How to Help Kids Thrive Without Stickers, Stars, or Bribes with Dr Richard Ryan
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It’s all about kids today
Dr. Richard Ryan is one of the people who’s most influenced the way I work with kids. He co-created Self-Determination Theory—a framework that’s completely reshaped how we understand motivation, learning, and well-being. His research has shown up in everything from parenting books to leadership seminars, but at its core, it’s about something really human: how people thrive when they feel autonomy, competence, and connection.
Having the chance to talk with Richard was a real full-circle moment for me. You can dive deeper into his work at selfdeterminationtheory.org.
How Schools Fail (and Why It Matters)
Here's the deal: I’ve been obsessing over this concept called Self-Determination Theory (SDT) for almost two decades. It's one of those ideas you stumble onto, and once you do, it shapes how you see literally everything—education, parenting, motivation, even pizza parties (yeah, stay with me here).
I recently had a conversation with Dr. Richard Ryan, one of the creators of SDT, and it felt a bit like talking to the Yoda of motivation. Richard and his collaborator Edward Deci created something powerful: a theory explaining exactly why people do things, why they don't, and what makes them feel genuinely happy and fulfilled.
Here’s the punchline first:
Schools are mostly getting it wrong.
We’ve Made Education Miserable
According to Dr. Ryan, education started out with good intentions—curiosity, exploration, personal growth. But somewhere along the line, we traded curiosity for compliance. We started chasing test scores, and now we’re shocked when kids check out. It’s a motivational disaster.
SDT says people need three basic things to flourish:
Autonomy (choosing your actions)
Competence (feeling capable and effective)
Relatedness (real connections with other humans)
The modern classroom? Often the opposite. It's filled with external pressures: tests, grades, rewards, punishments. No wonder so many kids feel bored, anxious, or detached.
Pizza Isn’t a Motivational Strategy
In our conversation, Richard broke down how rewards like pizza parties often backfire. You think, "Hey, pizza is fun!" But the hidden message is actually manipulation—do what I say, and you get something nice. Soon, kids only work for pizza, and the moment pizza’s off the table, motivation tanks. It’s classic extrinsic motivation—the kind that's cheap to offer, easy to scale, and totally ineffective long-term.
His advice? Celebrate authentically—don't make the celebration contingent on obedience. In short: pizza’s fine, but use it to genuinely connect, not manipulate.
Autonomy Isn't Just Freedom
Autonomy is one of the most misunderstood parts of SDT. It’s not simply removing rules and letting kids run wild. It’s about choice—giving students meaningful influence over their own lives, even within structure. Real autonomy looks like saying, "Here's why this matters. What do you think? How should we do this together?" It’s respectful, engaging, and—here’s the kicker—more effective than control.
Relationships Are Everything
Here's my favorite insight from Dr. Ryan: It matters less whether students like their teachers, and far more whether they believe their teachers like them. Read that again. The feeling of genuinely being liked—of being valued—is a powerful driver of motivation. Think back to your favorite teacher. You probably knew they liked you first, right?
This idea is simple, but transformative. If kids know you actually care about them, they'll be more motivated, they'll grow, and they'll thrive.
AI Isn't the Enemy
You can’t talk about motivation in 2025 without discussing AI. Schools right now are panicking about kids "cheating" with ChatGPT and its cousins. Richard flips the script—if students are cheating, that's on us. We designed a system ripe for gaming. Instead, AI should be a tool for creativity and curiosity, not something we're desperately policing. He envisions a future where AI helps students chase their interests, rather than just getting through assignments.
So, What’s School For?
Richard and I landed here: the purpose of school isn't test scores or even strictly preparing kids for college. It’s creating environments where young people can genuinely flourish. Education should help kids become who they are, build real skills, and feel confident and connected. Schools should serve humans—not scores.
When we get this right, everything else—grades, attendance, even long-term life outcomes—improves. It's simple, but hard to execute in a system built on control and compliance.
The Big Picture
Here's what I'm walking away with: if we really care about young people’s futures (and our own), we need to rethink motivation from the ground up. Less pizza manipulation. More genuine relationships. Less standardized control. More meaningful autonomy. Less fear of AI. More embracing it.
Thanks to Richard Ryan and SDT, I’m doubling down on creating spaces—like summer camp—where kids can actually flourish. We owe them more than a stale motivational system built in the 20th century. They deserve environments where learning feels alive again.
Bottom line: If we want motivated, capable, happy humans, let's stop focusing on control and start focusing on connection.
—Jack
Thank you
Huge thanks to Dr. Richard Ryan for sharing his time, wisdom, and warmth. Your work has shaped how I think about kids, learning, and what it means to truly thrive. Grateful for the chance to learn from you—this conversation meant a lot.
