Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
A Theory of Human Motivation
A. H. Maslow (1943) Originally Published in Psychological
Review, 50, 370-396.
[p. 370] I. INTRODUCTION
In a previous paper (13) various propositions were
presented which would have to be included in any theory of human motivation
that could lay claim to being definitive. These conclusions may be briefly
summarized as follows:
1. The integrated wholeness of the organism must
be one of the foundation stones of motivation theory.
2. The hunger drive (or any other physiological drive) was rejected as a
centering point or model for a definitive theory of motivation. Any drive that
is somatically based and localizable was shown to be atypical rather than
typical in human motivation.
3. Such a theory should stress and center itself
upon ultimate or basic goals rather than partial or superficial ones, upon ends
rather than means to these ends. Such a stress would imply a more central place
for unconscious than for conscious motivations.
4. There are usually available various cultural
paths to the same goal. Therefore conscious, specific, local-cultural desires
are not as fundamental in motivation theory as the more basic, unconscious
goals.
5. Any motivated behavior, either preparatory or
consummatory, must be understood to be a channel through which many basic needs
may be simultaneously expressed or satisfied. Typically an act has more than
one motivation.
6. Practically all organismic states are to be
understood as motivated and as motivating.
7. Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies
of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the
prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually
wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or
discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or
dissatisfaction of other drives.
8. Lists of drives will get us nowhere for various
theoretical and practical reasons. Furthermore any classification of
motivations [p. 371] must deal with the problem of levels of specificity or
generalization the motives to be classified.
9. Classifications of motivations must be based
upon goals rather than upon instigating drives or motivated behavior.
10. Motivation theory should be human-centered
rather than animal-centered.
11. The situation or the field in which the
organism reacts must be taken into account but the field alone can rarely serve
as an exclusive explanation for behavior. Furthermore the field itself must be
interpreted in terms of the organism. Field theory cannot be a substitute for
motivation theory.
12. Not only the integration of the organism must
be taken into account, but also the possibility of isolated, specific, partial
or segmental reactions. It has since become necessary to add to these another affirmation.
13. 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.
The present paper is an attempt to formulate a
positive theory of motivation which will satisfy these theoretical demands and
at the same time conform to the known facts, clinical and observational as well
as experimental. It derives most directly, however, from clinical experience.
This theory is, I think, in the functionalist tradition of James and Dewey, and
is fused with the holism of Wertheimer (19), Goldstein (6), and Gestalt
Psychology, and with the dynamicism of Freud (4) and Adler (1). This fusion or
synthesis may arbitrarily be called a ‘general-dynamic’ theory.
It is far easier to perceive and to criticize the aspects in motivation theory
than to remedy them. Mostly this is because of the very serious lack of sound
data in this area. I conceive this lack of sound facts to be due primarily to
the absence of a valid theory of motivation. The present theory then must be
considered to be a suggested program or framework for future research and must
stand or fall, not so much on facts available or evidence presented, as upon
researches to be done, researches suggested perhaps, by the questions raised in
this paper.[p. 372]
II. THE BASIC NEEDS
The ‘physiological’ needs. — The needs that are
usually taken as the starting point for motivation theory are the so-called
physiological drives. Two recent lines of research make it necessary to revise
our customary notions about these needs, first, the development of the concept
of homeostasis, and second, the finding that appetites (preferential choices
among foods) are a fairly efficient indication of actual needs or lacks in the
body.
Homeostasis refers to the body’s automatic efforts
to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream. Cannon (2) has
described this process for (1) the water content of the blood, (2) salt
content, (3) sugar content, (4) protein content, (5) fat content, (6) calcium
content, (7) oxygen content, (8) constant hydrogen-ion level (acid-base
balance) and (9) constant temperature of the blood. Obviously this list can be
extended to include other minerals, the hormones, vitamins, etc.
Young in a recent article (21) has summarized the
work on appetite in its relation to body needs. If the body lacks some
chemical, the individual will tend to develop a specific appetite or partial
hunger for that food element.
Thus it seems impossible as well as useless to
make any list of fundamental physiological needs for they can come to almost
any number one might wish, depending on the degree of specificity of
description. We can not identify all physiological needs as homeostatic. That
sexual desire, sleepiness, sheer activity and maternal behavior in animals, are
homeostatic, has not yet been demonstrated. Furthermore, this list would not
include the various sensory pleasures (tastes, smells, tickling, stroking)
which are probably physiological and which may become the goals of motivated
behavior.
In a previous paper (13) it has been pointed out
that these physiological drives or needs are to be considered unusual rather
than typical because they are isolable, and because they are localizable
somatically. That is to say, they are relatively independent of each other, of
other motivations [p. 373] and of the organism as a whole, and secondly, in
many cases, it is possible to demonstrate a localized, underlying somatic base
for the drive. This is true less generally than has been thought (exceptions
are fatigue, sleepiness, maternal responses) but it is still true in the
classic instances of hunger, sex, and thirst.
It should be pointed out again that any of the
physiological needs and the consummatory behavior involved with them serve as
channels for all sorts of other needs as well. That is to say, the person who
thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence,
than for vitamins or proteins. Conversely, it is possible to satisfy the hunger
need in part by other activities such as drinking water or smoking cigarettes.
In other words, relatively isolable as these physiological needs are, they are
not completely so.
Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most
pre-potent of all needs. What this means specifically is, that in the human
being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most
likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than
any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most
probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else.
