Idealism

Idealism is the basic desire for social justice. It motivates people to support social causes, pay attention to current affairs, or give to charities. Satisfaction of this desire produces feelings of compassion, whereas frustration produces feelings of outrage.

According to the theory of 16 basic desires, conscientiousness breaks down into honor and idealism. Honor binds us to our clan or ethnic group, while idealism binds us to humanity as a whole. These two aspects of conscientiousness are only moderately correlated with each other and, thus, need to be assessed separately.

People with a STRONG BASIC DESIRE FOR IDEALISM may care deeply about such social causes as world peace, uplifting the downtrodden, or world health. Personality traits that may apply to them include altruistic, compassionate, do-gooder, dreamer, fair, humanitarian, idealistic, involved, volunteer, philanthropic, volunteer, and perhaps martyr.   

People with a WEAK BASIC DESIRE FOR IDEALISM are focused on the events in their lives rather than on the great issues facing society. They may think that injustice is part of life and there is little one should do about it unless it directly affects oneself or loved ones. Personality traits that may apply to them include hard-nosed, pragmatic, man (woman) of the world, realistic, and possibly looks the other way.