I suspect that many Dopers are, indeed, primarily driven by curiosity, with independence as a close second. However, I might be wrong, and I’m very curious how different Dopers score on this test.
Please take the test below and list your scores !
[ol]
[li]Curiosity. Do you have a thirst for knowledge? [/li][li]Acceptance. Do you have a hard time coping with criticism? [/li][li]Order. Does it upset you when things are out of place?[/li][li]Physical Activity: Is physical fitness very important to you? [/li][li]Honor: Are principles and loyalty very important to you? [/li][li]Power: Do you often seek leadership roles?[/li][li]Independence: Do you think you won’t be happy if you’re not independent and self-reliant? [/li][li]Social contact: Do other people know you as a sociable and fun-loving person?[/li][li]Family: Does your family come first for you?[/li][li]Status: Are you impressed with people who own expensive things?[/li][li]Idealism: Compared with most people, are you more concerned with social causes? [/li][li]Vengeance: Is it very important for you to get even with those who insult or offend you? [/li][li]Romance: Is seeking and/or receiving love very important in your life? Here is an alternate question for people who are more inclined towards sex: Compared to your peers, do you spend much more time pursuing or having sex? [/li][li]Eating: Do you love to eat and often fantasize about food? [/li][li]Saving: Do you love to save for the future or hate to throw things away? [/li][li]Tranquility: Instead of noise and excitement, do you seek calm and tranquility? [/li][/ol]
[QUOTE]
**How to score: **
If you are strongly motivated by that particular drive, rate it +3.
If the motivation doesn’t interest you much one way or the other, rate it 0.
If you really couldn’t care less, rate the motivation minus 3
You can rate drives minus 2 , minus 1, plus 1 or plus 2 accordingly.
Try to be factual and objective in your evaluation. Sometimes, we think that a particular quality or value is important to us, but our actions indicate otherwise.
Curiosity, Honor, Independence (all +3)
and lowest on:
Vengeance (-3), Status (-2) and Eating (-1)
I think, though, it’s really hard to objectively evaluate yourself - I think we all want to score highest on the ones we see as the ‘best’. Sure, we won’t all see the same things as the best, but I bet that, for most of us, they’re similar. Could be wrong though.
Honor, Order, Independence, Social Contact, Family, (Coffee!)
Lowest Scores:
Vegenance, Status, Saving
I noticed that I would say, “Oh yeah, thats definitely me.” Then when I thought twice about my actions , I realized that it rated lower than I thought. I do agree though, Lsura , its hard to evaluate yourself objectively.
I agree, and for that reason it’s quite interesting to let somebody who knows you well, fill out the test for you. If the two scores are similar (2 points or less difference) then you are clear to others in your goals and values. That’s good thing, because being clear on what’s important to you makes it easier to reach your goals. If you state firmly that you’re not very keen on Social Contact, for instance, hopefully people will stop dragging you to parties.
I think the beauty of this system is that it doesn’t pass judgement on what should be important, but recognizes that people have different strengths and priorities.
So much time and life-energy can be wasted pursuing someone elses priorities!
By me, he missed a couple of major motivators, perhaps because they’re so basic that they just didn’t occur to him.
Physical comfort.
Ease (laziness).
The reason I mention them is that they are the strongest motivators in my life, unfortunately. But there isn’t any one who doesn’t share these motivations in some aspect, to some extent.
Oy! I can see your point (those two would be high on my list as well) but laziness can also be seen as the absence of any drive. That would make it fall into another category alltogether.
I just wanted to bump this thread, because I’m really curious about the scores of other Dopers.
What category? Seriously. I mean, what category of drive does having no drive stronger than those of comfort and ease fall into?
I mean, sure I have other drives. I value honor, family, tranquility, and lord knows, I value eating! In fact, with the exception of vengeance, there’s nothing on that list that doesn’t attract me to some degree at least some of the time. But none of it ever wins consistently over comfort and above all, ease. (Yes, I know this renders me pathetic, if not contemptible. But it’s what I am and at my age, 48, it’s highly unlikely I’m going to change. So self-acceptance is pretty much the only option other than suicide I’ve got.)
The things I rated highest were curiosity, power, independence, idealism, romance and eating.
Lowest was status. That’s right, I crave power but I don’t necessarily admire other people with “status” or want it for myself. I’m happy to have secret power! Like Batman!
My only +3 was curiosity.
+2’s were order, power, independence, vengeance and romance. I guess i’m a lover and a fighter.
I had almost no minuses at all, and the ones I did have were only -1.
My -1’s were: status, saving and tranquility. Which is good because I don’t have any of those.
Some of those questions were ambiguous of course. I don’t need expensive stuff, but I do value quality a lot, which tends to make me buy more expensive things. and I don’t love to eat so much as I love to cook, which means I’ll be thinking about food (but about cooking it, not eating it.)
Well, first of all, I value tranquillity, which I’ll lump in with ease, extremely highly as a personalitytrait. It takes a strong mind to be capable of amusing itself, without the world having to provide all sorts of entertainment and validation. Easy-loving people are usually capable of being happy while doing not much at all. In fact, they are creating contentment, comfort and happiness from scratch, and that is a talent undervalued mainly because you can’t sell these people anything, and it is hard manipulating them into doing stuff. If they are left in peace, they’re already happy just being, damn them.
Secondly, the taxonomical classicification of psychologytraits is, to put it mildly, not yet finished, and subject of endless debate with a lot of squabbeling over definitions. But what the hell, my 2 cents on ease/comfort is that it is not comparable to the other traits, because it can occur combined with almost any other drive. The drives are the sort of music; your love of ease, or fanatism on the opposite end of the scale, can be compared to how loud the volume of the music is set.
My 3’s were curiosity, honor, social contact, family, eating, and tranquility.
My 0’s were physical activity, power, status and vengeance.
I guess love for eating and a distaste for much physical activity would explain my shape and weight, plus my incipient diabetes. My disregard for status and power and love of family and social contact probably explain why I’m not President but get along with people pretty well.
I get as angry as anyone when I’ve been injured by someone, but I get over it quickly. Vengeance has no place in my life.
I don’t know that an accumulation of any set of these desires actually makes for happiness as much as the pursuit of them. I think of happiness as a process and not an end. Happiness as an end is “heaven,” and I can think of nothing more boring than a place entirely free of stress and troubles. Working out difficulties in life is a kind of non-physical exercise that, to me at least, trumps physical exertion. For example, the mental exercise of reading and posting on the SDMB rates far higher with me than a trip to the gym. I’ll probably die thinking so. And probably sooner than a more athletic type. That’s okay.
Whether happiness is important is for every individual to answer. If it’s the process, then I think it is important. If happiness is an end, it holds no importance for me.
