Notes on the Neuropsychology of Desire & Motivation

The core of business is giving people what they want. There are many ways this principle has been expressed. For example, as “solving problems”, “reducing pains”, or “creating value”. In the end, it’s simply about giving people something they want.

Then the next question may be, what do people want? Of course, different people want different things at different times, so you will need to do the work of discovering this with whomever your target audience is. Regardless, being able to answer the question “What do people want?” will help you create better products, services, marketing, and communication processes.

To answer this question, I like to refer to first principles. In the context of what people “want”, we can find our first principles in neuroscience and psychology.
I’ve found that there are two notable and useful models that can help explain the neuropsychology of desire.

The first model is “Reiss’ 16 Desires”, which are 16 main desires Dr. Steven Reiss found in his research. He also covers the psychological and biological functions at play when it comes to each desire.

The second model details two classes of motives covered in An Integrated Guide to Consumer Neuroscience . The authors cover the main, highly validated motives covered in the past several decades of neuropsychology and consumer neuroscience research.

For each work, I’ll summarize the individual desire or motive and then give marketing and persuasion insights.

You can use this to help with:

• Coming up with hooks for your social media videos

• Text copy for your landing pages

• Topics to cover in your blog, vlog, or other media

• Headlines to test in your ads

• Creative to test in your ads