If all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism
is then dominated by the physiological needs, all other needs may become simply
non-existent or be pushed into the background. It is then fair to characterize
the whole organism by saying simply that it is hungry, for consciousness is
almost completely preempted by hunger. All capacities are put into the service
of hunger-satisfaction, and the organization of these capacities is almost
entirely determined by the one purpose of satisfying hunger. The receptors and
effectors, the intelligence, memory, habits, all may now be defined simply as
hunger-gratifying tools. Capacities that are not useful for this purpose lie
dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to write poetry, the
desire to acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire
for a new pair of shoes are, in the extreme case, forgotten or become of
sec-[p.374]ondary importance. For the man who is extremely and dangerously
hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams food, he remembers food,
he thinks about food, he emotes only about food, he perceives only food and he
wants only food. The more subtle determinants that ordinarily fuse with the
physiological drives in organizing even feeding, drinking or sexual behavior,
may now be so completely overwhelmed as to allow us to speak at this time (but
only at this time) of pure hunger drive and behavior, with the one unqualified
aim of relief.
Another peculiar characteristic of the human
organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of
the future tends also to change. For our chronically and extremely hungry man,
Utopia can be defined very simply as a place where there is plenty of food. He
tends to think that, if only he is guaranteed food for the rest of his life, he
will be perfectly happy and will never want anything more. Life itself tends to
be defined in terms of eating. Anything else will be defined as unimportant.
Freedom, love, community feeling, respect, philosophy, may all be waved aside
as fripperies which are useless since they fail to fill the stomach. Such a man
may fairly be said to live by bread alone.
It cannot possibly be denied that such things are
true but their generality can be denied. Emergency conditions are, almost by
definition, rare in the normally functioning peaceful society. That this truism
can be forgotten is due mainly to two reasons. First, rats have few motivations
other than physiological ones, and since so much of the research upon
motivation has been made with these animals, it is easy to carry the
rat-picture over to the human being. Secondly, it is too often not realized
that culture itself is an adaptive tool, one of whose main functions is to make
the physiological emergencies come less and less often. In most of the known
societies, chronic extreme hunger of the emergency type is rare, rather than common.
In any case, this is still true in the United States. The average American
citizen is experiencing appetite rather than hunger when he says “I am [p. 375]
hungry.” He is apt to experience sheer life-and-death hunger only by accident
and then only a few times through his entire life.
Obviously a good way to obscure the ‘higher’
motivations, and to get a lopsided view of human capacities and human nature,
is to make the organism extremely and chronically hungry or thirsty. Anyone who
attempts to make an emergency picture into a typical one, and who will measure
all of man’s goals and desires by his behavior during extreme physiological
deprivation is certainly being blind to many things. It is quite true that man
lives by bread alone — when there is no bread. But what happens to man’s
desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?
At once other (and ‘higher’) needs emerge and
these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these
in turn are satisfied, again new (and still ‘higher’) needs emerge and so on.
This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organized into a
hierarchy of relative prepotency.
One main implication of this phrasing is that
gratification becomes as important a concept as deprivation in motivation
theory, for it releases the organism from the domination of a relatively more
physiological need, permitting thereby the emergence of other more social
goals. The physiological needs, along with their partial goals, when chronically
gratified cease to exist as active determinants or organizers of behavior. They
now exist only in a potential fashion in the sense that they may emerge again
to dominate the organism if they are thwarted. But a want that is satisfied is
no longer a want. The organism is dominated and its behavior organized only by
unsatisfied needs. If hunger is satisfied, it becomes unimportant in the
current dynamics of the individual.
This statement is somewhat qualified by a
hypothesis to be discussed more fully later, namely that it is precisely those
individuals in whom a certain need has always been satisfied who are best
equipped to tolerate deprivation of that need in the future, and that
furthermore, those who have been de-[p. 376]prived in the past will react
differently to current satisfactions than the one who has never been deprived.
The safety needs. — If the physiological needs are
relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may
categorize roughly as the safety needs. All that has been said of the
physiological needs is equally true, although in lesser degree, of these
desires. The organism may equally well be wholly dominated by them. They may
serve as the almost exclusive organizers of behavior, recruiting all the capacities
of the organism in their service, and we may then fairly describe the whole
organism as a safety-seeking mechanism. Again we may say of the receptors, the
effectors, of the intellect and the other capacities that they are primarily
safety-seeking tools. Again, as in the hungry man, we find that the dominating
goal is a strong determinant not only of his current world-outlook and
philosophy but also of his philosophy of the future. Practically everything
looks less important than safety, (even sometimes the physiological needs which
being satisfied, are now underestimated). A man, in this state, if it is
extreme enough and chronic enough, may be characterized as living almost for
safety alone.
Although in this paper we are interested primarily
in the needs of the adult, we can approach an understanding of his safety needs
perhaps more efficiently by observation of infants and children, in whom these
needs are much more simple and obvious. One reason for the clearer appearance
of the threat or danger reaction in infants, is that they do not inhibit this
reaction at all, whereas adults in our society have been taught to inhibit it
at all costs. Thus even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened we
may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a total
fashion and as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped
suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light, or other unusual sensory
stimulation, by rough handling, by general loss of support in the mother’s arms,
or by inadequate support.[1][p. 377]
In infants we can also see a much more direct
reaction to bodily illnesses of various kinds. Sometimes these illnesses seem
to be immediately and per se threatening and seem to make the child feel
unsafe. For instance, vomiting, colic or other sharp pains seem to make the
child look at the whole world in a different way. At such a moment of pain, it
may be postulated that, for the child, the appearance of the whole world
suddenly changes from sunniness to darkness, so to speak, and becomes a place
in which anything at all might happen, in which previously stable things have
suddenly become unstable. Thus a child who because of some bad food is taken
ill may, for a day or two, develop fear, nightmares, and a need for protection
and reassurance never seen in him before his illness.
