Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Motivation — why organisms act and persist — intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, needs, goals and values, the internalization of regulation, and the difference between autonomous and controlled motives; the empirical counterpart of the philosophy of autonomy under agency (ADR-023).
39 of 1352 THEORY documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| THEORY-046 v2 | Expected tangible rewards for merely engaging in an interesting task lower later free-choice engagement with it | Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999, LIT-557): across 55 experiments, expected tangible rewards given for working on an interesting task lowered free-choice engagement after the reward stopped (d = −0.40; children −0.43, college students −0.21), and lowered self-reported interest less (−0.15). By their study-by-study account, Cameron and Pierce’s rival analysis found the same for this contingency (performance-independent rewards, −0.29), while disputing nearly everything else. Their 2001 reply (LIT-562), read here, re-codes 145 studies and finds it again: rewards offered for doing an interesting task lowered free choice, −0.35 across 57 studies. Active: both sides of the dispute find this effect. | Active |
| THEORY-047 v2 | A regulation taken in under controlling conditions is introjected rather than integrated, so the social history of how a value was acquired shapes how autonomous acting on it is | Deci and Ryan (LIT-558) and Ryan and Deci (LIT-559): supports for relatedness and competence are enough to get a value internalized, but only as an introject or a compartmentalized identification; integration also needs autonomy support. The experimental evidence is Deci et al. (1994), as reported: the same amount of internalized behaviour correlated positively with felt freedom and enjoyment under autonomy support and negatively under control. Field studies on parenting, religion and medical training agree, correlationally. This is a historical condition on autonomy of the kind THEORY-040 asks about, with empirical support, but it has not been tested against matched present endorsement or applied to manipulation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-049 v2 | Whether an external event lowers or raises intrinsic motivation depends on whether it is experienced as controlling or as information about competence | Cognitive evaluation theory, as tested by Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999, LIT-557) and summarized by Ryan and Deci (LIT-559) and Deci and Ryan (LIT-558): rewards, feedback, deadlines and choice affect intrinsic motivation through their “functional significance”. Controlling events shift the perceived locus of causality outward and undermine it; informational ones affirm competence and enhance it, but only with a sense of autonomy. The meta-analytic pattern fits, and controlling versus informational positive feedback differ by d = −0.78 in four studies. Mediation by felt control is untested for rewards. Its rival, Cameron, Banko and Pierce’s account (LIT-562), finds rewards tied to a score or to beating others do not undermine. Neither side has tested mediation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-052 | Frustration of the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness is a transdiagnostic process in psychopathology | Vansteenkiste, Ryan and Soenens (2020, LIT-561) propose that need frustration, distinct from mere lack of satisfaction, plays “a transdiagnostic role”, citing a longitudinal study in which it predicted adolescents’ depressive and eating symptoms and “largely accounted for their co-occurrence”. Deci and Ryan (LIT-558) had located the etiology of “various forms of psychopathology” in developmental need deprivation, with need substitutes, controlled styles and rigid patterns as the route. The evidence is correlational, mostly self-report, and from the theory’s authors. A partner of the inflexibility account, not a rival. | Proposed |
| THEORY-054 v3 | A regulation is autonomous to the degree it is integrated with one’s other values and needs: autonomy is graded, and is not set by the order of the attitude that endorses it | Self-determination theory orders motives on a continuum from external through introjected and identified to integrated regulation and intrinsic motivation. Ryan and Deci (LIT-559) and Deci and Ryan (LIT-558) place autonomy in integration, “congruence with one’s other values and needs”, and report a quasi-simplex structure and an experiment in which integrated and introjected internalization behave differently. Ryan and Deci (LIT-560) align this with hierarchical accounts but grade it. It is the empirical counterpart of THEORY-029’s negative claim. It is not shown that integration can be measured apart from endorsement, and it does not escape Velleman’s dilemma. | Proposed |
