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Integrative processes refer to people’s strivings to develop and exercise their capacities for autonomous self-regulation. This chapter highlights the importance of integration within Self-Determination Theory (SDT), surveys the psychological research on the topic, and reviews the burgeoning neuroscience research on integrative processes. This chapter proposes that integration is multifaceted and that different neural networks orchestrate specific integrative processes. Different brain regions are seen as nodes operating within and across multiple decentralized networks that support the experiential and behavioral aspects of integrative processes already known to SDT scholars. This chapter additionally reviews some of the neuroscientific methods available to SDT researchers and flags conceptual difficulties in this emerging area of research that seeks to connect complex phenomenology with biology.

Personality coherence is an individual difference capturing the extent to which a person’s psychological characteristics are coordinated, unified, and integrated. The present research addressed the extent to which coherence indicators inter-correlate and predict relevant outcomes over and above the effects of the Big Five among midlife adults ( N = 446). Coherence indicators loaded onto four components: actor coherence, which captured the extent to which people were consistent in their interpersonal values, traits, and behavior; agent coherence, which captured the extent to which people’s goals were coordinated and need-congruent; author coherence, which captured the extent to which people’s self-defining stories were well composed and theme laden; and controlled coherence, which captured the extent to which people experienced their goals as pressured or compelled and as leading them to need-detracting futures. Although actor coherence correlated with both agent and author coherence, agent and author coherence were not correlated. Nevertheless, the actor-, agent-, and author-coherence composites each predicted at least one of the outcome variables (i.e., well-being, autonomy, and ego development) over and above the Big Five. The present findings suggest that the coherence of personality constitutes an individual difference domain of consequence beyond the established content dimensions of personality.

The concept of personality coherence refers to the extent of psychological unity and wholeness embodied within each individual. In the present research, we examined the extent to which the narrative, functional, and organismic conceptualizations of personality coherence interrelate, as well as their associations with psychological abilities and personal adjustment. College students ( N = 391) narrated accounts of three personal memories; listed five personal strivings that they subsequently compared and evaluated; completed performance measures of their intelligence, wisdom, and creativity; and rated their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Individuals who coherently organized their autobiographical memories were protected against feeling pressured or compelled in their personal strivings and against being steered toward need-detracting futures. Narrative indicators of coherence were otherwise independent of the functional and organismic indicators, although all indicators of personality coherence correlated with personal adjustment. Wisdom and creativity predicted narrative coherence, which partially mediated the associations they demonstrated with eudaimonic well-being.

We integrate Rawls’ (1971/2009, 1993, 2001) concept of primary goods with self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), to examine the link between people’s perceptions of primary goods (i.e., views of society as just and fair), basic psychological need satisfaction, and well-being. In Study 1 (N=762, countries = Australia, the United States, South Africa, India, and the Philippines) and Study 2 (N=1479, groups = ethnic minority, sexual minority, political group, religious group), we used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to assess associations between perceptions of primary goods and wellness, and the intermediary role of basic psychological needs. Perceptions of primary goods linked positively to well-being (average effect size = 0.48), and negatively to ill-being (average effect size = -0.46). These associations were strongly mediated by basic psychological needs (average percentage mediated: 53% Study 1 and 68% Study 2). Results signify the importance of primary goods’ perceptions to wellness.

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in representing semantic self-knowledge. Studies comparing semantic self-judgments with judgments of close others suggest that interpersonal closeness may influence the degree to which the MPFC differentiates self and other. We used optical neuroimaging to examine if support for competence, relatedness, and autonomy from relationship partners moderates MPFC activity during a personality judgment task. Participants (

