MindCraft Challenges

In Self-Determination Theory, there are three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. What should people do when their basic psychological needs are not met? One thing that people can do is to seek out supportive people and groups that would better meet their basic psychological needs. However, we can also choose to intentionally engage in activities that meet those basic psychological needs.

Challenge: take the challenge described in Behzadnia and FatahModares (2023) where you choose an activity that meets one of the basic needs each day for a week (see the instructions in Table 2 on page 70). This challenge will work best if you are in a situation where your basic psychological needs are not being met. Track whether your well-being, motivation, and need satisfaction improve by intentionally engaging in those activities.

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A brief introduction to basic psychological needs
https://doi.org/10.1037/0708-5591.49.1.14
The Behzadnia and FatahModares task
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-022-09968-9
Basic psychological needs are motives
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00589.x

Metacognition is the term used in psychological science to describe thinking about one's own thinking. Metacognition encourages people to think about their thoughts from new perspectives, which opens up the possibility of introducing new and different responses. You have already seen this example in Challenge #4, where it was used in distant self-talk. We can apply a similar kind of distancing to dealing with cravings (remember that for uncontrollable cravings, you should talk to a professional).

Challenge: When you feel a craving for something you are trying to avoid or a habit you are trying to break, imagine distancing or looking at your thoughts from far away and remind yourself that the craving is “just a thought”. If you are a Christian, you may find it helpful to consider the craving as “just a thought,” subject to Romans 7:25—you can be delivered from it through Jesus Christ.

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Distancing is the key skill to developing control over cravings
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.01.072
Metacognition involves distancing
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615594577

Acting as an agent can make a big difference. However, people don’t always think about whether they can be agents. College classrooms are one place where this often happens—students don’t always realize that they can actively improve their classes. Erika Patall and her colleagues demonstrated that student motivation improves when they learn to act as agents.

Challenge: Read the short version of Patall’s training course (linked below). Make sure that you complete the letter-writing activity at the end. Try to apply what you learn about agency and motivation in one of your classes. Did your classroom experience change?

Training: https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/make-any-class-better.pdf

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Student agency to change motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000614
Student engagement improves motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034934
Student actions create supportive classrooms
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032690

Today, we discussed how intentional activities contribute to happiness. The fit of those intentional activities with your identity is also important. Sonja Lyubomirsky has developed an instrument to help people identify which activities might be a good choice for a person based on their motivations for doing the activity.

Challenge: Take the Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic at https://pathtohappier.com/. The score for each type of activity will appear after you rate each of the five motivations for that activity. The activity or activities with the highest score are good fits for your current motivational profile. Try one of these activities for a week and monitor your happiness and sense of well-being. You can take a broad well-being inventory at https://psytests.org/life/ohien.html to track your well-being if you answer based on the last day or so each time.

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Changing goals and activities promotes happiness
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00002.x
Simple activities increase well-being.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412469809

How do we remember to do something in the future? Planning a future action and then remembering to actually do it is known as prospective memory. Peter Gollwitzer’s solution to the problem of prospective memory failure is implementation intentions: choosing a future cue and linking it to an intended action.

Challenge: Think of a common prospective memory failure you face (where you intended to do something but failed to do it when the moment arrived). Create an implementation intention for that prospective memory:

If I ________________, I will ________________.

Write down the implementation intention and place it somewhere you will see it every morning. Say it out loud to yourself when you see it. Did you avoid prospective memory failure?

Read More
The Psychology of Planning
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-021524-110536
Cues and implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2014.975816
An early description of implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493