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Maslow's pyramid of human needs for self-realization. Maslow's pyramid of human needs: Do satisfied needs motivate?

In addition to unique architectural structures, there are also pyramids of a different kind, which, nevertheless, cause far from weak excitement around them. They can be called intelligent structures. And one of them is the pyramid of needs of Abraham Maslow, a famous American psychologist, the founder of humanistic psychology.

Maslow's pyramid

Maslow's pyramid is a special diagram in which all human needs are presented in a hierarchical order. However, none of the scientist’s publications contains any schematic images, because he was of the opinion that this order is dynamic in nature and can change depending on the personality characteristics of each individual person.

The first mentions of the pyramid of needs can be found in German-language literature of the 70s of the 20th century. They can still be found in many educational materials on psychology and marketing today. The needs model itself is actively used in economics and is of great importance for the theory of motivation and consumer behavior.

It is also interesting that there is a widespread opinion that Maslow himself did not create the pyramid, but only identified general features in the formation of the needs of people who are successful in life and creative activity. And the pyramid was invented by his followers, who sought to clearly present the scientist’s ideas. We will talk about this hypothesis in the second half of the article. For now, let’s look at what Maslow’s pyramid is in detail.

According to the scientist's research, a person has five basic needs:

1. Physiological needs (first step of the pyramid)

Physiological needs are characteristic of absolutely all living organisms existing on our planet, and, accordingly, of every person. And if a person does not satisfy them, then he simply will not be able to exist, and also will not be able to fully develop. For example, if a person really wants to go to the toilet, he will probably not enthusiastically read a book or calmly walk through a beautiful area, enjoying the amazing scenery. Naturally, without satisfying physiological needs, a person will not be able to work normally, engage in business or any other activity. Such needs are breathing, nutrition, sleep, etc.

2. Security (second stage of the pyramid)

This group includes the needs for security and stability. To understand the essence, you can consider the example of babies - while still unconscious, they strive on a subconscious level, after satisfying their thirst and hunger, to be protected. And only a loving mother can give them this feeling. The situation is similar with adults, but in a different, milder form: for security reasons, they strive, for example, to insure their lives, install strong doors, put locks, etc.

3. Love and belonging (third step of the pyramid)

We are talking about social needs here. They are reflected in such aspirations as making new acquaintances, finding friends and a life partner, and being involved in any group of people. A person needs to show and receive love towards himself. In a social environment, a person can feel useful and important. And this is what motivates people to satisfy social needs.

4. Recognition (fourth step of the pyramid)

After a person satisfies the need for love and belonging to society, the direct influence of others on him decreases, and the focus is on the desire to be respected, the desire for prestige and recognition of various manifestations of his individuality (talents, characteristics, skills, etc.) . And only in case of successful realization of his potential and after achieving recognition of people important to a person, he comes to self-confidence and his abilities.

5. Self-realization (fifth stage of the pyramid)

This stage is the last and it contains spiritual needs, expressed in the desire to develop as a person or a spiritual person, as well as to continue to realize one’s potential. As a result, creative activity, visiting cultural events, and the desire to develop one’s talents and abilities. In addition, a person who has managed to satisfy the needs of the previous stages and, having “climbed” to the fifth, begins to actively seek the meaning of life, study the world around him, and try to make his own contribution to it; he may begin to develop new views and beliefs.

This is a description of basic human needs. You can evaluate for yourself how true these descriptions are by simply trying to look at yourself and your life from the outside. Surely, you can find a lot of evidence of their relevance. But it should be said, among other things, that there are several controversial points in Maslow’s pyramid.

Authorship

Despite the fact that the authorship of the pyramid is officially attributed to Abraham Maslow, he has nothing to do with the version we have today. The fact is that in the form of a graph, the “Hierarchy of Needs” appeared in 1975 in the textbook of a certain W. Stopp, about whose personality there is practically no information, and Maslow died in 1970, and in his works, as already mentioned, there was not a single graphic arts.

