Abraham Maslow published the seminal article, “A theory of human motivation” in 1943; in it he detailed what he believed to be a hierarchy of human needs or motivations. In Maslow’s (1943) model, the structure of human motivations is dependent on their prepotentcy or their ability to ensure survival. The organization of the hierarchy is commonly represented in the form of a pyramid, in which the base most motivations must be satisfied before ascending to the next level, and so on.
Briefly, the five basic needs which form the pyramid are, in order of prepotency, physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. Physiological needs refer to any need which is necessary for survival, or for the perpetuation of the species, and can be very simplistically reduced to hunger, thirst, and the desire to reproduce. The physiological needs are the most prepotent, without the satisfaction of these needs “all other needs may become simply non-existent or be pushed into the background” (Maslow, 1943).
In order to illustrate the prepotency of physiological needs, we can imagine someone who is starving and on the brink of death, as Maslow (1943) states, “for the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food.” In an extreme case such as the one above, all other needs and motivations are overwritten by the situation, “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 secondary importance” (Maslow, 1943).
The second most prepotent need is safety. This need refers to the motivation to be free of danger, either actual or perceived. To illustrate this, we can imagine a hypothetical violent neighborhood, fallen into neglect, where many variables have contributed to a crime rate higher than average. In this scenario, the threat of crime or other types of danger occurring while simply walking down the street may be very high. We can contrast this image with a picture of a hypothetical gated community, where crime is something that occurs very rarely. A resident living in the first hypothetical community would primarily be occupied with satisfying his or her safety needs, while a resident of the second community may have his or her safety needs satisfied almost completely.
Following safety needs, are love needs. These include affection and belongingness, which can be the desire to form meaningful relationships with others and to find ones own place in a group. Maslow (1943) notes that we should not overlook “the fact that the love needs involve both giving and receiving love.” The next most prepotent needs are the esteem needs. More abstract than physiological or safety needs, these needs center on the “desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of [oneself], for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others” (Maslow, 1943). When satisfied, self-esteem will lead to “feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world” (Maslow, 1943).
The final human motivation is the need for self-actualization. The most abstract of the hierarchy, it was described by Maslow (1943) as “the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” What will promote self-actualization varies from person to person, but can range from athletic achievement, to the “desire to be an ideal mother,” to creative output, such as painting (Maslow, 1943). According to Maslow (1943), “man is a perpetually wanting animal,” and it is a basic human goal to strive to satisfy the needs of the hierarchy.
