Interpersonal supports for basic psychological needs and their relations with motivation, well-being, and performance: A meta-analysis

J Pers Soc Psychol. 2024 Apr 18. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000459. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTPeople's motivational processes, well-being, and performance are likely to be facilitated through the support of others. Self-determination theory argues that interpersonal supports for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are crucial to achieve these outcomes. In the present study, we provide a comprehensive examination of this formulation based on a meta-analytic database consisting of 4,561 effect sizes from 881 independent samples (N = 443,556). Our results indicate that supports for autonomy, competence, and relatedness were strongly positively related with the satisfaction of these basic needs and strongly negatively related to their frustration. Interpersonal supports for basic needs were strongly positively related with subjective well-being and exhibited small to moderate positive associations with performance. Moderation analyses showed general stability of effects across cultures, although correlations of autonomy support to autonomous motivation weakened as a function of individualism. The opposite pattern was observed for the correlation between relatedness support and intrinsic motivation. Some effects also declined as a function of sample age and lag in measurements. We also find that competence- and relatedness-supportive behaviors explained incremental variance in basic need satisfaction even after controlling for the more established effects of autonomy support. In addi...
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research