Adaptive interpersonal functioning relies on the effectiveness of behavioral and neural systems involved in cognitive control. Whether different subcomponents of cognitive control and their neural representations are associated with distinctive interpersonal dispositions has yet to be determined. The present study investigated the relationships between prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation associated with two subcomponents of cognitive control and individual differences in interpersonally relevant traits and facets within the Five-Factor Model of personality. Undergraduate participants (n = 237) provided self-ratings of interpersonal traits and underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure activation in regions-of-interest linked to subcomponents of cognitive control: the right lateral PFC and its involvement in response selection and inhibition/suppression (RS) during a go/no-go task, and the left lateral PFC associated with goal selection, updating, representation, and maintenance (GS) on a tower planning task. Multilevel models revealed that during both RS and GS, Neuroticism and Extraversion were associated with lower and higher levels of activation, respectively. Higher Agreeableness was related to lower activation during RS but also with greater activation during GS. More narrowly defined interpersonal facets subsumed within the broader trait domains were differentially associated with RS- and GS-related neural responses. Taken together, these findings highlight potential avenues of future research to better understand the ways in which the neural processes that subserve cognitive control may underlie interpersonal dispositions.

Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017) maintains that the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are essential qualities of experience that individuals require to thrive. The present research examined the role of psychological need fulfillment in a clinical sample undergoing treatment for major depressive disorder. Fifty-one patients with a SCID-IV diagnosis for major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to 16 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressant medication. Depressive symptoms, cognitive errors, dysfunctional attitudes, and psychological need fulfillment were assessed at four time points (pre-treatment, week 4, week 8, and week 16). Psychological need fulfillment increased over the course of treatment and did not differ significantly between treatment conditions. Furthermore, increases in psychological need fulfillment were associated with decreases in depression severity over and above the effects of time, cognitive errors, and dysfunctional attitudes. Given the incremental predictive validity of need fulfillment, a better understanding of its role in the treatment for depression may prove beneficial to mental health researchers and practitioners.

People’s abilities to integrate temporally distant identities are known to be facilitated by the fulfillment of basic psychological needs. However, the neural systems that support the integrative functions of need fulfillment are not well understood. Neuroimaging studies indicate that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) differentiates remembered past, perceived present, and imagined future identities, possibly on the basis of the self-relevance attributed to specific identity representations. Using optical neuroimaging, we examined the relationship between need fulfillment and activity within the MPFC when young adults (N = 110) made trait judgments about their past, present, and future identities. Participants reporting higher need fulfillment evidenced similarly high levels of activity in the right-MPFC across the conditions; in contrast, those reporting lower need fulfillment evidenced markedly reduced activity when judging past and future identities. Results thus suggest that, among people who experience higher need fulfillment, the MPFC processes temporally distant identities in a similarly self-relevant manner. These findings provide a new type of evidence of the relationship between need fulfillment and identity integration and provide future studies with a point of entry for further examining the neural basis of identity integration.

Human beings have fundamental psychological propensities toward growth, integrity, and wellness. Yet, historically, many approaches to motivation have ignored these inner propensities, focusing instead on how external contingencies shape expectancies and behaviors. This chapter reviews recent work in self-determination theory, an organismic approach in which people’s intrinsic, growth-oriented propensities are a central focus. Self-determination theory argues that people have basic psychological needs to experience competence, autonomy, and relatedness to others. Satisfaction of these basic needs facilitates autonomous motivation and wellness, whereas the frustration of these needs contributes to ill-being and is associated with lower quality, and often highly controlled, forms of motivation. Autonomous and controlled forms of motivation differ in their antecedents, neurological underpinnings, and outcomes. Although most of the experimentation and evidence base of self-determination theory has focused on proximal relationships (e.g., families, dyads, classrooms, teams, or workgroups), recent research is extending self-determination theory to address pervasive contexts (e.g., cultural or economic systems) and how they both directly and indirectly affect need satisfaction and motivation, thereby impacting people’s development and wellness. Pervasive contexts also influence people’s aspirational horizons and the life goals they pursue, further influencing both individual and community wellness. More need-supportive contexts conduce to more authentic living and intrinsic aspirations, which in turn promote more prosocial attitudes and actions and greater personal and societal wellness.

