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A. H.
Maslow (1943)
Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50,
370-396.
A
Theory of
Human
Motivation
[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 hewants
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
chronicallyhungry 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 conceptas 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 safety takes its
dearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive
neurosis. Compulsive-obsessives try frantically to
order and stabilize the world so that no
unmanageable, unexpected orunfamiliar dangers will
ever appear (14); They hedge themselves about with
all sorts of ceremonials, rules and formulas so
that every possible contingency may be provided for
and so that no new contingencies may appear. They
are much like the brain injured cases, described by
Goldstein (6), who manage to maintain their
equilibrium by avoiding everything unfamiliar and
strange and by ordering their restricted world in
such a neat, disciplined, orderly fashion that
everything in the world can be counted upon. They
try to arrange the world so that anything
unexpected (dangers) cannot possibly occur. If,
through no fault of their own, something unexpected
does occur, they go into a panic reaction as if
this unexpected occurrence constituted a grave
danger. What we can see, only as a none-too-strong
preference in the healthy person, e. g., preference
for the familiar, becomes a life-and-death.
necessity in abnormal cases.
The love
needs. -- If both the physiological and the safety
needs are fairly well gratified, then there will
emerge the love and affection and belongingness
needs, and the whole cycle [p. 381] already
described will repeat itself with this new center.
Now the person will feel keenly, as never before,
the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife,
or children. He will hunger for affectionate
relations with people in general, namely, for a
place in his group, and he will strive with great
intensity to achieve this goal. He will want to
attain such a place more than anything else in the
world and may even forget that once, when he was
hungry, he sneered at love.
In our
society the thwarting of these needs is the most
commonly found core in cases of maladjustment and
more severe psychopathology. Love and affection, as
well as their possible expression in sexuality, are
generally looked upon with ambivalence and are
customarily hedged about with many restrictions and
inhibitions. Practically all theorists of
psychopathology have stressed thwarting of the love
needs as basic in the picture of maladjustment.
Many clinical studies have therefore been made of
this need and we know more about it perhaps than
any of the other needs except the physiological
ones (14).
One thing
that must be stressed at this point is that love is
not synonymous with sex. Sex may be studied as a
purely physiological need. Ordinarily sexual
behavior is multi-determined, that is to say,
determined not only by sexual but also by other
needs, chief among which are the love and affection
needs. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that
the love needs involve both giving and receiving
love.[4]
The esteem
needs. -- All people in our society (with a few
pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for
a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation
of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem,
and for the esteem of others. By firmly based
self-esteem, we mean that which is soundly based
upon real capacity, achievement and respect from
others. These needs may be classified into two
subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for
strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for
confidence in the face of the world, and for
independence and freedom.[5] Secondly, we
have what [p. 382] we may call the desire
for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect
or esteem from other people), recognition,
attention, importance or appreciation.[6]
These needs have been relatively stressed by Alfred
Adler and his followers, and have been relatively
neglected by Freud and the psychoanalysts. More and
more today however there is appearing widespread
appreciation of their central
importance.
Satisfaction
of the self-esteem need leads to feelings of
self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and
adequacy of being useful and necessary in the
world. But thwarting of these needs produces
feelings of inferiority, of weakness and of
helplessness. These feelings in turn give rise to
either basic discouragement or else compensatory or
neurotic trends. An appreciation of the necessity
of basic self-confidence and an understanding of
how helpless people are without it, can be easily
gained from a study of severe traumatic neurosis
(8).[7]
The need
for self-actualization. -- Even if all these needs
are satisfied, we may still often (if not always)
expect that a new discontent and restlessness will
soon develop, unless the individual is doing what
he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an
artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to
be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be.
This need we may call
self-actualization.
This term,
first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is being used in
this paper in a much more specific and limited
fashion. It refers to the desire for
self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him
to become actualized in what he is potentially.
This tendency might be phrased as the desire to
become more and more what one is, to become
everything that one is capable of becoming.[p.