Another indication of the child’s need for safety
is his preference for some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to
want a predictable, orderly world. For instance, injustice, unfairness, or
inconsistency in the parents seems to make a child feel anxious and unsafe.
This attitude may be not so much because of the injustice per se or any
particular pains involved, but rather because this treatment threatens to make
the world look unreliable, or unsafe, or unpredictable. Young children seem to
thrive better under a system which has at least a skeletal outline of rigidity,
In which there is a schedule of a kind, some sort of routine, something that
can be counted upon, not only for the present but also far into the future.
Perhaps one could express this more accurately by saying that the child needs
an organized world rather than an unorganized or unstructured one.
The central role of the parents and the normal
family setup are indisputable. Quarreling, physical assault, separation,
divorce or death within the family may be particularly terrifying. Also
parental outbursts of rage or threats of punishment directed to the child,
calling him names, speaking to him harshly, shaking him, handling him roughly,
or actual [p. 378] physical punishment sometimes elicit such total panic and
terror in the child that we must assume more is involved than the physical pain
alone. While it is true that in some children this terror may represent also a
fear of loss of parental love, it can also occur in completely rejected
children, who seem to cling to the hating parents more for sheer safety and
protection than because of hope of love.
Confronting the average child with new,
unfamiliar, strange, unmanageable stimuli or situations will too frequently
elicit the danger or terror reaction, as for example, getting lost or even
being separated from the parents for a short time, being confronted with new
faces, new situations or new tasks, the sight of strange, unfamiliar or
uncontrollable objects, illness or death. Particularly at such times, the
child’s frantic clinging to his parents is eloquent testimony to their role as
protectors (quite apart from their roles as food-givers and love-givers).
From these and similar observations, we may
generalize and say that the average child in our society generally prefers a
safe, orderly, predictable, organized world, which he can count, on, and in
which unexpected, unmanageable or other dangerous things do not happen, and in
which, in any case, he has all-powerful parents who protect and shield him from
harm.
That these reactions may so easily be observed in
children is in a way a proof of the fact that children in our society, feel too
unsafe (or, in a word, are badly brought up). Children who are reared in an
unthreatening, loving family do not ordinarily react as we have described above
(17). In such children the danger reactions are apt to come mostly to objects
or situations that adults too would consider dangerous.[2]
The healthy, normal, fortunate adult in our
culture is largely satisfied in his safety needs. The peaceful, smoothly [p.
379] running, ‘good’ society ordinarily makes its members feel safe enough from
wild animals, extremes of temperature, criminals, assault and murder, tyranny,
etc. Therefore, in a very real sense, he no longer has any safety needs as
active motivators. Just as a sated man no longer feels hungry, a safe man no
longer feels endangered. If we wish to see these needs directly and clearly we
must turn to neurotic or near-neurotic individuals, and to the economic and
social underdogs. In between these extremes, we can perceive the expressions of
safety needs only in such phenomena as, for instance, the common preference for
a job with tenure and protection, the desire for a savings account, and for
insurance of various kinds (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old
age).
Other broader aspects of the attempt to seek
safety and stability in the world are seen in the very common preference for familiar
rather than unfamiliar things, or for the known rather than the unknown. The
tendency to have some religion or world-philosophy that organizes the universe
and the men in it into some sort of satisfactorily coherent, meaningful whole
is also in part motivated by safety-seeking. Here too we may list science and
philosophy in general as partially motivated by the safety needs (we shall see
later that there are also other motivations to scientific, philosophical or
religious endeavor).
Otherwise the need for safety is seen as an active
and dominant mobilizer of the organism’s resources only in emergencies, e. g.,
war, disease, natural catastrophes, crime waves, societal disorganization,
neurosis, brain injury, chronically bad situation.
Some neurotic adults in our society are, in many
ways, like the unsafe child in their desire for safety, although in the former
it takes on a somewhat special appearance. Their reaction is often to unknown,
psychological dangers in a world that is perceived to be hostile, overwhelming
and threatening. Such a person behaves as if a great catastrophe were almost
always impending, i.e., he is usually responding as if to an emergency. His
safety needs often find specific [p. 380] expression in a search for a
protector, or a stronger person on whom he may depend, or perhaps, a Fuehrer.
The neurotic individual may be described in a
slightly different way with some usefulness as a grown-up person who retains
his childish attitudes toward the world. That is to say, a neurotic adult may
be said to behave ‘as if’ he were actually afraid of a spanking, or of his
mother’s disapproval, or of being abandoned by his parents, or having his food
taken away from him. It is as if his childish attitudes of fear and threat
reaction to a dangerous world had gone underground, and untouched by the
growing up and learning processes, were now ready to be called out by any
stimulus that would make a child feel endangered and threatened.[3]
The neurosis in which the search for safety takes
its dearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessives
try frantically to order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable,
unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear (14); They hedge themselves
about with all sorts of ceremonials, rules and formulas so that every possible
contingency may be provided for and so that no new contingencies may appear.
They are much like the brain injured cases, described by Goldstein (6), who
manage to maintain their equilibrium by avoiding everything unfamiliar and
strange and by ordering their restricted world in such a neat, disciplined,
orderly fashion that everything in the world can be counted upon. They try to
arrange the world so that anything unexpected (dangers) cannot possibly occur.
