THE PE INVESTOR

A Theory of Human Motivation, by Abraham Maslow

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.

Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation

Abraham H. Maslow was an American psychologist (1908-1970), psychology professor, and author, best known for his hierarchy of needs, described in his article A Theory of Human Motivation, published in 1943 (see Abraham Maslow Wikipedia profile).

Below are the key insights from the article.

1. There are at least five sets of needs that human beings are motivated to satisfy.
2. These needs form a hierarchy, so that (i) when deprived of two needs, people will want to satisfy the more basic one first, and (ii) men being perpetually wanting animals, once the more “basic” (or “prepotent” in Maslow’s words) need is relatively well satisfied, their attention will shift to satisfying the “higher” one.
3. Maslow observes that most of the people he has worked with display the following basic needs, in about the following order:
   • Physiological needs, such as hunger, or thirst.
   • Safety needs, such as (i) for children: a preference for a safe, orderly, and predictable world, in which there is a schedule or routine, where dangerous/unexpected things do not happen, and where all-powerful parents (acting with justice, fairness, and consistency) shield them from harm, and (ii) for adults: protection from danger (wild animals, extreme temperatures, crime, tyranny, etc.), a preference for jobs with tenure and protection, savings accounts and insurance, and the familiar/known rather than the unfamiliar/unknown.
   • Love needs: giving and receiving love and affection (lover, spouse, children, friends, people in general), sense of belonging (place in a group).
   • Esteem needs: high and stable evaluation of themselves, self-respect, self-esteem, firmly based upon real capacity, achievement, and respect from others: (i) desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, confidence in the face of the world, independence, and freedom, (ii) desire for reputation or prestige (esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.
   • Self-actualization needs: desire to do what the individual is fitted for, to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. “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. (…) 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.”
4. The thwarting of these needs can be found in the following situations:
   • Physiological: emergency situations causing chronic extreme hunger or thirst.
   • Safety: (1) children feeling unsafe due to their witnessing quarreling, physical assault, separation, divorce, death within the family, parental outbursts of rage, threats of punishment, name-calling, rough handling, physical punishment, getting lost, being separated from the parents, being confronted with new faces, new situations or new tasks, (2) neurotic or near-neurotic adults: e.g. adults who behave as if a great catastrophe were impending, who are in search for a protector, who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, (3) brain injured people who order the world in a neat, disciplined, orderly fashion, (4) economic and social underdogs, (5) emergency situations such as “war, disease, natural catastrophes, crime waves, societal disorganization”.
   • Love: maladjustment and more severe psychopathology.
   • Self-esteem: feelings of inferiority, weakness and helplessness, severe traumatic neurosis.
5. Preconditions for the basic need satisfactions include: 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. These conditions are defended because the basic satisfactions would be endangered without them.
6. Cognitive capacities (perceptual, intellectual, learning) are partly aimed at satisfying basic needs, and any danger to them is therefore viewed as threatening.
7. The closer a conscious desire, an act, or a defense mechanism are to the basic needs, the more important they are.
8. Although related to the basic needs, Maslow postulates the existence of cognitive needs such as the desire to know, to understand, to systematize, to organize, to analyze, and to look for relations and meanings. These needs also form a hierarchy, with the desire to know “prepotent” over the desire to understand.
9. The hierarchy of needs is not rigid: (i) for some people, self-esteem seems to be more important than love: this is usually due to the notion that being powerful, self-confident or inspiring respect or fear will make them loved, (ii) in certain people, the level of aspiration may be permanently deadened or lowered: people who have experienced life at a very low level may remain satisfied as long as they have enough food, (iii) conversely, people who have never experienced real hunger may look upon food as unimportant, (iv) people who have been starved for love may lose the desire or ability to give and receive affection.
10. Most normal people are partly satisfied and partly unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time, but with varying degrees: e.g. one may be 85% satisfied in his physiological needs, 70% in his safety needs, 50% in his love needs, 40% in his self-esteem needs; and 10% in his self-actualization needs.
11. Basic needs are more often unconscious than conscious.
12. People across different societies are much more alike than it seems.
13. Some behaviors are motivated by several determinants: e.g., (1) the quest for knowledge can relate to safety (make sense of the world) and self-actualization, (2) making love can be motivated by sexual release, proving one’s de masculinity, making a conquest, feeling powerful, and/or winning affection.
14. Not all behavior is driven by the basic needs, nor motivated: e.g., behavior determined by the field or stimuli.
15. Everyday conscious desires can be regarded as symptoms or surface indicators of more basic needs.
16. Thwarting of important desires produces psychopathological results.
17. A satisfied need is not a motivator: needs cease to play an active determining or organizing role as soon as they are gratified.