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It’s all about kids today
Jack Schott
Summer Camp Evangelist
Transcript:
Cabin Chat Ep 7
Jack Schott:
Hello everybody, welcome back to Cabin Chats. Today I'm sitting down or standing if I'm being honest with Dr. Richard Ryan, who's the co-developer of self-determination theory, which has totally changed the way that I think about working with kids. I think I stumbled upon your work 15 or so years ago and everything I've done since, I think about so often what are the needs that aren't getting met or how can I...
amplify the three psychological needs that you outlined. So Richard, to get started, thank you so much for being here and
Richard Ryan:
Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having me today.
Jack Schott:
You talk about how in some ways self-determination theory started as a theory of motivation and it's still very much that. But it's also about flourishing and people being able to live in a world that they want to live in. How do you break that down?
Richard Ryan:
Well, know, when Ed DC and I started our work, which is really now going on 50 years ago, back in the 1970s, our focus was on a phenomenon we called intrinsic motivation. And this was just, you know, the motivation people have to do things that interest them, that they find challenging, for no external reward at all, and without a need for external pressure.
We saw this as like a sign of the liveliness of human beings, we were born into the world, we were curious, we want to learn things, we want to do things. And it's a natural kind of motivation. And we saw it being killed in classrooms and killed in organizations and just crowded out by all the ways we try and motivate people externally. So we started our work on motivation.
to see what we can see about facilitating or undermining it. But really over the years as we've studied how you optimally motivate people, it really revealed to us the conditions under which people are most vital, are most healthy. And that's how we got to the larger theory of flourishing, which is that when you do the things that also facilitate motivation, you're also doing the things that have people feel at their best. And so the one evolved to the other.
Jack Schott:
And so 50 years in, how are schools doing?
Richard Ryan:
Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. think schools are still operating in large part by motivational principles that don't work. We see that in the results of a lot of education, the high attrition, the poor attendance in a lot of places. I wouldn't say that, you know, schools have changed as much as I would like them to. But I will say this, you know, over these years when we were going into schools in the early 80s and things like that, nobody heard about the problems by using external world war. Nobody talked about.
intrinsic motivation. Today, those are part of the discourse of teachers. There are things that teachers do want to support and facilitate. Teachers themselves are often constrained in terms of how much freedom they can have in a classroom to create the right conditions. So that still goes on. But at least there's been some invasion of good ideas into the motivational circuits of schools and certainly around the world. some.
If we step outside of the United States, there's been some great experiments applying self-determination theory in school systems around the world. Very successful.
Jack Schott:
I've never met a teacher who didn't really care about kids. I'm sure that there's one or two of them out there. I've never met him. Every teacher I know really cares about kids and there's many of them feel stuck. You know, they care about kids and so you go to school because that's where kids are. And so you try to support them. How would you think about shifting or changing the structure of school to let
teachers be more autonomy supportive and give kids more space to flourish.
Jack Schott:
Well, some of the problems with our schools right now is we heavily constrain teachers in terms of content and style with which they can teach. And this is really related to a phenomenon we call high stakes testing. So most certainly public schools and many private schools are driven by this idea that they need to get high test scores on specific tests, pretty narrow criteria for what I would call success in schools. And I would think that if we could
take the high stakes out of high stakes testing. I don't mind testing out there so we can find out what's going on at schools, but to take the high stakes out of them and to give more autonomy and freedom to local schools so that they can develop curriculum that are responsive to the kids who are within that school. So a teacher can be responsive to the kids who are in his or her classroom. So, you know, to me, the first thing I would want to do is get rid of high stakes testing and have that stop being the driver of everything we do inside of classrooms.
It's not, to me, the criteria of a school should be our kids showing up. Are they feeling better about themselves? Are they being more confident? Are they interested in learning? These are the goals I'd like to have schools have. Instead, we have these really narrow things that are related to test scores. And that curriculum just turns off so many kids. It's not relevant to them. They don't know the meaning of it. They don't know why they're doing it. And of course, therefore, they're not motivated. It's not a way to drive a system.
Jack Schott:
And you've spent so, you know, an easy pushback to that is how do you measure that? We have to fund things. We have to decide where dollars get spent across so many different schools. And you've spent, like you said, the last 50 years trying to dig in and do, you know, real research on how kids are motivated, how people are motivated.
So how would we go about trying to shift policy or people's opinions in this direction?
Richard Ryan:
Well, know, I'm sympathetic to the idea that we need to measure in order to control what's going on out there. You know, I get that criteria, but let's start with measuring the thing that's most important. Do kids finish school? Do they show up every day? Let's start with attendance.
Let's start with measuring whether they're coming out healthier and whether they're coming out with a direction to go in life. And I don't mean always the university direction because again the curriculum is all shaped as if every child is going to go in the same direction towards you know Harvard or something. You know that's not the case. We have a lot of different kids and the needs are different and so we need to have a curriculum that reflects that heterogeneity.
