Entry #7 - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow was a humanistic theorist who recognized the complexity of motivation and so sought to describe it in terms of a hierarchy of needs - which is a model of basic human needs, structured in a hierarchical way. The most basic needs are those which are linked to our survival - our physiological needs for food, air, sleep, etc. When these needs go unfulfilled, nothing else matters, but once these needs are fulfilled, other types of needs are experienced. The next level of our needs are our safety needs which relate to both physical and psychological safety. The next level of needs are related to love and belongingness - giving and receiving acceptance and affection. These needs are usually fulfilled by our interactions with family and friends. There are many phenomena that reflect the human need for this level, such as dating clubs and personal ads. The next level up on the hierarchy is esteem needs - this means that the individual feels a need to feel self respect and the sense of being competent at what one does and receiving regard from others. 

Maslow believes that the more basic the need the more powerfully it is experienced and the more difficult it is to suppress or ignore. For this reason, the most basic needs are universally experienced, where as the higher needs are less commonly experienced. Maslow did believe, however, that the hierarchy is not completely rigid - this qualifies many special situations such as parental sacrifice. The highest level of the hierarchy of needs is self actualization, but Maslow believes that most people will rarely experience a strong need for self actualization because the lower needs are rarely ever completely satisfied.  A self actualized person, according to Maslow, has most or all of these characteristics: accurate perception of reality, enjoyment of new experiences, tendency to have peak experiences, clear moral standards, sense of humour, feeling of kinship with all people, close friendships, democratic character accepting others, need for privacy, independence from culture and environment,  creativity, spontaneity, problem centred rather than self centred, acceptance of human nature and resistance to conformity.  

Maslow's hierarchy of needs are very interesting theory as to our needs and how and in what order they need to be fulfilled. I think that both my physiological and safety needs are completely fulfilled -- I am not going hungary or being deprived of water (although sometimes I could use a little more sleep!) and I always feel safe, both physically and physiologically. An example of someone whose physiological needs are not being met is someone who is experiencing malnutrition from hunger. A friend of mine was anorexic last year, and she is currently recovering, but at the time she was not having her physiological needs met. I also have another friend that is not having his safety needs met - he has an extreme phobia of falling down the stairs to his death, and this causes him a lot of anxiety, which stops his safety needs from being met. I think that while my love and belonging needs are being met fairly well, I don't think that anyone's can ever be fully met because there is always some degree of uncertainty, especially concerning the future fulfillment of that need, when there are other people involved. But for the most part I think this level is being fulfilled for me - I have a loving family and great friends and am in a relationship, and even if these things are not constant everyday - I live far away from my family and many of my friends - this needs is primarily filled. The next level of need fulfillment is esteem - I think that this level is generally well fulfilled in my case, although because I have not have a very stable living situation in the recent past, and I have changed in personality significantly in recent years, this is a much more fluctuating one, and I have had higher or lower self esteem depending on my friendship/family situation. Currently I have medium level self esteem - while I believe and have faith in myself, my self esteem is definitely not as high as it could be - I am more easily swayed by other people's opinions than I would like and I am more sensitive towards and dependent on other people than I would like. 

While I think I have some of the qualities of a self actualized person, I think that in realizing that goal I still have a long way to go. 

The attached picture is pyramid displaying the hierarchy of needs.