Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices

by Paul R. Lawrence, Paul R. Lawrence

A touchstone for understanding how we behave on the job "This is a stimulating and provocative book in bringing together important ideas from different fields, and, thereby, giving us a whole new slant on 'human nature.'" --Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, MIT In this astonishing, provocative, and solidly researched book, two Harvard Business School professors synthesize 200 years of thought along with the latest research drawn from the biological and social sciences to propose a new theory, a unified synthesis of human nature. Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria have studied the way people behave in that most fascinating arena of human behavior-the workplace-and from their work they produce a book that examines the four separate and distinct emotive drives that guide human behavior and influence the choices people the drives to acquire, bond, learn, and defend. They ultimately show that, just as advances in information technology have spurred the New Economy in the last quarter of the twentieth century, current advances in biology will be the key to understanding humans and organizations in the new millennium.

Genres: Psychology, Business, Nonfiction, Science, Self Help, Leadership, Popular Science

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2001

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's the book in a nutshell: "we think there are 4 drives that drive all human behavior, and other people should do the research to see if it's true. Also, if it *is* true, here's how it applies to GM, HP, and the Russian and Irish economies". The rest of the book reads as a summary of popular science books and how they could reinforce the authors' ideas.

In general, this is pseudoscience put together by two Harvard Business School professors and strongly smacks of confirmation bias: the authors seem to have decided their premise, and then looked for evidence to support it. From their uncritical embrace of the Computational Theory of Mind (and specifically Pinker's version) to faulty reasoning like: "One way to test for the evolution of such subconscious drives is to ask a simple question: 'Which species of animal would be more likely to survive-one whose central nervous system has evolved modules that drive behavior toward essential resources, or one without such mental drive modules?" This book is full of hopeful thinking and poor science.

The book did improve a bit in the final third, where, if you assume that the main premise is correct, the authors show some practical examples of how it could be applied. But I think that's a pretty big assumption.

I disliked this book from the start. It grew on me toward the end, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The authors write their own damning criticism, when they say, "[their theory] is therefore vulnerable to being attacked as a Kipling-style 'just-so story,' as [noted evolutionary biologist] Stephen Jay Gould might say."

I am no Stephen Jay Gould, but this is a just-so story.

[Tristan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see how the ‘4 drives’ do operate to explain some behavior. But this attempts to introduce a unifying framework for human behavior. It suffers from anthro-centric, American-ideology centric, white-male-reference centric reasoning which didn’t strike me as contemporary, or actually holistic.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uses a basis of neurology and other disciplines to define what drives human beings. It breaks it down into four fundamental drives that sometimes intermingle, but can't be further simplified. These are the Drive to Acquire, the Drive to Bond, the Drive to Learn, and the Drive to Defend. The book uses this information to tell you how to best manage people. That is the vibe I got from it.

The book devotes three chapters to telling us about how the brain evolved, four chapters to telling us about the four drives, three chapters telling us about the context in which they work, and the final two chapters talk about Human Nature and how it relates to society. It is quite scholarly and explains the main thesis really well.

[Alaina Herfindal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basic - The only nugget I got from the book is an idea to create a most robust connections in a community by "forcing people" to interact based on the story of a priest having all members at the end of church put their name in a hat - pairing them up - and requiring that they meet for a 30-45 minute coffee/tea.

My thoughts: People innately want to connect with others but life experience makes it scary to reach out. Creating a forced element removes requiring people to put themselves out there and forces people to focus on similarities to get through the time period.

[Veronique Zancarini · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of summarizing what drives us humans is actually interesting and the authors did quite a good job. The concept they develop is clear and made me think a lot about how people I know and/or myself act sometimes. The first part (describing each drive and trying to explain why they are there and how they make us do what we do) is quite interesting.
However, I have to say that the second part (with less theory and more examples) needs a lot more developing. I found for example their explanation of the Russian crisis way oversimplified. The authors presented their ideas well and yes, they make sense. However, when it came to choosing examples to support their ideas, I found their choices were rather poor and that they just brushed over the subject instead of going deeper. I think it is a real shame because as a whole, their theory make a lot of sense.