Jack Schott:
I love that. Okay, wait, really quick. Let's rewind for a second.
Richard Ryan:
I'm not even sure I answered your question, Jack. I go on a rant like that and then, you whatever.
Jack Schott:
I love, no, I love, please, this is, this is, I'm changing the name of the podcast to, to Richard's Rants and, and it's, it's going to be awesome.
Richard Ryan:
Exactly. You might get a series of them here.
Jack Schott:
No, please, let's do that. This is not a classroom. Often you're in front of a screen and there's lots of statistics. This is much more Richard's rants than you have to back everything up with perfect research. But really quick, rewind, what is self-determination theory at its core?
Richard Ryan:
Yeah.
Richard Ryan:
Well, self-determination theory, as you pointed out earlier, Jack, is a theory of human flourishing. It's about what are the social conditions and the interpersonal relationships that really help us be all that we can be to allow us to pursue the things that really matter to us in life and feel vital and excited as we engage the world. So it's really a theory about that. And when it comes to classrooms, it's really a theory about how can we create the classroom environment in which kids are curious, engaged, vital, and feeling good about themselves.
To me, those are central criteria. Student well-being looms really, really high to me, and self-sufficiency theory is a theory that works pretty heavily to see what do we need in order to make that happen. But it's also...
has applications not just in education but in healthcare, in organizations, in technology. any space where motivation is happening, this theory has application. So it's been a pretty widely used theory, grown pretty tremendously over the years with that focus on optimal motivation and wellness.
Jack Schott:
And it seems to me like over the last 20 years or so, self-determination theory is quoted or at least alluded to in every book about motivation or getting things done.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, it's been a big change. think we talked like 10 years ago, wasn't it Jack, last time we talked. at that time, I would still say SDT was a bit of a not mainstream theory, but it's actually become a quite mainstream theory. It's the most cited theory of human motivation now and really of wellness. So it's had a lot of uptake in the world, but I think that's because it has real value in applied settings.
Jack Schott:
And how did you and Edward Deese stumble upon the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness?
Richard Ryan:
Well, as I mentioned earlier, when we were young, the thing that we were focused on was intrinsic motivation and what enhanced or what undermined intrinsic motivation. And two key elements popped out in all of our experimental and field research at the time, was people are intrinsically motivated when they can feel.
effective at what they're doing when they can see themselves as growing. It's not so much that you're perfect at what you do, but you can see that you're learning and you're growing as you go. So that feeling of competence is really essential to most intrinsically motivated activities. And the other one is the sense of autonomy. People lose their intrinsic motivation when they feel pushed around or imposed upon by external directives, when they can feel a sense of ownership and initiative and volition in what they're doing then.
then they're more likely to be intrinsically motivated. So those two needs, the needs for competence and autonomy were really essential to our understanding of intrinsic motivation. The third need for relatedness really started to pop up when we were thinking about internalization, how kids take on the value of things that aren't necessarily fun or interesting, but come to volitionally do them. And a lot of that is because they are willingly modeling the things promoted by people that they're attached to.
So, you if they feel relatedness to their teachers or parents, they're more likely to really internalize the values that they're transmitting. So autonomy, competence, and relatedness turned out to be really important things for what we would call high quality motivation.
And then also, as I said earlier, when we were studying those things that produce high quality motivation, we said, well, people have these things when they feel autonomy, when they feel competence, when they feel connectedness to others. They're feeling really well. They're at their happiest. And so this is how we got to the idea that these three needs are essential to well-being. So we started to test that hypothesis around the world.
Richard Ryan:
people in Korea, to people in the US, to people in Russia need autonomy in order to be well. And we find, yes, they do. Do they need to feel connected with others? Yes, they do. So these tend not to be universals, very little cultural moderation. are the of these are the nutrients for human wellness. And, you we got to them deductively for the most part.
Jack Schott:
And in the last some number of years, you've dug in and built this taxonomy for motivation that's, from, from a motive, I'm not motivated to external and interjection. And the one that I'm the most, you know, sort of interested in right now is this identification. Like how do I bring the external or the outside world into, you know, identifying as motivated. And then the last one is.
intrinsic motivation, which is where you started, I think.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah. Well, let me just first say a thing about this continuum of motivation that you just mentioned. When we started our work, when people thought about motivation, they thought it was like a single thing. You either had a little motivation or you had a lot. It didn't really matter how you shoved more motivation into the system. More was good. But what our work has suggested is that you can have very different qualities of motivation. You can have a lot of motivation, but it could come from the wrong source. And so
We see that some motivation is externally driven. We call that external regulation. That tends to be, can be powerful if you have big enough rewards or sticks, but people don't stick to it unless you keep the stick on them or the reward enticing them. Interjection is when you're doing things because you are.
