The 3 differences between wanting and desiring

The difference between wanting and wanting is something that is often overlooked. when talking about both love relationships and sources of motivation.

Distinguishing between these two psychology-related concepts can help us organize our lives in a way that makes sense. Not being able to understand the nuances and differences between emotions can lead us to make totally avoidable mistakes.

• Related article: "The 8 types of emotions (classification and description)"

The differences between wanting and wanting

No, wanting and wishing are not the same, although many people believe that they have the same meaning. Let's see how we can distinguish them on a day-to-day basis in a simple way to understand.

1. Desire arises from loss

When we want something, we do it from a tension or discomfort that arises from the fact that there is something missing in our lives (or at least perceived as absent even though it should be part of our everyday).

An easy way to understand this difference between wanting and desiring can be to compare it with mourning,

in which we feel sadness and anxiety at the loss of something that was significant to us.

Of course, mourning is something very intense that we unequivocally associate with discomfort, not like desire; but in both psychological phenomena the notion appears that something should be there and despite that it is not.

On the other hand, when we want something, this characteristic is not present; It's very common wanting something that we had never imagined would interest us.

2. Wanting responds to a simple strategy, desire to a complex one.

When we want something, we usually develop relatively structured and complex strategies to reach that goal, since we understand that to achieve that we need to invest in it. a significant amount of time, effort and resources.

On the other hand, when we want something, the most common thing is that we think of a simple way to get there, for example, it is typical to consider investing money in acquiring a material good that is in itself what interests us, without the need for us to attribute any other property to it beyond those it possesses in a way objective.

3. desire is autobiographical

Since buying and selling is the classic process by which we obtain concrete goods and services that are relatively easy to describe and understand, many times when we want something we automatically think of the way to get there in a single step: the economic transaction in the market.

In turn, in the market the vast majority of products are produced in series, to cover an objective need that is shared by many people.

If what we wanted was actually an object of desire, it would be much more difficult to find it as we need it, given that we must fill a void whose raison d'être is what we have gone through throughout our lives.

Desire is something much more unique, belonging to each individual, while wanting is not so much, and that is why a simple advertisement can arouse the same interest in thousands of people from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.

The implications in love life

As we have seen, desire leads us to look for something that fits the autobiographical story that we have created through of the process by which we interpret everything that has happened to us throughout our lives, while the action of want responds to a much more spontaneous feeling that leads us to direct our attention to needs that are simple and easy to understand by anyone else.

Therefore, in love, the ideal is to find a balance between wanting and wanting. If we only wish, we run the risk of imposing on the other person a story about what he is, one that fits only with our vision of her, whereas if we only want the relationship that can give, the link will be superficial and easy to destabilize.

• You may be interested in: "What is love? (and what is not)"

Its implications for marketing

In the world of marketing and advertising it is also important to know the differences between wanting and wanting, because in the vast majority of cases attempt to satisfy a need by way of wanting.

However, in certain cases, you can try to appeal to desire by suggesting abstract qualities that fill a habitual gap in a certain segment of the audience, of potential buyers. Of course, you will never exactly fit the emptiness of a specific person, but it will be easier for the imagination of the people for whom these campaigns are designed to make the rest.

Bibliographic references:

• Cacioppo, J.T & Gardner, W.L (1999). Emotion. "Annual Review of Psychology," 191.
• Kawabata H., Zeki S (2008). The Neural Correlates of Desire. PLOS ONE. 3(8):e3027.