What motivates human behavior? According to humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, our actions are aimed at meeting certain needs. To explain the motivation, Maslow introduced the concept of needs hierarchy in 1943, this hierarchy suggests that people are motivated to meet basic needs, before moving on to the most advanced ones. Needs.
While some schools of thought, such as psychoanalysis or behaviorism, tend to focus on problem behaviors, Maslow was much more interested in discovering and understanding what drives people to behave in a certain way and why some are more satisfied with their behavior. elections.
- As a humanist.
- Maslow believed that people had an innate desire for self-realization.
- In other words.
- To be everything they could become.
- However.
- To use resources and achieve these goals.
- They must first have met other more basic needs.
- Such as food.
- Safety.
- And love.
Maslow’s needs hierarchy is a motivational theory in psychology that encompasses a five-tier model of human needs, often represented as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
Maslow said people are driven to respond to certain needs hierarchically. Our most basic need is physical survival, and it is the first to motivate our behavior. Once this level is reached, the next level would also take precedence over the next level, and so on. .
These are the five different levels of Maslow’s needs hierarchy: the first level is the basis of the pyramid and the others are being built on top of it to the top.
This five-step model can be divided into disability and growth needs. The first four levels are often called disability needs and the upper level is called growth needs.
Disability needs arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when they are not met. In addition, the motivation to meet these needs will be strengthened as deadlines are met.
Maslow first stated that people need to meet disability needs at a lower level before moving forward to meet growth needs at a higher level; however, he then clarified that meeting a need is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon: in fact, it would be more pressed to varying degrees.
When a disability was needed, more or less satisfied, it disappears and our activities will go to the next set of needs to be met, now they will become our main needs. In this sense, we always have needs to be discovered.
On the other hand, the need for growth is not caused by the lack of something, but by the desire to evolve as a person. When these growth needs are reasonably met, the individual can reach a higher level, called self-realization.
Everyone is capable and has a desire to ascend the hierarchy to a level of self-realization. Unfortunately, progress often stops because meeting the needs of lower levels requires a large portion of our resources. On the other hand, different experiences and experiences can lead an individual to vary between levels of hierarchy.
As a result, not everyone will cross the hierarchy in a one-way manner; can come and go between different types of needs. In fact, Maslow indicated that the order in which these needs are met does not always follow a standard progression.
He said that for some people the need for self-esteem is more important than the need for love; for others, the need for creative development can even replace the most basic needs.
The most important limitation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is its methodology. Maslow examined the biographies and stories of 18 people he identified as self-fulfilling. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that he identified as common in this specific group of people. .
From a scientific point of view, this methodology poses several problems; on the one hand, it could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is very subjective, because it is based entirely on the investigator’s own judgment.
Personal opinion is always subject to prejudice, which reduces the validity of the information obtained, so the operational definition of Maslow’s self-realization should not be blindly accepted as a scientific fact.
On the other hand, Maslow’s biographical analysis focused on a sample of self-realized individuals, limited to white men who received a good education, including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Aldous Huxley, among others.
Moreover, although Maslow also studied self-directed women, such as Eleonor Roosevelt and Mother Teresa, they constituted only a small part of his sample, making it difficult to generalize his theory; in addition, it is extremely difficult to empirically test Maslow’s concept of self-realization.
Another criticism of Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory is his assumption that lower needs must be met before a person can reach their full potential and realize themselves. This isn’t always true.
Through the analysis of certain cultures in which large numbers of people live in poverty, it was shown that people are able to meet higher-order needs, such as love and belonging, with their barely met basic needs; However, this should not happen. because, according to Maslow, people who struggle to meet the most basic physiological needs (such as food, shelter, etc. ) could not meet the greatest growth needs.
In addition, many creative people, such as some artists (e. g. Rembrandt and Van Gogh), have lived in poverty throughout their lives, however, they are believed to have devoted much of their resources to meeting their highest needs.
Currently, psychologists treat the concept of motivation as a more complex agent, therefore, different needs?of different orders?could act simultaneously as motivation. A person may be motivated by increased growth needs, as well as lower needs (disability needs).
Despite criticism, Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory remains a benchmark, the starting point of many studies that try to understand why we behave in a certain way, or why the same outcome can produce very different reactions in different people.