- 01 · model / reviewBerridge & Robinson (2016), “Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction”
Separates incentive salience from pleasure and explains why cue-driven wanting can outlast liking.
- 02 · study / neuroscienceSchultz, Dayan & Montague (1997), “A neural substrate of prediction and reward”
Classic primate evidence for reward-prediction-error signalling in dopamine neurons.
- 03 · review / componentsBerridge, Robinson & Aldridge (2009), “Dissecting components of reward”
A compact account of liking, wanting and learning as separable reward processes.
- 04 · review / pleasureBerridge & Kringelbach (2015), “Pleasure systems in the brain”
Reviews hedonic hotspots and the neural architecture of pleasure.
- 05 · review / bodyCraig (2002), “How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body”
Foundational account of interoception as a bodily sense.
- 06 · review / predictive bodyBarrett & Simmons (2015), “Interoceptive predictions in the brain”
Predictive-processing account of how the brain models internal bodily states.
- 07 · review / allostasisTouroutoglou et al. (2020), “Motivation in the Service of Allostasis”
Connects motivation, effort, interoception and the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
- 08 · study / curiosityGruber, Gelman & Ranganath (2014), “States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning”
High curiosity improved memory for answers and incidental material while engaging dopaminergic circuitry.
- 09 · review / habitWood & Neal (2007), “A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface”
Explains how stable contexts cue habits and how goals interact with, rather than erase, them.
- 10 · longitudinal study / habitLally et al. (2010), “How are habits formed?”
Real-world repetition study that made habit formation look gradual and highly variable.
- 11 · theory / timeAinslie (1975), “Specious reward”
Behavioral theory of impulsiveness and hyperbolic delay discounting.
- 12 · review / visceral statesLoewenstein (1996), “Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior”
Shows how hot bodily states reshape valuation and self-prediction.
- 13 · study / scarcityMani et al. (2013), “Poverty impedes cognitive function”
Experiments and farm-cycle data on financial concerns and cognitive bandwidth.
- 14 · study / scarcityShah, Mullainathan & Shafir (2012), “Some consequences of having too little”
Scarcity can narrow attention toward the scarce resource and alter decision-making.
- 15 · review / planningGollwitzer (1999), “Implementation intentions”
Shows how if-then plans link intentions to cues and action.
- 16 · review / belongingBaumeister & Leary (1995), “The need to belong”
Argues that stable interpersonal attachment is a pervasive human motivation.
- 17 · theory / motivationRyan & Deci (2000), “Self-determination theory”
Autonomy, competence and relatedness as basic psychological needs.
- 18 · fMRI study / social rewardIzuma, Saito & Sadato (2008), “Processing of social and monetary rewards”
Reputation and money both activated reward-related striatal regions in a small fMRI study.
- 19 · social theoryFestinger (1954), “A theory of social comparison processes”
Classic account of how people evaluate themselves through comparison with others.
- 20 · cross-cultural reviewHenrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010), “The weirdest people in the world?”
Warns against treating WEIRD samples as representative of humanity.
- 21 · review / self and cultureMarkus & Kitayama (1991), “Culture and the self”
Independent and interdependent self-construals as culturally patterned motivational contexts.
- 22 · preregistered cross-cultural studyWalter et al. (2020), “Sex differences in mate preferences across 45 countries”
Large replication testing evolutionary and biosocial perspectives with 14,399 participants.
- 23 · review / matingBuss & Schmitt (2019), “Mate preferences and their behavioral manifestations”
Reviews context-specific mating strategies, similarities, differences and cultural variation.
- 24 · study / sexual motivesMeston & Buss (2007), “Why humans have sex”
237 reasons; 1,549 ratings; four broad factors and 13 subfactors.
- 25 · replication / age groupsWyverkens et al. (2018), “YSEX? A replication study in different age groups”
4,655 participants and a broad taxonomy of sexual motives across ages.
- 26 · model / sexual responseBasson (2000), “The female sexual response: a different model”
Circular, context-sensitive account of responsive sexual desire.
- 27 · model review / sexual responseBancroft, Graham, Janssen & Sanders (2009), “The dual control model”
Sexual excitation and inhibition as interacting, individually variable processes.
- 28 · scoping review / 152 papersJanssen & Bancroft (2023), “The Dual Control Model of Sexual Response”
Maps applications of excitation and inhibition research from 2009 to 2022.
- 29 · meta-analysis / 132 studiesChivers et al. (2010), “Agreement of self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal”
Separates physiological measures from subjective reports and their methodological moderators.
- 30 · population survey / fantasiesJoyal, Cossette & Lapierre (2015), “What exactly is an unusual sexual fantasy?”
1,516 adults rated 55 fantasies; statistical rarity and stigma are not the same.
- 31 · daily diary + longitudinal couples studyJodouin et al. (2021), “Discrepancy in dyadic sexual desire predicts sexual distress”
229 couples; desire discrepancy predicted later sexual distress in both time horizons.
- 32 · official health guidanceWorld Health Organization, “Defining sexual health”
Sexual health as well-being, safety, respect, pleasure and freedom from coercion.