A satisfied need ceases to motivate

The main question here is the relevance of needs for a person. For example, a self-sufficient person who is indifferent to communication does not need it and will not strive for it. Anyone who feels protected will not strive even more to protect themselves. Simply put, a satisfied need loses its relevance and moves to another level. And in order to determine current needs, it is enough just to identify unsatisfied ones.

Theory and practice

According to many modern psychologists, despite the fact that Maslow’s pyramid is a clearly structured model, it is quite difficult to apply it in practice, and the scheme itself can lead to completely incorrect generalizations. If we put all the statistics aside, a number of questions immediately arise. For example, how dark is the existence of a person who is not recognized in society? Or, should a person who is systematically malnourished be considered absolutely hopeless? After all, in history you can find hundreds of examples of how people achieved enormous results in life precisely because their needs remained unsatisfied. Take, for example, poverty or unrequited love.

According to some reports, Abraham Maslow subsequently abandoned the theory he put forward, and in his subsequent works (“Towards the Psychology of Being” (1962), “The Far Limits of Human Nature” (1971)), the concept of personal motivation was significantly refined. And the pyramid, which many specialists in the field of psychology and marketing are trying to find application for today, has generally lost all meaning.

Criticism

The main reason for criticizing Maslow's pyramid is its hierarchy, as well as the fact that needs cannot be completely satisfied. Some researchers interpret Maslow's theory in a generally unflattering way. According to their interpretation, the pyramid suggests that man is an animal that constantly needs something. And others say that Maslow's theory cannot be applied in practice when it comes to business, marketing and advertising.

However, the author did not adapt his theory to business or advertising, but only tried to answer questions in which, for example, behaviorism or Freudianism came to a dead end. Maslow simply sought to provide insight into human motivation, and his work is more philosophical than methodological.

Advantages and disadvantages

As is easy to see, the pyramid of needs is not just a classification of them, but reflects a certain hierarchy: instinctive needs, basic, sublime. Every person experiences all these desires, but the following pattern comes into force here: basic needs are considered dominant, and higher-order needs are activated only when the basic ones are satisfied. But it should be understood that needs can be expressed completely differently for each person. And this happens at any level of the pyramid. For this reason, a person must correctly understand his desires, learn to interpret them and adequately satisfy them, otherwise he will constantly be in a state of dissatisfaction and disappointment. By the way, Abraham Maslow took the position that only 2% of all people reach the fifth stage.

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Mankind knows many pyramids: the pyramids of Giza, the pyramids of Machu Picchu, the pyramids of Kukulkan and others. They are all phenomenal, each in their own way, and all arouse great interest. But in addition to these unique architectural structures, there are also pyramids of a different kind, which, nevertheless, cause far from weak excitement around them. They can be called intelligent structures. And one of them is the pyramid of needs of Abraham Maslow, a famous American psychologist, the founder of humanistic psychology.

Maslow's pyramid

According to the scientist's research, a person has five basic needs:

Physiological needs (first step of the pyramid)

Security (second stage of the pyramid)

Love and Belonging (Third Stage of the Pyramid)

Recognition (fourth step of the pyramid)

Self-realization (fifth step of the pyramid)

Authorship

A satisfied need ceases to motivate

Theory and practice

Criticism

Advantages and disadvantages

What are your true needs and motives? Find out on the course.

Theory of human needs - Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs

There are 5 basic human needs (according to A. Maslow’s theory):

Physiological needs (food, water, warmth, shelter, sex, sleep, health, cleanliness).
The need for safety and protection (including stability).
The need for belonging to a social group, involvement and support. In this case we are talking about partner, family, friends, intimacy and affection.
The need for respect and recognition (self-esteem, self-esteem, confidence, prestige, fame, recognition of merit).
The need for self-expression (realization of one’s abilities and talents).

The pyramid of needs reflects one of the most popular and well-known theories of motivation - the theory of the hierarchy of needs.