383]
The
specific form that these needs will take will of
course vary greatly from person to person. In one
individual it may take the form of the desire to be
an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed
athletically, and in still another it may be
expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. It
is not necessarily a creative urge although in
people who have any capacities for creation it will
take this form.
The clear
emergence of these needs rests upon prior
satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and
esteem needs. We shall call people who are
satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied
people, and it is from these that we may expect the
fullest (and healthiest) creativeness.[8]
Since, in our society, basically satisfied people
are the exception, we do not know much about
self-actualization, either experimentally or
clinically. It remains a challenging problem for
research.The preconditions for the basic need
satisfactions. -- There are certain conditions
which are immediate prerequisites for the basic
need satisfactions. Danger to these is reacted to
almost as if it were a direct danger to the basic
needs themselves. Such conditions as freedom to
speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long as no
harm is done to others, freedom to express one's
self, freedom to investigate and seek for
information, freedom to defend one's self, justice,
fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are
examples of such preconditions for basic need
satisfactions.
Thwarting
in these freedoms will be reacted to with a threat
or emergency response. These conditions are not
ends in themselves but they are almost so since
they are soclosely related to the basic needs,
which are apparently the only ends in themselves.
These conditions are defended because without them
the basic satisfactions are quite impossible, or at
least, very severely endangered.[p.
384]
If we
remember that the cognitive capacities (perceptual,
intellectual, learning) are a set of adjustive
tools, which have, among other functions, that of
satisfaction of our basic needs, then it is clear
that any danger to them, any deprivation or
blocking of their free use, must also be indirectly
threatening to the basic needs themselves. Such a
statement is a partial solution of the general
problems of curiosity, the search for knowledge,
truth and wisdom, and the ever-persistent urge to
solve the cosmic mysteries.
We must
therefore introduce another hypothesis and speak of
degrees of closeness to the basic needs, for we
have already pointed out that any conscious desires
(partial goals) are more or less important as they
are more or less close to the basic needs. The same
statement may be made for various behavior acts. An
act is psychologically important if it contributes
directly to satisfaction of basic needs. The less
directly it so contributes, or the weaker this
contribution is, the less important this act must
be conceived to be from the point of view of
dynamic psychology. A similar statement may be made
for the various defense or coping mechanisms. Some
are very directly related to the protection or
attainment of the basic needs, others are only
weakly and distantly related. Indeed if we wished,
we could speak of more basic and less basic defense
mechanisms, and then affirm that danger to the more
basic defenses is more threatening than danger to
less basic defenses (always remembering that this
is so only because of their relationship to the
basic needs).
The desires
to know and to understand. -- So far, we have
mentioned the cognitive needs only in passing.
Acquiring knowledge and systematizing the universe
have been considered as, in part, techniques for
the achievement of basic safety in the world, or,
for the intelligent man, expressions of
self-actualization. Also freedom of inquiry and
expression have been discussed as preconditions of
satisfactions of the basic needs. True though these
formulations may be, they do not constitute
definitive answers to the question as to the
motivation role of curiosity, learning,
philosophizing, experimenting, etc. They are, at
best, no more than partial answers.[p.
385]
This
question is especially difficult because we know so
little about the facts. Curiosity, exploration,
desire for the facts, desire to know may certainly
be observed easily enough. The fact that they often
are pursued even at great cost to the individual's
safety is an earnest of the partial character of
our previous discussion. In addition, the writer
must admit that, though he has sufficient clinical
evidence to postulate the desire to know as a very
strong drive in intelligent people, no data are
available for unintelligent people. It may then be
largely a function of relatively high intelligence.
Rather tentatively, then, and largely in the hope
of stimulating discussion and research, we shall
postulate a basic desire to know, to be aware of
reality, to get the facts, to satisfy curiosity, or
as Wertheimer phrases it, to see rather than to be
blind.
