A Theory of Human Motivation

Abraham H. Maslow opens this foundational paper by establishing the theoretical principles any comprehensive theory of human motivation must satisfy. Drawing on propositions from a previous paper, he outlines 13 guiding assumptions. Key propositions include that motivation theory must account for the integrated wholeness of the organism; that hunger and other bodily drives are atypical of human motivation; that theory should focus on ultimate rather than superficial goals; that needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of prepotency, meaning higher needs emerge only after more dominant ones are met; and that theory should be human-centered rather than animal-centered. A 13th proposition, which Maslow frames as a new addition, asserts that motivation theory is not synonymous with behavior theory, since behavior is also shaped by biological, cultural, and situational factors. He positions his framework within the functionalist tradition of William James and John Dewey (an approach emphasizing the practical functions of mental processes), the holism of the psychologists Max Wertheimer and Kurt Goldstein and of Gestalt Psychology (a school emphasizing perception and organization as integrated wholes), and the dynamic approaches of the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, calling this synthesis a "general-dynamic" theory. He presents the paper as a suggested program for future research rather than a set of settled conclusions.

Maslow identifies physiological drives as the most prepotent, or dominant, level of his proposed hierarchy. He notes two lines of research that revise conventional thinking: the concept of homeostasis, the body's automatic efforts to maintain a constant normal state of the blood stream, and findings that food appetites serve as efficient indicators of actual bodily needs. He argues that an exhaustive list of physiological needs is impossible because the number varies with the degree of specificity. These needs are unusual because they are relatively isolable and often have a localizable somatic base, meaning an identifiable physical source in the body, though even they are not entirely independent. A person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking comfort or dependence.

The core of Maslow's argument about physiological needs concerns their extreme dominance under deprivation. When a person simultaneously lacks food, safety, love, and esteem, hunger will most likely take priority, and all capacities become organized around obtaining food. Maslow qualifies this by stressing that such conditions are rare in a normally functioning society and that much motivation research conducted on rats has made it easy to project the "rat-picture" onto humans. This leads to the hierarchy's central mechanism: When physiological needs are chronically satisfied, higher needs emerge. Gratification becomes as important as deprivation, because it frees the organism from lower-level domination. A satisfied need is no longer an active motivator.

Safety needs constitute the second level. Once physiological needs are relatively met, safety needs emerge and can dominate the organism. Maslow suggests these needs are most easily observed in children, who react with alarm to sudden disturbance or loss of support and who prefer routine and predictability. Parental injustice, inconsistency, or family disruption threatens the child's sense of a reliable world. In healthy adults in a peaceful society, safety needs are largely satisfied; residual expressions appear in preferences for job security, savings, insurance, and worldviews that organize experience coherently. Safety needs become dominant only in emergencies such as war, disease, or societal disorganization. Maslow draws a parallel between neurotic adults and unsafe children, noting that some neurotic individuals perceive the world as hostile and search for a protector. He identifies compulsive-obsessive neurosis, a condition centered on rigid ordering and control, as the clearest expression of the search for safety.

Love, affection, and belongingness needs form the third level. Once lower needs are fairly well gratified, a person feels keenly the absence of friends, a romantic partner, or children, and strives for affectionate relationships and group belonging. Maslow identifies the thwarting of love needs as the most common core of maladjustment and severe psychopathology in the society of his time. He distinguishes love from sex, noting that sexual behavior is usually determined by multiple needs and that the love needs involve both giving and receiving.

Esteem needs form the fourth level. Maslow divides these into two sets: the desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, confidence, independence, and freedom; and the desire for reputation, prestige, recognition, and appreciation. Satisfaction produces feelings of self-confidence and capability, while frustration produces feelings of inferiority and helplessness.

At the top of the hierarchy sits self-actualization, a term first coined by Kurt Goldstein. Even when all lower needs are satisfied, Maslow argues, restlessness often develops unless the individual is doing what he or she is fitted for: A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write. Self-actualization refers to the desire to become everything one is capable of becoming, and its form varies greatly. Its emergence rests on prior satisfaction of all lower needs, and Maslow acknowledges that because basically satisfied people are exceptional, little is known about self-actualization experimentally or clinically.

Beyond the five-level hierarchy, Maslow identifies preconditions for basic need satisfaction, including freedoms of speech, expression, and inquiry, as well as justice, fairness, and orderliness. Threats to these conditions trigger emergency responses almost as if the basic needs themselves were endangered. He tentatively postulates the desires to know and to understand as additional motivational forces with independent standing, forming their own small hierarchy in which the desire to know is prepotent over the desire to understand.

Maslow qualifies the hierarchy by acknowledging it is not as rigid as his presentation may imply. Exceptions include people who prioritize esteem over love, innately creative individuals who pursue creativity despite unmet needs, and cases where prolonged deprivation permanently lowers aspiration. He introduces "increased frustration-tolerance through early gratification" to explain those who sacrifice basic needs for ideals: People whose needs were consistently met in early life develop character structures enabling them to withstand future deprivation. He also corrects the impression that needs operate in an all-or-none fashion, noting that most people are partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in all needs simultaneously. He offers illustrative percentages: The average citizen might be 85 percent satisfied in physiological needs, 70 percent in safety, 50 percent in love, 40 percent in esteem, and 10 percent in self-actualization. Basic needs, he adds, are more often unconscious than conscious, and the classification captures a unity behind superficial cultural differences.

Maslow stresses that most behavior is multi-motivated, meaning any single act may simultaneously express several levels of need. Not all behavior is even motivated; other determinants include external stimuli and conditioned reflexes. He distinguishes expressive behavior, which reflects personality without being goal-directed, from coping behavior, which involves purposive striving. He defends the theory's human-centered orientation, criticizing the behaviorist tradition of judging humans by animal standards.

Maslow concludes by connecting his theory to psychopathology, arguing that thwarting basic needs produces pathological results while thwarting unimportant desires does not. Gratified needs cease to be active motivators, a point he claims prior theories have overlooked. He postulates that a person thwarted in any basic need may be considered sick, analogous to someone lacking essential vitamins, and that a healthy person is primarily motivated by self-actualization. In a footnote, he suggests that since basic thwarting results from forces outside the individual, a healthy society would satisfy all basic needs and permit people's highest purposes to emerge. The paper closes by listing 13 unresolved problems for future research, including the relation between needs and values, implications for psychotherapy, and the etiology (origins and causes) of basic needs in early childhood.