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LIT-558: The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-03 (NOTE-439), from the authors' own deposit of the published target article on selfdeterminationtheory.org; worth reading as the full statement of what SDT means by a "need" and why it posits three. Needs are "innate psychological nutriments that are essential for ongoing psychological growth, integrity, and well-being" (p. 228), identified by what follows when they are satisfied or thwarted, not by how strongly people want them. Goals differ in their "why" (autonomous or controlled regulation) and their "what" (intrinsic or extrinsic content), and both matter because of need satisfaction. Thwarting produces need substitutes, controlled regulatory styles and rigid behaviour patterns. It is a target article: the commentaries and the authors' reply in the same issue were not read.
Tagsmotivation, agency, self, social-science, psychopathology-and-treatment, self-governance, well-being
Extended byLIT-561 — Basic psychological need theory: Advancements, critical themes, and future directions
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-439 — The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-047 — 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, THEORY-049 — Whether an external event lowers or raises intrinsic motivation depends on whether it is experienced as controlling or as information about competence, THEORY-052 — Frustration of the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness is a transdiagnostic process in psychopathology, THEORY-054 — 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

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Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (2000), Psychological Inquiry 11(4):227–268 (target article) — DOI-10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Key takeaways

  • What a need is. A need is not whatever moves people. It is a condition “for psychological health or well-being”, so that “psychological health requires satisfaction of all three needs; one or two are not enough” (pp. 228–229). A need is identified the way one shows that plants need water: by flourishing when it is met and breakdown when it is not.
  • Why and what. Autonomously regulated goal pursuit goes with better performance and well-being than controlled pursuit. Separately, placing relative importance on extrinsic aspirations (wealth, fame, image) goes with lower well-being even after the reasons for pursuing them are controlled for (Carver & Baird, pp. 244–245).
  • Autonomy is unique among the three. Competence and relatedness can be satisfied by controlled behaviour; autonomy “is essential for the goal-directed behavior to be self-determined” (p. 241).
  • Integration requires autonomy support. Relatedness and competence supports “can be sufficient to produce introjected values or compartmentalized (poorly integrated) identifications”. Integration also needs “an opportunity for the individual to freely process and endorse transmitted values” (p. 237).
  • Some values cannot be integrated. “Some goals are not integrateable because they are inherently inconsistent with human nature”, and can at best be introjected (pp. 246–247).

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, beside Ryan and Deci’s American Psychologist paper (LIT-559), as the long statement of the needs. It is the paper the 2020 review (LIT-561) names as having “formally identified” the three needs, and it carries the material the shorter paper lacks: the concept of need against Hull and Murray, SDT’s account of the self, need substitutes, the evolutionary argument, and SDT’s comparison with social-learning, terror-management, control, achievement-goal, flow and attachment theories.

Its account of the self (pp. 247–248) is what the record’s agency holdings would have to test: whether “integration with the self” can be specified without presupposing the agent (THEORY-029). NOTE-439 draws that out.

No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing here belongs in the anthology.

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