Avi Assor

• Phd, Full Professor
• Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Based on self-determination theory and principles of simulation-based learning, we present an innovative approach to fostering a need-supporting orientation in dialogues between teacher educators and their students. The need-supporting dialogical orientation has three major components: Empathic perspective-taking, fostering autonomous change motiva...

Introduction Sense of authentic inner compass (AIC) is the feeling that one knows what is important to oneself because one has values, aspirations, and goals with which one deeply identifies. Past research demonstrated the benefits of AIC, but there is no published research on parental dispositions promoting youth AIC. To increase knowledge of this...

Based on self-determination theory and research, we suggest that SEL programs should focus primarily on enhancing teachers’ capacity to support students’ basic psychological needs via practices that mostly do not involve teaching of skills via a pre-determined curriculum. This view is based on evidence that teachers can best facilitate students’ so...

Toddlerhood is a period where issues of autonomy and control in parent–child relationships become particularly intense. In response to these challenges, some parents adopt controlling practices, whereas others are more autonomy supportive. However, research has yet to examine prenatal orientations that foreshadow specific controlling or autonomy-su...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a broad theory of psychological growth and wellness that has revolutionized how we think about human motivation and the driving forces behind personality development. SDT focuses on people’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how social environments that support these needs fos...

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a broad theory of psychological growth and wellness that has revolutionized how we think about human motivation and the driving forces behind personality development. SDT focuses on people’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness and how social environments that support these needs fos...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

The current study examines the potential role of parenting practices posited to affect youths' need for autonomy in youths' acceptance of academic dishonesty. Results of Study 1, employing concurrent reports of 127 pairs of high school students and their parents in Mainland China, support the hypotheses that parental basic autonomy support correlat...

Parents whose self-esteem is contingent on their children’s achievements tend to exert more control over their children by displaying decreased affection and regard after failure in school (parental academic conditional negative regard). The current study examined parental anger and dysregulated anger expression as possible mechanisms in the respec...

This paper seeks to expand our knowledge on autonomy experiences predicting, or associated with, important well-being attributes, by drawing on the concept of an “Authentic Inner Compass” (AIC, Assor 2012, 2018; Vansteenkiste and Soenens 2015): Sense of knowing what is truly important to us in terms of values, aspirations, and goals. Study 1 (304 H...

Based on past theorizing and research, we posited that there are two kinds of specific experiences that contribute to the satisfaction of the general need for autonomy in emerging adults, as reflected in volitional, self-endorsed, actions. These experiences are: (1) feeling free, and (2) having a valid authentic inner compass (AIC). In the first st...

Little is known regarding how parents’ responses when first learning about their adolescents’ deviant peer affiliation affect adolescents’ further affiliation and disclosure of risk behavior to parents. Studies on the effects of parents’ warnings to control adolescents’ material or personal information resources are particularly scarce. To address...

Based on Self-Determination theory, we examined three hypotheses: (1) mothers’ achievement-oriented controlling behaviour towards their toddlers predicts children’s helpless coping with failure three years later, (2) mothers’ prenatal orientation to use conditional regard (CR) to promote children’s achievements predicts postnatal controlling behavi...

Ample research has demonstrated the benefits of basic autonomy supportive practices (e.g., perspective-taking, choice, minimizing-control) for adolescents’ psychosocial functioning. Herein, we posit that there is one additional autonomy supportive practice with specific importance for adolescents’ development: Reflective Authentic Inner Compass fac...

This paper focuses on a recently conceptualized construct—sense of authentic inner-compass (AIC)—and two parenting practices promoting it: basic autonomy-support (BAS) and inherent valuedemonstration (IVD). Rooted in self-determination theory, sense of AIC refers to the perception that we have self-guiding values, aspirations, and goals, which func...

Objective: We studied a recently conceptualized aspect of autonomy-support and suppression, not examined so far: Sensitivity to temperament-dispositions. Based on Self-Determination Theory, we hypothesized that, across cultures, disposition-frustrating decisions would have similar negative effects on adolescents' intrinsic-motivation to participat...

Objective. The focus of the current article was on the parenting strategy of using maternal conditional positive regard to promote adolescents’ suppression of anxiety to assess whether this strategy is benign or maladaptive. Method. Two studies (N = 230) examined mothers’ and adolescents’ reports of maternal conditional regard, adolescents’ motivat...

