaker 1: a psychological scientist, isn't it about the state of human beings?
Speaker 1: That your inquiry is concerned. So it's not a neutral science.
Speaker 1: Even if you think you're being neutral when it has
Speaker 1: no practical value, then you're using up societies resources for
Speaker 1: something that may have no practical value. So I can't
Speaker 1: agree with that. I think in the human sciences, we're
Speaker 1: asking questions that have import for human humanity, and we
Speaker 1: don't have all that much time to be fooling around either.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, and look, oh we're leaving that
Speaker 1: next generation, so we have to solve some of these
Speaker 1: problems now. And I definitely feel that urgency for that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely feel that urgency too. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: my own bent as well. But I'm just telling you,
Speaker 1: like in grad school and various points in my life
Speaker 1: when I've wanted to apply my work, I've gotten pushback
Speaker 1: from you know, from academics, you know, saying that that's
Speaker 1: not my business. So I mean it's refreshing to hear
Speaker 1: what you're saying, but I'm just letting you know that's
Speaker 1: not the pervasive view. Well, the place that you leave
Speaker 1: your values out is when you're doing that basic research.
Speaker 1: You try and bring a dispassionate critical eye to that
Speaker 1: and I believe that in STT we do that. It's
Speaker 1: not that we judge everything with a value lens. It's
Speaker 1: in your basic research you apply the scientific method, which
Speaker 1: means you think seriously about your data, yourself critical in it.
Speaker 1: But when you think about the purposes of why we
Speaker 1: do any of our work, you're going to leave values
Speaker 1: out of it. I don't understand that as a life position. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you. Look, you've done so much and you've
Speaker 1: applied this STD theory to such diverse environments. We already
Speaker 1: talked about work, organizations, education, but you've also applied to health,
Speaker 1: sport and exercise domain, video games, virtual environments. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me what you're really excited about right now that
Speaker 1: you're working on I know that you have a neurolab,
Speaker 1: so you really get into neuroscience work. Tell me whatever
Speaker 1: to ending this interview that you're really excited about right now. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, as you say, you know, we work on
Speaker 1: both mechanistic and so interested in the neurological underpinnings of autonomy,
Speaker 1: behavior and of close relationships. So that's what we're doing
Speaker 1: in our labs at Sydney. But on the other end,
Speaker 1: Birge in the macro structures now economic structures and how
Speaker 1: wealth distribution, social policies affect people's well being too so
Speaker 1: and everything in between. So you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I think the Values have a broad theory like STT,
Speaker 1: is it allows you to ask questions at every level
Speaker 1: of analysis, but it also then demands that you find
Speaker 1: evidence at every level of analysis that can be coordinated
Speaker 1: with the spirit of concilience. And I think that's our drive.
Speaker 1: So I think my problem, Scott, is I'm interested in
Speaker 1: too much in my problem too. Brother. I'm pretty passionate
Speaker 1: about a lot of things within within the field. But
Speaker 1: right now we're just finishing the new Oxford Handbook of
Speaker 1: Self Determination Theory Research. I'm just finishing with all the
Speaker 1: chapters in it. There's fifty five chapters in that book,
Speaker 1: all on diff for topics associated with self determination theory.
Speaker 1: Reading those over on, what I'm really excited about is
Speaker 1: that there's a community out there of you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of psychologists who are using SDT and ERNEST
Speaker 1: and who are becoming better experts in all the subject
Speaker 1: areas than me or Ed or anybody else who's been there.
Speaker 1: So what I'm excited about is that there's a new
Speaker 1: generation of self determination theories who are a lot smarter
Speaker 1: than me. I love that. I really appreciate your humility,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate just your legendary work in the field.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no other way of putting it. It
Speaker 1: was a true honor and delight for me to child
Speaker 1: with you today, and I just want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being only podcasts for having me. I'd
Speaker 1: love to come back sometime, especially after I read the
Speaker 1: Transcendence book. Then we then we can have a discussion
Speaker 1: in detail and nerd out about all that. Now. Now,
Speaker 1: that would be so much fun. So yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get that shipped on to you and we
Speaker 1: can really nerd out. Thanks. Thanks rich No, that's great.
Speaker 1: Thanks Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
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