Cody R. DeHaan and Richard M. Ryan, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Questions concerning the nature of happiness and wellness are age-old, as are the ways in which people strive to achieve them. Two traditions dominate theorizing about pathways to happiness and the good life. The hedonic tradition focuses on happiness as a desired subjective outcome, with interest in variables predicting it. The eudaimonic tradition focuses on characteristics associated with living well, defined in terms of realization of human potentials, and views happiness as one by-product of such living. Research within Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has links with each of these traditions. First, SDT explicitly distinguishes wellness from happiness, seeing the latter as a symptom of the former. Second, SDT research provides insights concerning how awareness, self-regulation, and a focus on intrinsic values, all attributes associated with eudaimonia, are associated with both wellness and positive hedonic outcomes, whereas some seemingly hedonistic lifestyles such as materialism can fail to yield even hedonic rewards. Most importantly, SDT highlights how social and environmental factors that support the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness facilitate happiness and wellness, providing practical, evidence-supported directions for human betterment.
self-determination theory; happiness; eudaimonia; well-being
The rise of positive psychology has reawakened some age-old questions about happiness and well-being: What is happiness? How can we attain it? How can we maintain it once we have it? Religion, philosophy, psychology, economics, and many other fields have all grappled with these questions about the nature and causes of happiness. Yet solutions to attaining and maintaining happiness remain matters of active scholarly debate.
One reason there is such active inquiry and research in happiness is the fact that many researchers and theorists have increased the status of happiness. Some have equated happiness with psychological wellness (e.g., Kahneman, 1999); in fact, for some theorists happiness is viewed as “the people’s choice” of a wellness variable, both because it is part of the common parlance and understanding, and additionally because it supplies an atheoretical route to discovering what constitutes “the good life” (see Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008). Others have suggested that happiness and positive emotions are central catalysts of human learning and growth (e.g., Fredrickson, 2004). With such importance placed on happiness, it is no wonder that the concept has become both more studied and more scrutinized.
If the questions of happiness’s functional importance aren’t weighty enough, there are additional wrinkles in the conundrum of happiness. One such wrinkle is evidence that people have characteristic set points (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2004) and characteristic styles of appraising happiness and distress (e.g., Weinstein, Brown, & Ryan, 2009). Considerable research indicates that happiness, when assessed in a global way, is relatively stable across the life span. Evidence also suggests substantial heritability of happiness and subjective well-being (e.g., Bartels et al., 2010; Rietveld et al., 2013), although different aspects of happiness and well-being may be differently heritable. For example, Franz et al. (2012) reported that psychological well-being is more heritable than life satisfaction. Nonetheless, the very consistency in how people answer questions about, or experience, general happiness, whether due to genes or stable response sets, raises concerns.
Researchers investigating set points and the stability of happiness have applied varied conceptualizations to the problem, including the concepts of hedonic adaptation (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999) and hedonic treadmill (Brickman & Campbell, 1971; Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006). Hedonic adaptation describes adaptation to affectively relevant stimuli—the attenuation of the felt emotions around a change in consequences. Hedonic adaptation allows us to reduce the impact of steady or continuous affective inputs, as well as to be more sensitive of changes around these baselines (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999). In other words, these ideas propose that humans eventually return to a normative level of happiness after any event moves them away (in either direction) from that level. For example, an increase may bring some immediate additional happiness, but these effects will quickly fade as expectations adjust, bringing happiness back to a baseline. These depictions of happiness have implicit in them assumptions leading to the treadmill metaphor, including that happiness has long-term stability, that this stability is in part genetically influenced, and that life changes that bring about increased happiness do so only briefly, as individuals will quickly habituate to change. Yet, this set of rather widely accepted ideas paints a troubling portrait for anyone who hopes to enhance happiness, with many processes serving to dampen or minimize the perceived impact of potentially positive influences.
