Classics in the History
of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
ISSN 1492-3713
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 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 or
unfamiliar 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 so closely 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 rather unimportant 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 may have 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 are many 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
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