[Lamec Mariita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book and I think it's a fascinating read. The author says we have 4 basic drives (drive to aquire, bond, learn, and defend) and these are the basic motivators for humans. I think they should be seen as psychological rather than biological. The main theme of this text is how we base our decision making on those four psychological drives that every person is born with regardless of religion, race or other factors.

[deleted d · Rating 2 out of 5]

average

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I encountered this book as a citation during a mandatory training course at work. It is suggestive but does not make its case convincingly. Its biggest flaw is the vague definition of the four drives that are its central topic.

After reading, I believe that dividing human nature into these four drives is a reasonable division that could have utility for modeling organizations and individual behavior. However, they do not make a good case that (1) drives are a superior way to model human nature (as opposed to things like bounded rationality maximizing a utility function) or (2) these drives are the best drive model available.

The book's biggest weakness is that the authors poorly define the drives, how they function, and when they are satisfied. They rely on a high-level intuitive description and expect the readers' intuitions to follow theirs. However, when they applied their model, I was often (almost always, it seems in retrospect) wondering why it was those drives and not others they highlighted. For example, at the end of the book, they mention cave paintings of battle as evidence of the drive to defend in ancient humans/hominids. First, this is not required. Some battles are aggression on all sides, such as when a new resource appears, and everyone fights to claim it. I could also characterize battle as acquisition (the aggressor in a fight for territory or booty). Battle is also bonding (a group activity that strengthens the social bonds among the group members). I can even see a battle as learning (the trope of the warrior always seeking to hone his skills against better opponents).

The lack of clarity about what it means for a drive to be "satisfied" limits their intended applications. They say that institutions that satisfy all four drives are more adaptive and will produce more fulfilled humans. Using my analysis of battle above, I could say that battle satisfies all four drives. Thus, we would predict that perpetual battle is an excellent state for humans leading to flourishing and fulfillment. The authors would be appalled.

The book was provocative, and I want to see how this developed in the 20+ years since its publication. However, it is a profoundly flawed work if one wants to apply its ideas to any practical problems. I am not convinced of its truth and will henceforth doubt any work based upon it without further refinement.

[Denise Hatcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book. It was refreshing to read about what motivates ALL humans instead of another text about how different different groups are. I spent a lot of time trying to process the first three chapters and memorize the four different drives. The next chapters seemed to flow more quickly, and I looked forward to finding time to read this book whenever I could.

Yes! I agree that four sources of motivation are the desires to: acquire, bond, learn, and defend. The first three chapters are in a section entitled “Bridging Gaps.” Then, chapters four through seven are each dedicated to explaining and providing examples of the drives that motivate the choices we, as humans, make. The third and fourth sections provide ample examples. The afterward identifies different ways in which this theory, that four basic drives motivate all humans, can be furthered examined.

Each chapter starts with a quote and my favorite was on page 171, the start of chapter nine. The authors quoted Charles Darwin who explained, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.” Maybe it is the quiet time of reflection brought on by the covid pandemic, but I found myself thinking about how each of the drives seems so relevant to my own life. Yes, I love being able to know I can buy whatever I feel I might need or want. Yes, my family and friends are important to me. I became a teacher because I wanted to spend my life learning. And, I love my “Mama Bear” hat for a lot of reasons.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand others, or their own life choices.

[Sasa Soso · Rating 3 out of 5]

4things that drives humans sometimes conflict happens, we can use these drives to understand world and how to run our lives and companies successfully.


