What Motivates You? – The Bad, The Ugly and The Good

Economists categorise what motivates people into 3 broad categories, which I will call Bad, Ugly and Good.

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The Bad: Narrow material self-interest. People are only motivated by getting more. More money, more leisure time, more stuff.

The Ugly: Broad self-interest as well as material self-interest. People are motivated by achieving higher status, fame, or better reputation.

The Good: People are also motivated to improve other people’s well-being, be it material or otherwise. This could be because being richer than someone else causes embarrassment. Or it could be pure altruism.

What motivates you?

Obviously, this is not an experiment. Experiments are unbiased and intended to observe behaviour, not influence it. My intention here is just to provoke some thought. What are you living for?

Recommended listening:

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly by Ennio Morricone