If, through no fault of their own, something unexpected does occur, they go
into a panic reaction as if this unexpected occurrence constituted a grave
danger. What we can see only as a none-too-strong preference in the healthy
person, e. g., preference for the familiar, becomes a life-and-death. necessity
in abnormal cases.
The love needs. — If both the physiological and
the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge the love and
affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle [p. 381] already
described will repeat itself with this new center. Now the person will feel
keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or
children. He will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general,
namely, for a place in his group, and he will strive with great intensity to achieve
this goal. He will want to attain such a place more than anything else in the
world and may even forget that once, when he was hungry, he sneered at love.
In our society the thwarting of these needs is the
most commonly found core in cases of maladjustment and more severe
psychopathology. Love and affection, as well as their possible expression in
sexuality, are generally looked upon with ambivalence and are customarily
hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Practically all theorists
of psychopathology have stressed thwarting of the love needs as basic in the
picture of maladjustment. Many clinical studies have therefore been made of
this need and we know more about it perhaps than any of the other needs except
the physiological ones (14).
One thing that must be stressed at this point is
that love is not synonymous with sex. Sex may be studied as a purely
physiological need. Ordinarily sexual behavior is multi-determined, that is to
say, determined not only by sexual but also by other needs, chief among which
are the love and affection needs. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that
the love needs involve both giving and receiving love.[4]
The esteem needs. — All people in our society
(with a few pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for a stable, firmly
based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or
self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. By firmly based self-esteem, we mean
that which is soundly based upon real capacity, achievement and respect from others.
These needs may be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the
desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face
of the world, and for independence and freedom.[5] Secondly, we have what [p.
382] we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect
or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or
appreciation.[6] These needs have been relatively stressed by Alfred Adler and
his followers, and have been relatively neglected by Freud and the
psychoanalysts. More and more today however there is appearing widespread
appreciation of their central importance.
Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to
feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and adequacy of being
useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting of these needs produces
feelings of inferiority, of weakness and of helplessness. These feelings in
turn give rise to either basic discouragement or else compensatory or neurotic
trends. An appreciation of the necessity of basic self-confidence and an
understanding of how helpless people are without it, can be easily gained from
a study of severe traumatic neurosis (8).[7]
The need for self-actualization. — 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. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet
must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be.
This need we may call self-actualization.
This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is
being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. 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.[p. 383]
The specific form that these needs will take will
of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the
form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed
athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or
in inventions. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who
have any capacities for creation it will take this form.
The clear emergence of these needs rests upon
prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We
shall call people who are satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied people,
and it is from these that we may expect the fullest (and healthiest)
creativeness.[8] Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the
exception, we do not know much about self-actualization, either experimentally
or clinically. It remains a challenging problem for research.
The preconditions for the basic need
satisfactions. — There are certain conditions which are immediate prerequisites
for the basic need satisfactions. Danger to these is reacted to almost as if it
were a direct danger to the basic needs themselves. Such conditions as freedom
to speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long as no harm is done to others,
freedom to express one’s self, freedom to investigate and seek for information,
freedom to defend one’s self, justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the
group are examples of such preconditions for basic need satisfactions.
Thwarting in these freedoms will be reacted to with a threat or emergency
response. These conditions are not ends in themselves but they are almost so
since they are so closely related to the basic needs, which are apparently the
only ends in themselves. These conditions are defended because without them the
basic satisfactions are quite impossible, or at least, very severely
endangered.[p. 384]
If we remember that the cognitive capacities
(perceptual, intellectual, learning) are a set of adjustive tools, which have,
among other functions, that of satisfaction of our basic needs, then it is
clear that any danger to them, any deprivation or blocking of their free use,
must also be indirectly threatening to the basic needs themselves. Such a
statement is a partial solution of the general problems of curiosity, the
search for knowledge, truth and wisdom, and the ever-persistent urge to solve
the cosmic mysteries.
We must therefore introduce another hypothesis and
speak of degrees of closeness to the basic needs, for we have already pointed
out that any conscious desires (partial goals) are more or less important as
they are more or less close to the basic needs. The same statement may be made
for various behavior acts. An act is psychologically important if it
contributes directly to satisfaction of basic needs. The less directly it so
contributes, or the weaker this contribution is, the less important this act
must be conceived to be from the point of view of dynamic psychology. A similar
statement may be made for the various defense or coping mechanisms. Some are
very directly related to the protection or attainment of the basic needs,
others are only weakly and distantly related. Indeed if we wished, we could
speak of more basic and less basic defense mechanisms, and then affirm that
danger to the more basic defenses is more threatening than danger to less basic
defenses (always remembering that this is so only because of their relationship
to the basic needs).
The desires to know and to understand. — So far,
we have mentioned the cognitive needs only in passing. Acquiring knowledge and
systematizing the universe have been considered as, in part, techniques for the
achievement of basic safety in the world, or, for the intelligent man,
expressions of self-actualization. Also freedom of inquiry and expression have
been discussed as preconditions of satisfactions of the basic needs. True
though these formulations may be, they do not constitute definitive answers to
the question as to the motivation role of curiosity, learning, philosophizing,
experimenting, etc. They are, at best, no more than partial answers.[p. 385]
This question is especially difficult because we
know so little about the facts. Curiosity, exploration, desire for the facts,
desire to know may certainly be observed easily enough. The fact that they
often are pursued even at great cost to the individual’s safety is an earnest
of the partial character of our previous discussion. In addition, the writer
must admit that, though he has sufficient clinical evidence to postulate the
desire to know as a very strong drive in intelligent people, no data are
available for unintelligent people. It may then be largely a function of
relatively high intelligence. 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.
