Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities

by Steven Reiss

Sex? Social standing? Social justice? With this breakthrough study of the motivational forces behind human behavior, and grounded in the most up-to-date psychological research available, Dr. Steven Reiss explains the 16 desires and values that shape our behavior-and shows how the ways we prioritize them determines our personality.

"Well-explained in lay readers' terms." ( Library Journal )

"An exciting new way to think about ourselves, an authoritative, research-based understanding of why we do the things we do." (Ellen Langer, Ph.D., author of Mindfulness )

"Offers valuable insight into such matters as why some interpersonal relationships are enduringly satisfying and others are not." (Professor Richard J. McNally, Harvard University)

"Reiss' system can improve our working relationships and enhance our professional lives." (Ruth Luckasson, J.D., Regents' Professor and Professor of Special Education, University of New Mexico)

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Management, Personal Development, Business, Historical Romance

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2002

About the author

PhD

Reviews

[Jan Höglund · Rating 1 out of 5]

Steven Reiss had a life-threatening illness which led him to rethink what makes life meaningful. His research formed the basis of this book. Steven Reiss describes at length the 16 basic desires that he identified together with Susan Havercamp:

-Power is the desire to influence others.
-Independence is the desire for self-reliance.
-Curiosity is the desire for knowledge.
-Acceptance is the desire for inclusion.
-Order is the desire for organization.
-Saving is the desire to collect things.
-Honor is the desire to be loyal to one's parents and heritage.
-Idealism is the desire for social justice.
-Social Contact is the desire for companionship.
-Family is the desire to raise one's own children.
-Status is the desire for social standing.
-Vengeance is the desire to get even.
-Romance is the desire for sex and beauty.
-Eating is the desire to consume food.
-Physical Activity is the desire for exercise of muscles.
-Tranquility is the desire for emotional calm.

Each desire must fulfill the following criteria (p.33):

1. The desire must be valued intrinsically rather than for its effects on something else. That is, it must be sought for its own sake.
2. The desire must have explanatory significance for understanding the lives of nearly everyone.
3. The desire must be largely unconnected to the other basic desires.

I found Steven Reiss distinction between feel-good happiness and value-based happiness interesting (pp.123–141), but otherwise I'm not convinced by Reiss' arguments. I think, for example, that idealism and vengeance are related. Read Talking to the Enemy by Scott Atran and you will see that an act of vengeance also can be an act of idealism. Also, being influenced by Christopher Alexander, I think real beauty 1) can be valued intrinsically, 2) have explanatory significance for understanding our lives, and 3) is largely unconnected to the other 16 desires - most notably romance and sex. Actually, I think the desire for real beauty is related to, but more basic than, the desire for order. I might be wrong, but I suspect that it's our personalities that motivate our desires, and not our desires that motivate our personalities.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being someone who reads books on a massive scale, it should come as little surprise that I get a lot of book recommendations from other people.  I would likely not have read this book had I not received a recommendation on it from an old college flame of mine who happens to be the first girl I remember kissing--I was almost 19 at the time--and who happens to have remained a friend and is now married with four boys.  The reason for the recommendation likely springs from the fact that we both have a strong interest in personality theory and in understanding ourselves and others, and as that interest has led to some fascinating and entertaining reading in the past [1], I was willing to read this book once I saw it was available in my local county library system.  This book proved to be a thoughtful and interesting read, where the author shows himself desirous of being seen as a scientific and data-driven humanistic psychologist while at the same time leaving room in the study of motivation for matters of spirit that he claims to be genetically hard-wired within people.  As I have long been fascinated and troubled by my own motivations and that of others around me, I found the journey in this book to be a worthwhile one to take.  If you are interested in these matters as well, this book will likely be of some interest for you also.

