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.

Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previous need theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psychological growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypotheses that different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contents have different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically because different regulatory processes and different goal contents are associated with differing degrees of need satisfaction. Social contexts and individual differences that support satisfaction of the basic needs facilitate natural growth processes including intrinsically motivated behavior and integration of extrinsic motivations, whereas those that forestall autonomy, competence, or relatedness are associated with poorer motivation, performance, and well-being. We also discuss the relation of the psychological needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary motivation theories.

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The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior

People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

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Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.

A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described. Correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies then show that the MAAS measures a unique quality of consciousness that is related to a variety of well-being constructs, that differentiates mindfulness practitioners from others, and that is associated with enhanced selfawareness. An experience-sampling study shows that both dispositional and state mindfulness predict self-regulated behavior and positive emotional states. Finally, a clinical intervention study with cancer patients demonstrates that increases in mindfulness over time relate to declines in mood disturbance and stress. Many philosophical, spiritual, and psychological traditions emphasize the importance of the quality of consciousness for the maintenance and enhancement of well-being (Wilber, 2000). Despite this, it is easy to overlook the importance of consciousness in human well-being because almost everyone exercises its primary capacities, that is, attention and awareness. Indeed, the relation between qualities of consciousness and well-being has received little empirical attention. One attribute of consciousness that has been much-discussed in relation to well-being is mindfulness. The concept of mindfulness has roots in Buddhist and other contemplative traditions where conscious attention and awareness are actively cultivated. It is most commonly defined as the state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present. For example, Nyanaponika Thera (1972) called mindfulness “the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception” (p. 5). Hanh (1976) similarly defined mindfulness as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality” (p. 11). Recent research has shown that the enhancement of mindfulness through training facilitates a variety of well-being outcomes (e.g., Kabat-Zinn, 1990). To date, however, there has been little work examining this attribute as a naturally occurring characteristic. Recognizing that most everyone has the capacity to attend and to be aware, we nonetheless assume (a) that individuals differ in their propensity or willingness to be aware and to sustain attention to what is occurring in the present and (b) that this mindful capacity varies within persons, because it can be sharpened or dulled by a variety of factors. The intent of the present research is to reliably identify these inter- and intrapersonal variations in mindfulness, establish their relations to other relevant psychological constructs, and demonstrate their importance to a variety of forms of psychological well-being.

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The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being

Why is there evil? This question has captured the interest of scholars of diverse specialties and backgrounds for centuries. The methods of answering it and the answers themselves have similarly reflected this diversity. My approach is that of a social scientist. The methods and research findings of social scientists can be brought to bear on what for others has been a legal, practical, theological, philosophical, or other kind of problem. One obstacle for the social scientist is the conflict between the inherent immorality of the topic and the professional scientist’s goal of unbiased neutrality. Social scientists are not supposed to let their values cloud their judgment, because doing so can impede the impartial search for truth. But can we view the crimes of Hitler and his minions with the same dispassionate and nonjudgmental attitude with which we observe the bar pressing of rats in a Skinner box? When doing research for my book on evil (Baumeister, 1997), I was struck by how routinely other social scientists rushed to assert that this was not really a problem. To understand is not to forgive, they insisted. Yet I was not so sure. Indeed, my own work pointed toward different conclusions. In particular, as we understand the perpetrators’ inner processes and attitudes, we come to see their crimes as considerably less heinous than how others judge them. Most people who commit evil acts do not themselves regard their actions as evil. Therefore, to understand their perspective is to understand the actions in a way that somehow diminishes their evilness. To be sure, as researchers and scientists our primary goal is to understand. Hence, we must perhaps accept that our approach will carry the moral risk of mitigating our condemnation of some of the worst things that human beings do. The purpose of this chapter is to answer the question “Why is there evil?” from the perspective of psychological research. Because few people regard their own actions as evil, it is necessary to reformulate this question as, “Why do some people do things that other people consider to be evil?” This requires both an understanding of how people perceive evil and why people are motivated to perform certain kinds of actions. Hence, this chapter contains three sections. The first addresses the question of what evil is, including the gap between perception and reality. The second considers the root causes of such behavior. The third turns to the proximal causation, which ultimately may be more tractable than the root causes.

Human evil: The myth of pure evil and the true causes of violence.

A good deal of people’s waking time is, more or less directly, spent thinking about and dealing with desire. There is no question that desires are often benign, functional, and evolutionary adaptive for the individual. However, there are cases where desire stands in conflict with important (selfregulatory) goals or (moral) values. Prime examples include the exsmoker who, upon seeing other people smoke, reexperiences a strong craving for a cigarette despite her intention to never smoke again, or two colleagues at work who cannot help feeling sexually attracted to each other despite the fact that one of them has made public vows of faith on the not-so-long-ago wedding day. And sometimes, much more trivially, the time or opportunity to fulfill a certain desire is just not “right,” such as when someone feels a strong need to pee on a long bus ride and, alas, the toilet is broken. There are both individual and societal reasons for why the capacity for desire regulation is such a highly important aspect of everyday functioning. The primary questions that we seek to answer in this chapter are: What is desire? When does it become problematic? How does desire regulation work? When and why can it go wrong? And how can it be improved? To approach issues of desire regulation, we will draw both on the literature of selfcontrol and emotion regulation. The selfcontrol literature is central because desires are driving forces that sometimes need to be held in check through inhibition or overriding. Selfcontrol research has yielded a wealth of insights on how such inhibitory processes may work and when they may be disturbed. More recently, the field has begun to scrutinize anticipatory, preventive strategies through which people actively set the stage for later selfcontrol successes (Fujita, 2011; C H A P T E R 3

Desire and desire regulation

Unjustified side effects were strongly intended: Taboo tradeoffs and the side-effect effect

Self-control and business ethics: how strengthening the self benefits the corporation and the individual

Successful self-control has many benefits for individuals and society as a whole. Self-regulation relies on a limited resource. After one act of self-control, this resource is reduced, thereby impairing future acts of self-control. Self-control resources can be managed and conserved for future tasks. Recent research on perceived self-control (in the self and others), self-control in interpersonal interactions, and the physiological basis of the limited resource model point to promising areas for future self-control research. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:419-423. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1173 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Roy F. Baumeister

Papers

Human evil: The myth of pure evil and the true causes of violence.

Desire and desire regulation

Unjustified side effects were strongly intended: Taboo tradeoffs and the side-effect effect

Self-control and business ethics: how strengthening the self benefits the corporation and the individual

Self-control: limited resources and extensive benefits