Edward L. Deci, a psychologist at the University of Rochester whose groundbreaking insights, with his colleague Richard M. Ryan, into what motivates people to do what they do — or not — helped revolutionize fields as disparate as the workplace, education, sports and marketing, died on Feb.
14 at his home in Rochester, N. Y. He was 83. His nephew Brett Jensen said the cause was complications of dementia. Working together in the late 1970s, Dr. Deci (pronounced DEE-cee) and Dr.
Ryan came up with what they called self-determination theory, a cluster of ideas about motivation and agency based on the view that people are naturally curious and eager to grow, and that they flourish in situations in which they feel autonomous, connected and competent.
This may seem obvious today. But at the time, psychology was in the grips of behaviorism, an approach centered on quantifying human behavior, with an emphasis on measured inputs and outputs and a rejection of human agency and subjective concepts like well-being.
“Most psychologists don’t think about people as living entities,” Dr. Deci said in a 2011 video. “They think about them as machines. ” Motivation was seen then as a single force, a set of largely external carrots and sticks. But he and Dr.
Ryan had a different perspective: They believed that there are various types of motivation, and that the particular type is the most important factor. Dr. Deci demonstrated this point early on, in a set of experiments in 1971 that predated his work with Dr. Ryan.
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