| THEORY-067 | Self-control over time needs no faculty of will: interests that dominate at different delays bargain, and resolve is the recursive staking of expected future choices on the present one | Ainslie’s précis (LIT-586): hyperbolic discounting makes a smaller, sooner reward temporarily preferred, so successive “interests” conflict as in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Treating a choice as a precedent bundles the series, and summed hyperbolic curves favour the larger, later rewards; a lapse costs credibility. Will is that recursion, not an organ. Schelling (LIT-602) describes the same divided chooser from the side of tactics: we manage our later selves as we manage other people. The mathematics of bundling is sound; that willpower works this way is argued, and the précis concedes it is hard to test directly. It is a claim about how control is achieved, not about whose control is self-governance. | Proposed |
| THEORY-070 | How much cognitive control to exert, and on what, is decided by a cost-benefit computation (the expected value of control) in a specification system distinct from the structures that implement the control | Shenhav, Botvinick & Cohen (LIT-585) unify dACC’s many reported functions as one: deciding whether, where and how much control to allocate. A control signal has an identity (a task set, a threshold, an attention template) and an intensity; its expected value is its probability-weighted payoff, with future value discounted, minus an intrinsic cost rising with intensity. dACC monitors and specifies; lateral prefrontal and subcortical structures implement. The paper reviews evidence and fits nothing, so Proposed. It does not say what the cost is, how EVC is computed, or that it governs emotion regulation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-077 v2 | Goals pursued for identified or intrinsic reasons receive more sustained effort, which carries their better attainment, and attaining them raises well-being more than attaining goals pursued under pressure | Sheldon & Elliot (1999), LIT-589: a goal is self-concordant to the degree its reasons are identified or intrinsic rather than external or introjected. In two semester-long student samples, self-concordance predicted sustained effort, and effort fully carried its link to attainment (self-concordance β = .02 and .08, ns, with effort in the model). In the same two samples attainment raised well-being more when goals were self-concordant (interaction β = .11, .23), partly through accumulated daily experiences of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Everything is self-report and correlational, and the structural models fit only after revision. It is evidence for the autonomous end of SDT’s continuum, not for integration as distinct from identification. | Proposed |
| THEORY-154 | Whether an expected tangible reward lowers or raises later intrinsic motivation depends on how tightly its stated contingency ties it to performance and success | Cameron, Banko and Pierce (2001, LIT-562), re-analysing 145 studies with contingencies coded by procedure. On interesting tasks, expected tangible rewards undermine later free choice when loosely tied to performance (for doing the task, for “doing well”) or earned at less than the maximum; they do not when given for surpassing a score, and they enhance it when given for exceeding others. Read through social cognitive and behavioural theory: rewards tied to success carry competence. Proposed: the paper measures no mediator and pools control groups that differ in feedback. | Proposed |
| THEORY-893 v3 | Reward has separable components: ‘liking’, its hedonic impact, measurable without report by orofacial taste reactivity in humans, apes, monkeys and rodents, and ‘wanting’, its incentive salience; brain stimulation and sensitization can raise ‘wanting’ without raising ‘liking’, so motivation can grow while pleasure stays flat or falls, and ‘liking’ reactions can occur without any subjective feeling of pleasure | Berridge and Kringelbach (2015), read in NOTE-1110. Reward splits into ‘liking’, ‘wanting’ and learning. ‘Liking’ has objective, cross-species orofacial markers. Lateral-hypothalamic stimulation and incentive sensitization raise ‘wanting’, which can grow “even if the drug became less pleasant”. Objective ‘liking’ reactions can occur “without any subjective pleasure feeling at all”. Filed because it bears directly on the record’s reading of valence as ordering-potential (CLAIM-440). | Proposed |
| THEORY-895 v2 | Incentive sensitization: repeated drug exposure can make the mesolimbic ‘wanting’ system lastingly hyper-reactive to drug cues and contexts, so that cue-triggered incentive salience grows, persists for years and even increases during abstinence, while ‘liking’ need not rise and may fall; sensitized ‘wanting’ can oppose the person’s cognitive desire, and incentive salience can run without any reportable change in feeling | Berridge and Robinson (2016), LIT-1461, read in NOTE-1109 from the PMC author manuscript. A review by the theory’s authors. Strong in rats and moderate in people for drugs; weak for behavioural addictions, where the authors call the evidence emerging and the mechanism unknown. Filed separately from THEORY-893, which holds the liking–wanting dissociation, because what QUESTION-267 and CLAIM-433 need is the sensitization result: a ranking whose strength is re-keyed to cues, cut loose from both pleasure and the person’s goals, and lasting. | Proposed |
