The study of basic psychological needs has witnessed a strong revival, in part spurred by Basic Psychological Need Theory (BPNT), one of the six mini-theories within Self-Determination Theory. Empirical studies on BPNT have increased exponentially since the millennium turn, leading to refinements and extensions in theory. In this contribution we review these two decades of research in order to introduce two special issues on BPNT. We first discuss key criteria that define and identify a basic need within BPNT. We then review several need-relevant themes, highlighting advancements and trends that characterize contemporary research on BPNT. Specifically, we address potential extensions of the shortlist of basic psychological needs, the role of psychological need frustration in increasing vulnerability to maladjustment, the study of the interface between individuals’ psychological and physical needs (e.g., sleep, sex, hunger), novel insights into critical need-supportive and need-thwarting practices, and the universality (versus variability) of effects of need satisfactions and supports across demographics, psychological characteristics, and cultural contexts. We also situate each of the 19 contributions that appear in this special double-issue on BPNT within these themes, while suggesting avenues for further research on the role of basic psychological needs in motivation, adjustment, and wellness.

/pdf/basic-psychological-need-theory-advancements-critical-themes-bhinndrj5c.pdf

Basic psychological need theory: Advancements, critical themes, and future directions

Socioeconomic differences in behaviour are pervasive and well documented, but their causes are not yet well understood. Here, we make the case that a cluster of behaviours is associated with lower socioeconomic status (SES), which we call “the behavioural constellation of deprivation.” We propose that the relatively limited control associated with lower SES curtails the extent to which people can expect to realise deferred rewards, leading to more present-oriented behaviour in a range of domains. We illustrate this idea using the specific factor of extrinsic mortality risk, an important factor in evolutionary theoretical models. We emphasise the idea that the present-oriented behaviours of the constellation are a contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors rather than a pathology or a failure of willpower. We highlight some principles from evolutionary theoretical models that can deepen our understanding of how socioeconomic inequalities can become amplified and embedded. These principles are that (1) small initial disparities can lead to larger eventual inequalities, (2) feedback loops can embed early-life circumstances, (3) constraints can breed further constraints, and (4) feedback loops can operate over generations. We discuss some of the mechanisms by which SES may influence behaviour. We then review how the contextually appropriate response perspective that we have outlined fits with other findings about control and temporal discounting. Finally, we discuss the implications of this interpretation for research and policy.

/pdf/the-behavioural-constellation-of-deprivation-causes-and-2vv8xd3q69.pdf

The behavioural constellation of deprivation: Causes and consequences

Origins and Development of Morality



Morality is a central aspect of social life and has been at the core of psychological theories for more than a century. The scientific study of morality poses enduring questions about how individual psychological needs for autonomy and attachment to groups and society can be met while also ensuring the integrity, dignity, and fair treatment of others. Drawing on philosophy, biology, anthropology, and sociology, developmental scientists have addressed these questions by studying the origins and acquisition of morality as well as the sources and nature of change. We provide a brief review of the theories that provided the foundation for research over the past half-century and then reflect on the controversies and misconceptions that still exist. We review current psychological research on the developmental roots of morality, morality and mental state knowledge, and moral judgments and reasoning. We also examine the various contexts, ranging from the family and peer groups to society, in which moral development occurs. The rich and growing literature on children's moral judgments has demonstrated that children's concepts of harm, resource allocation, fair and equal treatment of others, social inequities, and rights each develop from a very focused and narrow form in early childhood to their application to broader situational and cultural contexts. As they grow older, children become able to weigh and coordinate competing concerns in different contexts as they apply their moral judgments and emotions to social situations. We conclude with implications and directions for research. Throughout the chapter, we demonstrate how the study of morality has shed light on fundamental topics in developmental science, contributed novel methods, and discovered new knowledge about child development.


Keywords:

equality;
discrimination;
fairness;
family relationships;
intergroup attitudes;
justice;
moral emotions;
moral judgments;
moral neuroscience;
morality;
peer interactions;
prejudice;
rights;
theory of mind

Origins and Development of Morality

Objective. Autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling parenting have been shown to relate to positive and negative developmental outcomes, respectively. Most research that addresses antece...

Day-to-day Variation in Autonomy-Supportive and Psychologically Controlling Parenting: The Role of Parents’ Daily Experiences of Need Satisfaction and Need Frustration

Objective
This special issue focuses on self‐determination theory (SDT) as an integrative framework for the wider field of personality research. In this commentary our aims include: reflecting on the utility and strengths of SDT as such a general framework and responding to the various contributions in this issue regarding their use of SDT as a guiding, complementary, or contrasting framework.