- 33 · official classificationWHO, ICD-11 overview
Context for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an impulse-control classification.
- 34 · five studies / emotion goalsTamir et al. (2015), “An expectancy-value model of emotion regulation”
Expected usefulness can make people want anger or anxiety and act in emotion-consistent ways.
- 35 · emotion studyMauss et al. (2011), “Can seeking happiness make people unhappy?”
Valuing happiness too intensely can create monitoring pressure and reduce well-being.
- 36 · fMRI / purchase anticipationKnutson et al. (2007), “Neural predictors of purchases”
Anticipated gain, price and purchase decisions recruit distinguishable signals.
- 37 · meta-analysis / cue reactivityNoori et al. (2016), “Largely overlapping neuronal substrates of reactivity to drug, gambling, food and sexual cues”
176 studies and 5,573 individuals; overlapping cue-reactivity networks with modality-specific differences.
- 38 · behavioral addiction modelBrand et al. (2019), “The I-PACE model”
Person, affect, cognition and execution as interacting processes in problematic behaviours.
- 39 · clinical reviewAssessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behavior disorder (2024)
Clinical cautions around diagnosis, misdiagnosis, stigma and sexual medicine expertise.
- 40 · preregistered cue-reactivity studyAntons et al. (2025), “Cue reactivity towards distal cues in problematic internet use”
Generic log-in screens can function as cues in diagnostically validated problematic-use groups.
- 41 · meta-analysis / rewardsDeci, Koestner & Ryan (1999), “A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards”
Important debate about how external rewards can alter intrinsic motivation.
- 42 · motivational theoryHiggins (1997), “Beyond pleasure and pain”
Regulatory focus: promotion and prevention organise different kinds of wanting.
- 43 · motivated cognitionKunda (1990), “The case for motivated reasoning”
Desire can shape which reasons feel available and persuasive.
- 44 · literary theoryRené Girard (1961), Deceit, Desire and the Novel
Mediated or mimetic desire: the model can organise the object’s value.
- 45 · social theoryThorstein Veblen (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class
Conspicuous consumption and status display as social communication.
- 46 · sociologyPierre Bourdieu (1979), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Taste as classed practice, learned distinction and social positioning.
- 47 · cultural theorySara Ahmed (2004), The Cultural Politics of Emotion
How feelings circulate through bodies, signs, histories and institutions.
- 48 · cultural theoryLauren Berlant (2011), Cruel Optimism
When an attachment to a desired object makes flourishing harder to reach.
- 49 · philosophy of agencyHarry Frankfurt (1971), “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”
First-order desires, second-order volitions and the question of what it means to identify with a desire.
- 50 · philosophyBaruch Spinoza, Ethics
Desire as the striving by which a being persists and becomes intelligible through its powers.
- 51 · philosophyAristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Appetite, deliberation, habituation and the practical formation of character.
- 52 · psychoanalysisSigmund Freud (1920), Beyond the Pleasure Principle
A historical attempt to think about repetition, compulsion and the limits of pleasure as a master principle.
- 53 · social learningAlbert Bandura (1977), Social Learning Theory
Models, observation, imitation and self-efficacy as routes by which desire and action are learned.
- 54 · persuasionRobert Cialdini (1984), Influence
Social proof, scarcity, authority, reciprocity and commitment as recurring influence principles.
- 55 · sociology of intimacyEva Illouz (2007), Cold Intimacies
How markets and emotional life can become entangled in modern relationships.
- 56 · technology and marketsShoshana Zuboff (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
A critical account of behavioural prediction, extraction and the commercial shaping of action.
The philosophical and cultural works are not empirical proof for the behavioural claims. They are lenses: ways of asking what a laboratory measure leaves out, who benefits from a norm, and how a private feeling becomes a public economy.
Other people are inside the object.
Many desires are relational in disguise. We may want an object because it grants entry, recognition, safety, independence, desirability or a story about who we are. The need to belong describes a recurring desire for frequent, non-aversive interaction within ongoing bonds; social reward research shows that reputation can recruit some of the same striatal machinery as money.1618
The person can be the reward.
Mutual attention, responsiveness and the expectation of continued contact can make approach feel safe. Exclusion can create an approach-avoidance conflict: connection is wanted while the social field feels dangerous.
The audience can be the reward.
Money, praise, rank and reputation can overlap in reward processing. The overlap helps explain why public recognition can be energising; it does not make social and monetary value interchangeable.18
The model can be the cue.
Festinger’s social-comparison theory and Girard’s literary account of mediated desire point to a social fact: we often learn what to want by seeing what another person notices, owns, praises or pursues.19
Self-determination theory adds a different vocabulary: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Across domains, people tend to sustain motivation more easily when they can experience choice, effectiveness and connection. A 2022 meta-analysis of 144 studies and more than 79,000 students found that teacher autonomy support predicted need satisfaction and self-determined motivation, with competence the strongest predictor in that educational sample.17
These are not three universal buttons. Autonomy can mean independence in one setting and the ability to choose one’s obligations in another. Relatedness can be intimate, communal, spiritual or professional. The value of a desire is partly inherited from the relationships and institutions that make its outcome legible.