Greetings, friends!
Maslow's pyramid is a visual model that displays basic human needs in a simple and understandable form. Its author is the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970):
A. Maslow devoted a significant part of his research activity to the study of motivation and the hierarchy of human needs. He published a large number of works and wrote several books on this topic. But most people know him as the author of The Pyramid of Human Needs.
The main thesis of Maslow's theory is that a person needs to satisfy not only physiological, but also spiritual needs. It is interesting that a similar idea was expressed by the ancient Greek thinker Thales of Miletus (VII-VI centuries BC), who believed that this is precisely the main difference between humans and animals. Maslow noticed that there is a clear hierarchy in human needs, and based on observational data he created his model.
Maslow's pyramid structure
Today, there are several refined variations of the pyramid with different numbers of levels, but in Abraham Maslow’s basic model there are five such levels.
- Basic physiological needs (lowest level of the pyramid);
- Security and stability.
- Love, family, belonging to a social unit.
- Respect and public recognition.
- Self-realization (the highest level of the pyramid);
Schematically the Pyramid looks like this:
The first stage includes the organic needs necessary for the body to carry out its own life activities. The second stage ensures safety and survival, the third - socialization in society, the opportunity to start a family, give birth and raise children. The fourth stage is the desire for prestige, and the fifth, highest stage is spiritual, aesthetic and cognitive needs.
The first three stages are present in most animals, the fourth also appears quite often (hierarchy in a pack), the fifth is characteristic only of humans.
Desire for belonging and love
When a person is satiated, warmed up, and convinced of his own safety, a higher degree of needs arises - social. A person without society feels cut off from the outside world by a glass wall. It is impossible to develop and improve your life while living under a dome, without friends, acquaintances, or a couple. One way or another, a feeling of inferiority and fear of loneliness will overtake a person.
Man and girl in bed
The third stage of Maslow’s pyramid includes precisely these, more spiritual than physical desires: to find a couple, start a family, have friends and acquaintances, feel part of a social group. When a person feels needed and desired, feels the warmth of love affection and the value of his contribution to the development of the group, he thinks about higher desires, but without satisfying them, further development is impossible.
Description of the steps of the pyramid
The author himself called the model “Hierarchy of Human Needs,” but never used the word “pyramid” in his works. The term “Maslow’s Pyramid” appeared later and stuck, since such a form clearly reflects the concept of this theory. So, let's look at each of the steps in more detail.
The first stage is physiological needs
All living beings must carry out actions necessary to maintain life. For a person this is food, drink, sleep. It is difficult to enjoy a walk if you really want to go to the toilet, and if you are very hungry or thirsty, you don’t really think about love. Therefore, organic needs are the base of the pyramid. Only after satisfying them sufficiently does a person rise to the next level.
Second stage – safety
If the first stage ensures vital activity, then the second is needed for survival. A sense of security (strong doors, a good lock) and stability (a regular job, financial savings, insurance) is necessary for every person. Only when he is confident in his security does he begin to think about socialization and starting a family.
Stage Three – Love and Belonging
All social needs are included in this category. Every person has the desire to love and be loved, to create a family and produce offspring. He also strives to make new acquaintances, get close to interesting people, and become part of a group. Having entered the team, he feels the need to be useful, significant and valuable in this team, gradually moving to the next level.
The fourth stage is recognition and respect.
When the first three needs are satisfied, a person begins to strive for recognition, respect and prestige. He tries to show individuality, demonstrate unique characteristics and talents in order to attract attention and impress others. Only after making sure that the social group has appreciated his achievements does a person begin to strive for self-development and truly perceive spiritual values.
Fifth stage – self-realization and self-actualization
Having reached the fifth stage, a person begins to look for ways to realize his own potential. At this level there is the greatest diversity. People are engaged in creative activities, strive for self-development and education, improve their skills, form new views and beliefs, engage in charity and philanthropy, study the world around them and make efforts to make it better.
This is how Maslow’s pyramid describes the basic human needs. Despite the fact that this model quite accurately describes reality, many researchers note the presence of controversial issues in it, which also deserve detailed consideration. Let's take a closer look at them.
Pyramid of needs: what does it consist of?
The pyramid of needs includes five main blocks:
- physiology;
- safety;
- belonging;
- Love;
- confession;
- self-actualization.
As primitive needs (such as the desire to eat and drink) are satisfied, a person has a need to satisfy other needs - psychological, moral, social in nature.
