I don't think you can get useful answers or of this thread simply because most humans don't have metacognitive introspective awareness; it's not something we ev

I don't think you can get useful answers or of this thread simply because most humans don't have metacognitive introspective awareness; it's not something we evolved to have, in fact it is something that would bring negative reproductive fitness, given that the brain has mechanisms to actually hide the root motivation for our urges. The best way would be to study the neuroscience of human motivation. There's a specific brain circuit involved. But from another perspective, we do what we do to fulfill various needs, mostly security and belonging. That can result in things as complex as status games. Things are a lot more complex than that, if you consider the evolutionary history of the brain stem, limbic system and the cortex, each newer system is able to override the older one, resulting in completely different behaviour.