Maslow distributed needs as they increase, explaining this construction by the fact that a person cannot experience high-level needs while he needs more primitive things. The basis is physiology (quenching hunger, thirst, sexual need, etc.). A step higher is the need for security, above it is the need for affection and love, as well as to belong to a social group. The next stage is the need for respect and approval, above which Maslow placed cognitive needs (thirst for knowledge, desire to perceive as much information as possible). Next comes the need for aesthetics (the desire to harmonize life, fill it with beauty and art). And finally, the last step of the pyramid, the highest, is the desire to reveal inner potential (this is self-actualization). It is important to note that each of the needs does not have to be satisfied completely - partial saturation is enough to move to the next stage.

As lower-lying needs are satisfied, higher-level needs become more and more relevant, but this does not mean that the place of the previous need is taken by a new one only when the previous one is fully satisfied.

At the base of this pyramid are the so-called basic needs. These are physiological needs and the need for safety.

Physiological: need for food, water, sexual satisfaction, etc. If for some reason it is impossible to satisfy them, a person can no longer think about anything and cannot move on to satisfying other, higher needs in the hierarchy. Probably everyone has experienced the feeling of extreme hunger, which prevents you from doing or even thinking about anything else. V. Frankl described this very eloquently in his book “Saying Yes to Life.” Psychologist in a concentration camp." About how people living in constant fear, anxiety for themselves and their loved ones, could not talk about anything else except food. They talked about food at any time during their vacation, but the work was very hard, they described the dishes that they had once prepared, and talked about the restaurants that they visited. One of the most important needs that guarantees life, the need for food, was not satisfied for them, and therefore declared itself constantly.

When physiological needs are satisfied, a person stops thinking about them, forgets for a while, until the body gives another sign. Then you can switch your attention to satisfying other needs. Of course, we learned to abstain and endure for a while. But only for a while, until the discomfort becomes very strong.

The next level of needs is the need for security.. It is very difficult to realize any of your plans, dreams, work, develop, without feeling safe. If this need is not satisfied, a person organizes all his activities (sometimes neglecting even physiological needs for some time) to make his life safer. A threat to security can be global cataclysms, war, disease, loss of property, housing, as well as the threat of dismissal from work. You can track how, during a period of social instability in the country, the level of general anxiety increases.

To maintain a sense of security, we are looking for any guarantees: insurance, work with a guaranteed social package, a car with modern technologies that provide passenger protection, we study legislation, hoping to receive protection from the state, etc.

The third and fourth stages belong to the zone of psychological needs. If we are not bothered by unsatisfied basic needs, or simply put, if we are not hungry, thirsty, sick, not in a war zone, and have a roof over our heads, we strive to satisfy psychological needs. These include: a sense of significance, belonging to a particular social system(family, community, team, social connections, communication, affection, etc.), the need for respect, for love. We create systems for this, communities, without which we cannot survive. We strive for love, respect, friendship, we strive to be members of a group, a team.

When these needs are not met, we acutely experience the absence of friends, family, partner, and children. What we most want is to be accepted, heard, understood. We are looking for how to fulfill such a need, sometimes neglecting basic needs, so great is the torment of experiencing loneliness.

Sects and criminal groups often exploit this need. Teenagers have a particularly strong desire to be in a group. And therefore, a teenager, often without thinking, obeys the rules and laws of the group he strives to join only in order not to be rejected by it.

The next step is the need for recognition, selfexpression, respect for others, recognition of one’s own worth, stable high self-esteem. It is important for us to occupy some significant social position. We want our strengths to be recognized, our competence to be appreciated, our skill to be noticed. This may include the desire to have a good reputation, status, fame and glory, superiority, etc.

And sometimes we ourselves should think about how much these needs are satisfied in our lives, for example, in percentage terms. And, if these numbers are less than the statistical averages cited by A. Maslow (85% physiological, 70% in safety, 50% in love, 40% in respect and 10% in self-actualization), then it’s probably worth thinking about what we can change in our lives.

It is more convenient for us, as sales specialists, to use a different classification, with the help of which we find out what needs potential clients have.

