Autonomy is defined as the subjective experience of congruence between one’s basic values and behavior. Research guided by SDT has focused on the socializing conditions that either foster or undermine the individual’s autonomy at the expense of considering the individual’s capacity to function autonomously by actively and purposively shaping his or her social ecology. The present research adopted a social-ecological approach to the problem of human autonomy, wherein people are presumed to strive for autonomy by relying on their traits and abilities to extract what they need from the social environment. After completing a range of individual difference measures, first-year female undergraduates engaged in a leaderless group discussion task and provided round-robin ratings of their group-members’ social power; self-reported autonomy satisfaction was also assessed. Findings revealed that the personality trait Openness to Experience held predictive relations to social power attainment and, through this association, was positively related to autonomy satisfaction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25553 |
| Date | 31 December 2010 |
| Creators | Di Domenico, Stefano |
| Contributors | Fournier, Marc |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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