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Deficiency needs
Physiological needsThe physiological needs of the organism, those enabling homeostasis, take first precedence. These consist mainly of:
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 needsWhen 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:
Love/Belonging/Social needs
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 needsAccording 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 needsMaslow 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 needsBased 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 needsThough 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-actualizationSelf-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:
In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential. Self-transcendenceAt 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. CounterpositionsWhile 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:
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
Notes
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