Satisfaction of the basic psychological need of autonomy is essential for one’s optimal functioning and well-being. Recent studies consistently demonstrated that autonomy-deprived individuals would attempt to regain the sense of autonomy in the following autonomy-supportive activity. However, few studies explored individual differences during this process. In this study conducted in the learning context, we examined the moderating role of autonomy orientation in autonomy restoration. Both scales and the effort-provision paradigm were adopted so as to objectively measure one’s intrinsic motivation. Through two experiments with between-group designs, our results showed that, there exists a restoration process in which autonomy frustrated individuals would invest greater intrinsic motivation to regain autonomy afterwards, an effect only observed among individuals with high autonomy orientation. These findings extend existing literatures within the self-determination theory framework by showing that one’s autonomy orientation would facilitate autonomy restoration.

满足自主的基本心理需求对于一个人的最佳功能和幸福感至关重要。最近的研究一致表明，被剥夺自主权的个体会试图在接下来的自主支持活动中重新获得自主感。然而，很少有研究探讨这一过程中的个体差异。在这项在学习环境中进行的研究中，我们检验了自主取向在自主恢复中的调节作用。采用量表和努力提供范式以客观地衡量一个人的内在动机。通过两个组间设计实验，我们的结果表明，存在一个恢复过程，在这个过程中，自主受挫的个体会投入更大的内在动机来重新获得自主权，这种效果只在具有高度自治倾向的个体中观察到。这些发现扩展了自决理论框架内的现有文献，表明一个人的自主取向将促进自主恢复。