Autonomy support, basic need satisfaction and the optimal functioning of adult male and female sport participants: A test of basic needs theory

Grounded in Basic Needs Theory (BNT; Ryan and Deci, American Psychologist, 55, 68–78, 2000a), the present study aimed to: (a) test a theoretically-based model of coach autonomy support, motivational processes and well-/ill being among a sample of adult sport participants, (b) discern which basic psychological need(s) mediate the link between autonomy support and well-/ill-being, and (c) explore gender invariance in the hypothesized model. Five hundred and thirty nine participants (Male = 271;Female = 268; Mage = 22.75) completed a multi-section questionnaire tapping the targeted variables. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that coach autonomy support predicted participants’ basic need satisfaction for autonomy, competence and relatedness. In turn, basic need satisfaction predicted greater subjective vitality when engaged in sport. Participants with low levels of autonomy were more susceptible to feeling emotionally and physically exhausted from their sport investment. Autonomy and competence partially mediated the path from autonomy support to subjective vitality. Lastly, the results supported partial invariance of the model with respect to gender

Disabled Autonomy

Disability law is still undertheorized. In 2007, Ruth Colker wrote that disability law was undertheorized because it conflated “separate” with “unequal,” and because disability was largely ignored or poorly understood within theories of justice. The solution for Colker was to attach the anti-subordination perspective, which was developed to apply to race and sex, directly to disability. This Article argues that this transportation from the race and sex contexts was a partial solution, but is not sufficient to give full substance to disability law theory. Concepts from critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence have long been simply transported into the disability context, acting as an imperfect facsimile. The primary purpose of those concepts was to describe, analyze, and remedy problems primarily related to race and gender, not disability. While disability law has benefitted to some extent from inclusion in these legal theories, many of the unique features and complexities of disability law have been left on the table. This Article explores those complexities. Autonomy, usually thought of as an uncomplicated social good for other groups, is challenged in disability theory by two competing values. The value of anti-subordination is critical because it seeks to address, and redress, discrimination, sigma, and stereotyping. An anti-subordination perspective gives a voice and supplies resources to people with disabilities, and will counsel against choices that support stigma and stereotyping. An anti-subordination perspective might seek to limit a right to physician-assisted suicide, for example, because of concerns about exploitation and the messaging that disabled lives are not worth living. This runs counter to an autonomy-focused perspective, which would support the choice to end one’s life in the end stages of a terminal disease. An anti-eliminationism perspective advocates for the preservation of, and resources for, disabled lives. This comes to mean that not only are people with disabilities valued, but their disability is valued too. Instead of seeking to end Autism, for example, an anti-elimination perspective seeks to support Autistics. However, an anti-eliminationism perspective might also support the restriction of choice, and therefore come into conflict with autonomy, where there is a choice that results in the end of a disability. An anti-elimination perspective could seek to restrict the ability to selectively terminate pregnancies when a disability is found, for example. Anti-eliminationism inherently challenges the notion that getting rid of disability is a good thing. Parts I, II, and III of this Article describe the values of autonomy, anti-subordination, and anti-eliminationism in the disability context, and argue that these values are each critical components of disability law and theory. Part IV of this article provides an overview of some real-world examples where these values come into immediate conflict

Responsible Autonomy

As intelligent systems are increasingly making decisions that directly affect society, perhaps the most important upcoming research direction in AI is to rethink the ethical implications of their actions. Means are needed to integrate moral, societal and legal values with technological developments in AI, both during the design process as well as part of the deliberation algorithms employed by these systems. In this paper, we describe leading ethics theories and propose alternative ways to ensure ethical behavior by artificial systems. Given that ethics are dependent on the socio-cultural context and are often only implicit in deliberation processes, methodologies are needed to elicit the values held by designers and stakeholders, and to make these explicit leading to better understanding and trust on artificial autonomous systems.Comment: IJCAI2017 (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

What is Autonomy?

A system is autonomous if it uses its own information to modify itself and its environment to enhance its survival, responding to both environmental and internal stimuli to modify its basic functions to increase its viability. Autonomy is the foundation of functionality, intentionality and meaning. Autonomous systems accommodate the unexpected through self-organizing processes, together with some constraints that maintain autonomy. Early versions of autonomy, such as autopoiesis and closure to efficient cause, made autonomous systems dynamically closed to information. This contrasts with recent work on open systems and information dynamics. On our account, autonomy is a matter of degree depending on the relative organization of the system and system environment interactions. A choice between third person openness and first person closure is not required

