“Less self-determined forms of extrinsic motivation (money, fame, praise) are associated with negative outcomes such as depression, negative affect, and physical symtoms. … The results of Harlen and Crick (2003) found that individuals with intrinsic motivation (autonomy, competence, relatedness) had lower anxiety.”
– Department of Management, Faculty of Economics, Maranatha Christian University, Bandung, Indonesia.***
“Psychologists talk about the idea that you can pursue either extrinsically-oriented life motivations or intrinsically-oriented life motivations. Intrinsic motivations might be “I want to be very close to people,” “I want to feel like my life has meaning,” “I want to feel like I’m doing something good for the universe.” Extrinsic ambitions might be things like “I want to make sure that I’m wealthier than other people,” “I want to be viewed by others as having influence and power.”
As you can imagine, people set very different priorities on those two broad levels of organizing their lives. What they’ve shown is that for college seniors who put their focus on these extrinsically oriented life goals, that’s going to predict less life satisfaction over time. It’s an unhappy way to set your life goals.”
– Berkeley psychologist Sheri Johnson
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Cities and Mental Health
“The risk for some major mental illnesses (e.g. anxiety, psychotic, mood, or addictive disorders) is generally higher in cities (e.g. 6). Studies on anxiety disorders (including posttraumatic stress disorder, distress, anger, and paranoia) found higher rates in urban versus rural areas in several Latin American and Asian countries (7– 10). The same was true for psychotic disorders (e.g. schizophrenia) in China (11) and in large urban areas in Germany (12, 13). In a Danish study, the risk for schizophrenia was more than twofold for individuals who had spent their first 15 years in a major city versus those who had grown up in rural areas (14) (see the Table for a selective summary). Epidemiological studies further confirmed that the risk for schizophrenia was higher in people who grew up in cities (versus rural areas), thereby exhibiting a dose-response relationship: The more time spent in an urban environment as a child, the higher the risk for schizophrenia as an adult (15– 23).Likewise, mood disorders were observed more frequently among residents of large cities in Germany (12). In contrast, rural residents in China were more likely to have depressive disorders (8, 24). This was also true in a study on common perinatal mental disorders (depression and substance use) in women in Vietnam (25). Addictive disorders (for instance excessive use of massive multiplayer online role-playing games [MMORPG]) was mainly found among young adult university graduates living alone in urban France (26). In contrast, rural residents were more likely to have alcohol dependence than were urban residents, as shown in a study in China (8).”
– Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring of the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin
DANIEL GALOVAN 