Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) carried out his investigations into human behaviour between 1939 and 1943. Maslow suggested that there are goals that may be called basic needs. He arranged these into a series of different levels or the order of importance of these basic needs. Maslow's theory came into his consciousness through his early experiments with monkeys. He noticed that they, as with humans, tended to prioritise their actions according to their requirements.
For example, if you are hungry or thirsty, you will tend to take care of your thirst first, food second, and anything else after that, as you can live without food longer than without water. He took these ideas and formed his hierarchy of needs from it. He went beyond specific details to lay out the five broader layers listed below. An important facet of his theory is that a human is required to fulfil one layer before moving onto the next. With physiological needs forming the basis of human existence, and the ultimate goal being self-actualisation. The human hierarchy of needs proposed by Maslow is shown as,The physiological needs include the needs we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, and other minerals and vitamins.
They also include the need to maintain a pH balance and temperature. There also needs to be activity, conditions in which to rest, to sleep, to get rid of bodily waste, to avoid pain, and to have sex. Maslow expounded a belief, strengthened by research, that these are in fact individual needs, and that a lack of one of the above mentioned units of need, will lead to a craving for something including it as one of its components, e. g. lack of calcium will indubitably lead to a craving for milk.When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, the second layer of safety and security needs comes into the person's conscious.
There exists a constant interest in finding safe circumstances, stability and protection. From a negative perspective, this can mean having to face your anxieties and fears. In business terms this manifests itself as the need for a good job, with sound prospects for you being processed waiting your retirement. The next layer up considers our love and belonging needs.We feel a need for friends, a spouse, children, or even a communal need. From a negative perspective, we can potentially become susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties.
In the world of business, this layer of needs is reflected in the desire to be part of a team. The penultimate layer of needs begins to deal with the value of self-esteem. Maslow identified two versions of esteem needs. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, and even dominance.The higher form of self-esteem outlines the need for feelings such as self-respect, confidence, independence and freedom. Maslow termed these as a higher form, as once a person has self-respect it is harder to lose.
From a negative perspective, these needs can lead to low self-esteem and inferiority complexes. It was Adler who said that it is these inferiorities that are the base of all psychological problems. Maslow talks about these layers in terms of homeostasis. Homeostasis is the principle by which your inner furnace operates.
When it gets too cold, it switches the heat on; when it gets too hot, it turns the heat off. In the same way, your body reacts to a lack of a certain substance by developing a craving. When it is satisfied by this, it stops craving for that particular substance, and focuses its attention on the next. Maslow simply extended this theory to relate to his own theory of needs. Maslow's last layer of his hierarchy of needs is classed by him in many different ways.
He has called it growth motivation and being needs, and it is generally known as self-actualisation.These are needs that do not involve balance or homeostasis. Once engaged, they continue to be felt, and grow stronger the more we 'feed' them. They involve the continuous desire to fulfil potentials, and are fundamentally about achieving your most complete psyche, without further needs.
This fullness is termed as self-actualisation. In keeping with Maslow's theory, if a person wants to be truly self-actualising, then it is crucial to fulfil your lower needs first. When lower needs are unmet, you cannot devote yourself to the fulfilment of your potential.Unsurprisingly, Maslow was unable to suggest that more than two percent of the world's population has ever reached the point of self-actualisation. Maslow himself has answered the question of what self-actualisation can be classed as. He began by picking for himself a select group of people whom he called self-actualisers, some historical figures, as people who had reached the standard of self-actualisation.
Included in this group were people such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Eleanor Roosevelt.He looked at their biographies, past histories, etc, and from these developed a list of qualities that seemed unique to these people as opposed to the general population. As with any theory, there have been criticisms levelled at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The most common criticism concerns his methodology.
Picking a small number of people that he himself declared to be self-actualising, then reading about them or talking to them, and coming to conclusions about what self-actualisation is, does not seem to be the most scientific of tests to many people.Another criticism that has been levelled at Maslow's hierarchy is that there are cases of highly intelligent people having achieved self-actualisation without having fully realised their lower needs. Many of our society's best artists and authors, for example, suffered from poverty, bad upbringing, neuroses, and depression. For example, none could say that Van Gogh wasn't quite right in the head, but at the same time was involved in some kind of self-actualisation. A further criticism stacked against Maslow's theory has been the question of whether it is actually a hierarchy.
This criticism can be attributed to Alderfer's ERG theory (1972). Alderfer proposed a hierarchical theory formed through three need categories. Existence (E) needs can be correlated to Maslow's physiological, and to an extent some safety needs as well. Relatedness (R) needs are somewhat connected to Maslow's safety, social and some esteem needs. Growth (G) relates to the esteem and self-actualisation needs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, specifically the need for personal growth and development in creativity.The disparity between the two theories is shown by the fact that in the ERG theory, a person is able to retreat to a lower level if they encounter feelings of dissatisfaction.
For example, an individual who is unproductive at fulfilling their growth needs will, according to the ERG theory, display a mounting motivation towards relatedness needs. Achievement of these needs will undoubtedly lead to them making another attempt at satisfying their growth needs, with the hope of success. This is a pattern that Alderfer attributes to similar movements.The distinction between the two theories being that Maslow's hierarchy only allows for movement on one layer, whereas Alderfer's ERG theory allows for a person operating on more than one level concurrently, although to different degrees on each. Hodgetts (1991) supports the ERG theory as a plausible methodology to motivation, as it acknowledges the possibility of a person feeling frustration at their inability to progress from one level to another.
Maslow's theory can be applied, in today's society, by viewing the results (displayed in McKenna's 'Business Psychology and Organisational Behaviour') of a survey of 1900 managers.These managers rated several needs similar to the ones laid out in Maslow's theory, such as security, esteem, autonomy, and self-actualisation, in terms of the importance and level of satisfaction they would attribute to each. It was seen that highly satisfied needs were rated as relatively inconsequential, and vice-versa. There was a discrepancy in that self-actualisation needs lost importance only if lower levels were deprived. In a study based on the success of managerial trainees over a five-year period in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Maslow's concept was subject to practical testing.
The successful group, in terms of fifth year income, reported the highest satisfaction of achievement, esteem, and self-actualisation needs (Hall ; Nougaim, 1968). In practice, Maslow's theory does not allow for overlapping of layers. It is purely, in his eyes, a progression up the hierarchical ladder. However, the Hierarchy of Needs is a fair reflection of people's wants and needs. We all strive to find our 'true selves', and Maslow puts it into a simplified process for us to understand.
