(10-10-22)
Abraham Maslow (1943b) presented his theory of human motivation in a paper published in 1943: “A Theory of Human Motivation”
This theory has been high influential for over 70 years, although it has accumulated very limited empirical support.
Maslow was trained as a clinical psychologist but his ideas about human personality and psychology came to focus mainly on human adjustment and human potential. He was one of the figures often cited with regard to the “human potential movement” which would be reborn in current psychological circles as “positive psychology.” He became convinced that psychology and psychiatry had been lead astray by excessive focus on psychopathology, and needed to shift attention to healthy and well functioning individuals. He became interested in what a “full functioning” human would be like and helped popularize the term “self-actualization” [a phrase coined by the German psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein, as Maslow often acknowledged, and based, interesting enough, on Goldstein’s study of German soldiers who sustained head injuries during WWI.]. Maslow came to argue that if we could say with some clarity what a full functioning human would be like, that this would give us a real measure of adjustment, in essence a definition of “mental health” as opposed to mental illness. His theory of motivation reflects this thinking.
Maslow had presented a list of 13 propositions he considered, “would have to be included in any theory of human motivation that could lay claim to being definitive.”
- “The integrated wholeness of the organism must be one of the foundation stones of motivation theory.”
- drives (hunger and others) were rejected as a “centering point or model” of a theory of motivation
- a theory should stress and center upon “ultimate or basic goals” and “Such a stress would imply a more central place for unconscious than for conscious motivations.”
- There are usually multiple cultural paths to the same goal; “Therefore conscious, specific, local-cultural desires are not fundamental in motivation theory”
- Any motivated behavior must be understood as a channel through which many basic needs may be satisfied
- “Practically all organismic states are to be understood as motivated and as motivating.”
- “Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency.”, “Man is a perpetually wanting animal.”
- “Lists of drives get us nowhere”
- “Classifications of motivations must be based upon goals”
- “Motivation theory should be human-centered rather than animal centered.”
- “The situation or the field in which an organism reacts must be taken into account but the field alone can rarely serve as an exclusive explanation for behavior.”
- “Not only the integration of the organism must be taken into account, but also the possibility of isolated, specific, partial or segmental reactions.”
- “Motivation theory is not synonymous with behavior theory. The motivations are only one class of determinants of behavior. While behavior is almost always motivated, it is also almost always biologically, culturally and situationally determined as well.”
One aspect of his view of human functioning was his hierarchal theory of human motivation, usually presented as a pyramid (although not in Maslow’s original paper):
- At the base are “physiological needs”
- These are “the most pre-potent of all needs”
- When these are satisfied, temporarily, the “higher needs” emerge
- next come “safety needs”
- The family as foundational
- next “love” and belonging needs
- Reeve’s relatedness needs
- next “esteem needs”
- Ego, self, identity
- Reeve’s autonomy needs
- Reeve’s competence needs
- topping the pyramid are “self-actualization needs”
- “Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for.”
- “What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.”
- “It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”
Maslow’s original conceptualization was that “lower” needs need to be fulfilled before “higher” needs became active. The first four level were discussed as “deficiency needs” and the fifth level as a “growth need.” Other discussions refer to levels one and two as “basic” needs, levels three and four as “psychological needs”, and level five as the “growth need.”
Also, he posited that these needs were universal in all humans (but not everyone which achieve or graduate to the top of the hierarchy).
And, obvious in his own title, his theory of motivation is about human motivation. Maslow argued that a, “motivation theory must be anthropocentric rather than animalcentric” (1943a; 1943b). [This would be a point of contention for some, not all, current investigators of motivation. Maslow believed that an understanding of human motivation needed to be based on seeing what the goals of the person were.]
Finally, he speculated regarding “cognitive needs”, “the desires to know and to understand”, “Rather tentatively, then, and largely in the hope of stimulating discussion and research, we shall postulate a basic desire to know, to be aware of reality, to get the facts, to satisfy curiosity, or as Wertheimer phrases it, to see rather than to be blind.”
“modern” adaptations of Maslow’s motivational hierarchy have been influenced by evolutionary theories as well as critiques of pure stage theories. Current discussions of Maslow’s motivational levels see the relationships as less fixed, with more fluid movement possible and “lower levels” arising in individuals under specific environmental circumstances (e.g., a financial crisis may reactivate safety need in a person who mainly functions in terms of love/belonging needs). [Maslow’s original ideas allowed for this as well, people (and textbooks) writing about his ideas tended to present them more rigidly than I believe he intended. A similar fate has occurred with some of the thoughts of Freud’s, Adler, and other early writers and investigators of personality and motivation.]
D.T. Kendrick (2010) proposed a Revised Hierarchy of Maslow’s needs:
- The base is again: Physiological Needs: Homeostasis, food, water, sleep, shelter, medicine
- Next are Safety & Self-protection: Strive for absence of fear, anxiety, chaos, and seek security, stability, dependency, law and order
- Next come Affiliation & Belonging: Establish social relationships with groups, friends, lovers, family
- Status & Self-esteem: Self-respect, others’ respect, recognition, fame, glory
- at the top is a group of needs:
- Self-actualization: utilize abilities and talents to fullest in areas person choses
- Reproductive goals: mate acquisition, mate retention, parenting
- Pursuit of Happiness: subjective well-being that motivates rising in the hierarchy
- a person’s stage in life and present circumstances determine what need is most potent at any particular moment
- Questions have been raised about happiness as a useful goal in life (Sishi, Diener, & Lucas, 2007), and the path to happiness seems to vary across different cultures (Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon, 2011). Some experimental literature has explored deliberate efforts to boost well-being (Lyubomirsky et al., 2011).
- Kahneman (2011) discussed the growing literature on “experienced well-being.” One of his suggestions: “The easiest way to increase happiness if to control your use of time. Can you find more time to do the things you enjoy doing?” (p. 397).
- Kesebir & colleagues (2010) argue that finding meaning in life may be a person’s ultimate goal.
So, again, what do we make of the idea of a “psychological need”?