Attempting to more clearly define factors that contribute to a person’s level of happiness, Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2004) specified three main factors. The first component is a genetically determined set point that determines how happy someone will be when other factors are neutral. The second component is the circumstances of the individual’s life, or the relatively static or stable (though not necessarily entirely unchangeable) elements of life including factors such as demographics, sex, age, race, and physical location. The third and final component is made up of intentional activities that one engages with, including engaging in certain activities or approaching life situations with a given outlook. In a set of three studies, Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) followed college participants over a semester, and assessed changes in both circumstances (e.g., a change in living situation) as well as in activities (e.g., joining a new club). In these studies, increases in happiness at the midpoint of the semester were associated with both positive changes in circumstances and activities, whereas at the end of the semester, only increases due to changes in activities remained. Sheldon and Lyubomirsky suggest that, while relatively stable and slow-to-change forces (e.g., set points and life circumstances) play an important role in happiness, individuals also exert leverage through their intentional activities and pursuits: To some extent, people can seize responsibility for their own happiness.
In summarizing this recent research on happiness, we note that it highlights the stability, and slow-to-change nature, of overall happiness. Yet most of us probably have a different experience of happiness. What is most accessible and phenomenally salient to most individuals is not the stability of our happiness, but rather the variability and fluctuations in happiness that we experience. In certain types of contexts, we feel happy, and in other types of contexts, we feel unhappy or perhaps even perturbed. Supporting this view is a large body of experience-sampling and diary-based methods, which attest not only to a high degree of variability in happiness within persons, but also the fact that this within-person variability is predictable (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007). Because of this predictable variation in happiness, any understanding of happiness must account for both of these aspects, that is, for both the overall stability of individual differences in happiness, as well as the considerable variability of moment-to-moment assessments.
In sum, questions of happiness predominate today’s positive psychology, in part because happiness has been implicated in (and by some equated with) growth and wellness; because happiness appears to have both genetic and experience-dependent determinants; because happiness so saliently varies from moment to moment within this overall stability; and because there is debate about what type of happiness-related actions, if any, foster wellness.
In this chapter we discuss these questions about happiness through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000). SDT is an empirically driven, contemporary theory that directly speaks to all these issues, seeing happiness (i.e., positive affect) as an organismic signal that fluctuates strongly with need-supportive and need-thwarting contexts. Yet given its signal function, SDT does not view happiness as an end in itself, but rather as an informational input to fuller functioning. That is, SDT does not posit happiness as an organismic ideal—rather the ideal within SDT is a fully functioning, mentally well individual. Wellness in SDT’s view is about being authentically in touch with one’s surroundings and inward states, experiencing congruency rather than merely positive affect, and being able to use emotional inputs to volitionally regulate reactions and subsequent behavior. At the same time, SDT predicts that certain activities and lifestyles, particularly those associated with eudaimonic living, supply the most reliable paths to happiness and positive affect, and further suggests that not all culturally rewarded or valued endeavors can accomplish that aim. In what follows we detail these formulations and their relevance to happiness.
SDT is a broad theory of human growth, integrity, and wellness that views humans as inherently oriented toward mastering their environment and integrating new experiences into the self (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Yet these integrative and growth-oriented processes do not occur in all situations; these processes are either fostered or undermined by specifiable conditions. The social world can either support growth and integration leading to positive outcomes and wellness, or it can fail to support (or even actively thwart) them, and instead cause defense, suffering, and ill-being (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013). The characteristics of social contexts upon which outcomes hinge have, accordingly, been shown to be those that support three basic psychological needs (see Deci & Ryan, 2000).
Within SDT, basic psychological needs are not defined as merely subjective preferences, but rather as nutriments essential to psychological growth, wellness, and integrity (Ryan, 1995). Given this constrained definition, SDT has identified only three such needs. The first, the need for autonomy, refers to the need to experience behavior as self-endorsed and volitional. Autonomy is afforded when people feel choice and voice in behaving, and is diminished when they experience behavior as driven by pressures, external rewards, or coercion. Relatedness is the need to feel connected and significant to others. Relatedness is enhanced when one cares for or is cared for by others, and is diminished by social exclusion or disconnection. Competence refers to capability and effectiveness with the important activities one engages in life. The need for competence concerns feeling confident and effective in one’s actions, and this need is supported by well-structured contexts that afford positive feedback and mastery experiences. Each of these three needs has been shown to be necessary for psychological wellness in people regardless of culture, age, gender, or other socioeconomic factors. Whenever these needs are fulfilled, people flourish; when they are frustrated, wellness wanes. As an example, Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, and Kaplan (2003) showed that basic need satisfaction was critical in predicting wellness across countries as varied as South Korea, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Similarly, using measures of psychological needs reflective of SDT’s basic needs, Diener, Ng, Harter, and Arora (2010) showed that basic psychological need satisfactions were among the strongest predictors of positive affect across the globe.
