Maslow's hierarchy of needs

DATE: 1940s forward

TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Motivation

Hierarchy of needs is the core organizing principle of psychologist Abraham Maslow's theory of human motivation. He first formulated this theory in the 1940s and elaborated on it in the 1950s and 1960s. Although it has been subject to significant criticism, the theory has continued to be widely researched and has many applications.

Introduction

The concept of a hierarchy of needs became the central organizing principle in Abraham Maslow's theory of human motivation. A research psychologist who began his career in the 1940s with a series of studies on motivation, culminating with his book Motivation and Personality (1954), Maslow greatly furthered the understanding of human motives. When Maslow began his research, psychology largely regarded hunger motivation and thirst motivation as the paradigm for all other motives and examined motivation through animal studies, behaviorist theory, or both. Maslow rejected these early theories as insufficient to account for the human dimensions of motivation. He supplemented experimental study with clinical evidence and redirected the focus from drives to goals and from isolated determinants to a sense of the person as an integrated and dynamic whole.

The most important aspect of Maslow's theory of motivation was the notion of a hierarchy of needs. Maslow first articulated this theory in his early works, including "A Theory of Human Motivation," which appeared in Psychological Review in 1943, and he would continue to develop his theory over time. He first identified and differentiated among various clusters of motives. The five clusters he identified were as follows:

•physiological needs

•safety needs

•belongingness or love needs

•esteem needs (also known as or including ego or self-esteem needs)

•need for self-actualization

He noted that, in the order listed, the clusters formed a hierarchy from lower to higher motives. He pointed out that there is no final satiation point at which the person is no longer motivated, but rather that as a particular motivation is sufficiently gratified, another, higher motive will emerge more prominently. In Maslow's terms, the higher motives are therefore "prepotent" with regard to the lower ones. Furthermore, there is a basic directionality in the order in which each motivational cluster becomes prominent.

Later Developments

In 1955, following the success of his early studies, Maslow was invited to present his work at the prestigious Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. There, he advanced his thesis by making a key distinction between deficiency motivation and growth motivation. The first four clusters of motives tend to be motivating precisely when they are lacking, when there is a deficit or empty hole that must be filled. In contrast, people who are very healthy psychologically have sufficiently gratified their basic needs. This does not mean they have obtained more in an objective sense, but rather that their experience is not structured by a sense of lack. With this experienced sense of sufficiency, healthy people are free to develop their motive toward self-actualization, which Maslow defined as an "ongoing tendency toward actualizing potentials, capacities and talents . . . of the person's own intrinsic nature." Thus self-actualization can be seen as a trend toward fulfillment and integration. He described thirteen specific observable characteristics of such self-actualizing people, including being more perceptive, more accepting of the self and others, more spontaneous, more autonomous, more appreciative, and more creative, and having a richer emotional life and more frequent peak experiences.

Applications

As Maslow continued working, he began more and more to examine the lives of "self-actualizers," those people whom he identified as exemplary of being directed by self-actualizing motivation. He saw that a person's psychological life is lived differently when that individual is oriented not to the gratification of deficiency needs but to growth. This emphasis on growth soon became the focus of an emerging paradigm, known as humanistic psychology, studied by many other psychologists, including Carl R. Rogers. This emphasis on personal growth reoriented the study of psychology, focusing it not on issues of disease and negativity but rather on themes of personal enrichment and fulfillment, and of living an intrinsically meaningful life. Maslow's book Toward a Psychology of Being (1962) is one of the hallmarks of this movement, which swept beyond academic psychology into pop psychology.

Maslow's theory of motivation also influenced other disciplines, such as education and business. Mark Zimmerman's emotional literacy education project, for example, explicitly draws from Maslow's motivational theory. Research has continued into the role of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the fields of business, management, leadership, entrepreneurship, organizational development, and marketing. Issues such as optimally motivating workplace environments and incentives for employees continued to be particularly engaging topics for these studies. Though many of the specific applications often oversimplify Maslow's theory, the hierarchy of needs is still widely used, especially as the basis for management theories based on a vision of employees as most productive when synergistically and cooperatively engaged through opportunities for self-directed creativity rather than when subjected to authoritarian structures.

Several management and human resources experts advocated for employers' reconsideration of Maslow's hierarchy during the response to the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that was declared in early 2020. The priority for most companies became adapting their physical spaces and remote capabilities to ensure the health safety of their workers so that they could continue engaging with the work. At the same time, the marketing industry took note of the e-commerce trends that coincided with the pandemic, including shoppers' tendency to focus on ensuring that basic physiological and safety needs would continue to be met through large-scale purchases of necessities such as toilet paper before transitioning to more emotional needs such as hobbies.

Maslow himself considered this application important and contributed to it with his book Eupsychian Management: A Journal (1965). Maslow's position was that the more psychologically healthy people became, the more important such enlightened management would be for any competitive business. Maslow's theory was later used and distilled into a three-step hierarchy by Clayton Alderfer in 1972. Alderfer's three needs were existence, relatedness, and growth, or the ERG theory.

Criticism

Despite its prominence and ongoing influence, Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been subject to serious criticism. Many other researchers have noted that the theory has little grounding in the scientific method, instead being based on subjective analysis. The concept of self-actualization, especially, is essentially impossible to empirically test. It has also been argued that the hierarchical model is irrelevant, as there are examples of people who struggle to meet basic needs such as shelter and security yet are able to meet supposedly higher needs such as love and express great creativity. Therefore most modern psychologists view motivation and needs as operating on multiple levels at once.

Even some researchers who accept the general concept have critiqued Maslow's specific hierarchy as too narrow, or biased by various factors such as sex, culture, age, and personal circumstance. For example, it is often suggested that the original hierarchy conflates the physiological and emotional aspects of sex motivation, and that the model prioritizes the norms of individualistic societies. Various expanded or revised hierarchies have been proposed, including a common eight-stage version that adds cognitive needs and aesthetic needs before self-actualization and finishes with transcendence needs (motivations beyond personal interest, such as spiritual pursuits).

Bibliography

Alderfer, Clayton. Existence, Relatedness, and Growth; Human Needs in Organizational Settings. Free, 1972.

Burton, Neel. "Our Hierarchy of Needs." Psychology Today, 21 June 2019, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/our-hierarchy-needs. Accessed 16 Jul. 2024.

DeCarvalho, Roy Jose. The Growth Hypothesis in Psychology: The Humanistic Psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Mellen Research UP, 1991.

Guha, Indy. "Maslow's Hierarchy of Covid-19 Commerce: How the Pandemic Exposed Our Hierarchy of Needs." Forbes, 4 Mar. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2021/03/04/maslows-theory-of-covid-19-commerce-how-the-pandemic-exposed-our-hierarchy-of-needs/?sh=40d991fd4c06. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.

Hopper, Elizabeth. "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Explained." ThoughtCo., 25 Feb. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571. Accessed 16 Jul. 2024.

King, Daniel, and Scott Lawley. Organizational Behavior. Oxford UP, 2013.

Lowry, Richard. A. H. Maslow: An Intellectual Portrait. Brooks/Cole, 1973.

McLeod, Saul. "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs." SimplyPsychology, 24 Jan. 2024, www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html. Accessed 16 Jul. 2024.

Moss, Donald, ed. Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology. Greenwood, 1999.

Stephens, Deborah C., ed. The Maslow Business Reader. Wiley, 2000.

Warner, Janie. "COVID-19, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the Evolution of HR." HR Professionals Magazine, Jan. 2021, hrprofessionalsmagazine.com/2020/12/31/covid-19-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-and-the-evolution-of-hr/. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.