Eight Motivations
To see the basic ways emotions can affect people, we can look at the Maslow Hierarchy of Human Needs, which is used in education. We can also look at the Five Human Motivators, which is a list used in marketing. By combining the two lists we get one list of seven items, to which I add an eighth. All human interests fall into these eight categories. My proof of this is that I live in America in 2007, and if there was anything else that people felt was important in life besides these eight things, you can be sure that advertisers would’ve found it by now!
In descending order of general importance they are: Survival, safety, reproduction, social, self-gratification, self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and fulfillment of self-fulfillment.
Survival refers to anything involving immediate physiological necessities: food, water, oxygen, body temperature, and rest.
Safety refers to anything involving physical safety and avoiding risks to physical safety. This is a direct product of the survival instinct.
Reproduction refers to anything involving literal reproduction, romantic relationships, raising children, or recreational sex.
Social refers to membership in groups and interpersonal relations of all kinds. All species of primates are social animals for the same reasons people are: because they can survive best by cooperating in groups.
Self gratification refers to anything that makes a person feel good. Technically, this isn’t an instinct; it is the superficial result of the satisfaction of an instinct. Good feelings are the physiological reward for satisfying instincts. Since people have found so many ways to trigger superficial results of the satisfaction of instincts that have nothing to do with the actual satisfaction of their instincts, self-gratification is worth listing separately as a motivator. One good example is fruit-flavored candy: Candy tastes good because it tastes like ripe fruit that will keep you alive, even though eating candy won’t keep you alive.
Self-actualization refers to the use of abilities. As I use the term here, an ability is any personal capacity a person can use to advance his interests. Some direct examples are the abilities to hunt, to cook, and to work to earn a paycheck. Less direct examples include the ability to express oneself through dance, the ability to find (superficial) reproductive satisfaction with a member of the same gender, and the ability to search for better situations in which to use your abilities. Self-actualization applies differently to everyone, but applies in some way to everyone. For all of human evolution, people have depended on using whatever abilities they’ve had to preserve the survival of their DNA. If people are prevented from using their abilities to preserve the survival of their DNA in the most effective means perceivable, they will feel unsatisfied with their lives. That includes people who get stuck working at dead end jobs, dancers who aren’t allowed to dance, and homosexuals who are prevented from pursuing homosexual relationships. You’re probably listening to me talk right now to use your abilities to learn something new that you can put to use in your life somehow.
Self-fulfillment is the fullest use of an ability. Throughout human evolution, using abilities to their fullest potential was usually the best way for people to preserve the survival of their DNA by the most effective means perceivable. Otherwise, self-fulfillment is an extension of self-actualization.
Fulfillment of self-fulfillment is the use of all of one’s abilities to their fullest extents—or at least, their fullest extents possible, given the situation. For all of human evolution, the single best way for an individual to preserve the survival of his DNA was to use all of his abilities to their fullest potentials. Fulfillment of self-fulfillment gives you the sense that your life is complete. I had to add this one to the list myself because fulfillment of self-fulfillment is useless in marketing, because you can’t sell stuff to people who already feel like their lives are complete.
Here’s one example of how an emotional situation can involve multiple interactions of these thirteen items: If a man hooks up in a romantic relationship with a desirable woman, he satisfies his reproductive instinct by acquiring an attractive mate.
This applies in the short term to his desire to establish such a relationship in the first place, and it can apply in the longer term if he intends to have children with the woman.
If the woman had resources that the man needed to satisfy his survival and/or safety motivations, the relationship could serve those purposes also.
Creating an important relationship with another person serves a social function.
A romantic relationship with a desirable woman could also be a status symbol among his friends, which is another social function.
The relationship can yield self-actualization, self-fulfillment, or fulfillment of self-fulfillment depending on the degree to which he was satisfied with his ability to seek and find a mate.
The relationship can also satisfy those motivations if it offers him further opportunities to use his abilities.
The relationship will yield self-gratification by making the man feel good as a result of satisfying any of those motivations. Or… the man could be preoccupied with feeling like he’s satisfying his motivations, even though he isn’t. Basically, he would be doing things that seemed like they should satisfy his motivations and he would be imagining that they were satisfying his motivations, even though they weren’t really.
He would be imagining that their relationship was working out the way he wanted it to, just so he could go on feeling good about it. Then he would be assuming that the fact that he felt good about the relationship proved that it was working out. And if the woman felt like it wasn’t working out, she must just be making it all up. I’m sure we’ve all had relationships like that at some point, right?
You could say that he’s not in love with the woman; he’s just in love with the feeling of being in love. The woman was just the catalyst he needed to start the process.
So he better not be surprised when the woman kicks him out of her bed because she realizes that as far as he’s concerned, any other woman could serve in her place equally well.
As anticlimactic as I know it sounds for me to break love down into a mathematical equation, when Juliet stood on her balcony and said, “Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, oh Romeo?” this is what she was feeling. She remembered Romeo made her feel good in the past, and she imagined he would make her feel good again in the future, so she perceived his presence to offer her the most effective means to preserve the survival of her DNA.
As it turns out, she was wrong, because by the end of the play they were both dead, but at the time, that’s what she perceived.