Will feel guilty or bad about yourself if you don't or ashamed or you know pride and self inflation when you do You know again pretty powerful motivation, but it's not it's pretty unstable form of motivation that has a lot of costs for mental health if that's what you're driving yourself with
So the next one up is the one that you're inquiring about, Jack, which is identification, which is when we say, you do something not because of external rewards and not because of internal fears of shame or anxiety. It's because you actually think the thing is worthwhile. You're not doing it because it's fun, but you're doing it because you say, this is worthwhile. So, you know, I can volunteer for instance, for a organization that I care about the work. it fun to volunteer? But because I think the organization is important, I do it willingly and autonomously. In fact, I do it with.
you know, a great deal of energy. This is identification, doing something because you understand it's worth. You know, in schools all the time we're asking kids to do a lot of things that aren't fun because we think that they're worthwhile. So how do we get the child to think that it's also worthwhile? Well, we have to have a rationale. We have to have a reason that they understand why this thing could be useful or be worth putting your life energy into. You know, that's how internalization is built, supporting autonomy.
Richard Ryan:
giving a good rationale, allowing people to themselves feel ownership over their activities. This is how we help kids internalize and identify with the values that we think are important to them. So I'm not sure if that quite answers your question, but identification is that kind of special motivation where you're doing something willingly, even though it's not fun, but because you've understood why it has merit.
Jack Schott:
And you often talk about the difference between autonomy and independence and freedom and these things play with each other. They're related, but they're not exactly the same.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah. Well, you freedom in our work is just the absence of constraints. So you could, if you take a classroom with children, you come in and say, okay, no more constraints, no more rules. They would feel free, but there would be chaos. You know, it would break out in all directions. There wouldn't be a sense of purpose. There wouldn't be a sense of direction. There wouldn't be a place that they are directing their energy that has any, has any merit to it as we're talking about here. So.
Freedom isn't enough to guarantee high quality motivation. In fact, it just simply is the release of constraints. You need to combine freedom with also providing people with a purpose and meaning and sense of direction. That's where autonomy comes in because now I'm willingly doing something that I'm standing behind. So autonomy is a lot more than freedom. It's the willingness to do something. It's also not the same as independence. So, you know, I can be willingly doing something.
that somebody, you know, I might be willingly doing something that I want to do on my own. I say to you, Jack, I want to do this by myself. I would be autonomously independent. But I also might say, hey, Jack, I could use your help with this. You know, would you give me some guidance? I'm therefore autonomously depending on you, willingly turning myself over for guidance and help from you.
So most of the things that people do are some combination of dependence and autonomy. We're working with others, we're relying on others, and we're doing so willingly. So we don't see independence as the same thing as autonomy. In fact, at least in child development, the healthiest teenagers, for instance, are those who feel autonomous, who feel willingly doing what they're doing, but they're also still willing to turn to their parents for help and for guidance.
because they trust their parents. And our research shows that when parents are supportive of autonomy, their kids are more willing to rely on them and turn to them for guidance. They're more compliant, but not because they feel compliant, but because they are buying into what the parent would hope for.
Jack Schott:
And that sort of seems counterintuitive to some folks, that if you sort of are more autonomy supportive or giving your kids more space to explore and be themselves, then maybe there's a logic that they wouldn't need you or, I'm not sure how to break this down, but it does seem counterintuitive for a lot of folks.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, I think there's two kind of counter myths to it. One is that if I support my children's autonomy, they'll be running wild in the streets or something that they won't internalize. But of course, the evidence is the opposite. It's when parents are overly controlling, their kids may comply with the controls, but they don't buy into the real values underlying them. And they're more likely to be rebellious when the parents aren't looking. So control doesn't work as a strategy for good.
high quality internalization. And then, you the opposite of that is that if I help my children learn to be authentic and in touch with themselves, that they may pull away from me. And again, evidence is just the opposite of that. As you say, it's counterintuitive, which is that, you know, when parents support their children to be who they are, the children are more likely to want to be with their parents.
Jack Schott:
I've heard you talk about this idea of sort of SDT parenting being some combination of autonomy, structure, and involvement. How does that look?
Richard Ryan:
Well, know, so children need a lot of nutrients in the world, you know, as they're developing. And central self-termination theory is the idea of autonomy support. We're in there to try and help that person develop to be who they are. you know, autonomy support is really important, but so is the dedication of resources. know, a child can't do things always on their own. They need help. They need support. And we call this involvement. It's the spending of time. It's the paying attention to what they're doing, is knowing what your kid's about.
And most of that comes about because you're listening. You're supporting autonomy by taking their perspective, by trying to understand their point of view on things. And as you're doing that, you're learning a lot about what's going on in their lives. And then you can kind of helpfully support or stand out of the way as needed. And that's what involvement is, is that caring dedication of time to your child. And then the third thing I think is a really important one that's often overlooked that we call structure. growing up is hard.