SDT’s approach to wellness grows out of its roots in organismic theorizing, in which wellness is defined in terms of full and integrated functioning (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 1995). Full functioning would be defined in terms of persons being able to volitionally regulate and fully experience their activities, and pursue what is intrinsically valuable to them. Thus, wellness is not a content of living, but rather defined by a process of open awareness and integrative self-regulation (Ryan, Deci, Gronick, & La Guardia, 2006).
Within SDT, happiness is considered a variable of importance in its own right. Clearly, people value happy states, and states of positive affect are associated with high-quality motivation and functioning, including the state of intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Huta & Ryan, 2010). At the same time, within SDT, a strong distinction is made between happiness, understood as the presence of positive affect and absence of negative affect (Kahneman, 1999), and wellness, understood as full, integrative functioning (Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008).
As we have pointed out in numerous places, when a person is psychologically well, there is coherence and congruence to his or her functioning, and this congruence is associated with deep satisfactions of basic psychological needs. Integration in action is thus often associated with high levels of happiness because full, healthy functioning is adaptive and inherently satisfying. Happiness so defined is, in this respect, an excellent symptom of wellness (Niemiec & Ryan, 2013; Ryan & Huta, 2009), as generally happiness is an important indicator of healthy functioning. Yet importantly, autonomous or congruent actions are not always positively toned. Within the SDT conceptualization of wellness, in the face of certain events, such as the death of a loved one, one would be considered more fully functioning and well if he or she could experience negative feelings (such as grief, loss, and sadness) instead of ignoring them or reframing the event as “positive” (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Similarly, being aware of stressors and perturbation is an important element in informed choices and self-regulation. Indeed, within SDT, full functioning involves an open receptivity to emotions, even when one chooses not to act on them.
In addition, there are some pursuits and mental states in which positive affect and wellness are disconnected. For example, in certain phases of bipolar disorders, pervasive positive affect can be a symptom of illness rather than wellness. In other contexts, positive affect is associated with gratifications that can be harmful, as in drug and gambling addictions, or certain narcissistic disorders. Finally, small boosts in positive affect may support behaviors such as consumerism, compulsions, or materialism that do not have a long-term wellness yield, as we discuss. In these and other ways, one should not make the mistake of identifying happiness and wellness, even while appreciating their typically robust association within any given sample.
SDT’s focus on full functioning has linked it with eudaimonic thinking, a tradition that also distinguishes mere happiness from living well. The concept of eudaimonia has its roots in Aristotelian philosophy (Ryan & Deci, 2001; Waterman, 2012), and deals with the content and process of a life well lived (Ryan, Curren, & Deci, 2012). Specifically, the eudaimonic perspective on well-being does not focus on a particular outcome in the way that the hedonic perspective focuses on happiness, but instead concerns the prescriptions for living a complete human life that will achieve valued human potentials (Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008). Within this perspective, happiness is not interchangeable with wellness, nor is happiness the focus or aim of living well. Yet happiness is expected as a probable outcome when one lives a eudaimonic lifestyle. Conversely, in SDT’s view, shallow or inauthentic pursuits (e.g., those that don’t reflect intrinsic values) may bring about temporary pleasure or happiness but do not sustain wellness. At the same time, SDT recognizes happiness as a symptom of wellness because the presence of happiness is often indicative of need-satisfying, authentic, eudaimonic living.
SDT has a specific view on the function of emotions, including those associated with happiness within healthy self-regulation. Theoretically, emotions serve an informational function (Ryan et al., 2006), providing information about whether one is “on track,” so to speak, in regards to the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs. That is, when people satisfy needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they typically show a rise in positive emotions and a decrease in negative ones. Interestingly, such effects are apparent in both moment-to-moment experience sampling research (e.g., Ryan, Bernstein, & Brown, 2010) and in general survey findings (e.g., Chirkov et al., 2003). However, such emotions are not infallible indicators because they can be triggered and influenced in many ways, sometimes in activities that are not related to basic need satisfactions (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013).