Social neuroscience involves the use of neuroscience methods to study how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Progress in social neuroscience depends upon the advancement of methods that enable researchers to examine the neural and broader biological bases of social psychological phenomena. This chapter introduces continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as an emerging neuroimaging technique in social neuroscience. After a brief review of fNIRS principles, it demonstrates the utility of fNIRS for social neuroscience by identifying well-established patterns of neural activity when people make self- and other-referential judgments. Consistent with previous work using other neuroimaging methods, participants exhibited greater medial prefrontal activity when rating trait adjectives with respect to themselves relative to adjectives with respect to their friends. The chapter closes by reflecting upon the ways in which fNIRS may be best used to advance social neuroscience.

This article presents large-sample developmental and validation research for a set of research scales of an existing 360-degree personality measure, the LMAP 360 (Leadership Multi-rater Assessment of Personality). In Study 1 (N = 1,771), we identified 6 broad domains underlying LMAP item clusters: Neuroticism, Dominance, Enthusiasm, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Scales measuring these broad domains and their constituent facets showed strong internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and self-informant correlations. In Study 2 (N = 729 and N = 694), we examined LMAP research scales’ convergent and discriminant validity against three well-validated personality inventories (Goldberg's adjectives, the Big Five Inventory, and the Big Five Aspects Scales) and one measure of cognitive ability (the International Cognitive Ability Resource). LMAP research scales correlated strongly with corresponding scales from other inventories and were distinct from cognitive ability.

Fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy is believed to facilitate people's integrative tendencies to process psychological conflicts and develop a coherent sense of self. The present study therefore used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the relation between need fulfillment and the amplitude of conflict negativity (CN), a neurophysiological measure of conflict during personal decision making. Participants completed a decision-making task in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. Three types of decision-making situations were created on the basis of participants' unique preference ratings, which were obtained prior to ERP recording: low-conflict situations (choosing between an attractive and an unattractive option), high-conflict approach-approach situations (choosing between two similarly attractive options), and high-conflict avoidance-avoidance situations (choosing between two similarly unattractive options). As expected, CN amplitudes were larger in high- relative to low-conflict situations, and source localization analyses suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex was the generating structure of the CN. Most importantly, people reporting higher need fulfillment exhibited larger CN amplitudes in avoidance-avoidance situations relative to low-conflict situations; to a lesser extent, they also exhibited larger CN amplitudes in approach-approach situations relative to low-conflict situations. By contrast, people reporting lower need fulfillment exhibited CN amplitudes that poorly discriminated the three decision situations. These results suggest that need fulfillment may promote self-coherent functioning by increasing people's receptivity to and processing of events that challenge their abilities to make efficient, self-congruent choices.

Self-report questionnaires are the most commonly used personality assessment despite longstanding concerns that self-report responses may be distorted by self-protecting motives and response biases. In a large-scale meta-analysis ( N = 33,033; k = 152 samples), we compared the means of self- and informant reports of the same target’s Big Five personality traits to examine the discrepancies in two rating sources and whether people see themselves more positively than they are seen by others. Inconsistent with a general self-enhancement effect, results showed that self-report means generally did not differ from informant-report means (average δ = −.038). Moderate mean differences were found only when we compared self-reports with stranger reports, suggesting that people are critical of unacquainted targets. We discuss implications of these findings for personality assessment and other fields in which self-enhancement motives are relevant.

Inhibitory control is subserved in part by discrete regions of the prefrontal cortex whose functionality may be altered according to specific trait-based phenotypes. Using a unified model of normal range personality traits, we examined activation within lateral and medial aspects of the prefrontal cortex during a manual go/no-go task. Evoked hemodynamic oxygenation within the prefrontal cortex was measured in 106 adults using a 16-channel continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy system. Within lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex, greater activation was associated with higher trait levels of extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and lower neuroticism. Higher agreeableness was also related to more activation in the medial prefrontal cortex during inhibitory control. These results suggest that personality traits reflecting greater emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness may be associated with more efficient recruitment of control processes subserved by lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex. These findings highlight key links between trait-based phenotypes and neural activation patterns in the prefrontal cortex underlying inhibitory control.