Psychologists agree that the practical use of the pyramid invented by A. Maslow is possible only in limited cases. There is no evidence that every person needs recognition and respect; many people live well without these needs. There are people who deliberately starve, which means their basic needs are not satisfied, but they still feel good.
There is a version that Maslow himself subsequently did not recognize his theory as correct, refined its postulates, but it was never brought to the ideal.
Criticism
Modern psychologists note that the theory of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is poorly suited for practical application, since it implies some incorrect generalizations. The main meaning of the concept is that each subsequent stage of the pyramid can exist only on the condition that complete well-being is observed at the previous stage. However, in practice this rule is not always observed.
History knows many cases when outstanding successes in certain areas were achieved by people who lived literally in poverty or faced failures on the love front. Great poets, artists, musicians - they all showed their talents at the highest level of the pyramid. But many of them starved all their lives, suffered from unrequited love, or were outcasts in their society.
Over time, Abraham Maslow himself significantly refined the theory of motivation, which is why the model of the hierarchy of needs became much more complicated. In particular, a factor such as age was added. For example, a half-starved student who is on the verge of expulsion from the university (minus the first and second stages), still thinks about love. And the need for self-actualization is absent among young people and appears closer to 50 years (at the same time, the author himself claimed that only 2% of people reach the fifth stage).
As a consequence of all of the above, Maslow’s pyramid is used today mainly by marketers, but is practically not considered in psychology.
Hierarchy of needs and principles of human motivation according to A. Maslow’s pyramid
Leaders have always recognized the need to encourage people to work for the organization. However, they believed that simple material rewards were enough for this. But in most cases this is not true.
Consumer researchers and managers are faced with the problem that there is no universal or universally accepted description of human motivation. Several attempts have been made to comprehensively describe the forces that fuel and guide human behavior, and these typologies overlap in many ways, reflecting general agreement about the status of certain human motives.
One of the most famous theories belongs to Abraham Maslow (1943), who put forward the idea of a hierarchy of human needs. A. Maslow divides needs into lower physiological drives (thirst, etc.), safety needs (housing), affective needs (love) and higher order needs - for self-esteem and self-expression (in essence, this is a person’s need to express the best that is in him There is).
Satisfaction of lower-order needs activates the next, higher level of needs, requiring a person to behave according to different patterns.
The meaning of the concept of motivation.
When planning and organizing work, the manager determines what exactly the organization must do, when, how and who, in his opinion, should do it. If the choice of these decisions is made effectively, the manager has the opportunity to coordinate the efforts of many people and jointly realize the potential capabilities of a group of workers. Unfortunately, managers often mistakenly believe that if a certain organizational structure or a certain type of activity “works” well on paper, then it will also “work” well in life. But this is far from true. A leader, in order to effectively move towards a goal, must coordinate the work and force people to carry it out. Managers are often called executive leaders because their main purpose is to ensure that the organization's work gets done.
Leaders translate their decisions into action by putting into practice the basic principles of motivation. In this context, i.e. In terms of management, the following definition can be given:
Motivation is the process of motivating oneself and others to act to achieve personal or organizational goals.
Modern theories of motivation.
A systematic study of motivation from a psychological point of view does not allow us to determine exactly what motivates a person to work. However, research into human behavior at work provides some general explanations of motivation and allows for the creation of pragmatic models of employee motivation in the workplace. The results of these studies are mainly discussed in the remainder of this chapter.
We divide the various theories of motivation into two categories: content! procedural.
Content theories of motivation are based on the identification of those internal drives (called needs) that make people act in one way and not another. In this regard, the work of Abraham Maslow, David McClelland and Frederick Herzberg will be described. More recent process theories of motivation are based primarily on how people behave based on their perceptions and cognitions. The main process theories we will look at are expectancy theory, equity theory, and the Porter-Lawler model of motivation.
It is important to understand that although these theories differ on a number of issues, they are not mutually exclusive. The development of theories of motivation was clearly evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature. As noted above, these are not just ivory tower theories. They are effectively used in solving daily problems of motivating people to work effectively. Therefore, in each case we will briefly indicate the scope of application of this theory in management practice.
To understand the meaning of the theory of content or process motivation, you must first understand the meaning of the fundamental concepts: needs and rewards.
Primary and secondary needs.
Psychologists say that a person experiences a need when he feels physiologically or psychologically a lack of something. Although a particular person at a particular time may not have a need in the sense of consciously feeling it, there are certain needs that every person can feel. Content theories of motivation represent attempts to classify these universal human needs into certain categories. There is still no universally accepted identification of certain needs. However, most psychologists agree that needs can in principle be classified as primary and secondary.