This postulation, however, is not enough. Even
after we know, we are impelled to know more and more minutely and
microscopically on the one hand, and on the other, more and more extensively in
the direction of a world philosophy, religion, etc. The facts that we acquire,
if they are isolated or atomistic, inevitably get theorized about, and either
analyzed or organized or both. This process has been phrased by some as the
search for ‘meaning.’ We shall then postulate a desire to understand, to
systematize, to organize, to analyze, to look for relations and meanings.
Once these desires are accepted for discussion, we
see that they too form themselves into a small hierarchy in which the desire to
know is prepotent over the desire to understand. All the characteristics of a
hierarchy of prepotency that we have described above, seem to hold for this one
as well.
We must guard ourselves against the too easy
tendency to separate these desires from the basic needs we have discussed
above, i.e., to make a sharp dichotomy between ‘cognitive’ and ‘conative’
needs. The desire to know and to understand are themselves conative, i.e., have
a striving character, and are as much personality needs as the ‘basic needs’ we
have already discussed (19).[p. 386]
III. FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BASIC NEEDS
The degree of fixity of the hierarchy of basic
needs. — We have spoken so far as if this hierarchy were a fixed order but
actually it is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied. It is true that most
of the people with whom we have worked have seemed to have these basic needs in
about the order that has been indicated. However, there have been a number of
exceptions.
(1) There are some people in whom, for instance,
self-esteem seems to be more important than love. This most common reversal in
the hierarchy is usually due to the development of the notion that the person
who is most likely to be loved is a strong or powerful person, one who inspires
respect or fear, and who is self confident or aggressive. Therefore such people
who lack love and seek it, may try hard to put on a front of aggressive,
confident behavior. But essentially they seek high self-esteem and its behavior
expressions more as a means-to-an-end than for its own sake; they seek
self-assertion for the sake of love rather than for self-esteem itself.
(2) There are other, apparently innately creative
people in whom the drive to creativeness seems to be more important than any other
counter-determinant. Their creativeness might appear not as self-actualization
released by basic satisfaction, but in spite of lack of basic satisfaction.
(3) In certain people the level of aspiration may
be permanently deadened or lowered. That is to say, the less pre-potent goals
may simply be lost, and may disappear forever, so that the person who has
experienced life at a very low level, i. e., chronic unemployment, may continue
to be satisfied for the rest of his life if only he can get enough food.
(4) The so-called ‘psychopathic personality’ is
another example of permanent loss of the love needs. These are people who,
according to the best data available (9), have been starved for love in the
earliest months of their lives and have simply lost forever the desire and the
ability to give and to receive affection (as animals lose sucking or pecking
reflexes that are not exercised soon enough after birth).[p. 387]
(5) Another cause of reversal of the hierarchy is
that when a need has been satisfied for a long time, this need may be
underevaluated. People who have never experienced chronic hunger are apt to
underestimate its effects and to look upon food as a rather unimportant thing.
If they are dominated by a higher need, this higher need will seem to be the
most important of all. It then becomes possible, and indeed does actually
happen, that they may, for the sake of this higher need, put themselves into
the position of being deprived in a more basic need. We may expect that after a
long-time deprivation of the more basic need there will be a tendency to
reevaluate both needs so that the more pre-potent need will actually become
consciously prepotent for the individual who may have given it up very lightly.
Thus, a man who has given up his job rather than lose his self-respect, and who
then starves for six months or so, may be willing to take his job back even at
the price of losing his a self-respect.
(6) Another partial explanation of apparent
reversals is seen in the fact that we have been talking about the hierarchy of
prepotency in terms of consciously felt wants or desires rather than of
behavior. Looking at behavior itself may give us the wrong impression. What we
have claimed is that the person will want the more basic of two needs when
deprived in both. There is no necessary implication here that he will act upon
his desires. Let us say again that there are many determinants of behavior
other than the needs and desires.
(7) Perhaps more important than all these
exceptions are the ones that involve ideals, high social standards, high values
and the like. With such values people become martyrs; they give up everything
for the sake of a particular ideal, or value. These people may be understood,
at least in part, by reference to one basic concept (or hypothesis) which may
be called ‘increased frustration-tolerance through early gratification’. People
who have been satisfied in their basic needs throughout their lives,
particularly in their earlier years, seem to develop exceptional power to
withstand present or future thwarting of these needs simply because they have
strong,[p. 388] healthy character structure as a result of basic satisfaction.
They are the ‘strong’ people who can easily weather disagreement or opposition,
who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the
truth at great personal cost. It is just the ones who have loved and been well
loved, and who have had many deep friendships who can hold out against hatred,
rejection or persecution.
I say all this in spite of the fact that there is
a certain amount of sheer habituation which is also involved in any full
discussion of frustration tolerance. For instance, it is likely that those
persons who have been accustomed to relative starvation for a long time, are
partially enabled thereby to withstand food deprivation. What sort of balance
must be made between these two tendencies, of habituation on the one hand, and
of past satisfaction breeding present frustration tolerance on the other hand,
remains to be worked out by further research. Meanwhile we may assume that they
are both operative, side by side, since they do not contradict each other, In
respect to this phenomenon of increased frustration tolerance, it seems
probable that the most important gratifications come in the first two years of
life. That is to say, people who have been made secure and strong in the
earliest years, tend to remain secure and strong thereafter in the face of
whatever threatens.