There are several basic needs that every person strives to satisfy throughout life. If one of the desires is satisfied, the person strives to satisfy the next need.

The need for survival. The survival instinct is the most powerful instinct of a human being. Every person wants to save his life, protect his family, friends, and compatriots from danger. Only after receiving a guarantee of survival does a person begin to think about satisfying other desires.

Need for security. Once a person receives guarantees of survival, he begins to think about the safety of every aspect of his life.

Financial security– every person is afraid of poverty and material losses and strives to overcome them. It is expressed in the desire to save and increase wealth.

Emotional safety necessary for a person to feel comfortable.

Physical Security– every person, to a certain level, needs food, warmth, shelter and clothing.

The need for security does not mean that a person needs an armored door. He may well want to purchase high-quality wallpaper that will serve him for a long time.

Need for comfort. As soon as a person reaches a minimum level of security and safety, he begins to strive for comfort. He invests a huge amount of time and money to create a cozy home environment and strives to create comfortable conditions at work. A person strives for comfort in any situation and chooses products that are convenient and easy to use.

Need for image. The client focuses on the attractiveness and prestige of the product.

Need for free time. People want to relax as much as possible and look for any opportunity to stop work and relax. The focus of most people is evenings, weekends and vacations. Leisure time activities play a central role in human behavior and decision making.

Need for love. People have an urgent need to build and maintain loving relationships. Everything a person does is aimed either at achieving love or at compensating for a lack of love. An adult personality is formed in the conditions of love received or not received in childhood. The desire to create reliable conditions for love is the main reason for human behavior.

The need for respect. A person strives to earn the respect of other people. The bulk of human activity is aimed at this. Loss of respect can be a significant cause of dissatisfaction, and obtaining a high-ranking position can be a greater incentive than money.

The need for self-realization. The highest desire of a person is the realization of the creative potential of the individual, his talents and abilities. A person's motivation is aimed at achieving whatever they are capable of achieving. Throughout his life, he strives to use the most talents and abilities. The need for self-realization can be stronger than all other motivations.

2. SECURITY AS A FUNDAMENTAL NEED

The concept of security is associated with the primary sources (basic needs) of human life.

Scientists emphasize that higher-level needs arise after the satisfaction of lower-level needs.

According to Maslow, “Human needs are arranged in a hierarchy. In other words, the emergence of one need is usually preceded by the satisfaction of another, more pressing one. Man is an animal that constantly experiences certain desires.”

Higher needs contribute to more complete satisfaction of the need for security.

The need for security ranks first among those that distinguish a person from the rest of the living world:

1. Physiological needs (satisfying hunger, thirst, procreation...), 2. Need for safety,

3. The need for love and social connections, 4. The need for respect, approval and recognition from society,

5. The need for self-actualization, personality development, incl. spiritual.

Consequently, all other needs that distinguish a person arise only after the need for security is satisfied.

A very important remark was made by the “master of psychology” A. Maslow: “Just as a well-fed person does not feel hungry, one who is safe does not feel threatened... The need for security is considered as an active and main factor mobilizing the body’s resources only in reality emergency circumstances such as war, disease, natural disasters, increased crime, disorganization of society...”

By the need for security we must understand the need to preserve and prolong the sustainable satisfaction of lower needs.

This circumstance creates a very dangerous situation today: modern global problems, not brought to the consciousness of every inhabitant of the Earth, pose a threat terrible in terms of possible consequences - like invisible radiation.

When the focus is constantly on only private security tasks, the population of the planet does not realize the full emergency of the coming era of global crisis. Higher needs not only arise after the need for security has been satisfied, but also serve to more fully satisfy it.

Let me explain. Personality, i.e. a human individual with personal characteristics satisfies his need for security by taking actions to protect himself from threats he detects, both instinctive and rational. But not only. To increase their level of security, people unite into communities. It doesn’t require any special proof that together is safer.

So: the desire for unification is inherent in the next human need - the need for social connections.

