Explain why people who lack social contact are more prone to serious health problems.

Four-drive theory includes four fundamental drives identified from earlier psychological, sociological, and anthropological research. These drives are: Drive to acquire. This is the drive to seek, take, control, and retain objects and personal experiences. It is a variation of the need for achievement, competence, status and self-esteem, and to some extent self-actualization.35 The drive to acquire also motivates competition. Drive to bond. This drive is a variation of the need for belonging and affiliation described by Maslow and McClelland. It explains why our self-concept is partly defined by associationsPage 135 with social groups (see Chapter 3). It may also explain why people who lack social contact are more prone to serious health problems.36 The drive to bond motivates people to cooperate and, consequently, is essential for organizations and societies. Drive to comprehend. This is similar to Maslow’s primary need to know. People are inherently curious and need to make sense of their environment and themselves.37 They are motivated to discover answers to unknown as well as conflicting ideas. To some degree, the drive to comprehend is related to self-actualization. Drive to defend. This is the drive to protect ourselves physically, psychologically, and socially. Probably the first drive to develop, it creates a fight-or-flight response when we are confronted with threats to our physical safety, our possessions, our self-concept, our values, and the well-being of others. How Drives Influence Motivation and Behaviour Recall from Chapter 3 that the stimuli received through our senses are quickly and nonconsciously tagged with emotional markers.38 According to four-drive theory, the four drives determine which emotions are tagged to incoming stimuli. Most of the time, we aren’t aware of our emotional experiences because they are subtle and fleeting. However, emotions do become conscious experiences when they are sufficiently strong or when they significantly conflict with one another. Four-drive theory applies the model described in the previous section. It states that our social norms, past experience, and personal values direct the motivational force of our emotions to decisions and behaviour that potentially reduce that tension (see Exhibit 5.3). In other words, our mental skill set develops behavioural intentions that are acceptable to society, consistent with our own moral compass, and have a high probability of achieving the goal of fulfilling our felt needs.39