A legacy unfinished: An appreciative reply to comments on self-determination theory’s frontiers and challenges.

Abstract

It is an honor to receive comments from such an esteemed group of scholars, and their recognition of the progress in motivational sciences catalyzed by a global community of self-determination theory (SDT) researchers. Given limited space, we respond to only a few of their reactions. In our legacy article (Ryan et al., 2021), we focused on autonomy, in part because, as Koestner and Holding (2021) highlighted, SDT is unique in its emphasis on this concept. Koestner and Holding further suggested that SDT's emphasis on autonomy has a particular salience in this age of COVID-19 in which voluntary compliance matters to public health. We agree, and have seen SDT's ability to differentiate between autonomy and freedom, and to identify strategies that facilitate maintained behavior change to be highly relevant in this pandemic (e.g., Martela et al., 2021;Vermote et al., 2021). Concerning this emphasis on autonomy, Sheldon and Geoffredi (2021) worried that SDT faces a threat from determinists who object to free will. Patall (2021) comments about the wide applicability of SDT's universal principles. Vallerand (2021) points to major contributions of SDT in focusing on basic human needs, in differentiating types of extrinsic motivation, and in researching human flourishing well before the advent of positive psychology. Sansone and Tang (2021) highlight the complexity of SDT's motivational taxonomy, and that people can have both betweenand within-person differences in configurations of motives. We appreciate these positive reviews of SDT, and agree with our commentators' unanimous view that the theory's work is far from complete. We hope our SDT legacy article thus serves not as a coda, but instead as a springboard for yet further theorizing, experimentation, and interventions that contribute to humanity through supporting people's autonomy and capacity to pursue what really matters to them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)