This
postulation, however, is not enough. Even after we
know, we are impelled to know more and more
minutely and microscopically on the one hand, and
on the other, more and more extensively in the
direction of a world philosophy, religion, etc. The
facts that we acquire, if they are isolated or
atomistic, inevitably get theorized about, and
either analyzed or organized or both. This process
has been phrased by some as the search for
'meaning.' We shall then postulate a desire to
understand, to systematize, to organize, to
analyze, to look for relations and
meanings.
Once these
desires are accepted for discussion, we see that
they too form themselves into a small hierarchy in
which the desire to know is prepotent over the
desire to understand. All the characteristics of a
hierarchy of prepotency that we have described
above, seem to hold for this one as
well.
We must
guard ourselves against the too easy tendency to
separate these desires from the basic needs we have
discussed above, i.e., to make a sharp dichotomy
between 'cognitive' and 'conative' needs. The
desire to know and to understand are themselves
conative, i.e., have a striving character, and are
as much personality needs as the 'basic needs' we
have already discussed (19).[p.
386]
III.
FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BASIC
NEEDS
The degree
of fixity of the hierarchy of basic needs. -- We
have spoken so far as if this hierarchy were a
fixed order but actually it is not nearly as rigid
as we may have implied. It is true that most of the
people with whom we have worked have seemed to have
these basic needs in about the order that has been
indicated. However, there have been a number of
exceptions.
(1) There
are some people in whom, for instance, self-esteem
seems to be more important than love. This most
common reversal in the hierarchy is usually due to
the development of the notion that the person who
is most likely to be loved is a strong or powerful
person, one who inspires respect or fear, and who
is self confident or aggressive. Therefore such
people who lack love and seek it, may try hard to
put on a front of aggressive, confident behavior.
But essentially they seek high self-esteem and its
behavior expressions more as a means-to-an-end than
for its own sake; they seek self-assertion for the
sake of love rather than for self-esteem
itself.
(2) There
are other, apparently innately creative people in
whom the drive to creativeness seems to be more
important than any other counter-determinant. Their
creativeness might appear not as self-actualization
released by basic satisfaction, but in spite of
lack of basic satisfaction.
(3) In
certain people the level of aspiration may be
permanently deadened or lowered. That is to say,
the less pre-potent goals may simply be lost, and
may disappear forever, so that the person who has
experienced life at a very low level, i. e.,
chronic unemployment, may continue to be satisfied
for the rest of his life if only he can get enough
food.
(4) The
so-called 'psychopathic personality' is another
example of permanent loss of the love needs. These
are people who, according to the best data
available (9), have been starved for love in the
earliest months of their lives and have simply lost
forever the desire and the ability to give and to
receive affection (as animals lose sucking or
pecking reflexes that are not exercised soon enough
after birth).[p. 387]
(5) Another
cause of reversal of the hierarchy is that when a
need has been satisfied for a long time, this need
may be underevaluated. People who have never
experienced chronic hunger are apt to underestimate
its effects and to look upon food as a
ratherunimportant thing. If they are dominated by a
higher need, this higher need will seem to be the
most important of all. It then becomes possible,
and indeed does actually happen, that they may, for
the sake of this higher need, put themselves into
the position of being deprived in a more basic
need. We may expect that after a long-time
deprivation of the more basic need there will be a
tendency to reevaluate both needs so that the more
pre-potent need will actually become consciously
prepotent for the individual who mayhave given it
up very lightly. Thus, a man who has given up his
job rather than lose his self-respect, and who then
starves for six months or so, may be willing to
take his job back even at the price of losing his a
self-respect.
(6) Another
partial explanation of apparent reversals is seen
in the fact that we have been talking about the
hierarchy of prepotency in terms of consciously
felt wants or desires rather than of behavior.
Looking at behavior itself may give us the wrong
impression. What we have claimed is that the person
will want the more basic of two needs when deprived
in both. There is no necessary implication here
that he will act upon his desires. Let us say again
that there are many determinants of behavior other
than the needs and desires.