Indeed, considerable research within SDT has shown the relations between basic psychological need satisfaction and multiple indicators of well-being, including positive affect, at both between-person and within-person levels of analysis. In one early study, Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996) demonstrated the role of both stable trait levels of autonomy and competence, as well as the fluctuating daily levels of those same traits, in predicting positive affect, lack of negative affect, vitality, and lack of physical symptoms. On days that participants experienced greater satisfaction of needs for autonomy and competence, they showed enhanced outcomes. Yet, independent of these daily affects, people who had more need satisfaction also displayed greater well-being on average. Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, and Ryan (2000), in later work, measured all three needs, and results showed that satisfactions for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, both on average and daily levels, were all important for outcomes, including indicators of happiness.
Ryan, Bernstein, and Brown (2010) extended this research to adult workers. This work focused on the “weekend effect,” or the uplifting effects that weekends seem to have. This idea of the weekends having a positive effect was supported by the data—on weekends, people experienced more positive affect, less negative affect, greater vitality, and fewer physical symptoms. In addition, these effects were found across gender, as well as across varying trait levels of well-being. These effects were also found when contrasting work-related and non-work-related activities: People experienced more positive mood and increased vitality with non-work-related activities. In both of these models, the role of the basic psychological needs as mediators for the relations of weekday/weekend and work-related/non-work-related activities on outcomes was tested. The boost provided by weekends was largely mediated by autonomy and relatedness; for most workers, both of these need satisfactions were lower on weekdays, leading to less positive outcomes. When work-related and non-work-related activities were compared, autonomy, relatedness, and competence fully mediated the relations between activities and outcomes. This study thus provides compelling evidence for the role of social contexts, in this case experiences at work, in supporting the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and highlighting how need satisfaction predicts both within-person as well as between-person indicators of happiness and well-being.
Recent work by Howell and colleagues has highlighted the strong link between even momentary need satisfaction and well-being (Howell, Chenot, Hill, & Howell, 2011). They reported two studies: one in which participants completed hourly diaries of basic psychological need satisfaction and well-being (assessed with measures of happiness, enjoyment, and lack of stress), and another in which participants recalled their hourly need satisfaction and well-being for the preceding 18 hours. On average, hourly increases in autonomy and relatedness were associated with increased happiness and enjoyment and decreased stress. In addition, daily need satisfaction showed a similar pattern of results, with increased autonomy and relatedness being associated with greater happiness and enjoyment and decreased stress. Importantly, daily satisfaction of all three needs was positively associated with overall life satisfaction. A further analysis showed that life satisfaction moderated the relation between momentary autonomy and relatedness and momentary happiness, with those showing greater life satisfaction at the trait level having a stronger link between need satisfaction and happiness. This work provides support for the association between need satisfaction and well-being outcomes, but highlights the importance of eudaimonic factors.
Need frustration. Beyond considerations of basic psychological need satisfaction, recent research has been seeking greater understanding of the role of basic psychological need frustration. Previously it was implicitly assumed that the experience of satisfaction of needs being actively thwarted was one endpoint of a single continuum, with the other endpoint being need satisfaction, and lack of need satisfaction being somewhere in between. Yet, recent research highlights that need frustration could be measured uniquely. In a series of studies on athletes, the unique associations among need satisfaction, need frustration, and various outcomes were assessed, including positive and negative affect during sports activities (Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011). Autonomy support received from coaches led to increased need satisfaction, which in turn was strongly related to greater vitality and positive affect. Controlling coaches, on the other hand, led to increased need frustration, which in turn was strongly related to more negative affect, and in some samples more depression and more disordered eating. In a second study, autonomy support from coaches was again related to greater need satisfaction, but in this case greater need satisfaction was related to greater positive affect, decreased negative affect, and lower burnout; greater need frustration was associated only with more negative affect and more burnout. A third study replicated these results longitudinally, again showing that coaches’ autonomy support was most predictive of athletes’ need satisfaction, which in turn was most predictive of positive affect, whereas coaches’ control was most predictive of athletes’ need frustration, which in turn was most predictive of negative affect and physical symptoms. This set of studies seems to suggest that autonomy support leads most strongly to need satisfaction, which in turn is most highly related to positive outcomes, whereas controlling environments lead most strongly to need frustration, which in turn yields negative outcomes.
