A Theory of Human Motivation

A. H. Maslow (1943)

Classics in the History of Psychology

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Christopher D. Green

York University, Toronto, Ontario

ISSN 1492-3713

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A Theory of Human Motivation

may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. The integrated wholeness of the organism must be one of the foundation stones

of motivation theory.

2. The hunger drive (or any other physiological drive) was rejected as a centering

point or model for a definitive theory of motivation. Any drive that is somatically

based and localizable was shown to be atypical rather than typical in human

motivation.

3. Such a theory should stress and center itself upon ultimate or basic goals rather

than partial or superficial ones, upon ends rather than means to these ends. Such a

stress would imply a more central place for unconscious than for conscious

simultaneously expressed or satisfied. Typically an act has more than one

motivation.

6. Practically all organismic states are to be understood as motivated and as

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motivating.

7. Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say,

the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more

pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be

treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of

satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.

8. Lists of drives will get us nowhere for various theoretical and practical reasons.

Furthermore any classification of motivations [p. 371] must deal with the problem of

levels of specificity or generalization the motives to be classified.

9. Classifications of motivations must be based upon goals rather than upon

12. Not only the integration of the organism must be taken into account, but also the

possibility of isolated, specific, partial or segmental reactions. It has since become

necessary to add to these another affirmation.

13. Motivation theory is not synonymous with behavior theory. The motivations are

only one class of determinants of behavior. While behavior is almost always

motivated, it is also almost always biologically, culturally and situationally

determined as well.

The present paper is an attempt to formulate a positive theory of motivation which will satisfy

these theoretical demands and at the same time conform to the known facts, clinical and

observational as well as experimental. It derives most directly, however, from clinical

sound facts to be due primarily to the absence of a valid theory of motivation. The present

theory then must be considered to be a suggested program or framework for future research

and must stand or fall, not so much on facts available or evidence presented, as upon

researches to be done, researches suggested perhaps, by the questions raised in this paper.[p.

372]

II. THE BASIC NEEDS

The 'physiological' needs. -- The needs that are usually taken as the starting point for

motivation theory are the so-called physiological drives. Two recent lines of research make it

necessary to revise our customary notions about these needs, first, the development of the

concept of homeostasis, and second, the finding that appetites (preferential choices among

salt content, (3) sugar content, (4) protein content, (5) fat content, (6) calcium content, (7)

hormones, vitamins, etc.

Young in a recent article (21) has summarized the work on appetite in its relation to body

needs. If the body lacks some chemical, the individual will tend to develop a specific appetite or

partial hunger for that food element.

Thus it seems impossible as well as useless to make any list of fundamental physiological

needs for they can come to almost any number one might wish, depending on the degree of

specificity of description. We can not identify all physiological needs as homeostatic. That

sexual desire, sleepiness, sheer activity and maternal behavior in animals, are homeostatic,

has not yet been demonstrated. Furthermore, this list would not include the various sensory

pleasures (tastes, smells, tickling, stroking) which are probably physiological and which may

become the goals of motivated behavior.

In a previous paper (13) it has been pointed out that these physiological drives or needs are to

be considered unusual rather than typical because they are isolable, and because they are

localizable somatically. That is to say, they are relatively independent of each other, of other

say, the person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or

dependence, than for vitamins or proteins. Conversely, it is possible to satisfy the hunger need

in part by other activities such as drinking water or smoking cigarettes. In other words, relatively

isolable as these physiological needs are, they are not completely so.

Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most pre-potent of all needs. What this means

specifically is, that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it

is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others.

A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most probably hunger for food

more strongly than for anything else.

If all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is then dominated by the physiological needs,

purpose lie dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to write poetry, the desire to

acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire for a new pair of shoes are,

in the extreme case, forgotten or become of sec-[p.374]ondary importance. For the man who is

extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams food, he

remembers food, he thinks about food, he emotes only about food, he perceives only food and

he wants only food. The more subtle determinants that ordinarily fuse with the physiological

drives in organizing even feeding, drinking or sexual behavior, may now be so completely

overwhelmed as to allow us to speak at this time (but only at this time) of pure hunger drive and

behavior, with the one unqualified aim of relief.

Another peculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is

tends to think that, if only he is guaranteed food for the rest of his life, he will be perfectly happy

may all be waved aside as fripperies which are useless since they fail to fill the stomach. Such

It cannot possibly be denied that such things are true but their generality can be denied.

