The effects of autonomy-supportive versus controllingenvironments on self-talk

摘要

Based within a self-determination theoryframework (SDT: Deci and Ryan, Intrinsic motivation andself-determination in human behaviour. Plenum PublishingCo., New York, 1985), the present study examined theeffects of manipulating social-contextual conditions on thecontent of individuals' self-talk. Seventy student volunteerswere randomly assigned to a controlling or autonomy-supportive experimental condition. Participants wereinstructed to 'think-aloud' throughout a 10-min comput-erized task during which self-verbalizations were recorded.Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim, and thenanalysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word CountProgram (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., LIWC2001; LinguisticInquiry and Word Count (software and manual). LawrenceErlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 2001). Inductive content analyseswere also conducted. Triangulation of the quantitative andqualitative findings revealed that in the autonomy-sup-portive condition, individuals' self-talk was more`informational and less controlling, with participants usingmore positive emotional words and assents, and fewernegative emotional words, swear words, and first personreferences than in the controlling condition. The findingssuggest that social-context can affect cognitive factors suchas self-talk and further support the promotion of autonomy-supportive environments.