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A Theory of Human Motivation

A. H. Maslow (1943)

Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

Posted August 2000

[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 safet