Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A Comprehensive Analysis
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Maslow’s Pyramid is a psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow in his work: A Theory of Human Motivation (in English, A Theory of Human Motivation) in 1943 and subsequently expanded. Maslow formulated in his theory a hierarchy of human needs and the motivation of defending that as the most basic needs are met, human beings develop higher needs and desires in human nature, the call of the physiological and mental.
Contents
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Physiological Needs
- Safety and Security Needs
- Needs for Affiliation and Affection
- Esteem Needs
- Self-Realization or Self-Actualization
- Self-Actualized People
- Metaneeds and Metapathologies
- General Features of Maslow’s Theory
- Processing Cycle
- Reviews for his Theory
- See Also
- Bibliography
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often described as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the first four levels can be grouped as ‘deficit needs’ (deficit needs, or D-needs), the top level is called ‘self-actualization’, ‘growth motivation’, or ‘need to be’ (B-being needs or needs). The difference is that while the deficit needs can be met, the need for a continuous driving force.
The basic idea of this hierarchy is that the higher needs occupy our attention only when the lower needs of the pyramid have been satisfied. The forces of growth lead to an upward movement in the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push prepotent needs down the hierarchy. According to Maslow, the pyramid is universally available:
Physiological Needs
Physiological needs are basic for maintaining homeostasis (concerning health). Within these, the most obvious are:
- Need to breathe, drink water, and eat.
- Need to maintain balance in body temperature.
- Need to sleep, rest, and dispose of waste.
- Pain avoidance.
Safety and Security Needs
These arise when physiological needs are compensated. They are needs to feel safe and protected, even to develop certain limits of order. Among them are:
- Physical safety and health.
- Job security, income, and resources.
- Moral security, family, and private property.
Need for Affiliation and Affection
They are related to the affective development of the individual, the needs of partnership, participation, and acceptance. They are met through the service functions and benefits, including sports, cultural, and recreational activities. Human beings naturally feel the need to interact, be part of a community, and gather in families, with friends, or in social organizations. Among these are friendship, companionship, affection, and love.
Esteem Needs
Maslow described two types of esteem needs, a high and a low.
- High esteem is the need for self-respect and includes feelings such as confidence, competence, mastery, achievement, independence, and freedom.
- Low esteem concerns respect for others: the need for attention, appreciation, recognition, reputation, status, dignity, fame, glory, and even dominance.
The decline of these needs is reflected in low self-esteem and an inferiority complex.
Self-Realization or Self-Actualization
This latter level is something different, and Maslow used various terms to refer to it: “growth motivation”, “need to be”, and “self-realization”.
These are the highest needs, located at the top of the hierarchy, and through their satisfaction, there is a meaning to life through the development potential of an activity. It is reached when all previous levels have been achieved and completed, at least to some extent.
Self-Actualized People
Maslow considered a group of historical figures he felt fulfilled these criteria to be self-actualized: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and William James, among others.
Maslow concluded from their biographies, writings, and activities, a series of similar qualities. He felt that they were people:
- Focused on the fact that they knew how to differentiate the false or fictitious from the real and genuine;
- Focused on the problems facing them in terms of their solutions;
- With a different perception of meanings and purposes.
In their relations with others, they were people:
- With a need for privacy, feeling comfortable in this situation;
- Independent of the dominant culture and environment, based more on their own experiences and judgments;
- Resistant to enculturation, for they were not susceptible to social pressure; they were nonconformists;
- With a non-hostile sense of humor, preferring jokes about themselves or the human condition;
- With good acceptance of self and others as they were, not pretentious or artificial;
- With a freshness of appreciation, creative, inventive, and original;
- Tending to live experiences more intensely than the rest of humanity.
Metaneeds and Metapathologies
Maslow also addresses the issue differently than it is self-realization, speaking of impulsive needs, and discusses what it takes to be happy: truth, goodness, beauty, unity, wholeness and transcendence of opposites, vitality, uniqueness, perfection and necessity, completion, justice and order, simplicity, environmental richness, strength, playfulness, self-sufficiency, and finding meaning.
When the needs of self-realization are not fulfilled, meta-pathologies emerge. The list is as extensive as it is complementary to the meta-needs. Then emerges a degree of cynicism, disgust, depression, emotional disability, and alienation.
General Characteristics of Maslow’s Theory
- Only unmet needs influence the behavior of people, but a met need does not generate any behavior.
- Physiological needs are born with the person; other needs arise over time.
- As a person can control their basic needs, higher needs gradually emerge. Not all individuals feel self-actualization needs because it is a personal conquest.
- Higher needs do not arise to the extent that the lowest are being met. They may be concomitant, but the basic needs predominate over the higher ones.
- Basic needs require a relatively short motivational cycle for their satisfaction; in contrast, higher needs require a longer cycle.
Cycle Process
Maslow defined the basic needs of the individual in a hierarchical manner, placing the most basic or simple at the base of the pyramid and the most important or fundamental at the top of the pyramid. As needs are being met or achieved, ones of a higher level or better emerge. In the last phase is “self-realization”, which is nothing more than a full level of happiness or harmony.
Criticisms of his Theory
Consistent with Manfred Max-Neef in the book Development at Human Scale, and with Paul Ekins in Limitless Wealth: Gaia Atlas of the Green Economy, this conception of Maslow is credited with legitimizing the “pyramid” of social structure. If needs are hierarchical and infinite, society will also be set “naturally” as a pyramid where only the top has access to more and more, keeping down the expense of the broader base and more convenient dispossessed. This is opposed to Max-Neef’s vision of needs as a finite matrix of components (9 in four forms: Subsistence, Protection, Affection, Understanding, Participation, Creation, Recreation, Identity, and Freedom, by the Self, Having, Making, and Relations).
The most common criticism concerns its methodology, the fact of having chosen a small number of characters, whom he considered self-actualized, and drawing conclusions about self-realization after reading their biographies or talking to them.
Although Maslow’s theory has been seen as an improvement on previous theories about personality and motivation, concepts like ‘self-actualization’ are somewhat vague. As a result, the effectiveness of Maslow’s theory is complicated.
There is no evidence that each person has the ability to become “self-actualized”. Moreover, Wabha and Bridwell (1976), in an extensive review using Maslow’s theory, found little evidence that this order of Maslow’s needs existed or that there is a hierarchy.
There are examples of people who possess traits of self-realization and have not had their basic needs met. Many of the best artists suffered poverty, poor parenting, neurosis, and depression. However, some scientific studies show the full interest of people in self-actualization and building to a higher level of satisfaction.
A final criticism is the fact of considering the security of private property more important than having a family or morality, for example. Most of the natives of South America, Africa, or Asia do not have properties and can supply the rest of their needs.