SDT suggests that all motivated behaviors can be classified along a continuum from motivations or behavioral regulations that are more autonomous and integrated to the self, to those that are more controlled or experienced as external to the self. There are five points along the continuum of motivated behaviors, the first four of which are extrinsically motivated. External regulation is the least autonomous of these, and indicates behaviors that are enacted purely to gain externally controlled rewards or avoid punishments. Introjected regulation represents an external regulation that’s been partially internalized, meaning that the external contingencies are no longer present, but taking their place is a framework of contingent self-worth and shame- or guilt-avoidance that is present within the individual. A major form of introjected regulation is represented by ego involvement (Ryan, 1982), in which a person’s behavior is driven by self-esteem-related concerns. Identified regulation is yet more autonomous, characterizing actions that are engaged because they are consciously valued and endorsed, but not necessarily integrated with the larger ecosystem of values and beliefs within an individual. The final type of extrinsic regulation is integrated regulation, which describes behaviors that are brought into cohesion, or reciprocally assimilated, with the individual’s other values and beliefs. Integrated regulation is still extrinsically motivated, in that the intent is to attain outcomes independent of the satisfactions inherent in acting, but it is nonetheless highly volitional and autonomous, being wholeheartedly endorsed by the individual. The fifth type of motivation, intrinsic motivation, entails behaving because of the activity’s inherent enjoyment and satisfactions. It is this criterion that separates intrinsically motivated behaviors from those that are extrinsically motivated.
Because SDT is focused on the content of life leading to wellness, it thus follows that engaging in behaviors, identities, vocations, and avocations autonomously, rather than heteronomously, is expected to lead to greater basic psychological need satisfaction, and thus consequent well-being and happiness. Indeed, autonomous motivation has been linked to many positive outcomes. For example, motivation at work has been identified as an important predictor of outcomes. Ilardi, Leone, Kasser, and Ryan (1993) examined the role of motivation in the workplace on employees’ satisfaction with work and general well-being. To the extent that employees were autonomously motivated, they evidenced greater need satisfaction, greater satisfaction with work, and higher well-being, findings that have since been widely replicated (Gagné, Deci, & Ryan, 2013; Van den Broeck, Lens, De Witte, & Coillie, 2013).
In line with a eudaimonic perspective, when people direct their autonomous activities toward meaningful and valued endeavors, they especially derive basic need satisfactions. For example, in a set of studies, Weinstein and Ryan (2010) examined the role of helpers’ autonomous motivation in fostering both their own and recipients’ well-being and positive experience. An initial diary method assessed individuals’ engagement in prosocial behavior. On average, helping others was related to small increases in subjective well-being, vitality, and self-esteem. However, when proscocial behavior was autonomously motivated, these outcomes were significantly enhanced. In addition, the three basic psychological needs were shown to mediate between autonomous helping and these enhanced well-being outcomes. Another study provided an experimental analogue, showing that participants given a choice to donate to others experienced more positive affect and vitality than those instructed to do so. Once again, the three basic psychological needs mediated the relation between autonomous helping and changes in well-being. Additional experiments in this series showed further that only when helping was enacted autonomously did recipients of help show well-being benefits. That is, when recipients felt they were being willingly helped, both their wellness and that of the helper were enhanced. It seems clear that in the realm of prosocial behavior, motivation and need satisfaction are critical predictors in the happiness and well-being experienced during these activities.
Mindfulness is defined as an open and receptive awareness and attention, or a quality of consciousness, characterized by a clear awareness of the present moment (Brown & Ryan, 2003). When engaging with life in a mindful way, one is fully attending to and aware of what is going on for himself or herself at any given moment, but is not overwhelmed by or subjected to those experiences or immediately judging of or reactive to them. Although mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism and other related traditions, it has been increasing in popularity within psychological research.
In developing a scale to measure mindfulness, Brown and Ryan (2003) used a theoretically grounded and empirically based factor analytic approach to create the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). This scale measures mindfulness in everyday life, independent of attitude, motivational intent, and common outcomes, leaving items such as “I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later,” and “I rush through activities without being really attentive to them” (reverse scored). In varied samples, mindfulness was positively related to openness to experience and awareness of internal states, and negatively related to social anxiety and rumination, among other relevant constructs. Data also revealed positive associations between mindfulness and positive affect, life satisfaction, and vitality, whereas it was negatively correlated with negative affect, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and the presence of physical symptoms.