Research on the neural efficiency hypothesis of intelligence (NEH) has revealed that the brains of more intelligent individuals consume less energy when performing easy cognitive tasks but more energy when engaged in difficult mental operations. However, previous studies testing the NEH have relied on cognitive tasks that closely resemble psychometric tests of intelligence, potentially confounding efficiency during intelligence-test performance with neural efficiency per se. The present study sought to provide a novel test of the NEH by examining patterns of prefrontal activity while participants completed an experimental paradigm that is qualitatively distinct from the contents of psychometric tests of intelligence. Specifically, participants completed a personal decision-making task (e.g., which occupation would you prefer, dancer or chemist?) in which they made a series of forced choices according to their subjective preferences. The degree of decisional conflict (i.e., choice difficulty) between the available response options was manipulated on the basis of participants' unique preference ratings for the target stimuli, which were obtained prior to scanning. Evoked oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex was measured using 16-channel continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Consistent with the NEH, intelligence predicted decreased activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during low-conflict situations and increased activation of the right-IFG during high-conflict situations. This pattern of right-IFG activity among more intelligent individuals was complemented by faster reaction times in high-conflict situations. These results provide new support for the NEH and suggest that the neural efficiency of more intelligent individuals generalizes to the performance of cognitive tasks that are distinct from intelligence tests.

Intrinsic motivation refers to people's spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards. Over the past four decades, experimental and field research guided by self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2017) has found intrinsic motivation to predict enhanced learning, performance, creativity, optimal development and psychological wellness. Only recently, however, have studies begun to examine the neurobiological substrates of intrinsic motivation. In the present article, we trace the history of intrinsic motivation research, compare and contrast intrinsic motivation to closely related topics (flow, curiosity, trait plasticity), link intrinsic motivation to key findings in the comparative affective neurosciences, and review burgeoning neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. We review converging evidence suggesting that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are phylogenetically ancient tendencies that are subserved by dopaminergic systems. Studies also suggest that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across large-scale neural networks, namely, those that support salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. We suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Socioeconomic status ( SES ) and income inequality are now recognized as important determinants of health, and there is growing interest in uncovering the intermediary psychosocial pathways through which the socioeconomic context affects physical well-being ( Marmot in The status syndrome: how social standing affects our health and longevity, Henry Holt, New York, 2004; Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, Allen Lane, London, 2009 ). We adopted the applied framework of self-determination theory ( SDT; Deci and Ryan in Psychol Inq 11:227–268, 2000 ) and hypothesized that fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness would mediate the relationships that SES and income inequality have to self-rated health. An online community sample of American participants ( N = 1,139 ) completed a detailed demographic survey and provided self-reports of need fulfillment and health complaints. Structural equation models controlled for impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. Controlling for sex and age, need fulfillment was predicted positively by subjective SES and objective household income and negatively by state-level income inequality; in turn, need fulfillment predicted lower levels of health complaints. These findings suggest that SDT provides a useful framework for the study of SES, income inequality, and health, and that basic psychological needs are an important mechanism through which socioeconomic contexts influence health.

Models of social response concern the identification and delineation of possible responses to social pressure. Previous efforts toward a unified model have been limited to conceptualizations that define conformity and its alternatives based on discrete categories (e.g., Montgomery, 1992 ; Nail et al., 2000 ). Social response in many settings, however, is more a matter of degree, requiring continuous-response formats. The authors propose a new unified model, the double diamond, which was derived from a synthesis of 11 existing models. To our knowledge, it includes for the first time in a continuous-response model: two types of conformity, three types of anticonformity, independence, compromise, contagion, and numerous other possibilities. The model provides a needed theoretical foundation for a relatively new influence technique: strategic self-anticonformity ( MacDonald et al., 2011 ). The broader integrative power of the model is illustrated by its links with the true self ( Rogers, 1951 ), self-determination theory ( Ryan & Deci, 2008 ), and two therapeutic techniques— paradoxical intention ( Frankl, 1967 ) and motivational interviewing ( Miller & Rollnick, 2002 ).

