Abraham Maslow presented a very simple way to conceive of a person's needs. The Hierarchy of Needs ranks needs from the lowest and most basic levels, to the highest levels, as shown in the figure:
Maslow raises then, within his theory of personality, the concept of hierarchy of needs, in which needs are structurally organized with different degrees of power, according to a biological determination given by our genetic constitution as an organism of the human species.
The hierarchy is organized in the form of a pyramid in such a way that deficit needs are in the lowest parts, while development needs are in the highest parts of the hierarchy; In this way, in the order given by power and by its priority, we find the deficit needs, which would be the physiological needs, the security needs, the love and belonging needs, the esteem needs; and development needs, what would be the needs for self-actualization and the needs for transcendence.
Within this structure, when the needs of one level are satisfied, a state of apathy does not occur, but instead the focus of attention is occupied by the needs of the next level and that is in the immediately higher place of the hierarchy, and it is these needs that are sought to be satisfied.
Maslow's theory states that lower needs are a priority, and therefore more powerful than higher needs in the hierarchy; "A hungry man is not concerned with impressing his friends with his courage and abilities, but rather with ensuring enough to eat" (DiCaprio, 1989, p.364).
Only when the person manages to satisfy the lower needs - even if he does it in a relative way - do the higher needs gradually come into his awareness, and with that the motivation to be able to satisfy them; as the positive trend becomes more important, a greater degree of psychological health and a movement towards full humanization are experienced.
Maslow's hierarchy
For Maslow, becoming fully human would imply the acceptance of satisfaction of the needs determined by our biological base, which would allow, after satisfying the tendencies that unite us with the rest of humanity, to discover the idiosyncratic, which distinguishes us from the rest. of human beings, discovering their own tastes, talents determined by our inheritance, to make them concrete - elaborate them - based on hard work; In Maslow's words: "the way in which we are different from other people is also discovered in this same personal search for identity" (Frick, 1973, p. 34).
Physiological needs
They refer to the truly basic needs of food, water, shelter, and sex. The first priority, regarding the satisfaction of needs, is given by physiological needs. These needs would be associated with the survival of the organism, within which would be the concept of homeostasis, which refers to “the automatic efforts of the body to maintain a normal and constant state of blood supply” (Maslow, 1954, p.85), which would be associated with certain needs, such as feeding and maintaining proper body temperature. Not all physiological needs are homeostatic because within these they are; sexual desire, maternal behavior, full activities and others. A better description would be to group them within the satisfaction of hunger, sex and thirst.
When these needs are not satisfied for a long time, the satisfaction of the other needs loses its importance, so they cease to exist.
Security and protection needs
They describe the desire of the person to enjoy safety or protection. They include a wide range of needs related to maintaining a state of order and security. Within these needs would be the needs of; feeling safe, the need for stability, the need for order, the need for protection and the need for dependency. Security needs are often expressed through fear, as they are: fear of the unknown, fear of chaos, fear of ambiguity, and fear of confusion. Security needs are characterized by the fear of losing control of their life, of being vulnerable or weak in the face of current, new or future circumstances.
Many people suspend many wishes such as freedom to maintain stability and security.
Security needs often take on a very important role when they are not adequately satisfied; “Most people cannot go beyond the level of safety functioning” (DiCaprio, 1989, p.365), which is seen in the need that many people have to prepare for the future and its unknown circumstances.
Needs of belonging and love
They focus on social aspects where almost everyone places value on interpersonal relationships and social interaction. Within the needs of love and belonging are many needs oriented in a social way; the need for an intimate relationship with another person, the need to be accepted as a member of an organized group, the need for a family environment, the need to live in a familiar neighborhood, and the need to participate in group action working for the common good with others. The existence of this need is subordinate to the satisfaction of physiological and safety needs.
The conditions of modern life, in which individualism and lack of interaction are a pattern of life, do not allow the expression of these needs.