Importantly, and in addition to these relations with positive outcomes on the whole, mindfulness was also associated with greater satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Several studies in this series supported the important role of mindfulness in processes that support more aware, autonomous self-regulation, resulting in greater well-being. In one such study, mindfulness was shown to moderate the relationship between implicit and explicit measures of self-awareness of affect, supporting the role of mindfulness in facilitating awareness of implicit emotions and potentially facilitating well-being (Brown & Ryan, 2003). In another, trait mindfulness predicted more autonomous activity day to day, and as such, lower levels of negative affect. Independent effects for state mindfulness were found, with mindfulness on a given day predicting greater autonomous activity, decreased negative affect, and increased positive affect on a given day.
In similar research, Weinstein, Brown, and Ryan (2009) explored the role of mindfulness in coping with stress. Across four studies, mindfulness was associated with lower appraisals of stress in demanding situations and more adaptive coping strategies in the face of stress. Mindfulness also predicted greater well-being, measured by greater positive affect, less negative affect, and greater vitality. Mediation analyses demonstrated that the relations between mindfulness (both state and trait) and well-being were mediated by both appraising situations as less stressful and using more adaptive strategies in coping with stress.
This research, taken together, points to the important role that autonomous motivation plays in a life well lived, producing well-being, and as a result, happiness. In addition, mindful attention and awareness facilitate autonomous engagement with life, as well as more adaptive engagement with stressful situations, paving the way for eudaimonic well-being as conceptualized within SDT.
The behaviors, identities, vocations, and avocations that we engage in our lives are often organized around goals or aspirations toward which we are striving. When one examines these goals, it is clear that goals can vary on many dimensions. Kasser and Ryan (1993, 1996) examined goals in a series of studies, suggesting that there are two different categories of aspirations. Intrinsic aspirations refer to goals that produce relatively direct satisfaction of the basic psychological needs, whereas extrinsic aspirations refer to those that are less likely to produce (or do not at all produce) satisfaction of the needs. Examples of intrinsic aspirations include personal growth, community involvement, and affiliation, whereas extrinsic aspirations are exemplified by seeking wealth, fame, and image. Importantly, it’s not the simple fact of holding extrinsic aspirations that is negative; instead, it’s the relative balance of intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations that together determine the movement toward wellness or ill-being that one’s life takes.
In their early research, Kasser and Ryan (1996) explored the relations of aspirations and well-being. In multiple studies, they found that placing higher value-intrinsic values such as personal growth, intimate relationships, and community contributions was positively related to happiness, self-actualization, and vitality, whereas an emphasis on extrinsic values such as financial success or image was associated with more negative affect and symptoms of depression and anxiety. This general set of findings established that placing greater value on intrinsic aspirations (relative to extrinsic aspirations) was associated with well-being outcomes; placing greater value on extrinsic aspirations relative to intrinsic showed the opposite, a result that has since been widely replicated (Kasser, 2002; Kasser et al., in press).
Some have argued that perhaps the relations between aspirations and outcomes could vary by vocation—in essence, a matching hypothesis. For example, Sagiv and Schwartz (2000) suggested that a focus on materialism should lead to positive outcomes in environments that strongly value materialism. To address this concern, Vansteenkiste, Duriez, Simons, and Soenens (2006) assessed the aspirations of two groups of students: those in business and those in teaching. As is expected, business students valued extrinsic aspirations more highly than teaching students and intrinsic aspirations less than teaching students. Yet the relations between intrinsic aspirations and greater well-being, as well as extrinsic aspirations and lower well-being, were equivalent for both groups. That is to say, no evidence for a matching hypothesis was found; placing greater value on intrinsic aspirations was a path to well-being, whereas focusing on extrinsic aspirations was not, regardless of context.
The factors that we mention in the preceding sections that are associated with both eudaimonia and happiness—namely, autonomous motives, mindful awareness, and a focus on intrinsic goals—are all variables that are centered on individuals. Yet in addressing the factors that promote and thwart human flourishing and the happiness that attends it, SDT strongly emphasizes the impact of social and environmental inputs (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Indeed, as Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2004) point out, it is the circumstances of one’s life that also contribute to levels of happiness.
Within SDT, these life circumstances specifically affect happiness through their effects on basic psychological need satisfactions and frustrations. Social contexts that are consistently thwarting of our needs can greatly limit our ability to be fully functioning and well and thus expectably are also associated with less positive and more negative affect. Conversely, need supportive contexts enhance wellness and the happiness associated with it. Because the SDT literature is replete with empirical demonstrations of this point, we highlight just a few representative findings.
