TARGET ARTICLE The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan Department of Psychology University of Rochester Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motiva- tion requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, auton- omy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previous need theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psycholog- ical growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypotheses that different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associ- ated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contents have different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically be- cause 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 psycho- logical needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary mo- tivation theories. Most contemporary theories of motivation assume that people initiate and persist at behaviors to the ex- tent that they believe the behaviors will lead to desired outcomes or goals. Beginning with the work of Lewin (1936) and Tolman (1932), this premise has led moti- vation researchers to explore the psychological value people ascribe to goals (e.g., T. Kasser & Ryan, 1996; Vroom, 1964), people’s expectations about attaining goals (e.g., Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Bandura, 1989; Rotter, 1966), and the mechanisms that keep people moving toward selected goals (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1998). Whereas initially this approach assumed that any two equally valued goals with the same expectancies for attainment would yield the same quality of perfor- mance and affective experience, recent work on goal-directed behavior has begun to distinguish among types of goals or outcomes. Researchers have, for example, contrasted ability-development goals with ability-demonstration goals (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984) and approach goals with avoidance goals (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Elliot & Church, 1997; Higgins, 1996), suggesting that the different types of goals have different behavioral and affective consequences. Like these other theories, self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1980, 1985b, 1991) has differen- tiated the concept of goal-directed behavior, yet it has taken a very different approach. SDT differentiates the content of goals or outcomes and the regulatory pro- cesses through which the outcomes are pursued, mak- ing predictions for different contents and for different processes. Further, it uses the concept of innate psy- chological needs as the basis for integrating the differ- entiations of goal contents and regulatory processes and the predictions that resulted from those differentia- tions. Specifically, according to SDT, a critical issue in the effects of goal pursuit and attainment concerns the degree to which people are able to satisfy their basic psychological needs as they pursue and attain their val- ued outcomes. The concept of needs was once widely employed in empirical psychology to organize the study of motiva- tion. Although variously defined at the physiological or psychological levels and as innate or learned, the concept of needs specified the content of motivation Psychological Inquiry Copyright © 2000 by 2000, Vol. 11, No. 4, 227–268 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.