Kantian Personal Autonomy

Jeremy Waldron has recently raised the question of whether there is anything approximating the creative self-authorship of personal autonomy in the writings of Immanuel Kant. After considering the possibility that Kantian prudential reasoning might serve as a conception of personal autonomy, I argue that the elements of a more suitable conception can be found in Kant’s Tugendlehre, or “Doctrine of Virtue”—specifically, in the imperfect duties of self-perfection and the practical love of others. This discovery is important for at least three reasons: first, it elucidates the relationship among the various conceptions of autonomy employed by personal-autonomy theorists and contemporary Kantians; second, it brings to the surface previously unnoticed or undernoticed features of Kant’s moral theory; and third, it provides an essential line of defense against certain critiques of contemporary Kantian theories, especially that of John Rawls

(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements In and Beyond Capital, the State and Development

Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of what appears to be a new set of claims in contemporary social movements based around the idea of autonomy. In this paper we interrogate this demand for autonomy. In order to do this, we first engage with existing literatures, identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: 1) autonomous practices vis-à-vis capital, or, what Negri calls, the ‘self-valorization’ of labour; 2) self-determination and independence from the state; and 3) alternatives to hegemonic discourses of development. We will then problematize and point out the central potentials, weaknesses and antagonisms at the heart of the concept of autonomy. We argue that social movements’ demands for autonomy point to, what Laclau and Mouffe call, the impossibility of society, the idea that society can never be complete. That is, there will always be resistances, such as those expressed by autonomous social movements. However, this also lets us understand the conception of autonomy to be incomplete. Autonomy itself is hence an impossibility. To point to these limits of the discourses of autonomy, we discuss how demands for autonomy are tied up with contemporary re-organizations of: 1) the capitalist workplace, characterized by discourses of autonomy, creativity and self-management; 2) the state, which increasingly outsources public services to independent, autonomous providers, which often have a more radical, social movement history; and 3) regimes of development, which today often emphasize local practices, participation and self-determination. Behind these critical reflections on the conception and practice of autonomy is the idea that autonomy should always be seen as something relational. That is, autonomy can never be fixed; there is no definite ground for demands for autonomy to stand on. Instead, social movements’ demands for autonomy are embedded in specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts, giving rise to possibilities as well as impossibilities of autonomous practices

Forbidden ways of life

I examine an objection against autonomy-minded liberalism sometimes made by philosophers such as John Rawls and William Galston, that it rules out ways of life which do not themselves value freedom or autonomy. This objection is incorrect, because one need not value autonomy in order to live an autonomous life. Hence autonomy-minded liberalism need not rule out such ways of life. I suggest a modified objection which does work, namely that autonomy-minded liberalism must rule out ways of life that could not develop under an autonomy-promoting education. I conclude by suggesting some reasons why autonomy-minded liberals should bite the bullet and accept this

Autonomy and Performance of Foreign Subsidiaries in five Transition Countries

The paper analyses the link between the autonomy according to business function and the performance of foreign subsidiaries in Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Estonia. The novelty of the paper is in the deeper investigation of the multidimensionality of autonomy. Using the method of principal components, four business function factors relating to autonomy were obtained (technology, marketing, management, finance). The results supported the argument that the relationship between autonomy and performance depends on the type of autonomy. Marketing and finance are the most powerful dimensions of autonomy. Higher autonomy in marketing is negatively linked with technology upgrading, measured by productivity level, improvement of technological level of production equipment, and quality of products. The higher the financial autonomy of the subsidiaries the bigger the positive changes in all fields of performance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40166/3/wp780.pd

Autonomy in Video Games and Gamification

In the past decade, gamification (using game elements in non-gaming tasks to enhance motivation and engagement) has become a popular concept in many industries, but few studies have explored the principles under which it works. Self-determination theory suggests three psychological needs that gamification fulfills: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Autonomy, a person\u27s perception that they have the ability to act however they choose, has emerged as an important, yet less-studied aspect in gamification. Inclusion of autonomy in gamification should foster engagement, enjoyment, and better performance. An experiment inspired by the above was carried out in which a sample of college students (N = 57) played a video game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover with either the choice to customize the aesthetics of their character and background (autonomy-supportive) or no choice of aesthetics (non-supportive). It was hypothesized that conditions involving more choice would lead to higher perceived autonomy and performance, and that perceived autonomy would be positively correlated with engagement, enjoyment, and performance. The manipulation resulted in no significant difference in perceived autonomy or performance, and perceived autonomy was only significantly positively correlated with enjoyment. Prior Super Mario Bros. experience was also found to positively correlate with perceived autonomy in the autonomy-supportive condition. The choice of aesthetics does not appear to have been sufficiently strong enough to increase perceived autonomy in this context