Degree of relative satisfaction. — So far, our
theoretical discussion may have given the impression that these five sets of
needs are somehow in a step-wise, all-or-none relationships to each other. We
have spoken in such terms as the following: “If one need is satisfied, then
another emerges.” This statement might give the false impression that a need
must be satisfied 100 per cent before the next need emerges. In actual fact,
most members of our society who are normal, are partially satisfied in all
their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the
same time. A more realistic description of the hierarchy would be in terms of
decreasing percentages of satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy of prepotency,
For instance, if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of illustration,
it is as if the average citizen [p. 389] is satisfied perhaps 85 per cent in
his physiological needs, 70 per cent in his safety needs, 50 per cent in his
love needs, 40 per cent in his self-esteem needs, and 10 per cent in his
self-actualization needs.
As for the concept of emergence of a new need
after satisfaction of the prepotent need, this emergence is not a sudden,
saltatory phenomenon but rather a gradual emergence by slow degrees from
nothingness. For instance, if prepotent need A is satisfied only 10 per cent:
then need B may not be visible at all. However, as this need A becomes
satisfied 25 per cent, need B may emerge 5 per cent, as need A becomes
satisfied 75 per cent need B may emerge go per cent, and so on.
Unconscious character of needs. — These needs are
neither necessarily conscious nor unconscious. On the whole, however, in the
average person, they are more often unconscious rather than conscious. It is
not necessary at this point to overhaul the tremendous mass of evidence which
indicates the crucial importance of unconscious motivation. It would by now be
expected, on a priori grounds alone, that unconscious motivations would on the
whole be rather more important than the conscious motivations. What we have
called the basic needs are very often largely unconscious although they may,
with suitable techniques, and with sophisticated people become conscious.
Cultural specificity and generality of needs. —
This classification of basic needs makes some attempt to take account of the
relative unity behind the superficial differences in specific desires from one
culture to another. Certainly in any particular culture an individual’s
conscious motivational content will usually be extremely different from the
conscious motivational content of an individual in another society. However, it
is the common experience of anthropologists that people, even in different
societies, are much more alike than we would think from our first contact with
them, and that as we know them better we seem to find more and more of this
commonness, We then recognize the most startling differences to be superficial
rather than basic, e. g., differences in style of hair-dress, clothes, tastes
in food, etc. Our classification of basic [p. 390] needs is in part an attempt
to account for this unity behind the apparent diversity from culture to
culture. No claim is made that it is ultimate or universal for all cultures.
The claim is made only that it is relatively more ultimate, more universal,
more basic, than the superficial conscious desires from culture to culture, and
makes a somewhat closer approach to common-human characteristics, Basic needs
are more common-human than superficial desires or behaviors.
Multiple motivations of behavior. — These needs
must be understood not to be exclusive or single determiners of certain kinds
of behavior. An example may be found in any behavior that seems to be
physiologically motivated, such as eating, or sexual play or the like. The
clinical psychologists have long since found that any behavior may be a channel
through which flow various determinants. Or to say it in another way, most
behavior is multi-motivated. Within the sphere of motivational determinants any
behavior tends to be determined by several or all of the basic needs
simultaneously rather than by only one of them. The latter would be more an
exception than the former. Eating may be partially for the sake of filling the
stomach, and partially for the sake of comfort and amelioration of other needs.
One may make love not only for pure sexual release, but also to convince one’s
self of one’s masculinity, or to make a conquest, to feel powerful, or to win
more basic affection. As an illustration, I may point out that it would be
possible (theoretically if not practically) to analyze a single act of an
individual and see in it the expression of his physiological needs, his safety
needs, his love needs, his esteem needs and self-actualization. This contrasts
sharply with the more naive brand of trait psychology in which one trait or one
motive accounts for a certain kind of act, i. e., an aggressive act is traced
solely to a trait of aggressiveness.
Multiple determinants of behavior. — Not all
behavior is determined by the basic needs. We might even say that not all
behavior is motivated. There are many determinants of behavior other than
motives.[9] For instance, one other im-[p. 391]portant class of determinants is
the so-called ‘field’ determinants. Theoretically, at least, behavior may be
determined completely by the field, or even by specific isolated external
stimuli, as in association of ideas, or certain conditioned reflexes. If in
response to the stimulus word ‘table’ I immediately perceive a memory image of
a table, this response certainly has nothing to do with my basic needs.
Secondly, we may call attention again to the
concept of ‘degree of closeness to the basic needs’ or ‘degree of motivation.’
Some behavior is highly motivated, other behavior is only weakly motivated.
Some is not motivated at all (but all behavior is determined).
Another important point [10] is that there is a
basic difference between expressive behavior and coping behavior (functional
striving, purposive goal seeking). An expressive behavior does not try to do
anything; it is simply a reflection of the personality. A stupid man behaves
stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply
because he is what he is. The same is true when I speak in a bass voice rather
than tenor or soprano. The random movements of a healthy child, the smile on
the face of a happy man even when he is alone, the springiness of the healthy
man’s walk, and the erectness of his carriage are other examples of expressive,
non-functional behavior. Also the style in which a man carries out almost all his
behavior, motivated as well as unmotivated, is often expressive.
