Humans have pondered this question for decades. Is it money, power, and fame? Or rather fear and punishment? Psychologists’ answers have varied, along with a broad transformation in prevailing views.

“The whole field of motivation has changed over the last 40 years, from thinking about how you can control people from the outside to thinking how you can really facilitate and support people’s commitment and engagement in activities,” says Richard Ryan, a clinical psychologist and professor of clinical and social sciences in psychology.

Together with Edward Deci, the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences, the two psychologists are the founders of self-determination theory (SDT) and most recently the authors of the authoritative 700-plus-page volume Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness (Guilford Press, 2017).

Developed by Ryan and Deci nearly four decades ago, self-determination theory has become one of the most widely accepted theories of human motivation in contemporary behavioral science. Its starting point is the idea that all humans have the natural—or intrinsic—tendency to behave in effective and healthful ways. To date, their research has been cited several hundred-thousands of times, spawning thousands of clinical experiments and studies worldwide.

Central to SDT is the distinction between two types of motivation—autonomous motivation (sometimes also called intrinsic motivation) and controlled motivation. “Autonomous motivation has to do with engaging in an activity with a full sense of willingness and volition,” Deci explains. “Whereas controlled motivation means doing something with the experience of pressure and obligation.”

The evidence-based theory holds that all humans have a basic need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In a nutshell: Research by the pair (and inspired by them) suggests that we need to feel that we can succeed at a task and that we are making progress towards that success—what they call competence. Meaningful options as we work toward that competence constitute our autonomy. Lastly, we need to feel that our efforts are recognized by others and that we are part of something beyond ourselves—what Ryan and Deci have termed interpersonal relatedness.

What’s the enduring pull of the theory for today’s researchers? “I think there’s a lot of control in the world,” says Deci. “There are a lot of people who are trying to push others around—in organizations, in politics, in homes. And a lot of people are paying attention to this other point of view [SDT] because they don’t like the control they find in so many aspects of their lives.”

Read more here.

Patients with low back pain who were depressed were more likely to be prescribed opioids and receive higher doses, according to a new study.  Understanding these prescribing patterns sheds new light on the current opioid epidemic and may help determine whether efforts to control prescription opioid abuse are effective.

“Our findings show that these drugs are more often prescribed to low back pain patients who also have symptoms of depression and there is strong evidence that depressed patients are at greater risk for misuse and overdose of opioids,” said John Markman, director of the Department of Neurosurgery’s Translational Pain Research Program and senior author of the study, which appears in PAIN Reports, a journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Low back pain is a leading cause of disability in the U.S., and the most common condition for which opioids are a prescribed treatment.

The researchers used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey — a federally-compiled set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the U.S. — to compile opioid prescription data from 2004-2009.

This period is important because it coincides with a steep rise in the prescription rates of opioids to treat lower back pain.  The time frame of the study also immediately preceded the introduction of a new generation of drugs designed to deter abuse and the implementation of a wide range of policies to address the opioid epidemic. So the findings will serve as an important benchmark to evaluate the impact of these efforts.

The researchers found that individuals with low back pain who were positively screened for depression were more than twice as likely to be prescribed an opioid and received more than twice the typical dose of the drug over the course of a year.

The study also points out the need for researchers to more fully understand the risks and benefits associated with prescribing opioids and other forms of pain medications to individuals with low back pain and depression.  Low back pain is also the condition most often studied to approve new pain medications.

“Excluding depressed patients may lead clinicians who rely on these studies to underestimate the risks of opioids when they are prescribed for low back pain in routine practice,” said Markman.

Read more here.

The two high school girls, one black and one white, exchanged heated words in the cafeteria until the white girl shouted out a name—actually a pair of names—laden with the worst racial and gender-related insults that could be directed at a young, black female. Her face burning with indignation and humiliation, the black girl reached up with every ounce of her strength and slapped the white girl full across the face.

The black student, who was attending a predominantly white suburban high school, was suspended for a week for physical violence. But as Signithia Fordham, an associate professor of anthropology, sees it, the slap in the face wasn’t the only act of violence between the two girls.

“Not all violence is physical, especially the kind often practiced by girls and women,” says Fordham. “And language is the most widely used form of nonphysical violence in human interaction.”

Fordham spent two-and-a-half years studying female-specific bullying, competition, and aggression at Underground Railroad High School—a pseudonym for a predominantly white suburban high school in upstate New York. Her objective was to initiate a re-examination—followed by a redefinition—of the misrecognized harm inflicted in social practices widely assumed to be relatively benign.

In her new book, Downed by Friendly Fire: Black Girls, White Girls, and Suburban Schooling (University of Minnesota Press), Fordham argues that in much of contemporary American society, females continue to be rewarded primarily for beauty, male attention, and reproduction. Females who succeed in these contests are seen as gender-appropriate, and the others often considered “spinsters” or “leftover women.” Perhaps for this reason, nonphysical acts of aggression, directed strategically at a victim’s marginalized status, have been shown to have serious social and academic consequences for victims. As a result, Fordham argues, these acts can and should fall under the rubric of violence.

Read more here.

Once again, the University of Rochester made the National Academy of Inventors global list of top patenting universities, reports UR Ventures Technology Review.  At 39 issued U.S. patents in 2016, Rochester placed 64th in the world, tied with the University of Arkansas system.

“It is no surprise that larger universities with bigger research budgets ranked higher on this list,” the review notes. “Schools like UNC (33rd), U Penn (17th), Harvard (14th), Michigan (9th), Johns Hopkins (7th), Stanford (3rd), and MIT (2nd) have research enterprises spending two, three, four, and even five times as much as Rochester. Some unfamiliar with Rochester might find it surprising that we ranked higher than Emory (66^th), NC State and the University of Arizona (tied at 80th), Georgetown (88th), and Dartmouth (97th).” See the complete list here.

When the number of patents earned is normalized based on research expenditures, the review notes, the University of Rochester “surges up in the rankings. Traditional research and technology transfer powerhouses, such as Stanford (2.58 patents earned per $10M spent in research), MIT (1.7) remain ahead of Rochester, but at (1.14) we surpass Michigan (1.09), Johns Hopkins (1.08), U Penn (1.04), and even the entire State of California system (0.96), which led the NAI list with 505 patents.”

An issued patent, on its own, has limited intrinsic value without the technology it covers being developed and marketed. “It is the mission of the universities’ technology transfer operations to license the intellectual property contained in those patents to entities capable of bringing the scientific advancement to the public,” the review notes. “At UR Ventures, we seek to file patents with commercial potential. Then we spend the majority of our resources and efforts in developing the underlying technology to increase our chances of finding and attracting the right business partner(s) (startups and/or established companies) to carry it forward to market.”

Click here for a sample of University of Rochester patents currently available for licensing.

David Gelman, Political Science, “Three Essays on Floor Debate in American Deliberative Bodies.” 10 a.m. June 29, 2017. Harkness Hall 329. Advisor: David Primo.

Jennifer Schneider, Health Practice Research (School of Nursing), “African American and Latino Adolescent Experiences with Mental Health Services.” 9 a.m. June 30, 2017. Helen Wood Hall 3w-301. Advisor: Jane Tuttle.

July 14: UNYTE scientific session, “Collaborate to Innovate Maternal & Child Health Translational Research.” 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Helen Wood Hall. Panel presentations, a poster session, interactive break-out groups, and a keynote address by Michele Caggana, deputy director of genetics and director of newborn screening at the Wadsworth School of Laboratory Sciences. For additional information and registration, go to UNYTE Scientific Session.

Due to the Fourth of July holiday, the next issue of Research Connections will be July 7.