(7) Perhaps
more important than all these exceptions are the
ones that involve ideals, high social standards,
high values and the like. With such values people
become martyrs; they give up everything for the
sake of a particular ideal, or value. These people
may be understood, at least in part, by reference
to one basic concept (or hypothesis) which may be
called 'increased frustration-tolerance through
early gratification'. People who have been
satisfied in their basic needs throughout their
lives, particularly in their earlier years, seem to
develop exceptional power to withstand present or
future thwarting of these needs simply because they
have strong,[p. 388] healthy character
structure as a result of basic satisfaction. They
are the 'strong' people who can easily weather
disagreement or opposition, who can swim against
the stream of public opinion and who can stand up
for the truth at great personal cost. It is just
the ones who have loved and been well loved, and
who have had many deep friendships who can hold out
against hatred, rejection or
persecution.
I say all
this in spite of the fact that there is a certain
amount of sheer habituation which is also involved
in any full discussion of frustration tolerance.
For instance, it is likely that those persons who
have been accustomed to relative starvation for a
long time, are partially enabled thereby to
withstand food deprivation. What sort of balance
must be made between these two tendencies, of
habituation on the one hand, and of past
satisfaction breeding present frustration tolerance
on the other hand, remains to be worked out by
further research. Meanwhile we may assume that they
are both operative, side by side, since they do not
contradict each other, In respect to this
phenomenon of increased frustration tolerance, it
seems probable that the most important
gratifications come in the first two years of life.
That is to say, people who have been made secure
and strong in the earliest years, tend to remain
secure and strong thereafter in the face of
whatever threatens.
Degree of
relative satisfaction. -- So far, our theoretical
discussion may have given the impression that these
five sets of needs are somehow in a step-wise,
all-or-none relationships to each other. We have
spoken in such terms as the following: "If one need
is satisfied, then another emerges."
This
statement might give the false impression that a
need must be satisfied 100 per cent before the next
need emerges. In actual fact, most members of our
society who are normal, are partially satisfied in
all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in
all their basic needs at the same time. A more
realistic description of the hierarchy would be in
terms of decreasing percentages of satisfaction as
we go up the hierarchy of prepotency, For instance,
if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of
illustration, it is as if the average citizen
[p. 389] is satisfied perhaps 85 per cent
in his physiological needs, 70 per cent in his
safety needs, 50 per cent in his love needs, 40 per
cent in his self-esteem needs, and 10 per cent in
his self-actualization needs.
As for the
concept of emergence of a new need after
satisfaction of the prepotent need, this emergence
is not a sudden, saltatory phenomenon but rather a
gradual emergence by slow degrees from nothingness.
For instance, if prepotent need A is satisfied only
10 per cent: then need B may not be visible at all.
However, as this need A becomes satisfied 25 per
cent, need B may emerge 5 per cent, as need A
becomes satisfied 75 per cent need B may emerge go
per cent, and so on. Unconscious character of
needs. -- These needs are neither necessarily
conscious nor unconscious. On the whole, however,
in the average person, they are more often
unconscious rather than conscious. It is not
necessary at this point to overhaul the tremendous
mass of evidence which indicates the crucial
importance of unconscious motivation. It would by
now be expected, on a priori grounds alone, that
unconscious motivations would on the whole be
rather more important than the conscious
motivations. What we have called the basic needs
are very often largely unconscious although they
may, with suitable techniques, and with
sophisticated people become conscious.
Cultural
specificity and generality of needs. -- This
classification of basic needs makes some attempt to
take account of the relative unity behind the
superficial differences in specific desires from
one culture to another. Certainly in any particular
culture an individual's conscious motivational
content will usually be extremely different from
the conscious motivational content of an individual
in another society. However, it is the common
experience of anthropologists that people, even in
different societies, are much more alike than we
would think from our first contact with them, and
that as we know them better we seem to find more
and more of this commonness, We then recognize the
most startling differences to be superficial rather
than basic, e. g., differences in style of
hair-dress, clothes, tastes in food, etc. Our
classification of basic [p. 390] needs is
in part an attempt to account for this unity behind
the apparent diversity from culture to culture. No
claim is made that it is ultimate or universal for
all cultures. The claim is made only that it is
relatively more ultimate, more universal, more
basic, than the superficial conscious desires from
culture to culture, and makes a somewhat closer
approach to common-human characteristics, Basic
needs are more common-human than superficial
desires or behaviors.
