The interest of the human being in those elements that are elemental for life is nothing new. At the same time as the philosophy of opulence, a way of understanding life emerged that emphasizes the need to reduce basic desires to their minimum expression: oriental asceticism, epicureanism, meditation practice or, more recently, the example of Henry David Thoreau and his life in Walden .

However, all these tendencies have in common the renunciation of desires from a spiritual or, at least, a deeply subjective point of view. What happens when science intervenes in these investigations?

What are man’s basic desires?

In an investigation whose goal was to find the structure of desires characteristic of human beings, the American psychologist Steven Reiss found 16 basic desires, sources of motivation, which are key when it comes to explaining our acts, the volitional dimension of our species: what moves us when it comes to interpreting, choosing and acting on our environment. This categorisation of desires into 16 factors is based on a study in which more than 6,000 people participated and is a way of approaching the study of what shapes our behaviour and our way of satisfying needs.

However, also serves to explain the personality of each person according to which wishes we give more importance to and which we give less importance to. In this way, and depending on which desire is the most important for us, it would be possible to find what Reiss defines as the ” point of happiness ” of each person.

The author first published this classification in 2000 with the book Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities , and is the following:

1- Acceptance , the need to be appreciated.

2- Curiosity , the need to learn.

3- Food , the need to eat.

4- Family , the need to have and raise children.

5- Honor , the need to be loyal to the traditional values of a community.

6- Idealism , the need for social justice.

7- Independence , the need to have individuality guaranteed.

8- Order , the need for stable and organized environments.

9- Physical activity , the need for exercise.

10- Power , the need to have a certain capacity of influence.

11- Romantic love , the need for sex and beauty.

12- Saving , the need to accumulate

13- Social contact , the need to have relationships with others.

14- Status , the need to be socially significant.

15- Tranquility , the need to feel safe.

16- Revenge , the need to strike back.

Tinting

It should be remembered, however, that the list of objectives, goals and sources of motivation are practically infinite in human beings, given that any concept or representation can embody one of them.

In addition, cultural variations between people in each region must be taken into account, which can reward or suppress certain manifestations of desire and will. Reiss proposes a list of 16 basic desires common to all people, which however take a different form depending on our decisions and our context , a theory of motivation.