| THEORY-904 v2 | Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) conclude, narratively from a handful of studies that measured or manipulated the goal intention, that implementation intentions affect performance only when the goal intention they serve is strong and activated, so the planned response is not elicited mechanically by its cue; in 2024, across eight tests, plan effects were larger with strong, activated or self-concordant goal intentions than with weak, unactivated or self-discordant ones (d = .79 for the difference), and in 31 physical-activity tests split at the median of intention, planning helped with strong intentions (d = .31) and had no effect with weak ones (d ≈ 0) | Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), LIT-1497, read in NOTE-1124, answer the worry that if-then plans make action rigid: plan effects appear only when the goal intention is strong and activated (p. 103), from four or five studies cited, not pooled. Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, read in NOTE-1131, find the pattern across tests. Neither tests what happens when the planned response becomes the wrong one. | Active |
| THEORY-908 v2 | Between tests, uncorrected for publication bias, implementation intentions in the contingent if-then format had larger effects than plans that schedule when, where and what without linking cue to response (d = .43 against .29); tests in which the plan was rehearsed had larger effects (.45 against .33, with no gain beyond one rehearsal), tests in which it was recorded had smaller ones (.31 against .44), and adding how or for how long to a time and place went with about half the effect (.24 against .46) | Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, read in full in NOTE-1131. Table 3’s moderators across 642 tests: contingent format .43 (k = 373), schedule .29 (k = 269); rehearsal .45 against .33; recording .31 against .44; visualising the response no effect. The authors read the recording and elaboration costs as deliberation undermining automaticity. Between-test and uncorrected for bias. | Active |
| THEORY-913 v2 | In small fixed-effect meta-analytic pools without correction for publication bias, responses specified in if-then plans ran more immediately (d = .77, k = 7), held up under a concurrent cognitive load (d = .85, k = 7) and ran without conscious intent (d = .72, k = 3) compared with responses under a goal intention alone, and the planned cues were detected, attended to and remembered better (d = .80, k = 6); the authors read this as control of the response handed in advance to the cue | Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006), LIT-1497, read in full in NOTE-1124. The component-process tables of the 94-test meta-analysis: large effects for the accessibility of the planned cue and for the immediacy, efficiency and non-conscious running of the planned response, each from one to seven tests, fixed-effect, without a bias correction. Only cue accessibility and cue–response link strength had been tested as mediators. The authors’ gloss is “instant habits”. | Active |
| THEORY-918 v2 | Across 642 experimental tests to September 2019, forming implementation intentions improved outcomes, with uncorrected effects on behaviour (d = .27), cognitive performance (.47), affect regulation (.66) and social judgement (.52), but publication bias was substantial: the pooled d = .36 falls to a model-averaged d = .15 under robust Bayesian meta-analysis, which still found extreme evidence of an effect (BF10 = 319), with large heterogeneity | Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, read in full in NOTE-1131. Random-effects pooling of 642 tests gave d = .36; Egger’s b = 1.06 (“substantial” bias); RoBMA found an effect (BF10 = 319.3) of d = .15 with tau = 0.27. By outcome: behaviour .27, cognition .47, affect .66, social judgement .52, all uncorrected. It replaces the 2006 figure of d = .65 from 94 tests, which had no bias correction. | Active |
| THEORY-1110 | Shenhav, Botvinick and Cohen propose that control is allocated top-down by a dedicated specifying system: dACC computes the expected value of a control signal, its probability-weighted payoff less an intrinsic cost rising with intensity, and specifies the signal that lateral prefrontal and subcortical structures implement | What the expected-value-of-control paper proposes, split from THEORY-070 by the sixth status review (ADR-058’s route) so that a claim needing only the proposal can stand on it. The paper was read in full (NOTE-446), so the reading of what it proposes is held. Whether the proposal is true, a fit of the computation and a dissociation of specifying from implementing, stays THEORY-070’s question, Proposed. | Active |