Emergency conditions are, almost by definition, rare in the normally functioning peaceful

Secondly, it is too often not realized that culture itself is an adaptive tool, one of whose main

functions is to make the physiological emergencies come less and less often. In most of the

known societies, chronic extreme hunger of the emergency type is rare, rather than common. In

any case, this is still true in the United States. The average American citizen is experiencing

appetite rather than hunger when he says "I am [p. 375] hungry." He is apt to experience sheer

life-and-death hunger only by accident and then only a few times through his entire life.

Obviously a good way to obscure the 'higher' motivations, and to get a lopsided view of human

capacities and human nature, is to make the organism extremely and chronically hungry or

thirsty. Anyone who attempts to make an emergency picture into a typical one, and who will

measure all of man's goals and desires by his behavior during extreme physiological

The safety needs. -- If the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a

new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety needs. All that has been said

of the physiological needs is equally true, although in lesser degree, of these desires. The

organism may equally well be wholly dominated by them. They may serve as the almost

exclusive organizers of behavior, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service,

and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism. Again we

may say of the receptors, the effectors, of the intellect and the other capacities that they are

this state, if it is extreme enough and chronic enough, may be characterized as living almost for

Although in this paper we are interested primarily in the needs of the adult, we can approach an

understanding of his safety needs perhaps more efficiently by observation of infants and

children, in whom these needs are much more simple and obvious. One reason for the clearer

appearance of the threat or danger reaction in infants, is that they do not inhibit this reaction at

all, whereas adults in our society have been taught to inhibit it at all costs. Thus even when

by rough handling, by general loss of support in the mother's arms, or by inadequate support.

[1][p. 377]

In infants we can also see a much more direct reaction to bodily illnesses of various kinds.

Sometimes these illnesses seem to be immediately and per se threatening and seem to make

for the child, the appearance of the whole world suddenly changes from sunniness to darkness,

so to speak, and becomes a place in which anything at all might happen, in which previously

stable things have suddenly become unstable. Thus a child who because of some bad food is

taken ill may, for a day or two, develop fear, nightmares, and a need for protection and

From these and similar observations, we may generalize and say that the average child in our

society generally prefers a safe, orderly, predictable, organized world, which he can count, on,

children in our society, feel too unsafe (or, in a word, are badly brought up). Children who are

adults too would consider dangerous.[2]

The healthy, normal, fortunate adult in our culture is largely satisfied in his safety needs. The

peaceful, smoothly [p. 379] running, 'good' society ordinarily makes its members feel safe

enough from wild animals, extremes of temperature, criminals, assault and murder, tyranny,

and to the economic and social underdogs. In between these extremes, we can perceive the

expressions of safety needs only in such phenomena as, for instance, the common preference

for a job with tenure and protection, the desire for a savings account, and for insurance of

various kinds (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old age).

the unknown. The tendency to have some religion or world-philosophy that organizes the

universe and the men in it into some sort of satisfactorily coherent, meaningful whole is also in

part motivated by safety-seeking. Here too we may list science and philosophy in general as

partially motivated by the safety needs (we shall see later that there are also other motivations

Some neurotic adults in our society are, in many ways, like the unsafe child in their desire for

safety, although in the former it takes on a somewhat special appearance. Their reaction is

often to unknown, psychological dangers in a world that is perceived to be hostile,

The neurotic individual may be described in a slightly different way with some usefulness as a

obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessives try frantically to order and stabilize the world so

that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear (14); They hedge

themselves about with all sorts of ceremonials, rules and formulas so that every possible

contingency may be provided for and so that no new contingencies may appear. They are

much like the brain injured cases, described by Goldstein (6), who manage to maintain their

equilibrium by avoiding everything unfamiliar and strange and by ordering their restricted world

in such a neat, disciplined, orderly fashion that everything in the world can be counted upon.

They try to arrange the world so that anything unexpected (dangers) cannot possibly occur. If,

through no fault of their own, something unexpected does occur, they go into a panic reaction

The love needs. -- If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then

never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children. He will hunger for

hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Practically all theorists of psychopathology

have stressed thwarting of the love needs as basic in the picture of maladjustment. Many

clinical studies have therefore been made of this need and we know more about it perhaps than

any of the other needs except the physiological ones (14).

is to say, determined not only by sexual but also by other needs, chief among which are the

love and affection needs. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that the love needs involve both

giving and receiving love.[4]

This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is being used in this paper in a much more specific

and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to

become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to

become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.[p.

383]

expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in

The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety,

creativeness.[8] Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the exception, we do not

The preconditions for the basic need satisfactions. -- There are certain conditions which are

express one's self, freedom to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend one's

self, justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are examples of such preconditions for

basic need satisfactions. Thwarting in these freedoms will be reacted to with a threat or

emergency response. These conditions are not ends in themselves but they are almost so

since they are so closely related to the basic needs, which are apparently the only ends in