Objective. The present study examined dynamics involved in parents’ tendency to hinge their self-esteem on their children’s achievements (i.e., child-invested contingent self-esteem). In two studies, a model was tested in which perceived social pressure to be an achievement-promoting parent, and parents’ own controlled causality orientation, served...

Research on Conditional Positive Regard (CPR) has shown that this seemingly benign practice has maladaptive correlates when used by parents. However, there is no research on the correlates of this practice in romantic relationships, nor on the processes mediating its effects. Building on the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), three stud...

This study focuses on the parenting practice of inherent value demonstration (IVD), involving parents' tendency to express their values in behaviours and appear satisfied and vital while doing so. Data from Chinese college students (n = 89) confirmed the hypothesis that offspring's perception of their parents as engaged in IVD predicts offspring's...

We investigated the role of three beliefs in predicting teachers’ motivating style toward students—namely, how effective, how normative, and how easy-to-implement autonomy-supportive and controlling teaching were each believed to be. We further examined national collectivism–individualism as a predictor of individual teachers’ motivating style and...

We present a conceptualization and a 2 year program of autonomy-supportive I–Thou dialogue among teachers and students that is based on self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan in Psychol Inq 11(4):227–268, 2000) and Buber’s (1960) philosophy. The program was applied in 18 seventh grade classes (420 students). Findings showed: (a) increases in posi...

This research focuses on offspring's perceptions of their parents' usage of conditional regard and autonomy-supportive practices in response to the offspring's experiences of negative emotion. Participants were 174 college students (60% were females). As predicted from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), students' perceptions of parents...

We examined the idea that adolescents' perceptions of their mothers as using parental conditional positive regard (PCPR) to promote academic achievement are associated with maladaptive self feelings and coping. A study of 153 adolescents supported the hypothesis that PCPR predicts self-aggrandizement following success and self devaluation and shame...

Schools across the globe vary in how autonomy-promoting they are. Recognizing that some social institutions attain seemingly harmonious functioning by suppressing individuals’ autonomy, the first half of the chapter asks whether these hierarchical institutions necessarily need to be autonomy suppressive. The second half of the chapter illustrates h...

This study explored the relationship between parents' use of conditional regard (PCR, Assor, Roth, & Deci, 2004; Roth, 2008) to promote suppression of sad feelings and the following emotional skills in young children: (1) recognition of sadness in facial expressions, (2) awareness of sad feelings in oneself, and (3) empathic response to others' sad...

We examined how emotion regulation style affects performance on Emotional Stroop task with facial expressions and emotional words. People with different emotional regulation style differ in the way they manage anger. Integrative regulators manage emotions through the acknowledgment and engaging in constructive actions. Dis-regulators experience the...

We employed SDT based theory of individual differences in emotional regulation style to examine the effect of emotional regulation on unrealistic optimism. The essence of unrealistic optimism is that people underestimate the likelihood of negative events, but overestimate the likelihood that they will experience positive events. Integrative regulat...

This paper responds to Michael Hand's argument in ‘Against autonomy as an educational aim’ (Oxford Review of Education, 32, 535–550), refutes it and identifies two faults at its foundation. Through this criticism, the paper makes a substantiated case, both theoretical and empirical, for endorsing the value of education for autonomy as a major goal...

This study examines whether cognitive-processing costs induce adaptive pre-decisional information search in children aged 7-8. Children aged 7-8 and 11-12 asked questions about objects kept in sealed boxes for the purpose of subsequent choice. Availability of a memory aid that recorded acquired information and choice set size were manipulated indep...

In moderate religious communities, adolescents and young adults are increasingly exposed to modern ideas and lifestyles and thus may face a potential tension between religion and modernity. The current study investigated the exploration processes of one hundred and four Jewish Modern Orthodox higher education students in Israel. The participants re...

This article focuses on the following issue: How can we build a training and support system that would enhance the motivation and capacity of teachers for high-quality implementation of information technology innovations guided by humanist ideas? That is, a system that would not only increase teachers' motivation to apply Humanist Information Techn...