| THEORY-1117 | Ainslie proposes that self-control over time needs no faculty of will: hyperbolic discounting makes preferences that dominate at different delays, these grow into interests that bargain with no governor above them, and resolve is the recursive staking of expected future choices on the present one | What Ainslie’s précis of Breakdown of Will proposes, split from THEORY-067 by the ninth status review (ADR-058’s route, on THEORY-1110’s pattern) so that a claim needing only the proposal can stand on it. The précis was read in full (NOTE-443), so the reading of what it proposes is held. Whether the proposal is true, which turns on bundling by self-prediction, the credibility of precedents and the order of lapse districts, stays THEORY-067’s question, Proposed. | Active |
| THEORY-1175 | Between tests, implementation intentions in the contingent if-then format had larger effects than plans that schedule when, where and what without linking cue to response (d = .43 against .29); rehearsing the plan once raised the effect, keeping a copy to revisit lowered it (.31 against .44), and adding how or for how long to a time-and-place cue roughly halved it | The wide form THEORY-908 held before the tenth status review narrowed it, kept as a Proposed reading by the ADR-047 kind-1 sweep of 2026-10-30: the source asserts it, and THEORY-908, Active, is its evidence. Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, conclude that the if-then format leads to superior impact, that rehearsal helps and that revisiting a kept copy makes plans less effective; their evidence is between-test moderator contrasts, uncorrected for bias. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1176 | Implementation intentions affect performance only when the goal intention they serve is strong and activated, so the cue-triggered response is gated by the goal and does not fire on the cue alone | The wide form THEORY-904 held before the tenth status review narrowed it, kept as a Proposed reading by the ADR-047 kind-1 sweep of 2026-10-30: the source asserts it, and THEORY-904, Active, is its evidence. The title is the old title’s general clause; its evidence clause read the 2024 moderator (d = .79) as a plan effect, a mis-statement left with THEORY-904’s note. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1192 v2 | Across 642 experimental tests to September 2019, forming implementation intentions reliably improved behaviour, cognitive performance, affect regulation and social judgement, but publication bias was substantial: the pooled d = .36 falls to a model-averaged d = .15 under robust Bayesian meta-analysis, with large heterogeneity | The wide form THEORY-918 held before the tenth status review narrowed it, kept as a Proposed reading by the ADR-047 kind-1 sweep of 2026-10-30: the source asserts it, and THEORY-918, Active, is its evidence. Sheeran, Listrom & Gollwitzer (2024), LIT-1488, find a robust overall effect after correction for publication bias and report benefits in all four outcome domains; only the overall estimate was corrected, and within behaviour vaccination and voting did not differ from zero. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1305 | In Kasser and Ryan’s two cross-sectional samples, holding constant how much a person aspires to overall, the relative importance of extrinsic aspirations (money, fame, image) goes with less self-actualization and vitality and more physical symptoms, and of intrinsic aspirations (growth, relationships, community, health) with the reverse; the paper does not test whether this survives the reasons for pursuing the goals | Kasser and Ryan (1996), LIT-1977, read in NOTE-1525 from the scan on the SDT site. Active as a careful reading of reported associations with their sizes and samples: 100 community adults and 192 students, all self-report. The intrinsic and extrinsic results are nearly one contrast, since both enter after an overall score averaged across all seven domains. Not shown: causation, need satisfaction as mediator, or that the pattern holds once the autonomy of one’s reasons is controlled, which the paper names as an open question. | Active |
| THEORY-1307 | In Slemp et al.’s meta-analysis of 881 mostly cross-sectional samples, perceived support for autonomy, competence and relatedness each correlated strongly with satisfaction of all three needs (ρ = .44–.62) and negatively with their frustration, but the three supports intercorrelated .67–.71, and their need-specificity appears only in joint models: with all three entered, relatedness support carried relatedness satisfaction (β = .56) and autonomy support added nothing to it (β = .007) | Slemp et al. (2024), LIT-1969, read in NOTE-1507 from the CC BY Online First PDF. Active as a statement of what the meta-analysis reports, its Table 2 reproduced from its Table 1 matrix. It is a statement about correlations, which the authors interpret as effects on theoretical grounds only; it does not say support causes need satisfaction, or that the needs are distinct in the world. | Active |
