The Hierarchy of Human Needs

1
The Hierarchy of Human Needs

• Adapted from Abraham Maslow

2
(1) Physiological Needs

• Cover the strive for food and all survival
  activities
• Ontogenetically, our oldest needs, located in the
  somatic area of our brain
• Result from sheer necessity
• Meeting these needs presumes economic development
• Meeting these needs creates satisfaction
• Thwarting these needs creates materialistic
  priorities

3
(2) Safety Needs

• Need for physical security and protection
• Need for ordered, reliable and predictable
  environment
• Meeting these needs presumes functioning
  institutions
• Meeting these needs creates relaxation
• Thwarting these needs creates anxiety, xenophobia
  and a priority on law and order

4
(3) Belongingness and Love Needs

• Need for social connectedness among family
  members, relatives, friends and peers
• Meeting these needs presumes functioning social
  relations
• Meeting these needs creates interpersonal trust
• Thwarting these needs creates social distrust,
  alienation and civic malaise

5
(4) Esteem Needs

• Need for being respected by others need for
  reputation, prestige and status
• Meeting these needs presumes functioning social
  relations
• Meeting this need creates self-respect
• Thwarting this need creates an inferiority
  complex

6
(5) Self-Actualization

• Need to realize oneself
• Meeting this need presumes the presence of
  individual liberties and rights
• Meeting this need creates not only satisfaction
  but feelings of fulfilment and happiness

7
Characteristics 1

• Even if all the needs are satisfied, we may
  expect that a new discontent will soon develop,
  unless the individual is doing what he,
  individually, thinks to be fitted for. A musician
  must make music, an artist must paint, a poet
  must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace
  with himself This need we may call
  self-actualization It refers to mans desire
  for self-fulfilment, namely to the tendency for
  him to become actualized in what he is
  potentially The concrete form that this need
  will take will of course vary greatly. At this
  level individual differences are greatest. (p.
  46)

8
Characteristics 2

• The higher need is a later evolutionary
  development. We share the need for food with
  living things, the need for love with the apes,
  the need for self-actualization with nobody. The
  higher the need the more specifically human it
  is. (p. 98)

9
Characteristics 3

• Higher need gratifications produce more
  profound happiness. (p. 98)
• Higher needs require better (societal)
  conditions to make them possible. (p. 99)
• A greater value is usually placed upon the
  higher need than upon the lower by those who have
  been gratified in both. (p.99)

10
Characteristics 4

• The pursuit and gratification of the higher
  needs have desirable civic and social
  consequences Hunger is highly egocentric the
  only way to satisfy it, is to satisfy oneself.
  But the search for love necessarily involves
  other people This completely supports Fromms
  contention that self-love is synergetic with
  rather than antagonistic to love for others. (p.
  100)