We’re ultimately motivated by four things: the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to learn and the drive to defend. The drive to acquire doesn’t just make us want material goods like food – it makes us seek out social status too. The drive to acquire also pushes us to have more goods than those around us.(competitive), The drive to acquire and the drive to bond can also conflict, however. When that happens, we have to decide which is more important to us, but luckily we’ve evolved to make good decisions (most of the time!) Our drive to bond can also be harmful sometimes. The drive to bond isn’t just about love: we feel special when we’re part of a group, but we also perceive ourselves differently from those in other groups. That’s what causes the “us vs. them” mentality in social conflicts. It’s called the dyadic instinct and it can lead to discrimination and persecution. Companies can leverage the desire to learn to make their employees happier. Studies have shown that people enjoy their job more if they learn while working. That’s why it feels good to discuss and share new ideas.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Smith discovers evolutionary psychology

This is evolutionary psychology as seen by two professors from the Harvard Business School (!). While some readers may be familiar with a lot of what is presented here, it is agreeable to get a perspective from another academic discipline and a new sense of application. It is especially pleasing because professors Lawrence and Nohria write well and have an appreciation of what an exciting time of biological discovery we are living in, a time when the convergence of knowledge and techniques from various disciplines is giving us the ability to look inside the black box of human nature previously closed.

The authors' use of the term "drives" to designate the source of behaviors is familiar, but the idea that these drives come from modules in the brain, or a network of modules, is what is relatively new. Whether this is just another construct like Freud's ego, id, and superego is an open question. However--and this is important and at the very essence of what is going on in brain science today--unlike Freud's construct, the one presented here is based on something tangible in the brain's structure. As the authors report, recent advances in technology allow us to discern the brain's structure as it works. These observations provide a scientific basis for constructs attempting to explain human behavior. Whether there are four fundamental drives, as messrs. Lawrence and Nohria think, or some other number, or whether an entirely different construct is required, is also an open question. Personally, I find their array persuasive, and I think the idea of "drives" a valuable one. More important though is their understanding that we are motivated by more than rational self-interest, the so-called "invisible hand" from Adam Smith and the market place.

Here are the drives as defined on page 10:

D1 is to acquire objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others.

D2 is to bond with others in mutually beneficial, long-term relationships.

D3 is to learn about and make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

D4 is to defend ourselves, our loved ones, our beliefs, and our resources.

In should be noted that these four drives do not in any way contradict the general finding in biology that individuals tend to behave in such a way as to enhance their reproductive success. What is new is that such "selfish" behaviors include behaviors usually seen as altruistic. Yet I think the authors would enhance their understanding of the idea of "altruistic behavior" by reading Amotz and Avishag Zahavi's The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle (1997) in which the adaptive function of some altruistic behavior is to directly advertise fitness.

It should also be noted, as the authors do on page 63, that "What drives behavior is a contest among the emotions, not the rational calculation alone." In other words, rationality leads to the creation of an emotion which competes with the instinctive emotion. This is an important concept. It is not the rational mind overcoming the emotional mind, but the employment of emotion by the rational mind to overcome instinctive imperatives which sometimes lead us in the wrong direction.

Through the process of "social bonding" as presented on page 83, the authors embrace the idea of group selection, an idea disparaged by notions from Dawkins's "selfish gene" and elsewhere. The idea that there could be the selection of genes that "orient behavior toward the good of the group" has long been discounted by the establishment in evolutionary biology. (This view is changing.) The seemingly very convincing argument has been that "any carrier with a genetic disposition to be nice to others would be, in time, wiped out by the selfish free-riders in the population." (Still on page 83.) My feeling, however (similar to that of the authors), is that for human beings the "in time" part has never had a chance to kick in. This is mainly because of the constant struggle of tribe against tribe throughout human and pre-human history. The benefit to the tribe from individuals willing to risk life and limb for the good of the tribe is clear. What has not been realized by many is that the benefits to the individual by enhancing the tribe's fitness more than offset the loss incurred from taking risks. True, if the tribe faced no outward danger for a long period of time, the genes of the "selfish free-riders" would predominate in the population and the altruistic genes would die out. But that hasn't happened. Consequently groups (bands and tribes) that contained many "altruistic" individuals survived while groups with fewer altruistic individuals died out. Therefore we have the "group selection of individuals" (which is a way I have seen this phenomenon phrased).

I should also like to note that religion, the cultural evolution of, is accounted for in a similar way. Those tribes that had religious beliefs strong enough to facilitate bonding and altruistic behavior survived more often than tribes that did not. This is something that Edward O. Wilson pointed out some years ago in his book On Human Nature.

