They are universal, and I think they motivate everybody. The surprising part of the study, he says, is that while we each embrace all 15 values, we do so at very different intensities. Some people like sex so much they make exclamation marks on the questionnaire. Howard Hughes bought a movie studio to be close to women, and he used his electronics companies to track as many as 167 women a day. 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.