Levels of Analysis, Regnant Causes of Behavior and Well-Being: The Role of Psychological Needs

Within both basic philosophy of science and theoretical biology the idea that scientific disciplines can be organized in some type of hierarchy reflecting micro-to-macro levels of analysis has been widely discussed (e.g., Corbi & Prades, 2000; Kauffman, 2000). Yet psychologists have often eschewed philosophical schemes as largely irrelevant to their investigation of human behavior. Sheldon, Cheng, and Hilpert’s (this issue) systematic presentation of these general ideas appropriately brings attention to the issue, which impacts all attempts at scientific explanation within our field. As would be expectable, their focus was primarily on what they put as the top three levels— personality, social relations, and culture—which are the primary levels where Sheldon’s own research has resided, but clearly many of their considerations apply across the levels Seldon et al. have differentiated, from micro-to-molar systems. It is noteworthy, however, that the levels they selected are somewhat arbitrary both in terms of what constitutes a level and what disciplines or fields of study get included at particular levels. For instance, social psychology gets a level, personality psychology gets a level, and cognitive psychology gets a level, so three of the nine levels are psychology, whereas the whole of chemistry gets just one level with all fields of chemistry contained within it. As well, one could ask why certain disciplines are combined within one level and why some other relevant disciplines are left out all together. Why, for example, is sociology combined with anthropology and called culture? Is sociology really more akin to anthropology as part of the culture level than it is to social psychology as part of the social relations level? We would have been more inclined to include it with social psychology. And why do the disciplines of economics and political science, which are highly relevant to the causes of human behavior and are critical aspects of culture, not appear at all in the hierarchy? In short, it seems clear that one could provide further differentiations, or different categorizations and descriptions of levels. However, although researchers could consider different levels in their explanations, there are important sensibilities captured in Sheldon et al.’s model that could be useful for other investigators as well. As Sheldon et al. highlight, levels of explanation interpenetrate, making conciliation essential to our science. For example, at a macrolevel, U.S. culture is defined by the interplay of its democratic political system and its capitalist economic system, and surely these macrosystems influence and affect human behavior and subjective well-being, as some of Sheldon et al.’s data indicated. We know, for example, that when people have the experience of autonomy, which tends to be facilitated by the democratic process, they are more engaged and effective in learning and problem solving and display greater well-being (e.g., Jang, Reeve, Ryan, & Kim, 2009; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008). And we know that contingent, monetary rewards (e.g., Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999), which are a central component of capitalism (Kasser, Cohn, Kanner, & Ryan, 2007) can diminish people’s engagement, effective performance at heuristic activities, and wellness. So we infer that the actual political and economic systems would also have empirically documentable influences, an inference borne out in research comparing nations regarding quality of life (see, e.g., Eckersley, 2004). In contrast, other cultures that have a totalitarian political system combined with a central-planning economy (e.g., most of the Eastern Bloc prior to 1989; see Deci et al., 2001) have vastly different effects on their residents. Macrosystems can even impact biology, which in turn affects psychological needs and wellness, as when poverty contributes to toxin exposures or poor nutrition. Within SDT we discuss such interpenetrating factors in terms of embedded contexts analysis (e.g., Connell & Wellborn, 1991; Deci & Ryan, in press) in which our interest is in how the levels of systems within which individuals are embedded impact wellness and full functioning through the distal or proximal