I think this is an excellent book for the general reader and a fine melding of the ideas of evolutionary biology into the culture of the work place and other loci in the modern world. The authors do a good job of showing how the ideas of evolutionary psychology go far beyond the retelling of "just so" stories, ideas that can help us to understand ourselves and the world in which we live.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”

[Marieli Holbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This whole book could have been an email. The idea is good but it was not developed in a rich way. They develop the theory through very basic and obvious arguments that didn't really bring anything of value to the table.

[May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthropology read if u like to!

[Shivani Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice one demonstrating the 4 drives that drive our behaviors and actions.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book fabulous. It has already changed how I view human nature as a leader, as a member of my Family, as a member of a larger profession. Recommend to leaders, managers, social scientists, psychologists. Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria explore four fundamental (i.e. innate) and distinct drives that all humans have - acquire, bond, learn, and defend. The strength of their argument lies in their research - anthropological, cultural and organizational. Their research examples are rich in variety and compelling. As of 2001 not yet tested to predict behavior I think anyone would agree that the model is sound in understanding individual and group behavior. For leaders, managers, and political scientists the theory is just as useful in determining how to shape behavior.

[Maura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a lot of practical information. The breakdown of human nature into 4 drives (to acquire, to bond, to learn, to defend) is interesting, but the evolutionary biology analysis seems a little simplistic. I'm glad I don't live in a world where most people's selections of mates has ever seemed as sexist and reductionist as the authors suggest.

The analysis of organizational failures resulting from the lack of one or more of these drives in the individuals' roles is more interesting. I would never have extrapolated that HP strove to include all 4 drives in new openings, or that GM lacked some of these drives in reducing its operators to mindless work (no learning, little bonding between managers and reports) and forcing suppliers into painful price reductions (no bonding).

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explains free will as the result of balancing the four drives underlying human emotions: the drive to acquire, to learn, to bond with others and to defend oneself and one's group.

The authors speculate that all of these drives are the result of natural selection: prehistoric females preferred males who could bond with them, learn, acquire and share.

So why is there war and fanaticism? People pervert the desire to learn by falling for extreme ideologies, and pervert the desire to bond by uniting against common enemies.

However, I wish the authors had explained one puzzling event of recent decades: the collapse of the desire to bond in affluent nations, as measured by plunging marriage and birth rates.

[Richard Pfau · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Driven" is a well-written scholarly account that is aimed at synthesizing information about human behavior from a variety of fields ranging from evolution and biology to the social sciences. However, the processes discussed and four drives that the book focuses upon seem better explained (i.e., in more detail, based on neural processes) by a meta-theory called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT). For example, PCT can help one realize that the four drives seem to be four categories of many different but related goals, desires, purposes, norms, standards, … (called "references" by PCT) and that humans behave to avoid or reduce neural error signals resulting from differences between one's perceptions and those references. (For more information about PCT see IAPCT.org)

[Bart-Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was one of the hardest books I've ever read since university (. If you aspire to become an anthropologist this book is absolutely worth reading. The book covers an interesting subject that humans have 4 basic drives: to acquire, to bond, to learn and to defend. Every action can be defined as driven by of one or more combinations of these drives. I helps explain and even predict human behavior.

[Adam Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read and interesting premise, worth the read. My only complaint is that the book was published in 2002 and is it deals with several emerging fields (evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, etc). Consequently, some of the information might alread be a bit outdated. A good read but I would recommend some other similar books that have been published recently first.

[Jill · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could turn back time and choose NOT to read this book, I would. I was looking for something that I could apply to my own life, but instead I got something a bit too academic and repetitive to sink my teeth into. Blah.

[Leonardo Campos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gostei bastante do livro, acho que adicionou bastante informação interessante.

Basicamente o livro estuda quatro motivadores humanos e tenta explicar a formação deles dada nossa evolução como espécie.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was included in my book: The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. www.100bestbiz.com

[James Solano · Rating 4 out of 5]

good examples of what drives us and how.

[Elizabeth]

As seen in FYI: For Your Improvement.