Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended to include his observations of man's innate curiosity. His theory contends that as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy. Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."^[1]

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as deficiency needs associated with physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. While deficiency needs must be met, growth needs are continually shaping behaviour. The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the needs that are lower down in the pyramid are mainly or entirely satisfied. Once an individual has moved past a level, those needs will no longer be prioritized. However, if a lower set of needs is continually unmet for an extended period of time, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs - dropping down to that level until those lower needs are reasonably satisfied again. Innate growth forces constantly create upward movement in the hierarchy unless basic needs remain unmet indefinitely.

Deficiency needs

The deficiency needs (also termed 'D-needs' by Maslow) are:

Physiological needs

The physiological needs of the organism, those enabling homeostasis, take first precedence. These consist mainly of:

• the need to breathe
• the need to drink water
• the need to regulate homeostasis
• the need to eat
• the need to dispose of bodily wastes
• the need for sexual activity

If some needs are not fulfilled, a human's physiological needs take the highest priority. Physiological needs can control thoughts and behaviors, and can cause people to feel sickness, pain, and discomfort.

Safety needs

When physiological needs are met, the need for safety will emerge. When one stage is fulfilled you naturally move to the next. Safety and security rank above all other desires. These include:

• Physical security — safety from violence, delinquency, aggressions
• Security of employment
• Security of revenues and resources
• Moral and physiological security
• Family security
• Security of health
• Security of personal property against crime

Love/Belonging/Social needs

After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as:

• friendship
• sexual intimacy
• having a supportive and communicative family

Humans generally need to feel belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group (clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams, gangs) or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues, confidants). They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression. This need for belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure. e.g. an anorexic ignores the need to eat and the security of health for a feeling of belonging.

Esteem needs

According to Maslow, all humans have a need to be respected, to have self-respect, and to respect others. People need to engage themselves in order to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-value, be it in a profession or hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem, inferiority complexes, an inflated sense of self-importance or snobbishness. There are two levels to Esteem needs. The lower of the levels relates to elements like fame, respect, and glory. The higher level is contingent to concepts like confidence, competence, and achievement. The lower level is generally considered poor. It is dependent upon other people, or someone who needs to be reassured because of lower esteem. People with low esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again are dependent on others. However confidence, competence and achievement only need one person and everyone else is inconsequential to one's own success.

Cognitive needs

Maslow believed that humans have the need to increase their intelligence and thereby chase knowledge. Cognitive needs is the expression of the natural human need to learn, explore, discover, create, and perhaps even dissect in order to get a better understanding of the world around them.

Aesthetic needs

Based on Maslow's beliefs, it is stated in the hierarchy that humans need beautiful imagery or something new and aesthetically pleasing in order to continue up towards Self-Actualization. Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty that the world has to offer.

Growth needs

Though the deficiency needs may be seen as "basic", and can be met and neutralized (i.e. they stop being motivators in one's life), self-actualization and transcendence are "being" or "growth needs" (also termed "B-needs"), i.e. they are enduring motivations or drivers of behaviour.

Self-actualization

Self-actualization is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can.

Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is.^[2]

Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:

• They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
• They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
• They are creative.
• They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.
• They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
• They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
• They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective manner. Prejudices are absent.

In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential.

Self-transcendence

At the top of the triangle, self-transcendence is also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs.

Maslow believes that we should study and cultivate peak experiences as a way of providing a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment. Peak experiences are unifying, and ego-transcending, bringing a sense of purpose to the individual and a sense of integration. Individuals most likely to have peak experiences are self-actualizing, mature, healthy, and self-fulfilled. All individuals are capable of peak experiences. Those who do not have them somehow suppress or deny them.

Maslow originally found the occurrence of peak experiences in individuals who were self-actualizing, but later found that peak experiences happened to non-actualizers as well but not as often:

I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central… It is unfortunate that I can no longer be theoretically neat at this level. I find not only self-actualizing persons who transcend, but also nonhealthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. It seems to me that I have found some degree of transcendence in many people other than self-actualizing ones as I have defined this term…^[3]

In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich were the initiators behind the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

Counterpositions

While Maslow's theory was regarded as an improvement over previous theories of personality and motivation, it has its detractors. For example, in their extensive review of research that is dependent on Maslow's theory, Wahba and Bridwell (1976) found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described, or even for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all. For example, less individualistic forms of society than described by Maslow in this theory, might value their social relationships (e.g. family, clan or group) higher than their own physiological needs. Maslow addresses this seeming contraindication by explaining that once a need has been satisfactorily met for a certain period of time, the individual moves their focus up to the next need, and effectively deems the lower needs less important. For example, once an individual has had their Physiological needs and Safety needs met, they will move up to the Love and Belongingness level, where they will prioritize the health and well being of the family and community that the individual belongs to.^[4]

