HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

• hierarchy of needs - Maslow’s concept that needs are ordered in such a manner that those on a lower level must be satisfied before higher level needs become activated.
• conative needs - Needs that pertain to willful and purposive striving, for example Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
• These needs, which Maslow often referred to as basic needs, can be arranged on a hierarchy or staircase, with each ascending step representing a higher need but one less basic to survival.
• Lower level needs have prepotency over higher level needs; that is, they must be satisfied or mostly satisfied before higher level needs become activated.
• physiological needs - The most basic level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they include food, water, air, etc.
• Physiological needs differ from other needs in at least two important respects.

  1. Completely satisfied or overly satisfied
  2. recurring nature
• safety needs - The second level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they include physical security, protection, and freedom from danger.
• Safety needs differ from physiological needs in that they cannot be overly satiated; people can never be completely protected from meteorites, fires, floods, or the dangerous acts of others.
• basic anxiety - Anxiety arising from inability to satisfy physiological and safety needs
• love and belongingness needs - The third level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they include both the need to give love and the need to receive love.
• Children need love in order to grow psychologically, and their attempts to satisfy this need are usually straightforward and direct. Adults, too, need love, but their attempts to attain it are sometimes cleverly disguised
• esteem needs - The fourth level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they include self-respect, competence, and the perceived esteem of others.
• Maslow (1970) identified two levels of esteem needs - reputation and self-esteem.
• Reputation is the perception of the prestige, recognition, or fame a person has achieved in the eyes of others.
• self esteem is a person’s own feelings of worth and confidence. It is based on more than reputation or prestige
• self actualization needs - The highest level of human motivation; they include the need to fully develop all of one’s psychological capacities.
• Self actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-esteem even when scorned, rejected, and dismissed by other people.
• self actualizers are not dependent on the satisfaction of either love or esteem needs; they become independent from the lower level needs that gave them birth.
• In addition to these five conative needs, Maslow identified three other categories of needs - aesthetic, cognitive, and neurotic.
• aesthetic needs - Needs for art, music, beauty, and the like. Although they may be related to the basic conative needs, aesthetic needs are a separate dimension.
• cognitive needs - Needs for knowledge and understanding; related to basic or conative needs, yet operating on a different dimension.
• neurotic needs - Nonproductive needs that are opposed to the basic needs and that block psychological health whether or not they are satisfied.
• he estimated that the hypothetical average person has his or her needs satisfied to approximately these levels:

  1. physiological, 85%
  2. safety, 70%
  3. love and belongingness, 50%
  4. esteem, 40%
  5. self-actualization, 10%
• For some people, the drive for creativity (a self-actualization need) may take precedence over safety and physiological needs. An enthusiastic artist may risk safety and health to complete an important work. For years, the late sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski endangered his health and abandoned companionship to work on carving a mountain in the Black Hills into a monument to Chief Crazy Horse.
• Reversals, however, are usually more apparent than real, and some seemingly obvious deviations in the order of needs are not variations at all.
• Motivation is limited to the striving for the satisfaction of some need. Much of what Maslow (1970) called “ expressive behavior ” is unmotivated.
• Expressive behavior

  • often an end in itself and serves no other purpose than to be.
  • It is frequently unconscious and usually takes place naturally and with little effort.
  • It has no goals or aim but is merely the person’s mode of expression.
  • includes actions such as slouching, looking stupid, being relaxed, showing anger, and expressing joy.
  • can continue even in the absence of reinforcement or reward
• coping behavior

  • ordinarily conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by the external environment.
  • It involves the individual’s attempts to cope with the environment; to secure food and shelter; to make friends; and to receive acceptance, appreciation, and prestige from others.
  • serves some aim or goal (although not always conscious or known to the person), and it is always motivated by some deficit need
• Deprivation of physiological needs results in malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy, obsession with sex, and so on.
• metapathology - Illness, characterized by absence of values, lack of fulfillment, and loss of meaning, that results from deprivation of self-actualization needs.
• instinctoid needs - Needs that are innately determined but that can be modified through learning. The frustration of instinctoid needs leads to various types of pathology.
• Important similarities and differences exist between higher level needs ( love, esteem, and self actualization) and lower level needs ( physiological and safety ).
• Higher needs are similar to lower ones in that they are instinctoid.
• Hedonistic pleasure , is usually temporary and not comparable to the quality of happiness produced by the satisfaction of higher needs