Multiple
motivations of behavior. -- These needs must be
understood not to be exclusive or single
determiners of certain kinds of behavior. An
example may be found in any behavior that seems to
be physiologically motivated, such as eating, or
sexual play or the like. The clinical psychologists
have long since found that any behavior may be a
channel through which flow various determinants. Or
to say it in another way, most behavior is
multi-motivated. Within the sphere of motivational
determinants any behavior tends to be determined by
several or all of the basic needs simultaneously
rather than by only one of them. The latter would
be more an exception than the former. Eating may be
partially for the sake of filling the stomach, and
partially for the sake of comfort and amelioration
of other needs. One may make love not only for pure
sexual release, but also to convince one's self of
one's masculinity, or to make a conquest, to feel
powerful, or to win more basic affection. As an
illustration, I may point out that it would be
possible (theoretically if not practically) to
analyze a single act of an individual and see in it
the expression of his physiological needs, his
safety needs, his love needs, his esteem needs and
self-actualization. This contrasts sharply with the
more naive brand of trait psychology in which one
trait or one motive accounts for a certain kind of
act, i. e., an aggressive act is traced solely to a
trait of aggressiveness.
Multiple
determinants of behavior. -- Not all behavior is
determined by the basic needs. We might even say
that not all behavior is motivated. There aremany
determinants of behavior other than
motives.[9] For instance, one other
im-[p. 391]portant class of determinants is
the so-called 'field' determinants. Theoretically,
at least, behavior may be determined completely by
the field, or even by specific isolated external
stimuli, as in association of ideas, or certain
conditioned reflexes. If in response to the
stimulus word 'table' I immediately perceive a
memory image of a table, this response certainly
has nothing to do with my basic needs.
Secondly,
we may call attention again to the concept of
'degree of closeness to the basic needs' or 'degree
of motivation.' Some behavior is highly motivated,
other behavior is only weakly motivated. Some is
not motivated at all (but all behavior is
determined).
Another
important point [10] is that there is a
basic difference between expressive behavior and
coping behavior (functional striving, purposive
goal seeking). An expressive behavior does not try
to do anything; it is simply a reflection of the
personality. A stupid man behaves stupidly, not
because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated
to, but simply because he is what he is. The same
is true when I speak in a bass voice rather than
tenor or soprano. The random movements of a healthy
child, the smile on the face of a happy man even
when he is alone, the springiness of the healthy
man's walk, and the erectness of his carriage are
other examples of expressive, non-functional
behavior. Also the style in which a man carries out
almost all his behavior, motivated as well as
unmotivated, is often expressive.
We may then
ask, is all behavior expressive or reflective of
the character structure? The answer is 'No.' Rote,
habitual, automatized, or conventional behavior may
or may not be expressive. The same is true for most
'stimulus-bound' behaviors. It is finally necessary
to stress that expressiveness of behavior, and
goal-directedness of behavior are not mutually
exclusive categories. Average behavior is usually
both.
Goals as
centering principle in motivation theory. -- It
will be observed that the basic principle in our
classification has [p. 392] been neither
the instigation nor the motivated behavior but
rather the functions, effects, purposes, or goals
of the behavior. It has been proven sufficiently by
various people that this is the most suitable point
for centering in any motivation
theory.[11]
Animal- and
human-centering. -- This theory starts with the
human being rather than any lower and presumably
'simpler' animal. Too many of the findings that
have been made in animals have been proven to be
true for animals but not for the human being. There
is no reason whatsoever why we should start with
animals in order to study human motivation. The
logic or rather illogic behind this general fallacy
of 'pseudo-simplicity' has been exposed often
enough by philosophers and logicians as well as by
scientists in each of the various fields. It is no
more necessary to study animals before one can
study man than it is to study mathematics before
one can study geology or psychology or
biology.
