Who am I?: 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions Define Our Persona: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personality [Taschenbuch]

 

 

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This book is based on a thorough study of value-based motivation in order to identify the bases of each person's identity and behavior. Because of the methodology used, this work represents a breakthrough in understanding how and why individuals differ. It takes us for the first time beyond the frequently-cited Maslow hierarchy of needs onto a better metric for looking at individual differences.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in human motivation, how to have better relationships with others, self-understanding, and self-improvement as well as scholars in the field of human behavior. The book is written in a simple, clear style, but also contains the necessary references and rigor to appeal to the scholar.

The significance of this book is that it is the first scientific study to successfully challenge the often cited pain-pleasure principle of motivation and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This study is based on developing a long list of human values, testing those using behavior-based questions asked of individuals and observers with a cross-section of society, and then looking for common value areas in a large sample drawn from the United States, Canada, and Japan. The resulting responses were then clustered statistically to locate 16 common value areas that were present in almost every individual tested.

These value areas are power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical activity, and tranquility. You will have to read the book to find out exactly what is meant by these areas, but don't think about them too literally. The meanings are different from the common dictionary definitions in several cases (such as with romance, which is a cross that includes sex and beauty). There is a test you can use to find out how oriented you are (very, average, or less than average) to each area in the book that I found very interesting to take.

The book goes on to distinguish between enjoyment from pleasant sensations (which is fleeting and depends mostly on how well born and wealthy you are) and value-based pleasure which anyone can achieve at a high level. Christopher Reeve is cited as an example of someone who has lots of fear and pain from his paralysis, but lots of value-based pleasure based on his attachment to his family, his idealism, and his desire to help others like himself.

The author goes on to argue that these same values are found in the primates most like humans, so he thinks that the values are primarily inherited as a species. On the other hand, the degree of your feeling for these areas is conditioned by environmental influences like family values, exposure, and experiences.

He makes a strong case for individuality, because there are 43 million potential combinations of attributes possible. To drive that point home and to explain more about the values, the author also provides profiles of Howard Hughes, Jackie Kennedy, and Humphrey Bogart among others.

In his comparison to Maslow, he finds many similarities and many important differences. He finds more differences among individuals than Maslow did. His work is also based on measurement while Maslow's work is a theory, without a measurement basis. He also found that Maslow was wrong about the importance of safety and order.

In Part 2 of the book, the author takes on what all of this means for enjoying more personal fulfillment, improving your relationships with others, how men and women differ, the impact of aging, the implications for your working life, the effect on child rearing, and how it all relates to sports and spirituality.

A potentially controversial finding is that spirituality is not a basic human need, but rather a context for expressing more fundamental needs among the 16 listed above. I had some trouble with that, and found that what was written did not seem to describe spirituality as I experience it. Take a look, and see what you think.

The book goes on to relate many fundamental communications problems to differences in values, with many specific examples. I thought that this section was terrific because it helps explain the reasons why some stallbusting methods work better than others in overcoming the communications stall, the most common one we humans experience.

The book describes how many common psychological problems relate to certain value profiles (including the ones for depression), and how advertising slogans appeal to major value types.

I found the suggestions for experiencing greater fulfillment of these values to be useful and helpful. That's an important payoff for you in reading and applying the lessons of this book to your own life. Those who are looking for a potential spouse will like the section on matching values and how that can help establish a better relationship. I suspect that a lot of relationship problems really start with value conflicts that are never resolved.

The book is very affirming, because it does not exalt one set or combination of values over others. In a sense, it creates a full appreciation for the uniqueness and specialness of each individual.

The book will be a paradigm shifter of the sort that overcomes the disbelief stall (why do you do what you do?) about the sources of human behavior, makes major progress on the communications stall, and shows many improved ways for people to make rapid progress in the best tradition of 2,000 percent solutions.

1 Star = bad

2 Star = average

3 Star = Ok

4 Star = Very Good

5 Star = Must Read

I was looking foreward reading this book since the reviews were quite well. Unfortunately the book did not hold what I have expected. In this review I would like to outline some points that are worthwhile to mention.

16 Basic Desires: Steven Reiss outlines a new approach of explaining the basic desires of each of us. Amongst those desires you can find "power", "idealism" or "curiosity" but also "romance", "physical activity" or "eating". Each of those desires is shortly explained.

Examples: The book is full of examples. Some of them are very good some are a little bit farefetched. In order to give some personality to the examples, Steven Reiss attributed to each example a name. Sometimes I had difficulites to place these people and to decide in what context these persons stand towards the author.

History: The author did a really good job on the background work. The historical foundation is always short and simple.

Self Test: In my opinion the test at the end of the book is very simple and not to sophisticated. Anyhow I think, that answering the given questions gives you a good idea about who you are.

All in all I was disappointed about the outcome of the book. Two things I have to criticise:

1.) Sometimes I had the impression that Mister Reiss needed to fill the book with text. With some chapters I really had my difficulties. One of those was the chapter about communication. In my opinion a shorter version of this book would just be fine (about max. 50 pages).

2.) I missed the "so what part". After I analyzed "who I am" I wanted to know what is coming next. Exactly at this point the book is a little bit to vague. I would have expected some deeper insights. Let us see an example: You know, that one of your desires is "eating". The author's consequence is that you should either join a gourmet club or make your job in a restaurant. You can decide for yourself whether such an advice is good enough.

Anyway, if you read this book, I recommend the following process:

1.) Just start with the test in the appendix. This way you can skip chapter one to six.

2.) Decide whether you want general information (chapter 7), information about your relationship (chapter 8), about your work (chapter 9), about your family (chapter 10) or about sports (chapter 11). You must not read all of them just the chapters that are important for you and where you see your strength (based on the test).

This book is highly recommendable for three reasons:

1) it provides 16 convincing categories of basic human desires (I tried to come up with others, but did not manage to find any more relevant). Some categories are straightforward and intuitive (e.g. desire for status), others include surprising subelements (e.g. romance, which includes love, sex, but also beauty and aesthetics). Unlike Maslow, the basic beliefs are not set in hierarchical order, which means they are equitable. It helps to understand that other people are not behaving "peculiar" or "with bad intentions", they might only follow their strongest desires.

2) it is highly practical. Estalishing your Reiss profile, teaches you a lot about yourself. Doing the profile for your partner, family members, friends, teachs you even more. In particular, diverging intensities of a single belief can lead to conflicts. A whole chapter of the book is dedicated to these interpersonal situations of "not getting it". For me this was an eye opener on past conflicts and hopefully is a remedy against potential future conflicts.

3) it is written in a appropriate, personal, entertaining way, without becoming theoretical, esoteric or judgemental.

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