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Psychologists have long been interested in how people prioritize life goals.

Life History Theory focuses on the tradeoffs we make allocating energy to survival, growth, and reproduction.

A recent study found surprising consensus among young people regarding their most important goals.

What are your fundamental motives, your most important life goals? This motivation question has busied psychologists and theorists for millennia. One interesting approach to addressing this question, Life History Theory, borrows from evolutionary science to focus on the tradeoffs that individuals make in allocating energy to survival, growth, and reproduction.

According to the theory, life unfolds via a competitive process between various forms in order to obtain energy from the environment and convert it for survival and reproduction. A hunter may obtain energy through consuming prey and, in turn, allocate it toward survival (building shelter) and reproductive (having sex) activities. The challenge is that energy is limited, and its allocation therefore requires tradeoffs—forced decisions about how to spend it. Expend much energy now, and you’ll have less later. Focus on doing one task, and you’ll have nothing left for another. Evolution will favor those who allocate wisely toward fitness. In this sense, natural selection is expected to result in optimal strategies. These strategies are bound to differ by individual and environmental characteristics. Optimal energy allocation in children, for example, is bound to differ from that in adults. Newborns optimally allocate energy differently from adolescents; healthy people may differ from the sick, and stable environments may reward different strategies than unstable ones.

A recent 2024 study by Joyce Benenson of Harvard and Henry Markovits of University of Quebec used this idea as a framework for examining the current desired goals of young adults. The study looked at how young adults weigh the importance of various life goals that have been shown to impact survival and/or reproduction.

Working within an evolutionary framework, the authors focused on life goals that have been shown to affect survival and reproduction odds in mammals (human and non-human). The authors selected 16 such goals, dividing them into three categories: reproduction (e.g. desire for offspring), individual goals related to survival and/or reproduction (e.g., health, energy, physical strength, emotional strength, resource acquisition, skills at work, and additional talents), and alliances enhancing survival and/or reproduction (pair bonds, social connections, multiple sexual partners, etc.).

Participants (851, childless, 18–23-year-old adults from 11 world regions) were presented online with the list of 16 goals. Each participant was asked to weigh the importance of every goal in his or her ideal life. Weights had to add up to 100, requiring tradeoffs (prioritizing some goals over others).

Results revealed strong agreement across participants regarding their most highly preferred goals. In fact, only four goals were weighted above chance: Finding a beloved romantic partner, being physically and emotionally healthy, and earning money or resources. In comparison, lower-weighted goals included having children, being physically attractive, being physically strong, being skilled at work, and having good relationships with others besides a romantic partner. Interestingly, having many sexual partners was the least important goal across the sample (although men valued it higher than women).

As would be expected, the authors found some sex differences in goal preference. Specifically, men weighted higher the goals of having a talent outside work, being physically strong, having a physically attractive romantic partner, and having many sexual partners. This finding aligns with the evolutionary argument that having multiple fertile romantic and sexual partners increases the odds of mating success for men.

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Sex differences, however, did not emerge regarding the importance of earning money or resources, being physically attractive, the perceived benefits of having nearby kin or friends, or good relationships with community members.

One interesting finding was the low priority placed on having children. This seems to contradict the evolutionary assumption about the primacy of the reproductive motive. The authors speculate that this finding may show “that the desire to have children is not an evolved motivation. Instead, evolution may have relied on the desires to form romantic/sexual bonds to produce children.” An environment, such as ours, where childbearing is decoupled from romantic/sexual bonds, allows for favoring the latter over the former.

In sum, it appears that—when asked to choose—young people value love, health, and wealth most highly. All of these goals are adaptive, yet they form an incomplete strategy toward well-being. Current research has shown that life satisfaction and well-being depend heavily on community and social connectedness, both of which were rated low by participants in this study. This may have implications for young people's overall well-being. To put a spin on the Rolling Stones' lyric, even if you can get what you want, you may still not have everything you need to be happy.

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