We may also
reject the old, naive, behaviorism which assumed
that it was somehow necessary, or at least more
'scientific' to judge human beings by animal
standards. One consequence of this belief was that
the whole notion of purpose and goal was excluded
from motivational psychology simply because one
could not ask a white rat about his purposes.
Tolman (18) has long since proven in animal studies
themselves that this exclusion was not
necessary.
Motivation
and the theory of psychopathogenesis. -- The
conscious motivational content of everyday life
has, according to the foregoing, been conceived to
be relatively important or unimportant accordingly
as it is more or less closely related to the basic
goals. A desire for an ice cream cone might
actually be an indirect expression of a desire for
love. If it is, then this desire for the ice cream
cone becomes extremely important motivation. If
however the ice cream is simply something to cool
the mouth with, or a casual appetitive reaction,
then the desire is relatively unimportant. Everyday
conscious desires are to be regarded as symptoms,
as [p. 393] surface indicators of more
basic needs. If we were to take these superficial
desires at their face value me would find ourselves
in a state of complete confusion which could never
be resolved, since we would be dealing seriously
with symptoms rather than with what lay behind the
symptoms.
Thwarting
of unimportant desires produces no
psychopathological results; thwarting of a
basically important need does produce such results.
Any theory of psychopathogenesis must then be based
on a sound theory of motivation. A conflict or a
frustration is not necessarily pathogenic. It
becomes so only when it threatens or thwarts the
basic needs, or partial needs that are closely
related to the basic needs (10).
The role of
gratified needs. -- It has been pointed out above
several times that our needs usually emerge only
when more prepotent needs have been gratified. Thus
gratification has an important role in motivation
theory. Apart from this, however, needs cease to
play an active determining or organizing role as
soon as they are gratified.
What this
means is that, e. g., a basically satisfied person
no longer has the needs for esteem, love, safety,
etc. The only sense in which he might be said to
have them is in the almost metaphysical sense that
a sated man has hunger, or a filled bottle has
emptiness. If we are interested in what actually
motivates us, and not in what has, will, or might
motivate us, then a satisfied need is not a
motivator. It must be considered for all practical
purposes simply not to exist, to have disappeared.
This point should be emphasized because it has been
either overlooked or contradicted in every theory
of motivation I know.[12] The perfectly
healthy, normal, fortunate man has no sex needs or
hunger needs, or needs for safety, or for love, or
for prestige, or self-esteem, except in stray
moments of quickly passing threat. If we were to
say otherwise, we should also have to aver that
every man had all the pathological reflexes, e. g.,
Babinski, etc., because if his nervous system were
damaged, these would appear.
It is such
considerations as these that suggest the bold
[p. 394] postulation that a man who is
thwarted in any of his basic needs may fairly be
envisaged simply as a sick man. This is a fair
parallel to our designation as 'sick' of the man
who lacks vitamins or minerals. Who is to say that
a lack of love is less important than a lack of
vitamins? Since we know the pathogenic effects of
love starvation, who is to say that we are invoking
value-questions in an unscientific or illegitimate
way, any more than the physician does who diagnoses
and treats pellagra or scurvy? If I were permitted
this usage, I should then say simply that a healthy
man is primarily motivated by his needs to develop
and actualize his fullest potentialities and
capacities. If a man has any other basic needs in
any active, chronic sense, then he is simply an
unhealthy man. He is as surely sick as if he had
suddenly developed a strong salt-hunger or calcium
hunger.[13]
If this
statement seems unusual or paradoxical the reader
may be assured that this is only one among many
such paradoxes that will appear as we revise our
ways of looking at man's deeper motivations. When
we ask what man wants of life, we deal with his
very essence.
IV.
