And then you have somebody like the Unabomber who goes out into Montana and obviously is not pursuing the opposite sex at all. Social contact is another example. Men, for example, ranked sex and vengeance much higher than women. Women are more sensitive to anxiety and pain than men. Reiss believes we probably retain the same core values and desires throughout our lives, but age takes a toll.
Ambition goes down, sex goes down, everything goes down.
It's more than just mellowing. As we get older, we just don't give a damn. Reiss sees more than just an illumination of what drives us, but an important tool in predicting human behavior that could be useful in everything from marriage counseling to sorting out the criminally inclined. He's joining with other researchers at Dartmouth, Harvard and Dalhousie universities to take the project to the next step. The goal is to develop a series of profiles that could pigeonhole everyone.