Two studies examined the relations between young adults' empathic responding and their perceptions of two maternal behaviors. As predicted from self-determination theory, perceived maternal control had unique negative associations with empathic support of one's romantic partner (indicated by both self-reports and partner reports) and with empathic...

The authors conducted 2 studies of 9th-grade Israeli adolescents (169 in Study 1, 156 in Study 2) to compare the parenting practices of conditional positive regard, conditional negative regard, and autonomy support using data from multiple reporters. Two socialization domains were studied: emotion control and academics. Results were consistent with...

We propose that self-determination theory's conceptualization of internalization may help school reformers overcome the recurrent problem of `the predictable failure of educational reform' (Sarason, 1993). Accordingly, we present a detailed learning and implementation structure to promote teachers' internalization and application of ideas and pract...

On the basis of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), the authors examined whether 2 different types of introjected motivation—an avoidant type aimed at avoiding low self-worth and an approach type aimed at attaining high self-worth—are both associated with a less positive pattern of correlates relative to identified motivation—acting beca...

The assumption that high level functioning is characterized by a great deal of autonomy is central to some major theories of moral development [Kohlberg (in T. Lickona (ed.) Moral development and behavior: Theory, research and social issues, 1976); Piaget (The moral judgment of the child, 1932)] and to the self-determination theory of motivation [R...

The present article addresses 3 issues pertaining to the conceptualization and assessment of the effects of over- and underrating academic competence. First, it is shown that it is impossible to separate the effects of over- and underrating from the effects of both perceived and actual competence. Second, it is shown that the method used by Connell...

This article presents two studies aimed at validating a new TAT-like projective measure of autonomous motivation in children. Study 1 assesses the validity of the new measure by correlating it with self-report questionnaires of autonomous motivation, positive and negative affect, task value and mastery goal orientation. Study 2 is an experiment in...

This study examined teachers' experience of autonomous motivation for teaching and its correlates in teachers and students. It was hypothesized that teachers would perceive various motivations posited by E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan's (2000) self-determination theory as falling along a continuum of autonomous motivation for teaching. Autonomous motiva...

This study investigated the relations between early adolescents’ academic motivational orientations and an aspect of quality of friendship: intimacy. Two-hundred and three Jewish-Israeli seventh grade students responded to surveys asking them about their academic achievement goals and about characteristics of their friendships. Variable-centered re...

Two studies examined the well-being and parenting correlates of autonomous and controlled motivations for agreement with parental values. We hypothesized that autonomous motivation would be associated with subjective well-being, whereas controlled motivation would be associated with agitation and guilt. Study 1 involved 399 Israeli youth (mean age=...

This research demonstrates the usefulness of the technique of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) in the con-struction of indices of the experience of autonomy, a cen-tral construct in Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory of motivation and personality (SDT, 2000) and a construct central to recent controversies on socialization in different cultures....

This article addresses the controversy regarding the value of offering choices as a teaching practice. Inconsistent of results regarding the effects of choice in various settings suggest that choice can be either motivating or de-motivating. Based on the self-determination theory of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000), we propose that choice can be moti...

This study tested the hypothesis that interest in a certain topic enables children to sustain their intrinsic motivation in topic-related tasks when positive feedback is absent. Ninety-one Israeli children in the seventh grade completed a questionnaire assessing their interest in the topic of logic questions. Later, in individual sessions, children...

We focused on potential effects of directly controlling teacher behaviors (DCTB), such as giving frequent directives, interfering with children's preferred pace of learning, and not allowing critical and independent opinions. We hypothesized that children's perceptions of their teachers as directly controlling would arouse anger and anxiety in chil...

Current theory and research in the area of motivation indicate that while frequent academic failures are clearly undesirable, temporary failure in challenging academic tasks can have important psychological benefits when followed by successful coping. However, teachers' responses during our school reform programme suggest that some special educatio...

Two experiments examined the effect of age and cognitive demands on children’s choice strategies. Children aged 8–9 and 12–13 years were asked to choose among either two or four products that differed in several attributes of varying importance to them. Choice tasks were designed to differentiate between the lexicographic and the equal-weighting st...

Parents' use of conditional regard as a socializing practice was hypothesized to predict their children's introjected internalization (indexed by a sense of internal compulsion), resentment toward parents, and ill-being. In Study 1, involving three generations, mothers' reports of their parents' having used conditional regard to promote academic ac...

