What motivates people?

June 9th, 2009  |  Published in Economics idea, Psychology  |  4 Comments

One of the main premises of my economic thinking is that pay incentives aren’t needed to motivate workers. To support this idea, I’m going to start reading more about motivation.

I just took a quick look at the Wikipedia article on motivation and found an interesting list of sixteen needs that Professor Steven Reiss believes guide nearly all of human behavior. They are:

  1. Acceptance, the need for approval
  2. Curiosity, the need to think
  3. Eating, the need for food
  4. Family, the need to raise children
  5. Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one’s clan/ethnic group
  6. Idealism, the need for social justice
  7. Independence, the need for individuality
  8. Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable environments
  9.  Physical Activity, the need for exercise
  10. Power, the need for influence of will
  11. Romance, the need for sex
  12. Saving, the need to collect
  13. Social Contact, the need for friends (peer relationships)
  14. Status, the need for social standing/importance
  15. Tranquility, the need to be safe
  16. Vengeance, the need to strike back

Without using pay incentives, jobs can help people meet their need for acceptance, curiosity, honor, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, social contact, status, and tranquility. Any given job probably won’t help meet all of these needs. However, it is reasonable to expect that almost all jobs could help workers meet at least one or two of these needs.

If a job can be made to satisfy some of a worker’s needs, perhaps pay incentives aren’t needed to get them to exert themselves.

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  1. Adam says:

    June 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm (#)

    Of course pay incentives aren’t necessary. Look at the antebellum American south; slaves weren’t motivated to work by being paid.

    So I’d add self-preservation and pain-aversion to that list, among others.

    Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a fantastic exploration of some of the other things that motivate us as well.

  2. Stephen Monrad says:

    June 10th, 2009 at 9:11 am (#)

    Adam.

    I take your point. pain-aversion and self-preservation could fall under 15 – Tranquility: the need to be safe.

    I think the point of the categories is that the multitude of things that motivate us are based on these 16 basic needs. Some things that motivate us could be mixtures of several categories.

  3. Adam says:

    June 10th, 2009 at 9:13 am (#)

    I think the categories are arbitrary and far from exhaustive. I won’t deny that they capture a piece of the picture–that is, that they describe some of what motivates us–but it’s a partial and not particularly detailed piece.

  4. Stephen Monrad says:

    June 10th, 2009 at 9:18 am (#)

    Adam.

    I’m just starting my research into motivation. I haven’t decided how complete or incomplete this list is.

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