We reflect upon the histories of the behavioral science and the neuroscience of motivation, taking note of how these increasingly consilient disciplines inform each other. This volume’s chapters illustrate how the field has moved beyond the study of immediate external rewards to the examination of neural mechanisms underlying varied motivational and appetitive states. Exemplifying this trend, we focus on emerging knowledge about intrinsic motivation, linking it with research on both the play and exploratory behaviors of nonhuman animals. We also speculate about large-scale brain networks related to salience processing as a possibly unique component of human intrinsic motivation. We further review emerging studies on neural correlates of basic psychological needs during decision making that are beginning to shine light on the integrative processes that support autonomous functioning. As with the contributions in this volume, such research reflects the increasing iteration between mechanistic studies and contemporary psychological models of human motivation.

The present study examined whether the grade point averages (GPAs) of university students could be predicted from appearance-based ratings of their Conscientiousness. Undergraduate participants (N = 249) provided self-reports of their Big Five personality traits and copies of their student transcripts from which their GPAs were obtained. Photographs of these undergraduates were then taken from which their personality traits were judged by unacquainted perceivers. Both aggregated and single perceiver-ratings of Conscientiousness predicted GPA. Aggregated perceiver-ratings predicted GPA incrementally over self-ratings, suggesting that appearance-based judgements of Conscientiousness may contain trait-relevant information beyond the scope of self-reports. These results contribute to a growing literature documenting the validity of appearance-based judgements of personality traits.

Gordon W. Allport (1937) considered the coherence of personality to be a matter of degree and, as such, an individual difference. Although considered by some to be the "central, unique charge" of personality psychology (Cervone & Shoda, 1999, p. 3), the study of personality coherence has been dispersed across different theoretical communities. We review how personality coherence has been defined and measured within the following five contemporary theoretical communities: the multivariate community (who focus upon the individual's profile of global trait dispositions), the social-cognitive community (who focus upon the individual's contextualized self-structures), the personological community (who focus upon the individual's unique and ongoing life story), the cybernetic community (who focus upon the individual's goal hierarchy), and the organismic community (who focus upon the individual's sense of self). We conclude by reflecting upon the extent to which the five perspectives converge upon an underlying self-epistemic function.Keywords: personality coherence, personality theories, self-insight, self-knowledgeResumeGordon W. Allport (1937) croyait que la coherence de la personnalite se mesurait en degres et, ainsi, qu'elle constituait une caracteristique individuelle. Bien qu'elle soit consideree par certains comme etant la « charge centrale, unique » de la psychologie de la personnalite (Cervone & Shoda, 1999, p. 3), plusieurs communautes theoriques se sont consacrees a l'etude de la coherence de la personnalite. Dans cet article, nous passons en revue de quelles facons cinq grands courants de pensee definissent et evaluent la coherence de la personnalite : la communaute de l'analyse multivariee (axee sur le profil individuel de l'ensemble des dispositions caracterielles), la communaute sociocognitive (axee sur les structures individuelles contextualisees); la communaute de la personnologie (axee sur le recit de vie unique de l'individu), la communaute de la cybernetique (axee sur la hierarchie des buts de l'individu), et la communaute organismique ( axee sur le sens de soi de l'individu). L'article se termine par une reflexion pour determiner dans quelle mesure les cinq perspectives convergent vers une fonction autoepistemique sous-jacente.Mots-cles : coherence de la personnalite, theories de la personnalite, analyse de soi, connaissance de soi.The only approach that may safely be excluded is the rhapsodic. Here we find theories that do little more than assert personality to be an "Indivisible Whole," "a total integrated pattern of behavior," an Unteilbarkeit,anin sich geschlossene Ganzheit. This rapturous literature of wholeness does not explore the unity that it apotheosizes; it merely contemplates and admires. Personality, it says, is like a symphony. Granted; but does not the comprehension of symphonic unity come only through an understanding of the articulate weaving of motifs, movements, bridge-passages, modulations, contrasts, and codas? Nothing but empty and vague adjectives can be used to characterize the work as a whole. If a totality is not articulated, it is likely to be an incomprehensible blur; it can be extolled, but not understood. What is more fatal, the rhapsodic approach seriously oversimplifies the whole problem, underestimating the conflicts and discords in every life. Unity, at best, is a matter of degree.(Allport, 1937, pp. 343-344)A central quality to personhood is the unity and wholeness that individuals both experience and demonstrate (albeit, perhaps, to varying degrees) in spite of the varieties and inconsistencies that regularly manifest in the cognition, emotion, and action of each individual. The capacity of each individual to some extent embody a range of contradictory qualities reflects the phenomenon known to personality researchers today as personality coherence, defined as the lawful organisation of psychological attributes within the individual (Allport, 1937, 1955, 1961). …