The concept of self-actualization is considered vague and psychobabble by some behaviourist psychologists. The concept is based on an Aristotelian notion of human nature that assumes we have an optimum role or purpose.^{[citation needed]} Self actualization is a difficult construct for researchers to operationalize, and this in turn makes it difficult to test Maslow's theory. Even if self-actualization is a useful concept, there is no proof that every individual has this capacity or even the goal to achieve it.

Other counterpositions suggest that not everyone ultimately seeks the self-actualization that a strict (and possibly naive) reading of Maslow's hierarchy of needs appears to imply:

• Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning describes his psychotherapeutic method (logotherapy) of finding purpose in life.
• Albert Einstein was actually drawn toward the sense of mystery in life. See Abraham Pais' Subtle is the Lord (Einstein, however, believed in naturalistic pantheism).
• Others seek to perform good works.
• Others are drawn toward the dark side of the human condition.

One could counter this argument by citing these as examples of ways people self-actualize. In fact, some of these examples (the attraction to the mysterious, performing good works) are actually specified as qualities of the self actualized individual in Maslow's writing, The Third Force. The ambiguity of the term lends itself to debate.

Transcendence has been discounted by secular psychologists because they feel it belongs to the domain of religious belief. But Maslow himself believed that science and religion were both too narrowly conceived, too dichotomized, and too separated from each other. Non-peakers, as he would call them, characteristically think in logical, rational terms and look down on extreme spirituality as "insanity"^[5] because it entails a loss of control and deviation from what is socially acceptable. They may even try to avoid such experiences because they are not materially productive—they "earn no money, bake no bread, and chop no wood".^[6] Other non-peakers have the problem of immaturity in spiritual matters, and hence tend to view holy rituals and events in their most crude, external form, not appreciating them for any underlying spiritual implications. Maslow despised such people because they form a sort of idolatry that hinders religions^[7] This creates a divide in every religion and social institution. It is important to note, however, that Maslow considered himself to be an atheist — thus, by his conceptualization of transcendence, any individual can have such experiences.^[8]

Psychologist Edwin C. Nevis has also made charges that Maslow's hierarchy of needs are culturally specific and not universal and, in response, formulated his own hierarchy of needs as an improvement effort.

Other scholars have sought to contextualize Maslow's work in its socio-political, and historical context. In Maslow, Monkeys and Motivation Theory (1997), Dallas Cullen revealed the extent to which Maslow's hierarchy relied on his gendered, and factually unfounded assumptions about sexual domination among apes. Cooke, Mills and Kelley's (2005) Situating Maslow in Cold War America argued that Maslow's theorizing was a direct reflection of his position as an anti- new-left Cold War liberal, and his hierarchy a reflection of these values - a kind of secular religiosity which legitimized the US way of life.

See also

• Human Potential Movement
• Humanistic psychology
• Meaning of life
• Organizational behavior
• Positive psychology
• Self (psychology)
• Spiral Dynamics
• Self-realization
• Self-Determination Theory - Needs Theory
• Transpersonal psychology

Notes

1. ^ Motivation and Personality, 1987.
2. ^ Psychological Review, 1949.
3. ^ The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, New York, 1971.
4. ^ Motivation and Personality, 1970.
5. ^ Maslow. "The 'Core-Religious' or 'Transcendent,' Experience", p. 22.
6. ^ Maslow, Transcendent, p. 23.
7. ^ Maslow, Transcendent, p. 24.
8. ^ Hoffman, E. 1999. The right to be human: A biography of Abraham Maslow.

References

• Cullen, D. (1995) Maslow, Monkeys and Motivation Theory. Organization, 4 (3) 335 - 373.
• Cooke, B., Mills, A., and Kelley E. (2005) Situating Maslow in Cold War America: A Recontextualization of Management Theory. Group and Organization Management, 30, 129 -125.
• Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96.
• Maslow, A. H. (1965). Eupsychian Management. Note that the Andy Kay featured in this book is the Andy Kay of Kaypro. Hardcover ISBN 0-87094-056-2, Paperback ISBN 0-256-00353-X.
• Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and Personality, 2nd. ed., New York, Harper & Row. ISBN 0060419873.
• Wahba, M. A., Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15, 212–40.
• Frankl, V. (1946). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.

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