Human beings can be proactive and engaged or, alternatively, passive and alienated, largely as a function of the social conditions in which they develop and function. Accordingly, research guided by self-determination theo~ has focused on the social-contextual conditions that facilitate versus forestall the natural processes of self-motivation and healthy psychological development. Specifically, factors have been examined that enhance versus undermine intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and well-being. The findings have led to the postulate of three innate psychological needs--competence, autonomy, and relatednesswhich when satisfied yield enhanced self-motivation and mental health and when thwarted lead to diminished motivation and well-being. Also considered is the significance of these psychological needs and processes within domains such as health care, education, work, sport, religion, and psychotherapy. T he fullest representations of humanity show people to be curious, vital, and self-motivated. At their best, they are agentic and inspired, striving to learn; extend themselves; master new skills; and apply their talents responsibly. That most people show considerable effort, agency, and commitment in their lives appears, in fact, to be more normative than exceptional, suggesting some very positive and persistent features of human nature. Yet, it is also clear that the human spirit can be diminished or crushed and that individuals sometimes reject growth and responsibility. Regardless of social strata or cultural origin, examples of both children and adults who are apathetic, alienated, and irresponsible are abundant. Such non-optimal human functioning can be observed not only in our psychological clinics but also among the millions who, for hours a day, sit passively before their televisions, stare blankly from the back of their classrooms, or wait listlessly for the weekend as they go about their jobs. The persistent, proactive, and positive tendencies of human nature are clearly not invariantly apparent. The fact that human nature, phenotypically expressed, can be either active or passive, constructive or indolent, suggests more than mere dispositional differences and is a function of more than just biological endowments. It also bespeaks a wide range of reactions to social environments that is worthy of our most intense scientific investigation. Specifically, social contexts catalyze both within- and between-person differences in motivation and personal growth, resulting in people being more self-motivated, energized, and integrated in some situations, domains, and cultures than in others. Research on the conditions that foster versus undermine positive human potentials has both theoretical import and practical significance because it can contribute not only to formal knowledge of the causes of human behavior but also to the design of social environments that optimize people's development, performance, and well-being. Research guided by self-determination theory (SDT) has had an ongoing concern with precisely these

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Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being.

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

A motivational science perspective on student motivation in learning and teaching contexts is developed that highlights 3 general themes for motivational research. The 3 themes include the importance of a general scientific approach for research on student motivation, the utility of multidisciplinary perspectives, and the importance of use-inspired basic research on motivation. Seven substantive questions are then suggested as important directions for current and future motivational science research efforts. They include (1) What do students want? (2) What motivates students in classrooms? (3) How do students get what they want? (4) Do students know what they want or what motivates them? (5) How does motivation lead to cognition and cognition to motivation? (6) How does motivation change and develop? and (7) What is the role of context and culture? Each of the questions is addressed in terms of current knowledge claims and future directions for research in motivational science.

https://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pintrich-motivation-review.pdf

A Motivational Science Perspective on the Role of Student Motivation in Learning and Teaching Contexts.

This chapter explores the ecology of human development, those forces in the person's environment that affect and influence development. Urie Bronfenbrenner's model of the human ecosystem guides the discussion, making connections between children in families and in communities and the larger society that surrounds them. The human ecosystem model is much like the study of the natural ecology, focusing on the interactions between subjects at various levels of the environment as they affect each other. The interaction between individual and environment forms the basis of an ecological approach to human development. This view sees the process of development as the expansion of the child's conception of the world and the child's ability to act on that world. Risks to development can come from both direct threats and the absence of opportunities for development. Sociocultural risk refers to the impoverishment in the child's world of essential experiences and relationships.

