Categorizing People: Analyzing People’s Motivation

I like analyzing people’s characteristics. Partly it is because I’m trained to be a teacher and it is useful to understand students’ characteristics to help them find the most suitable learning strategies. Partly it is because it serves me a purpose of getting them to ‘work’ or of getting something from them.

Of my experiences, I can safely categorize people’s motivation in doing something into four categories: money, personal glory, network, and altruism. Of course, one cannot be categorized into only one box. The characteristics may be a combination of some categories, but with one category to be more dominant. I even found that a person can wear different masks at a time, being in one category for certain occasions and/or purposes.