Abraham Maslow has identified five categories of need that people are motivated to satisfy, and they apply to everyone. These needs are sequential– starting with the most basic needs and building up to more complex.
The Hierarchy of Needs
• Physiological needs (food, water and air).
• Safety needs (security, stability, and freedom from fear or threat).
• Social needs (friendship, affection, acceptance, and interaction with others).
• Esteem needs (personal feelings of achievement or self-esteem and need for recognition or respect from others).
• Knowing and understanding needs. These needs are prevalent in people who desire learning, and having organized intellectual and social relationships.
• Self-actualization (self-fulfillment or realization of one’s potential) - become everything that one is capable of becoming
Abraham Maslow proposed this Hierarchy in 1943 as a means of determining what motivates people to do certain things and to behave in certain ways. According to Maslow, motivation is an inner psychological state that predisposed each of us to pursue or to avoid certain activities or goals. It is also concerned with the present, where a person is striving toward an outcome.
Maslow examined the role that education played in the areas of teaching and learning. For Maslow, basic needs must be satisfied first in order for a child to be concerned with higher order needs, such as knowledge of the world or becoming self-actualized. Once basic needs are satisfied, they no longer motivate and the child can be motivated by the next need in the hierarchy.
Abraham Maslow provided the best known and mostly widely understood precept in humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychologists adhere to these beliefs:
1. Focus on the present, emphasis on the here a now instead of examining the past or trying to predict