Valuation needs (estimate)
They include the person's concern for mastery, competence, and status. The need for esteem is one that is associated with the psychological constitution of people. Maslow groups these needs into two classes: those that refer to self-love, self-respect, self-esteem, and self-evaluation; and those that refer to others, the needs of reputation, status, social success, fame and glory.
Valuation needs are generally developed by people who have a comfortable economic situation, so they have been able to fully satisfy their lower needs. Regarding the other's estimation needs, these are met first than self-estimation, since generally the self-estimation depends on the influence of the environment.
Personal fulfillment needs (development)
They reflect the desire of the person to grow and develop their full potential. Satisfaction of the needs of lack is a necessary condition, but not sufficient, for the individual to achieve self-realization. The “merely healthy” person, according to Maslow, “likes culture, his goals are benevolent, they are full of good wishes and they lack malice, but something is missing” (Frick, 1973, p.53).
The element that could be stimulating to achieve the desire for self-realization and the growth of the personality would be the crisis and the disintegration of the personality, with the subsequent access to higher levels of integration and motivations typical of self-realization; however, there would be people who could reach the state of self-realization gradually without going through tremendous shocks.
Maslow proposed that a need became preponderant when it was unsatisfied inferior and becomes the primary or central need of the person. Think of a single mother who has just lost her job; you may be concerned about getting food for herself and her family. In this case, the preponderant needs would be physiological. On the other hand, if you have saved or if you have inherited a lot of money, then the preponderant needs would be the higher level needs, such as social or appreciation needs. According to Maslow, to motivate a person it is necessary to satisfy their preponderant need, in the case of the single mother it would be effective to offer them a significant economic remuneration (Gordon, 1997).
Needs outside the hierarchy
Need to know and understand
These cognitive needs do not have a specific place in the hierarchy, but were nevertheless addressed by Maslow. These needs would be derivatives of basic needs, expressed in the form of a desire to know the causes of things and to be passive towards the world.
Aesthetic needs.
The aesthetic needs are related to the desire for order and beauty. These aesthetic needs include: a need for order, a need for symmetry, the need to fill in spaces in poorly structured situations, the need to alleviate the tension produced by unfinished situations, and the need to structure events.
Theory evaluation
Advantage
- Maslow establishes the first systematization of human needs, which would have a biological root. In this way, he escapes from making a simple catalog of supposed instincts that man would possess, an erroneous attempt that forgets the differences between the animal world (where such instincts would supposedly exist) and the human species. Maslow was one of the first in affirming that a satisfied need is not a source of; Along with this, it denies homeostatic models of motivation, but instead postulates the existence of a positive tendency to growth, which would be expressed in the different needs of instinctual origin that arise successively after the satisfaction of lower-level needs. All of this gave a new basis to motivation studies.Maslow's studies are based on the study of healthy people - or up-to-date - and not on sick people, as Freud or Horney do, which would give us a more adequate perspective to understand how it is achieved and what "mental health" means., beyond defining it as the "absence of disease".
Limitations
- Although Maslow postulates that his model is valid for all human beings, his studies were carried out on western individuals of the twentieth century, so that propositions would be valid only for western society of our century. Although Maslow underlined the idea of preponderance More recent research has questioned its validity. Also, people may not have exactly five needs; the order may differ from Maslow's, or they may have several overriding needs rather than just one. Moreover, this theory cannot be generalized to other cultures or other countries. The order of the classification of needs also varies in different cultures.
Disadvantages
- While evidence has been obtained for some specific aspects of the model, a way to study the model as a whole has not been found; however, hierarchy is widely accepted for its intuitive appeal. Maslow's model does not clearly and consistently explain certain behaviors, such as self-sacrifice for the common good; Although this act is justified by the presence of transcendental needs that would exceed the basic order of survival, an adjustment of the model seems necessary to better assimilate these facts.
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In the following video, produced by Educatina.com, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs model is synthesized and explained and the motivation / needs theories of Herzberg and Mcclelland based on Maslow's ideas are introduced.
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