Methods and Results
We describe how SDT has developed organically and conservatively from “within” based on the emerging patterns of evidence, as well through the ongoing challenges from other models and frameworks. We then discuss each of the various contributions to this special issue, addressing themes that include SDT’s breadth of methods, and its relevance to topics such as narcissism, wisdom, individual differences, Big‐Five traits, and the neuropsychology of motivation, among others. Across these discussions, we highlight fruitful avenues for research and cross‐fertilization across the fields of personality, development, motivation, and neuroscience. At the same time, we counter some claims made about SDT, and forward certain cautions regarding the integration of SDT and other personality frameworks and models.

Conclusions
We conclude by revisiting the value of broad theory, and SDT in particular, for coordinating complex research findings concerning motivation, personality development and wellness across multiple levels of analysis and, perhaps more importantly, for pointing researchers to the right questions within today’s prolific empiricism

Reflections on self‐determination theory as an organizing framework for personality psychology: Interfaces, integrations, issues, and unfinished business

The Development of Moral Behavior from a Socialization Perspective

We present a psychometric scale that assesses risk-taking in 10 evolutionary content domains: between-group competition, within-group competition, status-power, environmental exploration, food selection, food acquisition, parent-offspring conflict, kinship, mate attraction, and mate retention. We report on three studies that evaluate the scale’s validity and consistency for a sample of 1,326 participants who rated their likelihood of engagement in, the perceived riskiness of, and the benefit associated with various risky activities. Behaviors were framed as modern-day analogues of qualitatively similar actions in recurring problem domains of the ancestral environment that were potentially beneficial but also potentially costly to survival and reproductive success. As expected, respondents’ degree of risk-taking was not consistently riskaverse or risk-seeking across content domains, and a set of eight life-history variables had domain-specific effects on risk-taking propensity. In most domains, men were significantly more risk-seeking than women, but in 2 of the 10 domains—food selection and kinship risks—women were more risk-prone than men. Participants who reported not being married or in a committed relationship scored significantly higher in the domains of mate attraction and mate retention. Age, reproductive goalsetting, parental status, number of siblings, and birth order also affected the formation of risk thresholds.

An Evolutionary Domain-Specific Risk Scale

Predicting moral outrage and religiosity with an implicit measure of moral identity

We considered how different forms of child knowledge (i.e., mothers’ reports of taking their child's perspective, their accurate knowledge in the form of precise predictions of their child's ratings regarding distress/comforting and compliance/discipline situations, and their perceived knowledge) are differentially associated with mother-reported autonomy support (i.e., providing meaningful rationales, providing choice, and acknowledging feelings; Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt, 1984). Mothers and their children (141 dyads, M = 11 years old at Time 1) participated in a two-wave longitudinal study with assessments made two years apart. The only form of knowledge that predicted changes in autonomy support was perspective-taking. Autonomy support, in turn, indirectly predicted changes in distress/comforting accuracy through child-reported self-disclosure and directly predicted changes in perceived knowledge. These findings underline the importance of differentiating among forms of child knowledge in the study of socialization processes.

Different ways of knowing a child and their relations to mother-reported autonomy support

In middle childhood, peers become important as children spend more time away from home. Major improvements occur in children's ability to understand the perspective of others and in their inferences about the psychological attributes of others, as well as of themselves. Social development continues to result from a complex interaction between genes and the environment in which children find themselves, and behavior geneticists have begun to identify the role of genetic mediation in social development, as well as specific genes that are involved in various social behaviors. Different children respond to the same socialization intervention in different ways, depending on a host of factors including variables such as age, sex, temperament, and the cultural context in which the intervention takes place. As a result, effective socialization is a function of the way children perceive and respond to a given intervention, rather than a function of a specific action on the part of the socializing agent. Socialization goes on in a variety of domains, with each domain characterized by a different kind of relationship between agent of socialization and child, and the actions of the latter need to be appropriate to the relationship or domain that is currently activated. Although parents, peers, and siblings differ considerably in their characteristics relative to the child being socialized, they all, nevertheless, operate in the same set of domains or relationships.


Keywords:

middle childhood;
socialization;
parents;
peers;
siblings

Social Development and Social Relationships in Middle Childhood

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