Legate, Ryan, and Weinstein (2012) examined the effect of autonomy supportive versus more controlling social contexts on the well-being of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals. In their research, they identified significant variation in how “out” individuals were in various contexts, such as with friends, family, and coworkers—that is, there were contexts in which individuals felt freer to disclose aspects of their sexual identity, and others in which they felt they could not, or did not desire to, disclose. Overall, greater disclosure was associated with greater well-being, as indicated by fewer depressive symptoms, less anger, and greater self-esteem. In daily life contexts in which their autonomy was supported, LGB persons tended to be both more likely to be open about their sexual identity and to show increases in well-being. Notably, however, disclosing in controlling contexts was not associated with greater well-being. This research indicates that autonomy support is critical for authentic functioning and disclosure of sexual identity, as well as the fact the individuals experience varying support for autonomy, with corresponding variations in wellness and positive feelings.
Many adults around the world spend a significant amount of time at work, suggesting that this would be a critical context for need support or thwarting to occur. Workplace autonomy support has been identified as an important factor in employee outcomes, including well-being. In a study of state-owned companies in Bulgaria, Deci and colleagues examined the role of an autonomy-supportive work climate in need satisfaction, engagement, and well-being of employees (Deci et al., 2001). To the extent that the workplace was supportive of employees’ need for autonomy, workers reported greater need satisfaction, and need satisfaction in turn predicted positive outcomes, including greater engagement at the workplace, as well as less anxiety and greater self-esteem. In addition, the study compared this model to a sample of American workers at a private company and found equivalent relationships, supporting the role of the social context (here, workplaces) in their relation to need satisfaction and wellness. Baard, Deci, and Ryan (2004) similarly showed that perceptions of autonomy support from managers were a significant predictor of need satisfaction, which was in turn related to lower depression and anxiety. Further, work previously reviewed by Ryan et al. (2010) revealed lower need satisfaction during work, as opposed to nonwork moments, and this lower satisfaction was associated with increases in negative affect, physical symptoms, and decreases in positive affect and vitality. Such studies highlight the important role that need support in work environments has on well-being and affect.
Parenting is another critical domain in which need support can significantly impact well-being and children’s happiness. Considerable research has shown that controlling parents undermine and autonomy-supportive parents facilitate children’s wellness (Ryan et al., 2006). Yet control can take many forms. For example, Assor, Roth, and Deci (2004) examined the effect of parental conditional regard on internalization and well-being. Parental conditional regard is a strategy whereby the parents control their children by conveying that they are unlovable if they do not live up to parental standards. Assor et al. demonstrated that mothers’ conditional regard was associated with children having greater introjected (as opposed to autonomous) regulation. In turn, this introjected regulation was related to ill-being outcomes. In addition, those subjected to conditional regard reported more short-lived satisfaction after successes, meaning that happiness from success was more fleeting. They also evidenced greater guilt and shame and less stable self-esteem. Sadly, parents who had been subject to conditional regard as children were later more likely to report using conditional regard with their own children. Thus, not only does conditional regard have negative consequences, but those subjected to it are more likely to use it themselves, propagating its negative effects.
Other studies by Weinstein et al. have examined the role of parental autonomy support in homophobia and, in one study, contingent self-esteem (Weinstein, et al., 2012). When participants in the studies reported their parents as controlling when they were growing up, there was a discrepancy between two measures of sexuality: explicit sexuality as measured by a traditional Likert scale from “gay” to “straight,” and implicit sexuality as assessed by a reaction time task measuring speed of associations between “me,” “others,” “gay,” and “straight” words. This discrepancy in itself was thought to be an indicator of poor integration of sexual identity. Accordingly, important consequences were found when this discrepancy was present, including greater homophobia and more contingent self-esteem. Contingent self-esteem is the extent that one must act in certain ways to feel good about oneself, or to have self-esteem, and is seen as an indicator of ill-being within SDT (Deci & Ryan, 1995). In sum, it’s clear that parental control has a wide range of negative consequences, and that parental autonomy support provides the basis for integration and well-being.
