Motives validation
Many different general systems of human motives have been postulated in the psychological literature. However, as yet, no consensus on which motives should be nominated, nor how many there are, has emerged. Recently, we deduced the existence of a number of motives using a logical argument derived from evolutionary theory; that humans have evolved an independent psychological ‘engine’ to respond to each kind of evolutionary problem set by a dimension of the human niche, or life-way. Here, we confirm the existence of 14 out of 15 of these postulated motives using factor analysis on a web-based sample of 500 respondents from the UK: Lust, Hunger, Fear, Disgust, Attract, Love, Nurture, Hoard, Create, Affiliate, Status, Justice, Curiosity, and Play. The items which loaded most strongly for each factor confirmed the expected core value of each motive. Comfort did not emerge, perhaps because it is more about satisfying specific physiological requirements than a cluster of activities linked semantically by the concept of attaining ‘comfort’. We believe this analysis can form the foundation of a scale for use in applied psychological work ranging from personality testing to personnel selection to public health program design.
Keywords
Motivation, Human motives, Network psychometrics, Individual differences, Life history theory, Human behavioural ecology, Evolutionary psychologyItem Type | Dataset |
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Capture method | Unknown |
Date | 14 February 2024 |
Language(s) of written materials | English |
Creator(s) |
Aunger, R |
LSHTM Faculty/Department | Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases > Dept of Disease Control |
Participating Institutions | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom |
Funders |
Project Funder Grant Number Funder URI Adaptive Foundations of Culture: Toward Understanding Cultural Orientations through the Lens of Life History Trade-Offs 24-00-013 UNSPECIFIED |
Date Deposited | 20 Jan 2016 15:11 |
Last Modified | 29 Oct 2024 11:09 |
Publisher | Open Science Framework |
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