| THEORY-1308 | In Chen et al.’s student samples from Belgium, China, the USA and Peru, need satisfaction related to life satisfaction and vitality and need frustration to depressive symptoms with no detectable difference across countries, and neither relation was moderated by how much a person valued or desired the need | Chen et al. (2015), LIT-2000, read in NOTE-1527. Two cross-sectional studies, N = 683 and 1,051. The relations and the null moderations are as reported. Proposed because universality is inferred from failures to reject, with fewer than 150 per country in the test half, and because explicit valuation and desire are the only measures of need strength. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1310 | In Sheldon, Elliot, Kim and Kasser’s three studies of most satisfying events, self-esteem was as salient as autonomy, competence and relatedness in every sample and the largest unique predictor of event affect balance among ten candidate needs in two of the three US samples (β = .28, .38); the authors, SDT researchers, concluded that there may be four fundamental needs and judged it imprudent to treat self-esteem as an outcome | Sheldon et al. (2001), LIT-1966, read in NOTE-1502 from the scan on selfdeterminationtheory.org. Active as a statement of what the paper reports and concludes, checked against Tables 2–7 and p. 336. It does not say self-esteem is a need: the criteria are self-reports of one remembered event, and the self-esteem items read like well-being, which is QUESTION-369’s problem in miniature. | Active |
| THEORY-1311 | The BPNSFS frustration scales measure low need satisfaction in negatively keyed form, not need frustration in the sense of active thwarting, so the separation of frustration from low satisfaction in BPNSFS data, and frustration’s stronger link to ill-being there, is largely a keying artefact | Murphy et al. (2023), LIT-1978, read in NOTE-1530; Kermavnar et al. (2024), LIT-1988, read in NOTE-1509, adopt it. The item content and the keying structure (THEORY-1316) are shown. That the frustration scales are therefore low satisfaction is the authors’ conclusion, held “probably” and “likely primarily”, and by their own account cannot be decided with data in which keying and construct are confounded. Proposed for that step. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1316 | In eight samples pooled to 3,692 respondents, the covariance of the BPNSFS items is organized more by item keying than by need: factors sharing a keying direction correlate .64 to .75 while satisfaction and frustration of the same need correlate .17 to .38, a higher-order model grouping the six scales by keying fits better than one grouping them by need, and the frustration items carry almost no thwarting content | Murphy et al. (2023), LIT-1978, read in NOTE-1530 from the PMC author manuscript. Active as a statement of what their analyses show, checked against Tables 1–3 and the reported fits: the factor intercorrelations, the two higher-order models and their indices, the external correlates sorted by keying, and the items. It does not say that the frustration scales measure nothing but keying; the authors hold that this cannot be settled with existing data, and the inference is THEORY-1311’s. | Active |
| THEORY-1318 | Among 31 original self-report scales of psychological need fulfillment found by a 2023 systematic search, 21 measure satisfaction only, one measures frustration only and one thwarting only; all are self-reports of experience or of the perceived environment, the field uses satisfaction, frustration, support and thwarting interchangeably in places, and several frustration scales are negatively worded satisfaction items | Kermavnar, Avsec, Huang and Desmet (2024), LIT-1988, read in NOTE-1509 from the version of record. Active as a statement of what the review counted and found, checked against its §3 and Tables 2–4, within the scope it set (English, healthy general populations, title terms). It does not rank the scales, test their validity, offer a criterion for need-hood, or take a side on the two-dimensional model. | Active |