This book seeks to wrestle with the thorny question of identity by positing a sixteen factor set of desires that reputedly lie at the base of human behavior in a wide variety of areas.  Sixteen is a popular number within personality theory--there are 16 different personalities within the Myers-Briggs Type Index (for the record, I am an ENTJ according to that particular scale), and it makes sense even if the grouping together of various desires is somewhat vague and unspecific.  In this moderate length book of around 260 pages including its core material and appendix, the author begins with a discussion of the health crisis that led him to think more seriously about matters of motivation.  The first part of the book on the basic desires comes after this with a discussion of what a basic desire is and how the author and his research team narrowed the many potential factors down to sixteen core desires:  power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical activity, and tranquility.  Each of these desires has three levels:  strong, average/mixed, and weak, and these sixteen desires are discussed in detail in chapters two through four of the book.  The fifth chapter of the book reminds reader that one size does not fit all and that there are many variations--some two trillion of them--that make people unique in what exactly drives them.  This leads the author to remind us that we often "don't get" what drives and motivates other people, leading us to misunderstand them, self-hug by demanding others follow our own set of drives and motivations, and leads us to engage in domestic tyranny that drives people away by our incessant demands for people to behave as we do rather than be true to their own natures.  In the second part of book the author discusses such topics as value-based (as opposed to pleasure-based) happiness, how relationships grow through similarity on principles and motives, how work can be turned into play by tapping into what drives us most deeply, the distinctions between family members and the sources of conflict in different drives and motivations, and in-depth examinations of drives and motives on areas of sport and religion, followed by an afterword and an appendix that invites readers to understand their own mix of desires.

Although I found the author to be somewhat too wedded to the faddish and imaginary explanation of evolutionary psychology and far too syncretistic when it comes to religious matters for my own tastes, the author deserves a great deal of credit for defending the value of religious belief and practice from its frequent assault by those who fancy themselves rational and scientific but end up being neither.  Of most personal interest, though, I found my own mix of desires to be highly striking.  According to the author, those with a larger amount of particularly strong or weak desires have a more difficult time working well within larger society but are often more complicated and fascinating people as a result.  In looking at the questions I found no desires to be weak but rather found most of the desires to be mixed/average.  I did, however, find six of the desires to be strong:  power, curiosity, honor, vengeance, romance, and idealism.  In my mind, this makes for a particularly intriguing result, suggesting some of the more difficult issues I have faced in my own personal life given the sort of experiences I have had.  There is a great deal of perversity in being so singularly ill-equipped to achieve my desires and motivations in life, at least thus far, but the hope of studying ourselves and others is that we may be better equipped to fulfill the purposes for which God has put us on this planet.  We may as well get on with that task as best as we are able.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reiss argues that life is more than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Our distinctive trait is our need for meaning. Through a survey protocol that he and an associate developed, Reiss identifies sixteen universal “desires and values that drive nearly everything we do.” These desires are intrinsic; they are ends in themselves; they are distinct from each other; and they vary in intensity. Each of us are driven primarily by just a few desires and we vary individually in their kind and intensity (“[L]argely because of genetic diversity,” he writes, “every person has a unique desire profile”).

Reiss argues that “a will-to-live” (survival instinct) does not belong in his list of basic desires. Humans have desire, purposes and goals. These are non-physical entities, he states, and these are what “distinguishes us from biological ‘stuff.’”In physics and biology, he comments, we do not have goals and purposes. We are blind, instinctive beings, and he dismisses this school of thought as applied to human behavior as ‘naturalism.’ “Little meaningful behavior can be explained in terms of the will to live, he states, adding that the will to live is not related to relationships, family (psychological) growth “and so on” (his list of sixteen desires which is what provides meaning).

The problem with Reiss’s “dual nature” thesis is that it separates body and mind (the will to live from our non-physical goals, ideals, the objects of desire). A clue to that problem is where Reiss, drawing from Frankl, states that “the search for meaning is the key to survival.” Here Reiss unwittingly places “meaning” as the means to the end of survival, which is the reverse of his argument in this book that survival is merely a means to support human goal-oriented activity. Reiss’s sixteen desires, while seemingly distinct from each other and seen as ends in themselves, are the means that have enabled us to survive over the eons. While our goals and ideas are non-physical, they translate into survival benefits. Power serves our survival needs, which is another way of saying that it supports our desire for independence (another word for freedom). Our desire for acceptance, social contact, family, honor (he uses this desire oddly), and order are part of our need for group life that supports our own well-being and survival. Our desire for status (related to honor?) is associated with power (obtaining benefits). The survival benefits of eating, savings, curiosity (learning) and physical activity are direct and obvious, as are the benefits of romance for sexual reproduction. Social ideals such as freedom and equality and justice are based on basic biological foundations – to protect the self’s freedom from imposition, and the desire for vengeance (and natural justice) is related to that.

