A few weeks ago I read Professor Steven Reiss‘s book “Who Am I?: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities“. I found this book after watching a TED Talk given by Daniel Pink entitled “The Surprising Science of Motivation“, and googling around on motivation.
Steven Reiss is a Ohio State University Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry. He has studied, amongst other things, anxiety sensitivity, and mental retardation. He has won several awards for his work, and has many published papers.
In this book, Dr Reiss describes his theory of 16 Basic Intrinsic Motivations. This theory argues that, humans are motivated by intrinsic psychological drives, and that these drives are ends in themselves. Each drive is measured as a continuum for an individual, from weak to strong; it is the particularly strong and weak drives that best explain an individual’s motivations. The combinations of these 16 motivations describe the variability of human personality. These 16 motivations are irreducible: any other described drive or motivation can be expressed by the fundamental 16. These values are not short term “feel-good” happiness, but long term “value-based” happiness.
The 16 basic desires are:
- Acceptance, the need for approval
- Curiosity, the need to think
- Eating, the need for food
- Family, the need to raise children
- Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one’s clan/ethnic group
- Idealism, the need for social justice
- Independence, the need for individuality
- Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable environments
- Physical Activity, the need for exercise
- Power, the need for influence of will
- Romance, the need for sex
- Saving, the need to collect
- Social Contact, the need for friends (peer relationships)
- Status, the need for social standing/importance
- Tranquility, the need to be safe
- Vengeance, the need to strike back
These motivations were selected by a Factor Analysis of a set of 328 enumerated goals / motivations surveyed over 400 people. Interestingly, this places things that to some seem independent, into the same category. For example: “Romance” includes the desire for aesthetic beauty as well as sensual pleasure; “Power” includes a drive for competence as well as power over others.
The book describes each motivation in some detail, if not in predictable, monotonous fashion. It’s interesting to mediate on and understand these “overloaded” meanings of the fundamental desires.
Later on, the book dives into four broad aspects of human society:
- couples
- work
- family
- sports
- religion
These aspects of human society can be built around many, if not all, of the 16 intrinsic desires. Also, particular social institutions attract similarly profiled people. For example, 65 ROTC Cadets scored very low for Tranquillity, and high for Power, Physical Activity and Vengeance. 45 Seminary Students tested high for Idealism, and low for Independence, Status, Family and Tranquillity.
Overall, I find the theory very intriguing. The idea that there is a irreducible, intrinsic set of end motivations is appealing to me somehow; it seems elegant to me. That said, I’m still wrestling with the overloaded-ness of motives like Power: I’m not motivated to have power over others, but I’m motivated to be competent in my skills/knowledge. I’m sure it can be explained in terms of other factors, but I haven’t cracked that yet.
After reading and ingesting this book & other online information, I found myself locking onto these motivators in my daily experiences. I suppose that’s a sign of it’s allure, at least for me. However, I’m treating it as entertainment, when it comes to applying it to others, and taking it lightly for introspection.
The book itself was a fascinating, yet painful read. The organization / presentation of the material was dry and repetitive: parts of the book felt like a template was created and populated, without much wordsmithing afterwards. Many more case studies, or anecdotes could have made this a much more pleasurable read.
Overall, this is a 3 of 4 possible stars book. It’s a 4 for the concept, but a 2 for presentation.