CHAPTER NINE

Abraham Maslow: Needs-Hierarchy

Theory
 A. Life of Maslow

• Abraham Maslow was born in New York in

1908, and was the oldest of seven children.
• His father was alcoholic and his mother was
cruel and unaffectionate.
• Maslow found books were a good refuge.
• He desired to learn and went to study at
Wisconsin under John Watson who taught him
about behaviorism and experimental
psychology.
 A. Life of Maslow (cont.)
• After earning his Ph.D., Maslow studied with
E. L. Thorndike at Columbia University and
later taught at Brooklyn College.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow proposed a hierarchy of five innate needs.
– He called these needs instinctoid, by which he meant they
have a hereditary component.
– These needs are ordered from lower or stronger needs to
higher and weaker needs.
– These needs are physiological, safety, belongingness, love,
esteem, and self-actualization.
– Maslow believed lower needs not being satisfied to
produce a crisis or deficit, or deficiency needs; failure to
satisfy them produces a deficit or lack in the individual.
– Maslow called higher needs growth, or being needs.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• According to Maslow, physiological needs
have a greater impact as motivating forces in
cultures where basic survival remains an
everyday concern.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• Safety and security needs are important drives
for infants and neurotic adults.
– Infants get upset with a threat to their safety and
adults learn ways to inhibit their reactions to
dangerous situations.
• Children will desire a constrictive routine with some
measure of freedom.
• Neurotic adults compulsively avoid new experiences.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• Belongingness and love needs can be
expressed through a close relationship with a
friend, a lover, mate, or through social
relationships formed within a group.
– The need to give and receive love can be satisfied
in an intimate relationship with another person.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• We require esteem and respect from
ourselves, in the form of feelings of self-
worth, and from other people, in the form of
status, recognition, or social success.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• Self-actualization is the highest of Maslow’s
needs. A person who has obtained this need
has the following conditions met in their lives:
– a person free of constraints by society and
themselves, must not be distracted by the lower-
order needs, be secure in their self-image and be
able to receive and give love, and finally, must
have a realistic knowledge of their strengths and
weaknesses, virtues and vices.
 B. Personality Development: The
Hierarchy of Needs (cont.)
• Maslow proposed a second set of innate needs, the
cognitive needs-to know and to understand.
– The need to know is stronger than the need to understand.
– The need to know and to understand begins in late infancy
and is expressed by children as a natural curiosity.
– Failure to satisfy the cognitive needs is harmful and
hampers the full development and functioning of the
personality.
– Maslow believed it is impossible to become self-actualizing
if we fail to meet the needs to know and to understand.
 C. The Study of Self-Actualizers
• Maslow proposed a distinct type of motivation
for self-actualizers called metamotivation
(sometimes called B-motivation of Being).
– Motivation indicates that it goes beyond
psychology’s traditional idea of motivation,
implying a condition in which motivation as we
know it plays no role. Instead, we say they are
developing within.
– Those who are not self-actualized have a D-
motivation or Deficiency.
C. The Study of Self-Actualizers (cont.)
• A self-actualizing person’s goal is to enrich
their lives by acting to increase tension to
experience a variety of stimulating and
challenging events.
C. The Study of Self-Actualizers (cont.)
• Maslow believed that only 1% or less of the
population were self-actualized and that they
share certain characteristics:
• (a) self-actualizers have an efficient perception of
reality,
• (b) they accept themselves and do not distort or
falsify their self-image or feel guilty,
• (c) are spontaneous, simplistic, and natural,
• (d) focus on problems outside of themselves,
C. The Study of Self-Actualizers (cont.)
• (e) have a sense of detachment and a need for
privacy,
• (f) have a freshness of appreciation, and
• (g) have mystical or peak experiences. A peak
experience is an event during which the self is
transcended and the person feels powerful,
confident, and decisive.
C. The Study of Self-Actualizers (cont.)
• According to Maslow, self-actualizers have
deep, lasting relationships and display no
racial, religious, or social prejudice.
– They are flexible, highly creative, spontaneous,
and willing to make mistakes and learn from them.
– Self-actualizers are autonomous, independent,
and self-sufficient.
– On occasion, they can be rude, even ruthless, and
they experience doubts, conflicts, and tension.
C. The Study of Self-Actualizers (cont.)
• Poor economic conditions, inadequate
education and children who are overprotected
and not permitted to try new behaviors may
not reach self-actualization.
• Maslow referred to another reason for the
failure to self-actualize is the Jonah complex
(refers to our doubts about our own abilities).
 D. Observations
• Maslow observed people whom he thought
had the characteristics of self-actualization.
• Maslow’s research with college students led
him to believe that young people did not have
these qualities developed.
• When Maslow studied people who were older,
he felt less than one percent of the population
was capable of meeting his criteria for self-
actualization.
 D. Observations (cont.)
• The Personal Orientation Inventory was
developed by Everett Shostrum to measure
Maslow’s theory of self-actualization.