| THEORY-1319 | In Niemiec, Ryan and Deci’s post-college sample, attaining intrinsic aspirations went with more well-being and less ill-being, and attaining extrinsic aspirations, entered alongside it, added nothing to well-being and went with more ill-being; the extrinsic null is a unique-variance result, since alone extrinsic attainment correlated positively with well-being and need satisfaction | Niemiec, Ryan and Deci (2009), LIT-1960, read in NOTE-1520 from the PMC author manuscript. N = 147 at two years post-college; latent SEM and residualized-change models, all self-report. The intrinsic result and the extrinsic null are as reported; the null holds only with intrinsic attainment in the model. Proposed because one small correlational sample cannot show that extrinsic success fails to raise well-being. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1320 | In Ntoumanis et al.’s meta-analysis of 73 SDT-informed health interventions, mostly randomized, the interventions raised perceived need support (g = 0.64), autonomy and competence satisfaction (0.37, 0.31), autonomous motivation (0.30) and health behaviour (0.45) by the end of the intervention, but not relatedness, controlled motivation or amotivation, and their small effect on psychological health (0.29) was gone at follow-up (0.14, ns); need frustration was not an outcome and mediation was not tested | Ntoumanis et al. (2020; issue 2021), LIT-1962, read in NOTE-1526 from the open-access PDF. Active as a statement of what the meta-analysis reports (Table 1, p. 222), with its sizes, intervals and k. It is the record’s experimental evidence that manipulating need support moves SDT’s proximal constructs; it is not evidence that need frustration is a process in psychopathology (THEORY-052). | Active |
| THEORY-1322 | In Belgian adolescents, need frustration measured by the twelve BPNSFS frustration items statistically absorbs most of the association between depressive and eating disorder symptoms: cross-sectionally their latent correlation falls from .50 to a non-significant .18, and in a two-wave latent change model their correlated change falls from .43 to .24; its mediating role is shown in correlated change over the same six months, not in temporal order | Campbell, Boone, Vansteenkiste and Soenens (2018), LIT-1964, read in NOTE-1533 from the early-view PDF on selfdeterminationtheory.org. Active as a statement of the reported models, checked against the text and Tables 1–2. It is the study THEORY-052 cites through LIT-561 p. 12 as the one longitudinal evidence for need frustration as transdiagnostic. It does not show that frustration precedes the symptoms, does not reach externalizing problems, and its measure is the one THEORY-1311 doubts. | Active |
| THEORY-1324 | In Ryan, Mims and Koestner’s experiment, the same expected reward for doing well left less later free-choice engagement when given with controlling feedback than with informational feedback, and in both styles less than no reward with the same feedback: the interpersonal style of a performance-contingent reward changes its effect, and the reward lowers intrinsic motivation even when the information it carries is held fixed | Ryan, Mims and Koestner (1983), LIT-1970, read in NOTE-1522 from the scan on the SDT site. One experiment, N = 96, n = 16 per cell, ANCOVA on initial interest. The framing effect is F(1, 89) = 4.25 and the reward effect against feedback-matched controls F(1, 89) = 4.34; recomputed from the cell means without the covariate, about 4.9 and 3.4 (p ≈ .07). Felt pressure was higher under controlling conditions; mediation was not tested. Proposed for replication and mediation. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1325 | In Chirkov et al.’s student samples from South Korea, Russia, Turkey and the USA, the more autonomous people’s reasons for engaging in practices of any cultural orientation, collectivist and vertical included, the higher their well-being, with no detectable difference across countries or genders; and vertical practices were much less internalized than horizontal ones | Chirkov, Ryan, Kim and Kaplan (2003), LIT-1989, read in NOTE-1513 from the published PDF on selfdeterminationtheory.org. N = 559, cross-sectional self-report. The positive relation held in every country and for every type of practice (β = .15–.42 within country); “no moderation” is twelve non-significant interactions in samples of 94–195. The primary study for SDT’s claim that autonomy is not individualism, which it supports empirically only in this form. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1326 | In Voigt’s model of hard decisions, when two options are valued equally the value differential is too small to choose (conflict, dACC), and the tie is broken during the choice by fixation: precuneus allocates spatial attention bottom-up to the salient item and dlPFC holds it in working memory, which both settles the choice and raises that item’s value, a change that lasts only if the choice is remembered (hippocampus) | Voigt (2022), LIT-1976, an Opinion article read in NOTE-1517. The model is the author’s “tentative” synthesis, resting mainly on Voigt et al. 2019 (not held) in which fixation duration and dlPFC and precuneus activity predicted later preference change; the causal role of gaze is imported from other studies. Proposed. The sharp edge for its use by Jennings (THEORY-1341): the attentional step is bottom-up capture by salience, not top-down prefrontal feedback. | Proposed |