Problem-solving is an executive function subserved by a network of neural structures of which the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is central. Whereas several studies have evaluated the role of the DLPFC in problem-solving, few standardized tasks have been developed specifically for use with functional neuroimaging. The current study adapted a measure with established validity for the assessment of problem-solving abilities to design a test more suitable for functional neuroimaging protocols. The Scarborough adaptation of the Tower of London (S-TOL) was administered to 38 healthy adults while hemodynamic oxygenation of the PFC was measured using 16-channel continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Compared to a baseline condition, problems that required two or three steps to achieve a goal configuration were associated with higher activation in the left DLPFC and deactivation in the medial PFC. Individuals scoring higher in trait deliberation showed consistently higher activation in the left DLPFC regardless of task difficulty, whereas individuals lower in this trait displayed less activation when solving simple problems. Based on these results, the S-TOL may serve as a standardized task to evaluate problem-solving abilities in functional neuroimaging studies.

Research has shown that people’s abilities to develop and act from a coherent sense of self are facilitated by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The present study utilized functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the effect of need satisfaction on activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), a key region in processing information about the self. Participants completed a decision-making task (e.g., Which occupation would you prefer, dancer or chemist?) in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. The degree of decisional conflict (i.e., choice difficulty) between the available response options was manipulated on the basis of participants’ unique preference ratings for the target stimuli, which were obtained prior to scanning. Need satisfaction predicted elevated MPFC activity during high-conflict relative to low-conflict situations, suggesting that one way need satisfaction may promote self-coherence is by enhancing the utilization of self-knowledge in the resolution of decisional conflicts.

The right inferior frontal gyrus is generally considered a critical region for motor response inhibition. Recent studies, however, suggest that the role of this cortical area in response inhibition may be overstated and that the contributions of other aspects of the prefrontal cortex are often overlooked. The current study used optical imaging to identify regions of the prefrontal cortex beyond the right inferior frontal gyrus which may serve to support motor response inhibition. Forty-three right-handed healthy adults completed a manual Go/No-Go task while evoked oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex was measured using 16-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy. During motor response inhibition, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and to a lesser extent the homologous contralateral region, showed increased activation relative to a baseline task. Conversely, the medial prefrontal cortex was significantly deactivated, and the extent of reduced activity in this region was associated with fewer errors on the response inhibition task. These findings suggest a more substantial role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in response inhibition and possibly a distinct function of the middle frontal gyrus subserving error detection on manual motor control tasks.

1. Stefano I. Di Domenico[1][1] 2. Marc A. Fournier[1][1] 1. 1University of Toronto Scarborough, Ontario, Canada 1. Stefano I. Di Domenico, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada. Email: s.didomenico{at}mail.utoronto.ca We examined how self-determination, the subjective experience of one’s behavior as internally initiated and personally endorsed, depends on one’s standing in real-world social hierarchies. We predicted that those with the traits most relevant to status attainment would be those afforded the most opportunities to be self-determining. We examined the trait of physical attractiveness, given its documented association with social status and no known association with self-determination. First-year undergraduates living in same-sex residences rated their housemates’ social status, while an independent set of observers rated the participants’ physical attractiveness. Consistent with prediction, physically attractive individuals attained the highest levels of social status; in turn, those who attained the highest levels of social status experienced the highest levels of self-determination. These findings provide new insights into self-determination as an inherently relational phenomenon and specifically highlight the formative influence of social status on people’s capacities for self-determination. [1]: #aff-1