Posts Tagged ‘Hierarchy of Needs’

Is it possible? Well, probably – but first, we’ve got to understand how we humans operate on a very basic level.

Many people have heard of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs. He developed a theory of personality that has influenced a number of different fields, including education. This theory accurately describes many realities of personal experiences.

Humanists focus upon potentials. They strive for an upper level of capabilities. They seek frontiers of creativity and the highest reaches of consciousness and wisdom. Maslow calls this level “self actualizing person, a fully functioning person or a health personality.”

In Maslow’s theory of needs, all of our basic needs instinctive (just like animals). Humans start with a very weak disposition that is then fashioned fully as the person grows. If the environment is right, people will grow straight and beautiful, actualizing the potential(s) they have inherited. If the environment is not right (news flash: it is mostly not!) they will not grow straight and beautiful. Maslow’s hierarchy offers five levels of basic needs. But beyond these needs, higher levels of needs exist, including needs for understanding, aesthetic appreciation, and purely spiritual needs. We humans cannot move through the stages of needs until the demands of the first (or supporting) need has been satisfied.

So, what are these basic needs?
1. Physiological: These biological needs consist of oxygen, food, water, and relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if deprived, we would not thrive.

2. Safety: When all physiological needs are met and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure (such as rioting). Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.

3. Love, affection, and belongingness: When the needs for safety and for physiological wellbeing are satisfied, love, affection and belongingness can then emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.

4. Self Esteem: When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for stability, a firm base or foundation, high level of self respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable. When these needs are unmet, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless, or worthless.

5. Self Actualization. When the first four levels of needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self actualization activated. Maslow describes self actualization as a person’s need to be and do that which the person was born to do. For example, a musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write. When unmet, restlessness ensues. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something.

Maslow believes that the only reason that people would not move well in the direction of self actualization is because of hindrances placed in their way by family or society. He states that education is one of these hindrances. Maslow states that educators should respond to the potential an individual has for growing into a self actualized being.

Interested in learning more? Spend some time online learning more about Maslow and his hierarchical theory. Then, think about times in your life where your basic needs may have gone unmet. What did you do? Think? Believe? Feel? How did you move forward? Or, are you stuck?