With the unification of people into a community, a new concern arises - ensuring the safety of this community. The task of simultaneously ensuring the security of both the community and each of its participants carries within itself a grain of contradiction. In a number of critical cases, it is impossible to simultaneously ensure the safety of both. Then a dramatic situation arises - you need to sacrifice either one or the other.

A community turns out to be viable only if the decisive majority of its members are ready to put the interests of the community above individual ones. Otherwise, the community will disintegrate or even die at the first critical situation. selfish interests.

And so: the conflict of individual and public interests is resolved by the next natural need of every person - the need for respect. With its help, a special mechanism for transforming public interests into personal ones arises in the community.

Such a mechanism is the opinion of others, customs and traditions, according to which a member of the community, who has risked himself and succeeded in acting for the benefit of the community, achieves respect and receives certain privileges - which serves his individual, selfish interests.

A developed society has added laws to the customs and traditions of respect and privileges for “selfless” citizens, according to which privileges are approved by the state. But, as it turns out, the respect of surrounding people and government agencies is not enough for the reliability of the operation of the named mechanism. The opinion of others and formal laws must be supported by a certain ideology with the introduction of Faith in certain ideals into the consciousness of people.

History has shown that religion has proven to be the most effective ideology. No “civil” society, built on the best laws, is able to fully control the implementation of these laws by its citizens.

The invincible principle “your shirt is closer to your body” drives the mind of every member of society to use all sorts of loopholes to satisfy their selfish interests, including contrary to the interests of society. This situation makes any pyramid of public (state) controllers-supervisors of the implementation of laws ineffective, since each of these supervisors is “also a person”, guided primarily by their own selfish interests.

Religion, faith in the Almighty, and the morality created by religious canons have placed an “overseer” in the form of conscience in the head of every believer.

He is responsible for his actions, for their compliance with moral social standards, directly before the Almighty, whom it is impossible to deceive. We can say that a believer needs respect not only from people who can be deceived (“not caught is not a thief”). It turns out that the need for respect, which follows the need for social connections, serves to strengthen the unification of people, also “works” for security. Finally, the highest human need - the need for development - also contributes to the most complete satisfaction of the need for security.

Human development allows him to adapt to the natural development of the environment, as part of a constantly changing nature. And the spiritual development inherent only to man has the ultimate goal of forming “higher”, “spiritual” values in the human consciousness - and these always turn out to be social values. Thus, it turns out that the need for security serves as a kind of “root” from which other basic needs “grow” and which are “served”. Therefore, the need for security deserves to be called not only the first among the basic needs of a person, distinguishing him from the rest of the world, but also the fundamental one. Consequently, safety is the primary source of human activity and is the ultimate goal in all spheres of his life. The foregoing also allows us to assert that safety is the primary source of human activity and is the ultimate goal in all spheres of his life.

Need for longevity.

The original life expectancy of a person, laid down by nature, is shortened by the implementation of threats and dangers from the environment.

Therefore, the actual life expectancy, being dependent on the natural species (biological) value, but different from it, characterizes the level of safety. At the same time, for a person whose life is always inextricably linked with the life of his community, there are three indicators:

· biological life expectancy of a person in general, · individual life expectancy relating to a specific person, · average life expectancy in a given community.

Biological life expectancy serves as a baseline indicator. For nature, which created man and provided for this duration, the performance of certain functions and the reproduction of the human race are important, so that there is someone to perform these functions.

A person must grow to adulthood and produce offspring, and then fulfill his function and raise descendants to adulthood.

After this, nature does not need this individual, since both the functions and reproduction of the family will be carried out by his descendants. Taking 25 years as the adult age of a person, we get 25+25 =50. If we put a margin on the spread of the received data, we will approximately obtain a biological life expectancy of 75-100 years.

“Additional” years can also be considered as the time allotted by nature (and nature?) for the free creative activity of the individual for the benefit of society

A significant portion of people do not live to reach their biological limit.