Reiss is in the ballpark when he characterizes pleasure as a by-product of getting what we desire. “Pleasure is the byproduct of getting what we desire, it is not the aim of desire,” he writes. Desires motivate and pleasure and pain are related to whether desires are satisfied. But Reiss is wrong when he separates desires from our biological being. In an integrated and hierarchical model, we first and foremost seek to survive (will to live) and these sixteen desires are the means that evolution has given us to serve that highest end. Reiss cuts into our history as if we’ve always been “modern” and as if we've had no evolutionary past.

[Sandra F · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas and usefulness of the content is 4/5 stars but the writing was painful to read and is a 2/5, and so together, we’ve got a 3/5 for the book overall.

Thinking of motivation in terms of several different dimensions was useful, and the 16 dimensions discussed were interesting.

But most of the book was really repetitive. After describing each of the 16 desires, we’d get a chapter about how each and every one of the 16 desires relates to work, or family, or sports, or religion, supported by very shallow or possibly made-up real-life examples. It was pretty tedious, and at some points, the author seemed to be grasping at straws. I wish the book had not been structured this way. Instead, it would have been more useful to devote a chapter to explaining each of the 16 desires, and going more in-depth about the research behind each desire.

There’s also a lot that just doesn’t make sense, and I wish I could ask someone about it.

For example, the “power” desire is described as “desire for influence” but also “desire for achievement” and “desire for leadership.” I can see how influence and leadership are related. But I don’t see how desire for achievement is at all related to influence/leadership/power. Reiss spends a lot of time talking about how people who have a strong power desire like to work hard and have achievements.

A desire for achievement seems, to me, unrelated to a desire for power. A desire for achievement seems more related to, perhaps, curiosity, or a desire to better yourself somehow. I might want to achievement by getting better at, say, improving my ranking in chess. But desiring to do this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with wanting to have influence, or power, over others.

If I had a really strong power desire, I’d just want to be an absolute monarch. Then I can order everyone around and not achieve anything.

The “honor” desire also confuses me a lot. Reiss describes it as loyalty to one’s parents and ethnic/religious group. But sometimes he also describes it as loyalty to a moral code. So, if my parents are horrible immoral people, and I need to turn them in, what am I supposed to do if I’m an honorable person? He talks about this a little bit with Linda Tripp recording her conversation with Monica Lewinsky (yes, this is such a dated book), and framed this as Linda Tripp as having a strong “honor” desire (loyal to a moral code) but low “social contact” desire (being unloyal to a friend). But what if it’s your own parents?

The “acceptance” desire makes the least sense to me also. Reiss describes this desire as follows: “Acceptance [is] the desire for inclusion, motivates people to avoid rejection and criticism.” He also somehow equates the desire for acceptance as being the same as “low self-confidence.”

To determine if you score highly on desiring “acceptance”, Reiss provides these three statements; if any are true, then you are high on desiring acceptance:

“You usually set easy goals for yourself.”
“You are a quitter.”
“You have great difficulty coping with criticism.”

This seems...bizarre. You can want to be accepted and included in your group, without being pathologically afraid of rejection and criticism, being a quitter, etc. I suspect Reiss & Havercamp really did find something interesting here, but that naming this desire “acceptance” doesn’t really describe it accurately.

Anyway, I’d really welcome any thoughts to clarify these. Thanks!

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok. It was a scientific study which was enjoyable but then ventured unto different realms of how to find happiness. Some interesting points on compatibility--like if you are curious and your partner/friends are not than you have some basic "not getting it" issues that will severely affect your relationship. Fun test that you can take and do for your friends.

