Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot (1999), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76(3):482–497 — DOI-10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.482
The brief’s citation is correct (JPSP 76(3), 1999). One search-engine
summary gave the pages as 546–557; the printed article runs 482–497.
Crossref gives only the year for the print issue, and No. 3 of the 1999
volume is the March issue, so published: carries 1 March 1999.
Key takeaways
- Self-concordance is a measure of why, not what. A goal is self-concordant to the degree its reasons are identified (“you really believe it’s an important goal to have”) or intrinsic (“the fun and enjoyment”) rather than external or introjected (“you would feel ashamed, guilty, or anxious if you didn’t”). The score is identified plus intrinsic minus introjected minus external.
- “Not all personal goals are personal.” Across three studies, self-concordant goals received more sustained effort over a semester, and effort carried the whole link from self-concordance to attainment. The authors’ earlier single-goal studies (Sheldon & Elliot 1998, as recapped on p. 484) found that controlled motivation predicts initial effort intentions but not effort two and four weeks later.
- “Not all progress is beneficial.” Attainment raised well-being more when goals were self-concordant, and in Study 3 that runs partly through accumulated daily experiences of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Attainment also had a direct effect that need satisfaction did not carry.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as the empirical model of self-endorsed goals that sits between SDT and the philosophy of self-governance. It is psychology with no instruction for machine-learning practice, so no anthology topic holds it.
It bears on the SDT accounts the record already holds:
- THEORY-054 (autonomy is graded integration, not order of
endorsement). The paper’s Figure 2 is the SDT continuum drawn as
“self-integrated versus nonintegrated action”, and it says identified and
intrinsic goals are “integrated with the self”. But its measure cannot
tell integrated from merely identified regulation: there is no integrated
item, and identified and intrinsic are summed. It is evidence that the
autonomous end of the continuum predicts persistence and well-being, not
that integration does. THEORY-054’s
promote_whenasks for exactly the separation this measure does not make, and its refutation clause (that integration may be measurable only as reflective endorsement) fits this measure: self-concordance is the person’s own rating of their reasons. - THEORY-047 (the history of acquisition fixes autonomy). No acquisition history is measured; self-concordance is present structure. The conclusion names the problem in SDT’s own terms: individuals “must learn to distinguish between their own native desires and interests and the alien injunctions that readily become infiltrated into the self”, yet “such infiltration is also the means by which individuals internalize the values of their culture” (p. 495).
- Ryan & Deci (LIT-559). The paper states the three needs as
“qualities of experience universally required by human beings in order
to thrive” (p. 484) and presents itself as extending self-determination
theory to self-generated goals. It is earlier than LIT-559, so no
extendsis declared; its own foundation is Deci and Ryan 1985 and 1991, which the record does not hold. - The philosophy. Self-concordance is a psychologist’s version of identification in the sense of THEORY-029: the question is “whether the person feels ownership”, not whether the goal is pleasant (p. 484). The paper concedes the content problem: a goal can be self-concordant and evil (its example is Kaczynski), and “a complete model of optimal goal functioning will need to address not only the why of striving, but also the what” (p. 495). That is the objection Taylor (LIT-594) is usually read as pressing against self-determining freedom.
Read in NOTE-448.