Their individual life expectancy is shortened by insecurity, which depends, first of all, on their own behavior in everyday life and in emerging dangerous situations.

A person who neglects the principles of a healthy lifestyle, who cannot foresee, avoid dangers, and, if necessary, act rationally, cannot hope for a long life.

However, the level of security of an individual, measured by individual life expectancy, depends not only on his behavior, but also on the level of security in a given community.

In general, if we take into account the average life expectancy of a person on the planet, the level of human security has been constantly increasing until now.

Safety as a result of life activity

Security is ensured by: a) protection from immediate threats; b) preventing potential hazards by transforming the environment;

c) the effectiveness of prevention determines the level of security of society, the effectiveness of protection makes it possible to realize (or not realize) the level of security achieved by society. A person’s actions, thanks to his mind, are distinguished by predicting the development of events, assessing the consequences of his actions, analyzing the causes of dangers, and choosing the most effective course of action to ensure his safety.

Life activities aimed at ensuring safety are potentially dangerous; Life hazards are traditionally brought to an acceptable level through trial and error.

Axiom:“Human life’s ultimate goal is to ensure his fundamental need for safety, however, by eliminating or reducing the original danger (threat), it contributes to the emergence of a new danger.”

Human motivation

Motivation is the process of motivating oneself and others to act to achieve personal and organizational goals. The effectiveness of motivation is related to a specific situation.

Motivation has been used since ancient times. The carrot and stick method (one of the first methods of motivation) has been used since the dawn of civilization. However, during the period of F. Taylor, managers realized that wages on the verge of starvation were stupid and dangerous. As the well-being of the population improves, the carrot does not always make a person work better.

The works of S. Freud, who introduced the concept of the unconscious, played a major role in this area. Scientists have put forward the thesis that people do not always act rationally. E. Mayo's experiments revealed a decrease in staff turnover due to an increase in the prestige of the profession, social and group relations.

Of interest from the point of view of identifying motivating factors is the theory of human needs proposed in
40s CC c. A. Maslow (Fig. 9.1).

Rice. 9.1. Hierarchy of needs according to A. Maslow Human need

Need is a physiological and psychological deficiency of something. Needs serve as a motive for action. Maslow said that the next need in the hierarchy is satisfied after the need of the previous level is fully satisfied. Although this is not necessary in life, and a person may seek, for example, to satisfy the need for status before his need for housing is fully satisfied.

F. Herzberg proposed two groups of factors in the 50s. CC c.

hygienic (external to work), which relieve job dissatisfaction;
motivation factors (internal, inherent to work).

The first group includes normal working conditions, sufficient wages, and respect from superiors. These factors do not automatically determine motivation. The second group of factors suggests that every person can work motivated when he sees a goal and considers it possible to achieve it.

The law of results (P. Lawrence and J. Lorsch) states that people strive to repeat the behavior that they associate with the result, the satisfaction of needs (using the example of the past).

D. McClelland identified three needs: power, success, involvement. Success is not just a result, but a process of achieving success. Involvement is a feeling of belonging to something, the possibility of social communication, a feeling of social interaction. He believed that at the present time, when all primary needs have already been satisfied, the listed needs of a higher order begin to play a decisive role.

Process theories of motivation

V. Vroom's expectancy theory. Expectation is the probability of an event occurring as assessed by a given individual. Reward is anything that a person considers valuable to himself. Internal reward is provided by the work itself, external reward is provided by the boss.

Vroom identified three relationships. Labor input is the result. The result is a reward. Valence, i.e. value, satisfaction with reward, since preferences vary among different people.

M = Z - P * P - V * Valence

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow believed that human needs have a hierarchical structure:

Physiological needs;
Need for safety and security;
Social needs;
Need for respect
The need for self-realization;

Needs form five levels, each of which can serve as motivation only after satisfying the need at a lower level. That is, first of all, a person strives to satisfy the most important need. Only after satisfying the first need does a person begin to think about another. Thus, a hungry person will not think about security or respect or recognition in society until he satisfies his need for food.