Primary needs are physiological in nature and, as a rule, innate. Examples include the need for food, water, breathing, sleeping and sexual needs. Secondary needs are psychological in nature. For example, the needs for success, respect, affection, power and the need to belong to someone or something. Primary needs are genetically determined, while secondary needs are usually recognized through experience. Because people have different backgrounds, people's secondary needs vary more than their primary needs.
Needs and motivational behavior. Needs cannot be directly observed or measured. Their existence can only be judged by people's behavior. Psychologists, observing people, have determined that needs serve as a motive for action.
Inert need is felt by a person; it awakens in him a state of aspiration. Urge is a feeling of lack of something that has a certain direction. It is a behavioral manifestation of a need and is focused on achieving a goal. Goals in this sense are something that is perceived as a means of satisfying a need. When a person achieves such a goal, his need is satisfied, partially satisfied or unsatisfied. For example, if you feel the need for a challenging job, this may motivate you to try to achieve the goal of getting a job that provides it. Once you get such a position, you may find that the work there is actually not as difficult as you thought. This may cause you to work less hard or look for another job where your need will be satisfied.
The degree of satisfaction obtained from achieving a goal influences a person’s behavior in similar circumstances in the future. In general, people tend to repeat behavior that they associate with need satisfaction and avoid behavior that is associated with insufficient satisfaction. This fact is known as the law of result.
Because needs motivate people to seek their satisfaction, managers must create situations that allow people to feel that they can satisfy their needs through the type of behavior that leads to the achievement of organizational goals. For example, remember what was given in Chap. 3 describes a situation where the introduction of long seam mining technology in coal mines destroyed independent work groups and deprived miners of close interpersonal relationships. This is an example of how characteristics of the work situation and associated tasks can influence need satisfaction. The new technology also did not give the miners a sense of completion and meaningfulness in the work they were doing, because with the new method, each miner performed only a small part of the overall coal mining process. Consequently, people did not have the opportunity to demonstrate all their abilities. As a result, production discipline worsened, absenteeism and labor turnover increased, and labor productivity decreased. These problems disappeared when the administration changed the production process so that technology no longer conflicted with people's needs.
Rewards.
When talking about motivation, the word “reward” has a broader meaning than just the money or pleasure with which the word is most often associated. Reward is anything that a person considers valuable to himself. But people have specific concepts of value, and therefore the assessment of reward and its relative value is different. Here's a simple example. A suitcase full of hundred dollar bills would be considered by most people in civilized nations to be a very valuable reward, and to the members of the primitive Tasaday tribe of the Philippines the suitcase itself would probably be of greater value than the money it contained. Likewise, a very wealthy person may find a few hours of genuine friendship more valuable to himself than a large sum of money.
Internal and external rewards. A manager deals with two main types of reward: internal and external. Internal rewards come from the work itself. For example, this is a feeling of achieving a result, the content and significance of the work performed, and self-esteem. Friendships and communication that arise during work are also seen as intrinsic rewards. The simplest way to ensure internal rewards is to create appropriate working conditions and clearly define the task. , for example, eliminated part of the assembly lines at one of its pilot plants, replacing them with assembly teams, in order to increase internal compensation for workers.
Extrinsic rewards are the type of reward that most often comes to mind when you hear the word “reward.” Extrinsic rewards do not come from the work itself, but are given by the organization. Examples of extrinsic rewards include salary, promotions, symbols of job status and prestige (such as a corner private office), praise and recognition, and fringe benefits (extra vacation time, a company car, payment of certain expenses and insurance).
To determine how and in what proportions internal and external rewards should be used for motivation purposes, the administration must determine what the needs of its employees are. This is the goal of substantive theories of motivation.
A. Maslow's hierarchy of needs
The essence of Maslow's theory of motivation (pyramid)
The theory of motivation (pyramid) of Maslow is based on the thesis that human behavior is determined by a number of basic needs that can be arranged in a certain hierarchy. From Maslow's point of view, these needs are universal, i.e. unite all people regardless of skin color, nationality, lifestyle, habits, demeanor and other external manifestations. The hierarchy of needs is built on the principle of the urgency of their satisfaction for a person.
Physiological needs.
