Book Review: Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness

[HDA]: I’ve been following Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan’s research since I was a graduate student in the 1980s. They laid the foundation for Self-Determination Theory (SDT) in Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Back then, Deci and Ryan noted that their focus was primarily on ‘selfdetermination and competence (with particular emphasis on the former) and about the processes and structures that relate to these needs’ (p. vii). By their account, ‘[t]he need for interpersonal relatedness, while no less important, remains to be explored, and the findings from those explorations will need to be integrated with the present theory to develop a broad, organismic theory of human motivation’ (p. vii). [JCB]: After almost four decades of empirical research, Ryan and Deci have more than delivered on this promise. Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness (Ryan and Deci, 2017) is their magnum opus – a definitive exposition of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as basic psychological needs. For the uninitiated, Ryan and Deci (2017) introduce SDT as ‘an empirically based, organismic theory of human behavior and personality development [that] differentiates types of motivation along a continuum from controlled to autonomous’. Transcending social psychology, SDT has become a multidisciplinary phenomenon with implications for health sciences, sociology, social work, environmental studies, and philosophy of education, precisely because it is ‘concerned with how social-contextual factors support or thwart people’s thriving through the satisfaction of [these] basic psychological needs.’.. (p. 3). [HDA]: Having grown up in an East Asian collectivist culture, I was intrigued by Deci and Ryan’s initial focus on autonomy. Early in my academic career in social psychology, I counted myself among those who questioned whether SDT applied in nonWestern contexts (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Markus et al., 1996). In some of my early research projects, I examined whether the need for autonomy might vary across different social-cultural contexts (d’Ailly, 2003, 2004). Interpersonal relatedness seemed more closely aligned with East Asian sociocultural values, but this was given very little attention back then. 807841 TRE0010.1177/1477878518807841Theory and Research in EducationBook reviews book-review2018