nucleation

LIT-1955: The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality

1 min read

Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1531), from the scan on the SDT site. Worth reading as the founding instrument of causality orientations theory: three separately scored, nearly independent orientations with good reliability, whose validity in 1985 was a set of small-sample correlations, behaviour the weakest.
Version2
Tagsmotivation, psychometrics
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1531 — Deci & Ryan — The General Causality Orientations Scale
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-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

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Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M. (1985). The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 19(2), 109-134. doi:10.1016/0092-6566(85)90023-6.

Key takeaways

Read in full on 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1531).

  • Three orientations, scored as levels within a person, not types.
  • Autonomy and control are independent (r = .03), not poles.
  • Reliable (α .69–.74) and stable (retest .71–.78, n = 51).
  • Validity is correlational and small-sample; “All of the predicted relationships appeared” (p. 123) overstates its own Table 2.
  • THEORY-1331.

Standing in the record

The source of Causality Orientations Theory, which the record holds only through NOTE-439 and NOTE-441.

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