And one of the things that parents do is that they can scaffold their kid. can set the challenges that are around them to be such that the child can master them. And they're not overexposed to challenges that are beyond their current capacity. So structure is kind of creating an environment for the natural tendency to grow and to learn.
to scaffold itself on, to climb up. So structure means create that environment that's optimally challenging to your kid. And then also, you know, giving them a direction so that they know what to do with their energies. I mean, sometimes that means setting limits or, you know, having rules or things like that. But again, in our work, rules are good, especially if they have a good rationale behind them because they help foster internalization. So we think all of these are important. know, autonomy support is important, but so is
is the dedication of time and of habit. And so it's providing a set of guidelines and rules, which we call structure, that allows the child to feel safe and to know where to direct their energies.
Jack Schott:
I get pushback on this around structure and control and I think they get conflated regularly It's like kids need more structure and what they what I'm hearing people say is actually like kids need to be told what to do more How do you see that?
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, yeah. I don't think of structure as telling kids what to do, although it may sometimes be doing that, but doing that in a way that also has them understanding why that would be the case. So you can tell kids what to do, but you also ought to be able to supply behind that a rationale and also compassion for why they might be resistant to that. That's part of the art of getting people to do what they don't want to do is, you know, be empathic with what the obstacles to that are.
So you can do structure in really controlling ways, as you suggest. It's, Jack, this is what we're doing now. We're going to stop here at X amount of time. And you must do it that way. The other thing I can do is say, here would be the optimal thing for us to do. What do you think about that? Let's get together toward this target. And then we come to agree on what our goals are. And you're more likely to.
to go along with them under that latter circumstance. So structure can be set in an autonomy supportive way. It can be set in a controllable way. And it has very different results. You set, you do structure in a controlling way. You get a lot of noncompliance reactants or kind of passive compliance, which is the lowest quality motivation you can have, which I'll do what you say, but that's it. And that's, we'll see what comes about from high controlling structure.
Jack Schott:
It's now walking through the world, you can almost see the like little bar graphs of how much autonomy is in this space for each individual. How connected are they or how much relatedness do they have with me and with other folks and how much are they building competence? And competence is sort of complicated. There's a million.
things you can build competence in, narrowly defined as like grades or things in school, but like, you know, I feel competent all the time because I went for a run or, you know, all kinds of, I made a joke, I made people laugh. And.
Richard Ryan:
That's the kind of...
activity that had me feel competence when I was in high school, which is to joke around a class to disrupt things. I got positive feedback from that, efficacy related feedback from my peers. Teachers may not have liked it, but I wasn't getting that kind of competence feedback that was satisfying from teachers. So I sought it out in these other realms. And now we see kids do that. They want to feel competent. They want to feel effective. They want to feel connected. And if they can't do it within the system that you're offering them, they will do it in some other way, often in a counterproductive way for
for what adults would like to accomplish.
Jack Schott:
Maybe that's why I have loved learning about self-determination theory so much is exactly that. Being the class clown, you're actually satisfying all three psychological needs so aggressively. Like, I get to do what I want. I'm using my autonomy to make jokes. I'm connecting with my friends by them noticing that I'm funny. And every time I'm a little funnier, I learn something about my competence around, you know, being able to make jokes.
Richard Ryan:
See you.
Yeah.
Richard Ryan:
I can grow as a comic and as a class clown even if I can't feel like I'm growing in my math lessons here.
Jack Schott:
Right, it's like, and it mattered to me, right? It mattered to me that my friends thought I was funny way more than I cared about my calculus test, except for I knew I was gonna get in trouble if I didn't do well on my calculus test later, which I didn't care as much about.
Richard Ryan:
Yep, no absolutely. So people are always gravitating towards activities where they can feel that their needs are being satisfied and away from those where they're not. And I don't even mean...
just physically, mentally, they're drifting away if their basic psychological thoughts are being satisfied. For instance, in this broadcast, if you have listeners and like, this is not relevant to me, they're tuning up. Or they're feeling pressured by the things that we're saying, they're reacting. So all situations either come to satisfy or repel us based on some basic psychological needs. And this is why it's important to have those nutrients in classroom or work environments.
or sport environments or where.
Jack Schott:
I haven't been able find more research on this, in a talk you gave a few years ago, you talked about that kids' increases, their motivation increases when they feel like their teachers like them, not if they like their teacher.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah. Well, it's not, it's not the second, it's true. It's it's not if they don't, but it's that, that if you ask kids the question, does my teacher like me?
Jack Schott:
What the re-
Richard Ryan:
that turns out to be really predictive of their motivation in the classroom because they are feeling connected and valued and significant in the classroom and that really matters. You know, I could like my teacher because the teacher is really funny or whatever else, but they may not be doing the things that are really supporting my autonomy or competence or other kinds of things. So I think it's more that I feel appreciated when I walk into the classroom, that's going to have me be more motivated. It's the teacher who shows each child that they matter.
that has an inclusive classroom.