| THEORY-1327 | As Ryan and colleagues’ 2022 meta-review maps it, the meta-analytic evidence for self-determination theory is concentrated in cognitive evaluation, organismic integration and basic needs theory, is mostly cross-sectional and heterogeneous, and has gaps: no meta-analysis of relationships motivation theory or of need frustration, one or two of causality orientations and goal contents, and none that separates integrated from identified regulation | Ryan, Duineveld, Di Domenico, Ryan, Steward and Bradshaw (2022), LIT-1967, read in NOTE-1500 from the accepted manuscript on OSF. Active as a statement of what the review reports about the 60 meta-analyses it found to July 2021, which is checkable against its Tables 1 and 2 and its own summaries. It does not say the meta-analyses are sound, since the review grades none of them, and it is written by the theory’s co-founder, with several included meta-analyses by its authors. | Active |
| THEORY-1331 | Deci and Ryan’s General Causality Orientations Scale measures autonomy, control and impersonal orientations as three separately scored and largely independent dispositions, reliable and stable over two months, whose validity rests on correlations with self-report measures in small samples, with behaviour its weakest support | Deci and Ryan (1985), LIT-1955, read in NOTE-1531 from the scan on the SDT site. Active as a statement of what the scale is and what its founding paper showed: α .69–.74 and near-independent subscales in 636 students, retest .71–.78 in 51, and a nomological table in samples of 42 to 87. It does not say that orientations cause behaviour, or that the orientations parallel the three kinds of event of cognitive evaluation theory, which the paper asserts and its data only suggest. | Active |
| THEORY-1338 | In the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale as Chen et al. built it, the distinction between satisfaction and frustration coincides with item direction: every satisfaction item states a positive experience and every frustration item an aversive one, so the better fit of six factors over three, which is the scale’s evidence that frustration is a separate dimension, is also what a keying or valence factor would produce | Chen et al. (2015), LIT-2000, read in NOTE-1527 from the publisher’s typeset copy in the ULB repository. Active as a statement about the instrument, checked against its Table 3 item by item and its model comparison (ΔSBSχ²(12) = 450.79, p. 226). It does not say the frustration dimension is an artefact, only that this evidence cannot tell it from one; that test is Murphy et al.’s (LIT-1978), unread. | Active |
| THEORY-1345 | In three cross-sectional studies of undergraduates, most of the variance in adult attachment security lay within persons, across relational partners (56–79%, error included), and relationship-specific satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness predicted relationship-specific security in every relationship tested, also with the relatedness items removed; relatedness was the strongest unique predictor, then autonomy, then competence | La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman and Deci (2000), LIT-1979, read in NOTE-1523. Active as a statement of the associations the three studies report, with their sizes. It does not say that need satisfaction causes security, which the authors say their data cannot show and believe runs both ways (p. 381). | Active |
| THEORY-1347 | In Patrick, Knee, Canevello and Lonsbary’s three correlational studies, perceiving that a romantic partner fulfils one’s needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness goes with better relationship quality, with relatedness the strongest unique predictor and the partner’s fulfilment adding to one’s own; but the measure does not separate the needs, its autonomy and competence subscales correlating .96 once corrected for unreliability | Patrick et al. (2007), LIT-1971, read in NOTE-1515 from the article on the SDT site. Active as a careful reading of reported results with their sizes and samples: eight pooled samples (N = 1,918), 66 couples, and 120 diarists with 908 disagreements, all self-report, mostly women students. It does not say need fulfilment causes relationship quality, that autonomous motivation mediates it (the mediation is cross-sectional), or that the three needs are distinct dimensions. | Active |
| THEORY-1349 | In two cross-lagged panel studies of university students, a negatively worded self-report of need frustration predicted later depressive symptoms (standardized β .13 to .18 over three lags) and later negative affect, net of earlier depression and negative affect, while negative affect did not predict later depression; depression also predicted later need frustration at one lag of two | Levine et al. (2021), LIT-1974, read in NOTE-1510 from the version of record in PMC. Active as a statement of the reported paths, checked against Tables 2, 4 and 5. It does not say the frustration causes the depression: the models are traditional cross-lagged panels without random intercepts, so their lagged paths mix stable between-person differences, the reverse path was as large as the forward one at the first lag, and every variable is a self-report. | Active |