I learned this today. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a universal classification system which has the most important needs at the bottom and then the following needs in an ascending order of importance.
Maslow was an American psychologist. He worked from the early 1930s until his death in 1970. He published his hierarchy of needs in 1943 in a paper called “The Theory of Human Motivation.”
The theory behind Maslow’s hierarchy is that people have to meet certain needs before they can try to meet other needs. Some needs are far more important than others.
The lowest tier of the pyramid are physiological needs. These are the basic needs for human survival. They would include food, water, shelter, sleep, and clothes, amongst others. If these needs are not met, a human cannot survive and cannot go on to meet further needs. These are the most important needs to our survival. We can live without a car, but we cannot live without water.
The next level of the pyramid is safety. Once we have met our fundamental needs, we need to try to feel safe. Without a sense of personal security, it is difficult to try to achieve anything else.
The next level is social belonging and love. It may be an evolutionary tool, but humans need to exist in groups. We need to feel that we belong.
Following this we have esteem. We need to be able to respect people and be respected. We need to have self-respect and we need to feel that we are needed.
Maslow suggested that these are the basic needs of all human beings. They are known as deficiency needs because a deficiency of any of these things causes us to try and get them. A lack of food, a lack of water, a lack of safety, a lack of respect pushes us to try and meet these needs. The longer people go without the need, the more motivation they have to meet it. Maslow’s pyramid ended here in 1943.
In 1970, he extended his pyramid with growth needs. These are needs that we don’t have but seek in order to grow as people. We can live without them, but we don’t grow. His first two levels are cognitive and aesthetic needs. Cognitive needs would be the need to create, to think, and to be curious. Aesthetic needs would be the need to appreciate art, appreciate nature, and beautify your life.
He then added self-actualization, which means the need to become all that you can be. The desire to be a better person and to strive for something.
And the last level was transcendence. This is best described as a spiritual need.
He published his paper in 1943 and it became very popular. It has been used as the basis for advertising. To advertise a product, you need to show how that product will help you move to the next level of the pyramid.
However, the pyramid is not without criticism. The main complaints are that the pyramid suggests that all of the levels are exclusive and that it is a very western ideal.
The pyramid suggests that you have to satisfy one need fully before you can move on to the next, but this is demonstrably not true. The levels are mixed, and people seek to satisfy them in a piecemeal way. This may be a sign of our modern Internet based society and the world might have been more simple when Maslow came up with the hierarchy. India can be used as a good example for this. Many people live in poverty and yet look for belonging and esteem. Some even prioritize a smartphone over more basic needs.
It has also been said that his hierarchy is very based in western culture. Other societies with different cultures might have extremely different needs and different priorities. Researchers studied over 60,000 people from 123 different countries to see how the hierarchy holds up. They discovered that all humans share the same basic needs, but the order of them was not the same across all countries.
Another criticism is that when Maslow looked at self-actualization, he worked backwards. He tended to look at the biographies of successful people that were already self-actualized and used that as the basis for his work. He also looked mostly at men.
A final criticism is that the main point of the hierarchy is about fulfilling our needs and reaching our potential. This leads people to say that it is a very selfish and self-obsessed set of needs. Some people have even gone so far as to say that it reflects the things that are wrong with our society as a whole. People are more interested in reaching their potential than they are in helping others or improving society. A very interesting argument.
So, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a pyramid that represents the needs that humans need to attain and their order of importance. Whether or not you agree with it is up to you. And this is what I learned today.
Photo from https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow
https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
https://www.verywellmind.com/updating-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-2795269
https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-Maslows-hierarchy-of-needs