SUMMARY
(1) There
are at least five sets of goals, which we may call
basic needs. These are briefly physiological,
safety, love, 'esteem, and self-actualization. In
addition, we are motivated by the desire to achieve
or maintain the various conditions upon which these
basic satisfactions rest and by certain more
intellectual desires.
(2) These
basic goals are related to each other, being
arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency. This means
that the most prepotent goal will monopolize
consciousness and will tend of itself to organize
the recruitment of the various capacities of the
organism. The less prepotent needs are [p.
395] minimized, even forgotten or denied. But
when a need is fairly well satisfied, the next
prepotent ('higher') need emerges, in turn to
dominate the conscious life and to serve as the
center of organization of behavior, since gratified
needs are not active motivators.
Thus man is
a perpetually wanting animal. Ordinarily the
satisfaction of these wants is not altogether
mutually exclusive, but only tends to be. The
average member of our society is most often
partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in
all of his wants. The hierarchy principle is
usually empirically observed in terms of increasing
percentages of non-satisfaction as we go up the
hierarchy. Reversals of the average order of the
hierarchy are sometimes observed. Also it has been
observed that an individual may permanently lose
the higher wants in the hierarchy under special
conditions. There are not only ordinarily multiple
motivations for usual behavior, but in addition
many determinants other than motives.
(3) Any
thwarting or possibility of thwarting of these
basic human goals, or danger to the defenses which
protect them, or to the conditions upon which they
rest, is considered to be a psychological threat.
With a few exceptions, all psychopathology may be
partially traced to such threats. A basically
thwarted man may actually be defined as a 'sick'
man, if we wish.
(4) It is
such basic threats which bring about the general
emergency reactions.
(5) Certain
other basic problems have not been dealt with
because of limitations of space. Among these are
(a) the problem of values in any definitive
motivation theory, (b) the relation between
appetites, desires, needs and what is 'good' for
the organism, (c) the etiology of the basic needs
and their possible derivation in early childhood,
(d) redefinition of motivational concepts, i. e.,
drive, desire, wish, need, goal, (e) implication of
our theory for hedonistic theory, (f) the nature of
the uncompleted act, of success and failure, and of
aspiration-level, (g) the role of association,
habit and conditioning, (h) relation to the [p.
396] theory of inter-personal relations, (i)
implications for psychotherapy, (j) implication for
theory of society, (k) the theory of selfishness,
(l) the relation between needs and cultural
patterns, (m) the relation between this theory and
Alport's theory of functional autonomy. These as
well as certain other less important questions must
be considered as motivation theory attempts to
become definitive.
Notes
[1]
As the child grows up, sheer knowledge and
familiarity as well as better motor development
make these 'dangers' less and less dangerous and
more and more manageable. Throughout life it may be
said that one of the main conative functions of
education is this neutralizing of apparent dangers
through knowledge, e. g., I am not afraid of
thunder because I know something about
it.
[2]
A 'test battery' for safety might be confronting
the child with a small exploding firecracker, or
with a bewhiskered face; having the mother leave
the room, putting him upon a high ladder, a
hypodermic injection, having a mouse crawl up to
him, etc. Of course I cannot seriously recommend
the deliberate use of such 'tests' for they might
very well harm the child being tested. But these
and similar situations come up by the score in the
child's ordinary day-to-day living and may be
observed. There is no reason why those stimuli
should not be used with, far example, young
chimpanzees.
[3]
Not all neurotic individuals feel unsafe. Neurosis
may have at its core a thwarting of the affection
and esteem needs in a person who is generally
safe.
[4]
For further details see (12) and (16, Chap.
5).
[5]
Whether or not this particular desire is universal
we do not know. The crucial question, especially
important today, is "Will men who are enslaved and
dominated inevitably feel dissatisfied and
rebellious?" We may assume on the basis of commonly
known clinical data that a man who has known true
freedom (not paid for by giving up safety and
security but rather built on the basis of adequate
safety and security) will not willingly or easily
allow his freedom to be taken away from him. But we
do not know that this is true for the person born
into slavery. The events of the next decade should
give us our answer. See discussion of this problem
in (5).