The physiological needs that are usually taken as the starting point for theories of motivation are the so-called physiological drives and desires. Physiological needs dominate over all others in the body and are the basis of human motivation. Thus, a person who needs food, security, love and respect is likely to desire food more than anything else. At this time, all other needs may cease to exist or be relegated to the background. Therefore, the state of the entire organism can be described as a person being hungry, since hunger dominates the consciousness almost completely. All the forces of the body begin to satisfy the need for food, and opportunities that cannot be used to achieve this goal are relegated to the background. Those. the desire to buy new shoes or a car becomes secondary in an extreme situation. At the same time, the organism exhibits a specific feature, which consists in the fact that at a time when the defining need dominates in a person, the philosophy of his future changes. In our example, for a chronically hungry person, utopia seems to be a place where there is plenty of food. He begins to think that with the guaranteed availability of food for the rest of his life, he will be completely happy and will never desire anything more. Freedom love respect is pushed aside like useless trinkets. But these are extraordinary circumstances that are rare in a normal peaceful society and most people are satisfied with it. When physiological needs are satisfied, other, higher according to Maslow, the next need for safety appears.
Security needs.
The next group of needs is the need for safety, security, stability, patron, protection, absence of fear, anxiety and chaos, the need for structure, order, law and restrictions, patron. According to Maslow, almost the same applies to these needs as to physiological ones. The body can be completely covered by them. If in the case of hunger it was defined as a person seeking to satisfy hunger, then in this case a person seeking security. Here again all the forces, intellect, and receptors serve primarily as a tool for seeking security. Once again, the dominant goal is the determining factor not only for the vision of the world and philosophy at the present moment, but also for the philosophy of the future and the philosophy of values. By the way, physiological needs, being in a satisfied state, are now underestimated. In ordinary life, the manifestation of security needs is found in the desire to obtain a stable job with guaranteed protection, the desire to have a savings account, insurance, etc. or the preference of familiar things over unfamiliar things, the known to the unknown. The desire to have a religion or philosophy that organizes the universe and people into a logically meaningful whole. Security needs can become relevant when there is a threat to law, order, and the authorities of society.
But because Healthy and happy adults in our culture have mostly satisfied their security needs, so it is quite possible that they no longer have any security needs as active motivators. Accordingly, higher ones then reappear; in Maslow’s pyramid these are the third level needs, the needs for love.
Needs for love and belonging.
If the physiological and safety needs are satisfied, the needs for attachment and belonging appear and everything that was said above is repeated again.
The need for love involves both the need to give and the need to receive love. When they are dissatisfied, the person is acutely worried about the absence of friends or a partner. A person will greedily strive to establish relationships with people in general, for the sake of a place in a group or family, and will strive with all his might to achieve this goal. The acquisition of all this will be more important for a person than anything in the world. And he may even forget that once hunger was in the foreground, and love seemed unreal and unnecessary.
Now the acute pain from loneliness, rejection and unfriendliness is stronger than anything else, and accordingly he will think that he would be absolutely happy if love appeared in his life. It is very important for a person to feel a sense of belonging, good neighborly relations in the same territory, among a class, a company, colleagues, because that their desire to flock together, to stick together, to be part of a group is in their nature.
If a person has love, he loves, and is loved, a new group of needs begins to appear, of an even higher level - this is the need for respect.
The need for respect.
All people in our society have a need for stable, justified, usually high self-esteem, self-esteem, self-esteem and the respect of others. Maslow divides these needs into two classes.
The first class includes strength, achievement, adequacy, mastery and competence, confidence in the face of the outside world, independence and freedom.
To the second, Maslow includes what is called a good reputation or the desire for prestige (defining them as appreciation or respect from other people), as well as status, fame and glory, superiority, recognition, attention, significance, self-esteem or gratitude.
Satisfaction of the need for self-esteem causes a feeling of self-confidence, one's worth, strength, abilities and adequacy, a feeling of one's usefulness and necessity in the world. Obstacles to satisfaction lead to feelings of inferiority, weakness and helplessness. These feelings lead to depression or neurotic tendencies. It should be taken into account that forming self-esteem based on the opinions of other people is fraught with danger, because it does not take into account the real abilities of the individual, his competence. The most stable and therefore healthy sense of self-esteem is based on deserved respect from other people, and not on ostentatious glory and fame and unjustified flattery. You need to be able to distinguish between real competence and achievements, which are based on exceptional willpower, determination and responsibility, from what is given naturally, without any work, only by innate qualities of the constitution and biological destiny.
Even if all of the above needs are satisfied, a person can often, if not always, expect that anxiety and dissatisfaction will soon arise again, they arise if a person is not doing what he was created for.
The need for self-actualization.
