Introduction to the pleasure, aggressive and generative drive

This article is inspired by a podcast¹ with Andrew Huberman and Paul Conti. In the podcast, Dr. Conti talks about the three drives that seem to guide our behaviour: the pleasure drive, aggressive drive, and generative drive.

The aggressive drive is our drive for forward active engagement, to take agency and to do something. When our aggressive drive is diminished, we lack motivation, self-determination and forward movement. On the other hand, when our aggressive drive is too high, we enforce ourselves on others and our environment, potentially harming them in the process of doing so.

The pleasure drive is the push for all things pleasurable: friendship, comfort, safety, sex, relief from things that are unpleasant, etc. Too little of it makes us less likely to attain these things whereas too much can lead to overindulgence.

In the podcast show-notes, the generative drive is defined as “the desire to create, build, and contribute to the world in meaningful ways, and to appreciate the process of doing so. […] Generative drive thus represents not just potential, but actionable tendencies toward growth, learning, and creating goodness, both individually and socially.”²

In a way, the generative drive is what motivates us to be productive. But why is it that sometimes we can be productive for hours on end, whereas at other times we seem utterly unable to get started?

Dr. Conti explains that the balance among our drives is crucial: we require a sufficient amount of each, yet the aggressive and pleasure drives should not surpass the generative drive.

In the upcoming days, I will walk you through the process of modelling the (interactions between the) aggressive, pleasure and generative drive. Through the model, we will uncover powerful mechanisms to help us access our productive potential.

Next: How the aggressive, pleasure and generative drive fit together.