Jack Schott:
Yeah, and that makes tons of sense to me. And as you know, I work with summer camp. So a lot of what I'm trying to figure out how to do is help 18, 19, 20 year olds understand how to be autonomy supportive, help kids and this shortcut around. If your campers believe that you like them, their wellbeing.
is, you know, they're going to flourish more, they're going to be more motivated. And so it's a great shortcut for a 19 year old who has never maybe been in charge of anything in their life to be like, okay, I know how to now I can problem solve for that.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, and it's just, you know, when you see somebody who's looking like they're not feeling very good, just reaching out to them a little bit and saying, hey, how's it going? Or showing that a little bit of caring helps that person feel significant, like they matter in the setting, especially if you do it in a not shaming and private kind of way. It feels special. It helps you feel like, you know, I'm part of this group. They care that I'm here. And that doesn't cost very much, but it matters a lot to the individual who receives it. So yeah, Jack, think it is.
Jack Schott:
And we all have those memories. We all have those memories of someone reaching out and just saying, hey, how are you doing? Or, you I thought it was funny when. And so we're going to...
Richard Ryan:
Thank you.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, exactly. You're recognizing a small thing that you do. like you, you accomplish something or you pull something off or you do a chore or you put some effort into something and somebody recognizes, says, Hey, Jack, that was really cool. The way you did X, you know, that sticks with you. That's a kind of competence feedback. You know that now I'm feeling excited here. You're not saying that to me about this podcast. So I just got to say,
Jack Schott:
So.
Jack Schott:
Richard, really appreciate that you're here and you're making jokes. We're having a great time.
Jack Schott:
Well, it is interesting to think about sort of this gap or this tension between sort of external praise and rewards of like, me motivating you sort of so silly that, you know, I would motivate you by praising you for being on the podcast, appreciating you certainly. But how do you think about that?
the you know Alfie Cohn talks about like being punished by rewards or or being that praise actually decreases motivation because it's external motivation.
Richard Ryan:
Well, think self-termination is a bit of a nuanced view on that. mean, I know Alfie's really down on rewards and down on praise and things like that. But I think even he would recognize that praise is also really helpful sometimes. It helps you feel confidence. It helps you feel recognized. It helps you feel acknowledged about things. So when praise isn't used to manipulate people, but rather to acknowledge and to respect what's been done, I think it's really effective.
You know, so when I see a job well done, I want to note that, you know, we have a company and, know, when our employees do something really good, I want to say, Hey, wow, that was really amazing how you pulled off X, Y or Z. And I'm sure that that's, that's motivating. But if I, if I'm using praise in a manipulative kind of way, like, you did just what I wanted you to do there. So that now they feel not only, control and lack of ownership, but they feel a bit manipulated.
That price can really backfire. And the same is true with rewards. I can give rewards in a way that, you know, our class works really hard on a project all week long. I say, you know, everybody works so hard on this, you know, let's have take a break and have a pizza. You could call that a reward, but it's really an acknowledgement of jobs well done and appreciative of the energies people put in. The other thing you say, if you work hard this week, I will give you a pizza on Friday. Okay, now you've reduced the value of everything being done to a pizza.
You know, it's not an effective way of communicating the value of what's been done or having people feel really appreciated. So it's all in the art of how are you using rewards? Are you using them to control or are you using them to recognize? And if it's the latter, they can be positive.
Jack Schott:
Yeah, it's almost like the latter was very much a celebration. It leans on the relatedness side, leans on the connection. Like we're connected, we did something together that matters. Let's have some pizza. I have access to pizza and you don't. So let's share it.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But if it's put as, we're having this pizza because you obeyed me all week long, that's going to lead to people not caring about, they're going to be like, I'm going to obey or have a pizza. I'd rather disobey. It becomes now an algebra that's not the same as, I want to be part of this group. I want to go ahead and choose to do it, which is what we're really trying to cultivate.
Jack Schott:
Right, if it was pizza and Mr. Beast shows up, then maybe it's a different story. It's a big enough reward that it's worth it, that I can stomach being obedient for a week.
Richard Ryan:
Right. But then if you do that and that's how you get obedience for the week, then it's like the next time you want that obedience, you got to get out the big reward again. And that's not a sustainable way of motivating over time. So I have a friend who teaches in a really difficult school and we were talking about the pizza thing because he gave the kids a pizza one time as a reward. now
They really want a pizza each time they do something good. So he has to like now, debrief them from that.
Jack Schott:
Well, that's what I mean. School is so built on that style of reward system that it makes sense that it's hard to break from that model. know, even if in that one instance he was just like, no, let's celebrate and have a pizza. They're so used to kids are so used to being kind of manipulated or coerced by different pieces of their teachers. And again.