The Ecology of Human Development

During the past two decades, the public health community’s attention has been drawn increasingly to the social determinants of health (SDH)—the factors apart from medical care that can be influenced by social policies and shape health in powerful ways. We use “medical care” rather than “health care” to refer to clinical services, to avoid potential confusion between “health” and “health care.” The World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health has defined SDH as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age” and “the fundamental drivers of these conditions.” The term “social determinants” often evokes factors such as health-related features of neighborhoods (e.g., walkability, recreational areas, and accessibility of healthful foods), which can influence health-related behaviors. Evidence has accumulated, however, pointing to socioeconomic factors such as income, wealth, and education as the fundamental causes of a wide range of health outcomes. This article broadly reviews some of the knowledge accumulated to date that highlights the importance of social—and particularly socioeconomic— factors in shaping health, and plausible pathways and biological mechanisms that may explain their effects. We also discuss challenges to advancing this knowledge and how they might be overcome.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00333549141291S206

The Social Determinants of Health: It's Time to Consider the Causes of the Causes:

This study used a daily diary method to examine a bidirectional spillover of conflict between the family and peer domains among 578 adolescents in the ninth grade from Chinese, Mexican, and European backgrounds. Overall, we found support for the bidirectional nature of the daily spillover between family and peer conflict across gender, ethnicity, and generation. Adolescents’ emotional distress partially explained the short term spillover between family and peer conflict. In addition, a longitudinal spillover was observed across the four years of high school across domains. Significance of these findings and suggestions for future research are presented.

Spillover between Family and Peer Conflict in Adolescents' Daily Lives

Prosocial behavior during adolescence becomes more differentiated based on the recipient of the action as well as the perceived value or benefit, relative to the cost to self, for the recipients. The current study investigated how functional connectivity of corticostriatal networks tracked the value of prosocial decisions as a function of target recipient (caregiver, friend, stranger) and age of the giver, and how they related to giving behavior. Two hundred sixty-one adolescents (9-15 and 19-20 years of age) completed a decision-making task in which they could give money to caregivers, friends, and strangers while undergoing fMRI. Results indicated that adolescents were more likely to give to others as the value of the prosocial decision (i.e., the difference between the benefit to other relative to the cost to self) increased; this effect was stronger for known (caregiver and friends) than unknown targets, and increased with age. Functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and OFC increased as the value of the prosocial decisions decreased for strangers, but not for known others, irrespective of choice. This differentiated NAcc-OFC functional connectivity during decision-making as a function of value and target also increased with age. Furthermore, regardless of age, individuals who evinced greater value-related NAcc-OFC functional connectivity when considering giving to strangers relative to known others showed smaller differentiated rates of giving between targets. These findings highlight the role of corticostriatal development in supporting the increasing complexity of prosocial development across adolescence.

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Corticostriatal Connectivity during Prosocial Decision-making Relates to Giving Behavior during Adolescence.

■ Abstract We focus our review on three universal tasks of human development: relationship formation, knowledge acquisition, and the balance between autonomy and relatedness at adolescence. We present evidence that each task can be addressed through two deeply different cultural pathways through development: the pathways of independence and interdependence. Whereas core theories in developmental psychology are universalistic in their intentions, they in fact presuppose the independent pathway of development. Because the independent pathway is therefore well-known in psychology, we focus a large part of our review on empirically documenting the alternative, interdependent pathway for each developmental task. We also present three theoretical approaches to culture and development: the ecocultural, the sociohistorical, and the cultural values approach. We argue that an understanding of cultural pathways through human development requires all three approaches. We review evidence linking values (cultural values approach), ecological conditions (ecocultural approach), and socialization practices (sociohistorical approach) to cultural pathways through universal developmental tasks.

Cultural pathways t hrough universal development

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia is related to emotion reactivity to social-evaluative stress.

The message that one's contributions are devalued can be a significant way that youth experience marginalization during the transition into adulthood. Participants (N = 298, Mage = 19.47 years, 51% female) reported having their ideas, opinions, and contributions being unwelcomed due to their ethnicity and gender. African American, Latinx, and Asian American young women indicated the most frequent devalued contributions. Devalued contributions due to ethnicity and gender were most strongly linked among these groups and Multiethnic youth than European American youth. Devalued contributions predicted depressive symptoms, feeling more needed and useful by society, and a greater sense of purpose beyond a traditional measure of discrimination. Assessing experiences of devalued contributions can provide a more thorough understanding of how marginalization shapes the transition to adulthood. 

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Andrew J. Fuligni

Papers

Spillover between Family and Peer Conflict in Adolescents' Daily Lives

Corticostriatal Connectivity during Prosocial Decision-making Relates to Giving Behavior during Adolescence.

Cultural pathways t hrough universal development

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia is related to emotion reactivity to social-evaluative stress.

Youth’s Experiences of the Devaluing of Their Contributions Due to Their Ethnicity and Gender