Chapter 8: Pervasive Influences on Wellness and Thriving: Cultural, Political, and Economic Contexts and the Support of Basic Psychological Needs

Social psychology is a broad discipline that concerns the impact of social influences on human experience and behavior (Smith, Mackie, & Claypool, 2014). Its focus is especially on how social contexts affect the individual, and his or her beliefs, perceptions, and wellness. Yet, any survey of the field suggests that the social influences that are primarily studied are those quite proximal to the individual.

Self-determination theory (SDT), an approach to human motivation, personality, and wellness (Ryan & Deci, 2017), has a strong social psychological bent. It has a rich tradition of research on how social contexts facilitate or undermine people’s autonomous motivation and their overall flourishing. Experimental studies as well as field research in classrooms, clinics, and workplaces have shown how factors within these proximal social contexts affect people’s experiences of autonomy, competence, and relat-edness, and in turn their healthy development. Yet, like social psychology, the preponderance of empirical work within SDT has been focused at the proximal level. That is, the theory has generated a lot of research on how immediate interpersonal and organizational environments affect people’s wellness and subsequent motivation, as mediated by the satisfaction of competence, relatedness, and autonomy needs.