Not the end all be all, but worth picking up for an hour or two.

[Matthew Belonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Havercamp & Reiss.

When Psychology & Philosophy meet.
16 traits opening up the field in the
Psychology of Motivation.

May need to refer back to this at a later
date. Just to verify what I already know.
But their is something about having
someone Organize and Order thinking
for you!

[Jordana Ayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book started well when explaining about the basic values and how to identify yours, but second half was less interesting as it tries to describe the impact of the values in marriage, work, families in a very generic way

[Fazurina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought this book to get to know myself and the contents didn't disappoint. Lot of good points for life.

[Jurgen Appelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good research, solid and useful model.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reaction to this genre is often that I don't believe I fit into the model. That's certainly untrue here and, based on the methodology, I understand why. Reiss developed the 16 traits using factor analysis and has validated these factors with multiple heterogeneous populations. The basic desires are each distinct and directly reflect human needs that serve as their own end. It's even more impressive that his approach to helping one understand their own needs succeeds without the need for a full profile (which he insists should only be administered by a trained psychologist). Not only does this framework help one understand and direct their own satisfaction, comparison to a partner's ratings highlights areas that match (for which a Principle of Bonding helps them grow together) and where they don't (for which a Principle of Separation must be managed to keep them from growing apart). He also presents a deeper form of miscommunication -- "not getting it" -- which manifests itself in misunderstanding, self-hugging, and everyday tyranny. Finally he shows how his findings can be applied to achieve the right balance in the areas that are most important. This leads to value-based happiness instead of feeling-based happiness. He relies both on other studies and early philosophical works, especially Aristotle, to make his point. Perhaps the single point I found most interesting was the psychological perspective that the absolute "good" cannot be the same for everyone because of these motivators.

[Hal]

Kind of an interesting book that delves into how you can use a list of sixteen characteristics developed by this psychologist that helps you understand what makes you tick. The characteristics seem logically correct and if one applies them objectively to evaluating themselves it appears to have some worth. The basic problem I had with the book was after laying out these character traits in great detail the author then proceeds to fill up the majority of the book with endless application examples in many different ways. It becomes somewhat repetitious and over done. Finally at the very end of the book he has a chart you can complete of your traits and apply them to a graph picture. It was kind of fun to do that but he really does not explain how to use and evaluate how it all ties together

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das Modell der 16 Lebensmotive kommt anderen, weniger scharf gefassten Ansätzen (z.B. Bedürfnisse in der Gewaltfreien Kommunikation) nahe und ist auf jeden Fall ein Thema, mit dem man sich mal befasst haben sollte, wenn man sich selbst (v.a. das Handeln) besser kennenlernen und verstehen will. Die Grundaussage: Erkenne die Lebensmotive, die dir besonders wichtig/unwichtig sind und du wirst besser an den Stellschrauben drehen können, wenn du unzufrieden bist. Ich bin nicht mit allem, was er schreibt, einverstanden und habe für mich brauchbarere Modelle gefunden. Dennoch nicht uninteressant.

[Vinnydbullet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Psychology of our Desires and how it effects us, the people we interact with and the movement of Society. Phenominal study that can change your paradigm with everyone that you meet.

Really great perspective on how to view people.

[Henry Manampiring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful concept to explain human behaviors or social phenomenon. There is even application in business, sport, or marketing. Could be flat for many, but for human psychology enthusiasts this book will make important addition in their book list.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting about unavoidable characteristics that make up who we are and our motivations.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't totally read this but it seemed to have interesting points.

[Fatima · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب رائع ومفيد ويجعلك ترى شخصيتك من شخصيات من حولك من زاوية مختلفة جدا كنت لأقيم هذا الكتاب بخمس نجوم الا ان الكاتب اخفق في اخر فصلين من الكتاب

[Verica Stanisic · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another book for an average American. :)
Mr. Reiss, for a man of science I expected more evidence-based material.