This paper presents a comprehensive conception of principals’ growth that is based on four psychological perspectives: humanistic fulfilment/actualisation, psycho-dynamic, moral/identity development, and adaptive cognitive development. This conception views principals’ development as a journey in which principals attempt to master challenges in fou...

This article examines two questions concerning teacher-behaviours that are characterised in Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) as autonomy-supportive or suppressive: (1) Can children differentiate among various types of autonomy-enhancing and suppressing teacher behaviours? (2) Which of those types of behaviour are particularly important...

This study examines the hypothesis that teachers'' educational values predict their behavior and students'' attributes when these values function as chronically accessible, positively valenced categories which are linked discriminantly to perceptions of specific behaviors. This hypothesis was tested in relation to the value of Encouraging Independe...

Data from multiple sources supported the distinction between secure and insecure motivation for recognition. Insecure recognition motivation was related to Fear of Power and need for Intimacy in Thematic-Apperception-Test type of stories but not to recognition-seeking in stories or in groups. The reverse was true for secure recognition motivation....

The study investigates how the characteristics of subgroups within a culture are related to the structure of parental ideas held by their members. Two subsets of social representations were suggested—shared parental ideas (SPI) which are largely common to members of a group and serve the goals of individuals as group members as well as the goals of...

The present study tests two hypotheses which are based on a motivational threat model of interpersonal evaluation: (a) Dominance- and dependency-oriented perceivers evaluate motivationally similar others less favorably only when evaluation pertains to an ambiguous attribute and perceivers score high on self-derogation; and (b) the relatively unfavo...

Israeli kindergartners from kibbutz and city environments evaluated themselves using Harter and Pike's (1984) pictorial scale on four domains: cognitive competence, physical competence, peer acceptance, and mother acceptance. The children were rated previously by their teachers on subscales corresponding to the first three domains. Results indicate...

This study focused on kindergarten children who were rated by teachers as low but rated themselves as high on cognitive competence (“overraters”), and on kindergarteners who were classified by teachers as high but rated themselves as low on cognitive competence (“underraters”). Children rated themselves and were rated by their teachers on Harter an...

The present study sought to examine the effects of men's power motive on their competence and sociability evaluations of high and low status persons. Subjects rated, via semantic differential scales, two persons whom they had observed (via videotape), working together on several tasks. The relative status of these target persons was manipulated thr...

Empirical research shows that persons scoring low on psychological adjustment (PA) generally experience large ideal self (IS) versus actual self (AS) discrepancies whereas the reverse is true for high-PA persons. A particularly interesting interpretation of this phenomenon, consistent with a large body of clinical and experimental literature, ascri...

Three stages in the development of the theoretical framework which has guided research on motives and defensive person perception are described, beginning with a trait approach and ending in a process oriented interactive model. Then, in order to accommodate findings showing that threatening stimuli are often processed in a realistic rather than a...

The authors examined the hypothesis that 3 processes underlie the defensive aspects of impression formation: (a) increased autonomic arousal after the perception of another person as a threatening stimulus, (b) defensive cognitive activity in regard to the threatening stimulus, and (c) reduction in autonomic arousal after the defensive cognitive ac...

This study examined the emotional involvement of 27 husbands and wives in their marriage relationships during the stressful period of the last trimester of the first pregnancy. Four behavioral dispositions indicated a state of high emotional involvement in the marriage: striving to gratify interpersonal needs primarily through the marital relations...

The study examined the relationships among the personality variables of deference, approval, locus of control, and dominance, and several measures of bargaining “toughness” in 44 male and female American college students. Results indicated that, as predicted, internality and dominance were positively, and deference was negatively, related to toughn...

Tested the hypothesis that attributes of the persons being perceived can moderate the effect of the perceiver's motivation on impression formation. 175 female and 105 male undergraduates rated, via semantic differential scales, 2 persons whom they had observed (via videotape) working together on a series of tasks. The relative status of these targe...

The conception of the various autonomy-affecting behaviors as simultaneously important (from now on we call it the "simultaneous importance" notion) has serious practical and theoretical implications. The present research was guided by the assumption that, despite the lack of direct evidence, the simultaneous importance notion is correct. Thus, we...