Musicians must create music, artists must paint, poets must write poetry in order to remain in harmony with themselves. A person must be what he can be. People must remain true to their nature. This need is called self-actualization. It refers to people’s desire to realize themselves, to manifest in themselves what is potentially inherent in them. It can be defined as the desire to bring out a greater degree of a person's inherent characteristics in order to achieve all that he is capable of. The specific embodiment is characterized by considerable diversity. For one, it may be the desire to be an unsurpassed parent, for another, an athlete.
Conclusion.
Maslow's pyramid is not ideal in its essence. It is often criticized, but A. Maslow himself did not claim its inviolability and recognized all the errors. But even today, in my opinion, it is the most logical of the classifications.
From this work the following conclusions can be drawn:
According to Maslow, the following basic needs exist: physiological, the need for safety, the need for love (belonging), the need for recognition and the need for self-actualization. they are arranged in a hierarchical order (the top is the need for self-actualization, and the base is physiological needs). In addition, the expanded hierarchy considers the need for cognition and aesthetic needs;
Needs do not arise only after 100% satisfaction of the previous one. In real life, a person constantly has several needs, but one of them dominates and influences the motives of a person’s behavior more strongly than others.
The lower the need is in a given hierarchy, the greater its percentage must be satisfied.
Self-actualization is the highest in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Not all people have a need for its implementation. People doubt their abilities and their strengths, thereby reducing the chances of self-realization. About 1% of people in our society become self-actualized individuals.
Pros and cons of the theory
Despite the imperfection of the model, Maslow's theory still remains the most convenient and visual form of representing the interdependence of human needs. Its popularity is due to such advantages as:
- a brief, succinct and visual explanation of a complex psychological phenomenon;
- simple and concise presentation, understandable to everyone;
- a simple one-dimensional structure with an obvious pattern;
- the best model for understanding human needs;
- the ability to be used as a tool for setting life priorities.
The main flaw in Maslow's pyramid of needs (besides the exceptions described in the Critique section) is its outdated understanding of human needs. The author first presented the idea in 1943, and wrote a book dedicated to it, “Motivation and Personality,” in 1954. Even in the most developed countries of the world, living conditions then were very different from today.
Physiological needs of a person
Physiological needs are on the first step of the pyramid for a reason. They are inherent in every living organism on the planet, including humans, and are vital. Without their satisfaction, the human body cannot survive, therefore, these needs need to be given the greatest attention.
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These include the simple needs of a living organism: food, water, rest, emptying. Speaking specifically about human needs, it is also worth adding the need to satisfy sexual needs, without which a person, although he can live and work, still his productivity is significantly reduced.
Practical application of the theory
Knowing how Maslow's pyramid works is useful for anyone, even if he is not a psychologist or marketer. This is a convenient model that allows you to understand your own needs and explain the behavior of others. With its help, you can choose effective ways to motivate yourself at this stage of life. Although Maslow’s theory is not ideal from the point of view of modern psychology, it will help you find “gaps” in your own life and eliminate them in order to become happier.
Desire for safety
When a person is fed, healthy, warm, another urgent need arises - to feel safe. As the second stage in the evolution of needs, it entails a whole series of desires: to protect yourself and your family, to have a roof over your head, to get rid of the fear of a threat to life.
Such desires are quite natural and important not only for the further transition to a higher level of needs, but also for the development of personality. A person who constantly experiences fear, fears for his life, cannot join society until he is sure of his own safety. We are not necessarily talking about a direct threat of death.
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This level is expressed in different ways at the present stage. A person buys an armored car, installs strong doors with a lock, and insures his life. In addition, this aspect also covers the need for stability, the desire to get rid of the failures and stress of modern life.
Confession
After a person has successfully integrated into society and sowed the seeds of social life, there is a need to bring into it something special, something significant, something that would help elevate the individual above others. This is a natural need, there is nothing selfish or immoral about it. This is not about worship, but about praise, approval, admiration for the talents and skills another person has worked hard to develop.
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At this stage of development, the individual is in dire need of praise and respect, without which he will not be able to further develop his personal and creative potential. In addition, receiving approval and respect for one's work significantly increases a person's confidence and self-esteem, which has a beneficial effect on other areas of his life.
Aesthetic need
When a person improves his skills, knowledge and potential, this contributes to the development of aesthetic needs. Unconsciously, there is a desire to surround yourself with beautiful things, admire nature and works of art, listen to beautiful music.
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Aesthetic pleasure leads to enlightenment and spiritual growth, gives rise to new knowledge and aspirations of a person, which result in the creative and career fields.
