What Do College Students Value Most?
A boost in self-esteem over sex, food, alcohol, friends or pay.
Often the key to great cognitive design comes from insight into deeply-felt and unsatisfied psychological needs (intellectual, affective, motivation, volitional) and finding a low friction way of satisfying them. For example, lottery tickets give us hope of “making in big in life”. And Facebook gives us an endless stream of gossip or inside information into the lives of others that we can use to evaluate ourselves.
So I am always on the lookout for new scientific studies that may reveal deeply felt and potentially unsatisfied needs. For example, the Journal of Personality just published a study that found:
“…people valued boosts to their self-esteem more than they valued eating a favorite food and engaging in a favorite sexual activity. Study 2 also showed that people valued self-esteem more than they valued drinking alcohol, receiving a paycheck, and seeing a best friend. Both studies found that people who highly valued self-esteem engaged in laboratory tasks to boost their self-esteem.”
The study group is US college students and boosts to self-esteem include, for example, a high grade or receiving a complement.
This finding has strong implications for anyone looking to improve education or design products and services for college students. It likely holds for other groups as well but what counts as a self-esteem boost is different.
Image Source: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