Richard Ryan:
I think one of the things he's done since then, since we were having our discussion is he gave a pizza without any contingency at all. Because he wanted to break that perception that you would get a pizza because you obeyed. It's like, no, no, we're just having a pizza here because we...
Jack Schott:
Yeah, that's interesting. Don't wait till Friday to have a pizza. Have a pizza on Tuesday, just cuz.
Richard Ryan:
He wants to break that set.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, yeah, and then they're not gonna see that contingency is set up in the same way.
Jack Schott:
So Richard, you've been doing research, you said, for 50 years. What has been sort of, well, let's call it 40. We could round, who knows when people are gonna listen to this. Anyway, since 78 or so, what has been surprising recently in the research that you've been doing?
Richard Ryan:
That's a bit of an exaggeration, 45 or so.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah.
Richard Ryan:
let me see. Well, you know, we're doing research in a lot of different areas. One of the projects I'm working on right now is at a pretty grand scale, but it's looking at how democratic institutions have an impact on well-being by helping people feel more autonomous. And so we've been tracking...
democracy indexes around the world and how those things relate to people's outcomes mediated by autonomy and even changes in nations over time. So as nations become less democratic or more autocratic, you can see that people's autonomy will go down and their wellbeing goes down. So it's part of the explanation as to why democracies have happier populations. I think we're doing so, you know, I guess what surprised me is the robustness of that data.
how strong it is that the opportunity for freedom and choice makes such a difference in people's lives. So that's one.
Jack Schott:
Yeah, at the absolute grandest scale of, you know, national government.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, so if I could take it to the other side, self-termination, there's also down on the micro side. So we're looking at what are the mechanics, the neuropsychological mechanics of autonomous and controlled motivation. And what we see is two different patterns in the brain, one more associated with intrinsic motivation, one more associated with internalization in terms of neural pathways as to how
high quality motivation happens. so I've been really interested in the dynamics of that, particularly the temporal dynamics of that in the brain, because they help teach us about real fundamentals in human motivation.
Jack Schott:
Such fascinating work that you get to sort of be involved in the literal science of how our brains are wired all the way up to the science of happiness at a national scale.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, I think it's one of the, when we think about self-determination theory, it's a specific theory, but it's also a framework for study. So, and it's been embraced by thousands of researchers around the world. So it's really they who are pushing the boundaries of this theory all the time. I'm just trying to keep up, Jack. I'm trying to stay with the flow of all of the creative and innovative work that has been done by self-determination theory researchers around the world. We have our next international conference coming up in Geneva.
next year year from now. And I just know that there's excitement from a lot of different countries about the work that's going to be presented. So I'm looking forward to that.
Jack Schott:
I work with lots of college students that come and work at camp. And if they're excited about the idea of self-determination theory and want to be researchers or want to get involved, what advice would you give to a 20-year-old who gets excited?
Richard Ryan:
Well, the first thing is, you know, access to the information. We have a website, self-determination theory dot org, which is loaded on every topic. So if you go in and you look at education, you look at sport, you look at business, you look at video games, you name it, the topic is there and research about motivational dynamics in that area there. So the first thing is, you know, go to the website and have fun. You know, that would be the first thing. It's a it's a pretty.
We try to make everything accessible and free. We're a non-profit organization. We're trying to give it away. So if you go there, you can get a lot of resources and get a start on the thing that interests you.
Jack Schott:
And you say you're studying democracy and autonomy supportive.
Richard Ryan:
And please let me name Joachim Waterschoot, who my colleague on those particular studies. And I just want to give him credit here, because he's really the leader. I'm kind of following him on this work.
Jack Schott:
Absolutely. it's 2025. The only thing anyone wants to talk about is AI. What's going to change as computers do all this thinking for us? How is that going to impact our motivation?
Richard Ryan:
Well, think, first of all, AI is an incredible tool. I use AI all the time. Our business uses AI. Our researchers use AI. So it's an incredible tool. And why not make use of such an incredible tool all the time? One of the things I've noticed among educators is they've approached AI more with fear than with promise. And what's the fear? The fear is somebody will cheat. And it's like, if that's the biggest fear, that's not a.
I'm not that concerned about that. The reason that people are cheating is because you've got some kind of high stakes test out there that you're forcing them to do, rather than encouraging them to develop an expertise in how to use prompts to get the information you want from AI, because this is the world of the future. So I think, again, if we were designing education to be relevant to what's going on in the current age, we wouldn't be trying to stop kids from using AI. We'd be trying to help them channel and learn how to use it for.
everything in their lives. So because it's going to be a relevant tool for all of them. I think AI has a lot of promise in that respect. And when we look at AI devices and AI agents, they have motivational dynamics themselves. You can train an AI assistant to be autonomy supportive and you get more.
compliance and motivation out of people when you do that. can also have just a controlling voice intonation in an AI device will have an impact on motivation. there's issues of motivation in AI design and there's also issues of motivation in AI use that are really important for us to tackle right now. But my main thing is it's like what an exciting world and why aren't we availing kids of this opportunity to learn how to use it.
