Background/Rationale: Organizations and societies increasingly seek evidence-based strategies to foster well-being and sustainable performance. Our work responds by examining how autonomy-supportive practices, need-satisfying environments, and positive technologies shape psychological and physiological functioning across workplaces, sports, healthcare, and public policy.
Methods: We employed randomized controlled trials, longitudinal and observational designs, scale development and validation, psychophysiological assessment, and mixed-methods approaches.
Results: Across studies, autonomy support, strengths use, and need satisfaction consistently improved well-being, engagement, ethical conduct, creativity, and team functioning, while controlling or incentive-heavy contexts predicted deviance, distress, and reduced performance.
Conclusions: Motivation quality-not quantity-drives thriving across domains, jobs and populations.
Action/Impact: Our findings informed digital interventions, leadership programs, coaching protocols, measures of societal functioning, mental-health monitoring tools, and policy-relevant insights (e.g., tax compliance), demonstrating scalable, evidence-based pathways to healthier and more effective systems.
Jacques Forest is a registered organizational psychologist (recipient of the 2024 professional award) and a Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP; he received the Fellow distinction in 2022). He is a full professor at ESG UQAM, the biggest French-speaking business school in the world. For the past 18 years, he has published 73 scientific articles and 20 book chapters, cited more that 13 000 times, in addition to giving 304 media appearances and delivering over 789 corporate presentations and training sessions in 12 different countries. He is the co-author of the best-selling book "The ABC of work motivation: How to energize any organization."
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