We have provided just a few examples, but the extensive body of work exploring the role of social and environmental factors within SDT research produces a convincing picture. The affordances social contexts provide for basic need satisfaction affect the motivations through which individuals engage in their daily activities and the goals toward which they strive, strongly impacting well-being and the happiness that tends to covary with it. The psychological need supportive versus thwarting character of social contexts, from classrooms to boardrooms to bedrooms, thus matters for wellness and happiness.
This principle of how environments impact wellness extends beyond proximal environments (such as family, peer, classroom, or work situations) to the distal or pervasive environments, such as people’s cultures, economic systems, and governmental styles. All of these distal factors have an influence on both happiness and people’s functioning. SDT specifically suggests that many of the positive effects of distal factors such as democracy, national wealth, economic distribution and justice, and other matters work in large part through their direct and indirect effects on psychological needs. For example, economic opportunity and fairness affect experiences of autonomy, competence, and relatedness powerfully, with resultant effects on wellness. This idea that the effect of distal factors on wellness works through need satisfaction also helps explain why wealth excess and certain types of advantages fail to enhance wellness beyond certain levels (e.g., Kasser et al., in press). In short, features of environments, both distal and proximal and “positive” or “negative,” work their impact ultimately through the basic psychological needs of the individual persons embedded within them.
The SDT conceptualization of happiness is one that is based on a core principle: living in a way that satisfies the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is a reliable route to well-being and the happiness that is typically associated with it (Ryan, Curren, & Deci, 2012; Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008). This expected relationship between need satisfaction and happiness applies to people’s daily activities, the identities they hold, the goals they strive for, and the interpersonal relationships in which they are engaged. Thus, assessments of general need satisfaction predict overall happiness ratings, domain need satisfactions predict domain happiness, and situational need satisfaction predict momentary happiness (e.g., Vallerand, 1997).
There is without a doubt overall stability in happiness. Sheldon and Lyubomirski (2006) defined three main determinants of happiness levels: namely, a genetically influenced set point, the circumstances of one’s life, and intentional activities. SDT research speaks particularly to the latter two issues: the circumstances and social contexts of one’s life (both proximal and distal) and one’s motivated, intentional activities. Clearly, behaviors, identities, aspirations, and contexts that fulfill the basic psychological needs bring about well-being and happiness, as does being in contexts that support those needs.
Moreover, consideration of the nature of happiness as both a relatively stable individual difference yet as a highly variable and sensitive variable at a within-person level of analysis reveals that its most important functions are largely as an informational input, important to self-regulation. Informational use of happiness can enhance intentional engagement in activities that will ultimately enhance wellness, and healthy self-regulation depends on the detection of variability around this set point. To this end, within-person variation around a normalized range is a positive thing for the organism, because it provides the basis for evaluating what is ultimately satisfying of the basic psychological needs and what is ultimately thwarting.
Yet in this regard, happiness is an organismic guide and input, rather than an ideal for wellness or some kind of ultimate aim for personality. Instead, SDT suggests that full functioning and self-realization are more appropriate aims. Nonetheless, there could be worse aims than happiness, because insofar as both SDT and more general eudaimonic thinking are correct, then the happiest individuals and societies will be those in which an emphasis is more on supports for basic need satisfactions rather than on extrinsic outcomes per se.
In fact, theorizing and research from SDT suggest several reliable routes to full functioning and well-being and resultant happiness, all of which function because they are satisfying the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. There is clear evidence that pursuing intrinsic goals and aspirations such as giving to one’s community, engaging in personal growth, and working toward close relationships fosters greater happiness. In contrast, living life with happiness as the ultimate goal is likely to lead people to shallower pursuits and activities that aren’t fulfilling of the basic psychological needs, thus failing to bring about stable and lasting happiness. Additionally, engaging in activities for which one is autonomous will bring about greater need satisfaction and, ultimately, wellness and the happiness associated with it.
Finally, being in social contexts that support basic psychological needs, not to mention creating such environments, will also lead to greater need satisfaction and thus wellness. Because our “environments,” both proximal and distal, are not just external elements that befall us, but are also, in part, our own social constructions and investments, they are something that can and should be critiqued. SDT provides a strong set of criteria for this critique, asking: Do social practices and policies facilitate or undermine basic need satisfactions? Applying such an evidence-focused critique and testing interventions based on it can provide yet another route to fostering both individual and societal wellness and happiness.