We may then ask, is all behavior expressive or
reflective of the character structure? The answer is ‘No.’ Rote, habitual,
automatized, or conventional behavior may or may not be expressive. The same is
true for most ‘stimulus-bound’ behaviors. It is finally necessary to stress
that expressiveness of behavior, and goal-directedness of behavior are not
mutually exclusive categories. Average behavior is usually both.
Goals as centering principle in motivation theory.
— It will be observed that the basic principle in our classification has [p.
392] been neither the instigation nor the motivated behavior but rather the
functions, effects, purposes, or goals of the behavior. It has been proven sufficiently
by various people that this is the most suitable point for centering in any
motivation theory.[11]
Animal- and human-centering. — This theory starts
with the human being rather than any lower and presumably ‘simpler’ animal. Too
many of the findings that have been made in animals have been proven to be true
for animals but not for the human being. There is no reason whatsoever why we
should start with animals in order to study human motivation. The logic or
rather illogic behind this general fallacy of ‘pseudo-simplicity’ has been
exposed often enough by philosophers and logicians as well as by scientists in
each of the various fields. It is no more necessary to study animals before one
can study man than it is to study mathematics before one can study geology or
psychology or biology.
We may also reject the old, naive, behaviorism
which assumed that it was somehow necessary, or at least more ‘scientific’ to
judge human beings by animal standards. One consequence of this belief was that
the whole notion of purpose and goal was excluded from motivational psychology
simply because one could not ask a white rat about his purposes. Tolman (18)
has long since proven in animal studies themselves that this exclusion was not
necessary.
Motivation and the theory of psychopathogenesis. —
The conscious motivational content of everyday life has, according to the
foregoing, been conceived to be relatively important or unimportant accordingly
as it is more or less closely related to the basic goals. A desire for an ice
cream cone might actually be an indirect expression of a desire for love. If it
is, then this desire for the ice cream cone becomes extremely important
motivation. If however the ice cream is simply something to cool the mouth
with, or a casual appetitive reaction, then the desire is relatively
unimportant. Everyday conscious desires are to be regarded as symptoms, as [p.
393] surface indicators of more basic needs. If we were to take these
superficial desires at their face value me would find ourselves in a state of
complete confusion which could never be resolved, since we would be dealing
seriously with symptoms rather than with what lay behind the symptoms.
Thwarting of unimportant desires produces no
psychopathological results; thwarting of a basically important need does
produce such results. Any theory of psychopathogenesis must then be based on a
sound theory of motivation. A conflict or a frustration is not necessarily
pathogenic. It becomes so only when it threatens or thwarts the basic needs, or
partial needs that are closely related to the basic needs (10).
The role of gratified needs. — It has been pointed
out above several times that our needs usually emerge only when more prepotent
needs have been gratified. Thus gratification has an important role in
motivation theory. Apart from this, however, needs cease to play an active
determining or organizing role as soon as they are gratified.
What this means is that, e. g., a basically
satisfied person no longer has the needs for esteem, love, safety, etc. The
only sense in which he might be said to have them is in the almost metaphysical
sense that a sated man has hunger, or a filled bottle has emptiness. If we are
interested in what actually motivates us, and not in what has, will, or might
motivate us, then a satisfied need is not a motivator. It must be considered
for all practical purposes simply not to exist, to have disappeared. This point
should be emphasized because it has been either overlooked or contradicted in
every theory of motivation I know.[12] The perfectly healthy, normal, fortunate
man has no sex needs or hunger needs, or needs for safety, or for love, or for
prestige, or self-esteem, except in stray moments of quickly passing threat. If
we were to say otherwise, we should also have to aver that every man had all
the pathological reflexes, e. g., Babinski, etc., because if his nervous system
were damaged, these would appear.
It is such considerations as these that suggest
the bold [p. 394] postulation that a man who is thwarted in any of his basic
needs may fairly be envisaged simply as a sick man. This is a fair parallel to
our designation as ‘sick’ of the man who lacks vitamins or minerals. Who is to
say that a lack of love is less important than a lack of vitamins? Since we
know the pathogenic effects of love starvation, who is to say that we are
invoking value-questions in an unscientific or illegitimate way, any more than
the physician does who diagnoses and treats pellagra or scurvy? If I were
permitted this usage, I should then say simply that a healthy man is primarily
motivated by his needs to develop and actualize his fullest potentialities and
capacities. If a man has any other basic needs in any active, chronic sense,
then he is simply an unhealthy man. He is as surely sick as if he had suddenly
developed a strong salt-hunger or calcium hunger.[13]
If this statement seems unusual or paradoxical the
reader may be assured that this is only one among many such paradoxes that will
appear as we revise our ways of looking at man’s deeper motivations. When we
ask what man wants of life, we deal with his very essence.
IV. SUMMARY
(1) There are at least five sets of goals, which
we may call basic needs. These are briefly physiological, safety, love,
‘esteem, and self-actualization. In addition, we are motivated by the desire to
achieve or maintain the various conditions upon which these basic satisfactions
rest and by certain more intellectual desires.
(2) These basic goals are related to each other,
being arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency. This means that the most prepotent
goal will monopolize consciousness and will tend of itself to organize the
recruitment of the various capacities of the organism. The less prepotent needs
are [p. 395] minimized, even forgotten or denied. But when a need is fairly
well satisfied, the next prepotent (‘higher’) need emerges, in turn to dominate
the conscious life and to serve as the center of organization of behavior,
since gratified needs are not active motivators.
Thus man is a perpetually wanting animal.
