Abraham Maslow
Born: 1 April 1908
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
Died: 8 June 1970 (heart attack)
Best Known As: Creator of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Hierarchy of Needs
Humanistic theory emerged in the 1950's as something of a backlash against the behavioral and psychodynamic theories. The principal charge hurled at these two models was that they are dehumanizing. Freudian theory was criticized for its belief that behavior is dominated by primitive, animalistic drives. Behaviorism was criticized for its preoccupation with animal research and for its mechanistic, fragmented view of personality. Critics argued that both schools of thought are too deterministic and that both fail to recognize the unique qualities of human behavior.
Many of these critics blended into a loose alliance that came to be known as humanism because of its exclusive focus on human behavior. Humanism is a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth. In contrast to most psychodynamic and behavioral theorists, humanistic theorists, such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, take an optimistic view of human nature. They assume that people can rise above their primitive animal heritage and control their biological urges, and that people are largely conscious and rational beings who are not dominated by unconscious, irrational needs and conflicts. Humanistic theorists also maintain a person's subjective view of the world is more important than objective reality. According to this notion, if you think that you're homely or bright and sociable, then this belief will influence your behavior more than the realities of how homely, bright, or sociable you actually are.
Abraham Maslow, a prominent humanistic theorist, proposed a sweeping overview of human motivation. His theory strikes a unique balance between biological and social needs and integrates many of the motivational concepts that were mentioned earlier.
Maslow's theory assumes that people have many needs that compete for expression. Of course, not all needs are created equal. Maslow proposed that human motives are organized hierarchically. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a systematic arrangement of needs according to priority, which assumes that the basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused. This hierarchical arrangement is usually portrayed as a pyramid. The needs at the bottom are the most basic.
Tier one is on the bottom of the pyramid, and they are the fundamental physiological needs that are essential to survival, such as the needs for food, water, a stable body temperature, and so on. They must be satisfied fairly well before the individual can become concerned about needs at higher levels in the hierarchy. When a person manages to satisfy a level of needs reasonably well (complete satisfaction is not required), this satisfaction activates needs at the next level.
The second tier in Maslow's pyramid is made up of safety and security needs. These needs reflect concern about long-term survival. People seek to live in an orderly, stable, and safe world. They want to be protected from assault, mayhem in the streets, environmental poisons, economic chaos, and so forth. Safety and security needs motivate adults to seek a stable job, to buy insurance, and to save money.
When safety and security needs are met adequately, needs for love and belongingness become more prominent. These needs lead people to seek affection from family, from friends, and in intimate relationships. When these needs are gratified, esteem needs are activated.
People who are seeking to fulfill esteem needs focus on their achievements and the recognition, respect, and status that they earn. Maslow's key point is that lower needs must be satisfied reasonably well before higher needs are aroused.
Consistent with his humanistic perspective, Maslow theorized that people have growth needs that emerge out of the human striving for personal growth, that is, evolution toward a higher state of being. The growth needs—such as the needs for knowledge, understanding, and aesthetic beauty—are found in the uppermost reaches of Maslow's hierarchy. Foremost among them is the need for self-actualization, which is the need to fulfill one's potential. It is the highest need in Maslow's motivational hierarchy. Maslow summarized this concept with a very simple statement: “What a man can be, he must be.” According to Maslow, people will be frustrated if they are unable to fully use their talents or pursue their true interests.
Maslow believed that human nature dictates the order of the various levels of needs. His hierarchy systematically organizes needs according to their biological and social foundations. As one moves upward in the hierarchy, each level of needs becomes less biological and more social in origin. Thus, according to Maslow, the degree to which a person's behavior is dominated by the biological needs depends on which level of needs is activated. This level varies depending on the individual and the circumstances.
From Maslow on Management
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization… It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming…
To do some idiotic job very well is certainly not real achievement. What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.
The test for any person is—that is you want to find out whether he’s an apple tree or not—Does He Bear Apples? Does He Bear Fruit? That’s the way you tell the difference between fruitfulness and sterility, between talkers and doers, between the people who change the world and the people who are helpless in it.
…seeking for personal salvation is anyway the wrong road to personal salvation. The only real path [is] salvation via hard work and total commitment to doing well the job that fate or personal destiny calls you to do, or any important job that “calls for” doing… This business of self-actualization via a commitment to an important job and to worthwhile work could also be said, then, to be the path to human happiness (by contrast with the direct attack or the direct search for happiness)—happiness is an epiphenomenon, a by-product, something not to be sought directly but an indirect reward for virtue… The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important… Or I can put this very bluntly: Salvation Is a By-Product of Self-Actualizing Work and Self-Actualizing Duty.
…most people prefer no work at all to meaningless work, or wasted work, or made work… In self-actualizing people, the work they do might better be called “mission,” “calling,” “duty”, “vocation,” in the priest’s sense… For the truly fortunate worker, the ideally enlightened worker, to take away work (mission in life) would be almost equivalent to killing him.
All human beings prefer meaningful work to meaningless work. This is much like stressing the high human need for a system of values, a system of understanding the world and of making sense out of it. This comes very close to the religious quest in the humanistic sense. If work is meaningless, then life comes close to being meaningless. Perhaps here is also the place to point out that no matter how menial the chores—the dishwashing and the test-tube cleaning, all become meaningful or meaningless by virtue of their participation or lack of participation in a meaningful or important or loved goal.
The best way to destroy democratic society would be by way of not only political authoritarianism but of industrial authoritarianism, which is anti-democratic in the deepest sense.
Enlightened management is one way of taking religion seriously, profoundly, deeply, and earnestly. Of course, for those who define religion just as going to a particular building on Sunday and hearing a particular kind of formula repeated, this is all irrelevant. But for those who define religion not necessarily in terms of the supernatural, or ceremonies, or rituals, but in terms of deep concern with the problems of human beings, with the problems of ethics, of the future of man, then this kind of philosophy, translated into the work life, turns out to be very much like the new style of management and of organization.