Jack Schott:
It's funny how it's likely to disrupt. We can fight it and try and push it out of schools to keep them the same. And like you, my hope is that we can, hopefully AI is a piece of shifting what education really looks like for kids to be more tangible and useful.
Richard Ryan:
You know, I think it was a, I'm probably going to misquote this now, but I think back on John Dewey, who talked about like, is education? And he was like, education is really like the drawing forth of that interest in curiosity to promote the issues of learning. So he was really interested in interest promotion. And if that's what our goal of school was, is interest promotion, then AI is just a great help in that goal.
If our goal in school is to train and control and test, and we don't want anybody getting any skills from anybody else or any help from anybody else, well then keep AI out of the hands of the kids. my goal would be the former rather than the latter.
Jack Schott:
Yeah, and so Seth Godin starts a TED talk with what is school for? Seth Godin, he's a marketing guy, he was fascinating, awesome guy. Anyway, from Buffalo, New York, by the way. But what, in your opinion, combining what Dewey said, what is school for?
Richard Ryan:
Who's there?
Richard Ryan:
Aha.
Richard Ryan:
I think school is a big question, but as a parent, as a grandparent, I would hope that what schools are is to help children flourish, to help them develop all they can be, both in terms of personality and also in terms of cognitive skills. So I want schools to treat my child well, to create an atmosphere for healthy development where they're ending up.
learning, but also growing in their confidence and a sense of self and sense of being part of a social organization. So to me, schools are facilitators of development. That's their number one job. It is not to get people into STEM careers. It is not to have them achieve the highest level of mathematics.
Children are going to go different ways. need all kinds of different things to how comes in life in order to have a society with people go in many different directions. But the one thing that's invariant is I think every parent wants schools not to hurt their child and to help them develop in a healthy way.
Jack Schott:
Yeah, I share many of your sentiments and struggle with the unfortunate system that we live in now. One of the reasons why I think summer camp is a special place for kids is that we're not constr- there's no high-take test. There's no SAT at the end of summer camp. You go to summer camp and you can build the system to be focused on flourishing. that- but that holds us to a higher standard. We better have- we better be able to be more autonomy supportive and, you know, because we don't have to be stuck.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Schott:
trying to help kids get into Harvard.
Richard Ryan:
You want kids to have rich learning and social experiences and Summer Camp really provides that opportunity. I wish schools were more like Summer Camp. That would be a positive direction for schools to take. To say, our job here is to have kids come in and feel better about themselves while they're learning. That would be an awesome goal for schools to have.
Jack Schott:
Great. Okay, my last question. What do most folks get wrong about or what do many folks get wrong about self-determination theory?
Richard Ryan:
Well, you know, first of all, Jack, this is our own weakness. It's an academic theory. It's a complicated theory. It's got a lot of constructs and terms because that's what science is really about. So it's really, you know, I guess my hope is that the translations of that theory into everyday use are...
available to people and they're done well. You know, like that's why I'm on a podcast with you. That's why I would do any of these things because you know, I'm a boring writer. I write in scientific terms all the time. I don't expect that people would read those things, but I do hope the message gets out there. So, you know, if I thought of...
of anything, it's about accessibility that's really needed. I think another thing that people sometimes get wrong, although less and less, is that the term autonomy scares people because they do equate it with freedom or with independence instead of willingly doing what you're doing. You our goal is that children are not...
Compliantly going through school, but willingly and in an interested way engaged in what they're doing there. That's the kind of motivation we're looking for. It's not about doing whatever you want or avoiding responsibility or avoiding accountability. So I think, you know, that's a fear that gets evoked. But, you know, actually, when you look at the research, if you use the right motivational techniques, you get more accountability, you get more responsibility, you get more good citizenship. Again, for some people, counter-intuitively.
Jack Schott:
Well, thank you so much for joining us. Is there anything that you want to make sure folks know about before we end this call?
Richard Ryan:
No, I just say, know, we've been kind of wide ranging today, Jack, on a lot of different topics and opinions, but, you know, the website, selfterminationtheory.org is a good place to go to just get some kind of basics on SDT and then into specifics. then, you know, we have an international conference next year in Geneva. People who are really into it, you can go there. should be, you know, it's always a really fun conference. This is our ninth international conference. We expect about a thousand people there.
It should be a really rich place and there will be people there who are developmental psychologists, who are teachers, who are business leaders, who are education and sport leaders. there's a lot to partake from there and a lot to learn.
Jack Schott:
I gotta get to Geneva.
Richard Ryan:
Yeah, love to have it Jack, love to have it.
Jack Schott:
You
Thank you so much.
