Autonomy
Αυτονομία
One of the three needs this research says separate the kinds of motivation, alongside competence and relatedness, and it means acting with a sense of choice over how. Work handed over with every decision already made can satisfy competence and remove autonomy at the same time.
How to spot it
Look at the last thing you handed over and count how many decisions were still open when it left your hands.
The research behind the term
The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits — doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
What it found
- Understanding motivation requires positing three innate psychological needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness.
- What matters is not only how much motivation there is but also what kind: different regulatory processes behind the same goal are linked to a different quality of functioning and well-being.
- The content of goals also matters, precisely because different goals satisfy the basic needs to different degrees.
How it found it
Theoretical work that situates the concept of needs in self-determination theory in relation to earlier need theories and derives testable hypotheses from it.
Practised in
The term does not stay a definition. It appears inside missions where the pattern happens in real time and you have to recognise it as it happens to you.
It Will Not Be Ready
Sources
Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits — doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01