[Michael Wu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few things in the book:

1. The 16 "fundamental desires"
2. How the authors arrived at them (factor analysis), and what formal properties the desires should satisfy (independence, not a product of more basic desires)
3. How the desires manifest in the world, how can the framework be useful
4. A DIY desire profile test

By itself, I think (1) is pretty interesting. The desires track well with intuition.

(2) was not done well. The authors describe (too) briefly how they came to this list, and are weirdly confident their work is correct. I would beg to differ, even on a purely intuitive level. Are they sure the desires for sex and beauty are really only one, and captured by the *romance* desire? How do they know these are independent? I am not convinced these 16 form some kind of holy, irrefutable list. They're at best a good set of traits that are reasonably broad covering and non-overlapping.

Re (3), I think there was a mix of good and bad. Some of it made no sense or was at best a stretch. But there were some very interesting points, most consisting of statements or predictions made using their framework. Ex.

- Shyness and being antisocial are different. Shyness is high *acceptance* (need for validation, aversion to criticism) coupled with potentially high *social contact*, whereas being antisocial is low *social contact*.
- The desires for *power* and *status* are different and independent.

All in all, I like the idea of decomposing desire down to atomic ones using factor analysis. I like decompositions. I'm not convinced by their arguments. It would have had an equal impression on me if the authors simply said this list was the product of thinking really hard.

[Sorento62 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that gives you a personality quiz to see how you differ from others. It seems pretty valid and fun, and it also gives some insight into applying the factors to relationships, careers, etc. Easy to skim and/or sample just the parts that interest you most.

Part of what was interesting to me was that most of the 16 factors (such as tranquility, curiosity, food, etc.) are things that everyone is motivated by to some degree. Most of us want each of the factors in moderation, not too much, not too little, but just enough. However, most of us also have one or a few factors which are super super important and desired in high doses, and those things motivate us especially strongly, and there are often one or two that we have a markedly lower need for or interest in than most people do. Therefore, they are good markers for what makes each of us different from the "average" person, while also affirming that most people have all these needs in moderation -- that by and large we all have a lot in common in this regard.

[Елена Козина · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book about identifying human basic desires to discover our real motivation in life. But the main part of it, with all those trivial examples and explanations, is really boring.

Мне понравилась идея этой книги о влиянии основных человеческих желаний на нашу истинную мотивацию в жизни. Но бóльшая часть этого труда, со всеми тривиальными примерами и ненужными пояснениями, безумно скучна.

[Jarrion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last Chapter Is The Best Chapter

I mean without necessarily putting my opinion on this book instead of facts.. What I will say is I think the questionnaire part @ the end is a really good way to scale to see if you and your significant other is on the same page with your life desires..

But other than that it’s a ok book.. Worth the buy especially since it’s 10.99 or something like that.. Now if it was 20 I’ll probably think really hard on buying this 1 lol..

[Micke Sandlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

En favorit. Jag gillar framför allt delen där författaren pratar om de två olika typer av lycka som finns. Må bra-glädje (se en film, spela ett spel, äta chips) och Värdebaserad-glädje (som vi mår bra av bara av att vi tänker tillbaka på det). Båda delarna behövs men det får inte bli så att Må-bra glädje ökar på bekostnad av värdebaserad glädje.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of 16 desires is interesting. I liked the first few chapters where the author is introducing the desires. After that, the book was a disappointment. It didn't go deeper. It was full of boring, shallow examples and forceful application of the original idea. It took me ages to finish reading. I still believe that the concept makes a lot of sense but overall, the text seems immature.

[Niels · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept is nice and I definitely learned some things but it is not well written.

[Robert Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

After trying to figure out the meaning of life, trying to figure out who you are has to the biggest question of life. Over the years, countless folks have tried to simplify the complexity of people, their motivations, desires, and their expected behavior into a set of simplifications that would allow people to be classified. Some of them with more success than others.

Click here to read the full review

[Janessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and interesting exploration of our motivations, desires, moral intuitions, and personalities.

[Fabio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The so called evidence are subsequently confirming surveys to, in my eyes false assumptions put together