Maarten Vansteenkiste

Maarten Vansteenkiste is a Professor in Psychology at the Ghent University in Belgium. Throughout his work he tries to map out the reasons that motivate people’s behavior and the goals and ambitions that people pursue throughout their lives. In doing so, he examines whether particular motives and goals are more likely to be associated with enduring persistence, high quality performance, personal wellness (e.g., low depression), a smoother identity development, and more adjusted social functioning (e.g., low prejudice), because these motives and goals are more conducive to people’s basic psychological needs. In addition, he investigates how the social environment, including parents, teachers, coaches and therapists, can affect people’s motivation. In answering these questions, he helps build and extend the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Vansteenkiste, Ryan, & Deci, 2008), but equally relies on other motivational (e.g., achievement goal theory, expectancy value theory), developmental (e.g., separation-individuation theory, social domain theory), clinical (e.g., motivational interviewing, transtheoretical model of change) and work and organizational theories (e.g., goal setting theory, job demands resources model).