Ordinarily the satisfaction of these wants is not altogether mutually
exclusive, but only tends to be. The average member of our society is most
often partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in all of his wants. The
hierarchy principle is usually empirically observed in terms of increasing
percentages of non-satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy. Reversals of the
average order of the hierarchy are sometimes observed. Also it has been
observed that an individual may permanently lose the higher wants in the
hierarchy under special conditions. There are not only ordinarily multiple
motivations for usual behavior, but in addition many determinants other than
motives.
(3) Any thwarting or possibility of thwarting of
these basic human goals, or danger to the defenses which protect them, or to
the conditions upon which they rest, is considered to be a psychological
threat. With a few exceptions, all psychopathology may be partially traced to
such threats. A basically thwarted man may actually be defined as a ‘sick’ man,
if we wish.
(4) It is such basic threats which bring about the
general emergency reactions.
(5) Certain other basic problems have not been
dealt with because of limitations of space. Among these are (a) the problem of
values in any definitive motivation theory, (b) the relation between appetites,
desires, needs and what is ‘good’ for the organism, (c) the etiology of the
basic needs and their possible derivation in early childhood, (d) redefinition
of motivational concepts, i. e., drive, desire, wish, need, goal, (e)
implication of our theory for hedonistic theory, (f) the nature of the
uncompleted act, of success and failure, and of aspiration-level, (g) the role
of association, habit and conditioning, (h) relation to the [p. 396] theory of
inter-personal relations, (i) implications for psychotherapy, (j) implication
for theory of society, (k) the theory of selfishness, (l) the relation between
needs and cultural patterns, (m) the relation between this theory and Alport’s
theory of functional autonomy. These as well as certain other less important
questions must be considered as motivation theory attempts to become
definitive.
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Notes
[1] As the child grows up, sheer knowledge and
familiarity as well as better motor development make these ‘dangers’ less and
less dangerous and more and more manageable. Throughout life it may be said
that one of the main conative functions of education is this neutralizing of
apparent dangers through knowledge, e. g., I am not afraid of thunder because I
know something about it.
[2] A ‘test battery’ for safety might be
confronting the child with a small exploding firecracker, or with a bewhiskered
face; having the mother leave the room, putting him upon a high ladder, a
hypodermic injection, having a mouse crawl up to him, etc. Of course I cannot
seriously recommend the deliberate use of such ‘tests’ for they might very well
harm the child being tested. But these and similar situations come up by the
score in the child’s ordinary day-to-day living and may be observed. There is
no reason why those stimuli should not be used with, far example, young
chimpanzees.
[3] Not all neurotic individuals feel unsafe. Neurosis
may have at its core a thwarting of the affection and esteem needs in a person
who is generally safe.
[4] For further details see (12) and (16, Chap.
5).
[5] Whether or not this particular desire is
universal we do not know. The crucial question, especially important today, is
“Will men who are enslaved and dominated inevitably feel dissatisfied and
rebellious?” We may assume on the basis of commonly known clinical data that a
man who has known true freedom (not paid for by giving up safety and security
but rather built on the basis of adequate safety and security) will not
willingly or easily allow his freedom to be taken away from him. But we do not
know that this is true for the person born into slavery. The events of the next
decade should give us our answer. See discussion of this problem in (5).
[6] Perhaps the desire for prestige and respect
from others is subsidiary to the desire for self-esteem or confidence in
oneself. Observation of children seems to indicate that this is so, but
clinical data give no clear support for such a conclusion.
[7] For more extensive discussion of normal
self-esteem, as well as for reports of various researches, see (11).
[8] Clearly creative behavior, like painting, is
like any other behavior in having multiple, determinants. It may be seen in
‘innately creative’ people whether they are satisfied or not, happy or unhappy,
hungry or sated. Also it is clear that creative activity may be compensatory,
ameliorative or purely economic. It is my impression (as yet unconfirmed) that
it is possible to distinguish the artistic and intellectual products of
basically satisfied people from those of basically unsatisfied people by
inspection alone. In any case, here too we must distinguish, in a dynamic
fashion, the overt behavior itself from its various motivations or purposes.
[9] I am aware that many psychologists md
psychoanalysts use the term ‘motivated’ and ‘determined’ synonymously, e. g.,
Freud. But I consider this an obfuscating usage. Sharp distinctions are
necessary for clarity of thought, and precision in experimentation.
[10] To be discussed fully in a subsequent
publication.
[11] The interested reader is referred to the very
excellent discussion of this point in Murray’s Explorations in Personality
(15).
[12] Note that acceptance of this theory
necessitates basic revision of the Freudian theory.
[13] If we were to use the word ‘sick’ in this
way, we should then also have to face squarely the relations of man to his
society. One clear implication of our definition would be that (1) since a man
is to be called sick who is basically thwarted, and (2) since such basic
thwarting is made possible ultimately only by forces outside the individual,
then (3) sickness in the individual must come ultimately from sickness in the society.
The ‘good’ or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted man’s
highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all his prepotent basic needs.
——————————————————————————–
References
1. ADLER, A. Social interest. London: Faber &
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2. CANNON, W. B. Wisdom of the body. New York:
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3. FREUD, A. The ego and the mechanisms of
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5. FROMM, E. Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar
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8. KARDINER, A. The traumatic neuroses of war. New
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Psychosomatic Med., 1943, 5, 85-92.
14. ———-. & MITTLEMANN, B. Principles of
abnormal psychology. New York: Harper & Bros., 1941.
15. MURRAY, H. A., et al. Explorations in
Personality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938.
16. PLANT, J. Personality and the cultural
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20. YOUNG, P. T. Motivation of behavior. New York:
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