[6]
Perhaps the desire for prestige and respect from
others is subsidiary to the desire for self-esteem
or confidence in oneself. Observation of children
seems to indicate that this is so, but clinical
data give no clear support for such a
conclusion.
[7]
For more extensive discussion of normal
self-esteem, as well as for reports of various
researches, see (11).
[8]
Clearly creative behavior, like painting, is like
any other behavior in having multiple,
determinants. It may be seen in 'innately creative'
people whether they are satisfied or not, happy or
unhappy, hungry or sated. Also it is clear that
creative activity may be compensatory, ameliorative
or purely economic. It is my impression (as yet
unconfirmed) that it is possible to distinguish the
artistic and intellectual products of basically
satisfied people from those of basically
unsatisfied people by inspection alone. In any
case, here too we must distinguish, in a dynamic
fashion, the overt behavior itself from its various
motivations or purposes.
[9]
I am aware that many psychologists md
psychoanalysts use the term 'motivated' and
'determined' synonymously, e. g., Freud. But I
consider this an obfuscating usage. Sharp
distinctions are necessary for clarity of thought,
and precision in experimentation.
[10]
To be discussed fully in a subsequent
publication.
[11]
The interested reader is referred to the very
excellent discussion of this point in Murray's
Explorations in Personality (15).
[12]
Note that acceptance of this theory necessitates
basic revision of the Freudian theory.
[13]
If we were to use the word 'sick' in this way, we
should then also have to face squarely the
relations of man to his society. One clear
implication of our definition would be that (1)
since a man is to be called sick who is basically
thwarted, and (2) since such basic thwarting is
made possible ultimately only by forces outside the
individual, then (3) sickness in the individual
must come ultimately from sickness in the society.
The 'good' or healthy society would then be defined
as one that permitted man's highest purposes to
emerge by satisfying all his prepotent basic
needs.
References
1. ADLER,
A. Social interest. London: Faber & Faber,
1938.
2. CANNON,
W. B. Wisdom of the body. New York: Norton,
1932.
3. FREUD,
A. The ego and the mechanisms of defense. London:
Hogarth, 1937.
4. FREUD,
S. New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. New
York: Norton, 1933.
5. FROMM,
E. Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar and
Rinehart, 1941.
6.
GOLDSTEIN, K. The organism. New York: American Book
Co., 1939.
7. HORNEY,
K. The neurotic personality of our time. New York:
Norton, 1937.
8.
KARDINER, A. The traumatic neuroses of war. New
York: Hoeber, 1941.
9. LEVY, D.
M. Primary affect hunger. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1937,
94, 643-652.
10. MASLOW,
A. H. Conflict, frustration, and the theory of
threat. J. abnorm. (soc.) Psychol., 1943, 38,
81-86.
11.
----------. Dominance, personality and social
behavior in women. J. soc. Psychol., 1939, 10,
3-39.
12.
----------. The dynamics of psychological
security-insecurity. Character & Pers., 1942,
10, 331-344.
13.
----------. A preface to motivation theory.
Psychosomatic Med., 1943, 5, 85-92.
14.
----------. & MITTLEMANN, B. Principles of
abnormal psychology. New York: Harper & Bros.,
1941.
15. MURRAY,
H. A., et al. Explorations in Personality. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1938.
16. PLANT,
J. Personality and the cultural pattern. New York:
Commonwealth Fund, 1937.
17.
SHIRLEY, M. Children's adjustments to a strange
situation. J. abrnorm. (soc.) Psychol., 1942, 37,
201-217.
18. TOLMAN,
E. C. Purposive behavior in animals and men. New
York: Century, 1932.
19.
WERTHEIMER, M. Unpublished lectures at the New
School for Social Research.
20. YOUNG,
P. T. Motivation of behavior. New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1936.
21.
----------. The experimental analysis of appetite.
Psychol. Bull., 1941, 38, 129-164.
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