Chapter 9 and 11- May and Maslow: Motivation. Self-Actualization, and Existentialism

ABRAHAM MASLOW

Outline of Maslow

  • Overview of Holistic-Dynamic Theory

  • Biography of Maslow

  • Maslow’s View of Motivation

  • Hierarchy of Needs

  • Self-Actualization

  • Peak or Flow Experience

Overview of Holistic-Dynamic Theory

  • Assumes whole person is motivated by one need or another

  • People have potential to grow toward psychological health/ self-actualization

  • Lower level needs must be satisfied before higher level needs can be met

Biography of Maslow

  • Born in NYC in 1908, eldest of seven children of Russian-Jewish immigrants

  • Harbored lifelong animosity toward his mother (sounds like the mother from hell according to our text)

  • Married a first cousin

  • Received a PhD in psychology from University of Wisconsin where he worked with primates

  • Returned to New York and work with E.L. Thorndike at Columbia University (Scored a 195 on the IQ test)

  • Met and was influenced by Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney

  • In 1951, became a chairperson of the psychology department at Brandeis University

  • Died in 1970 of a heart attack

  • Described the human potential movement as the “third force” with the other two being psychoanalysis and behaviorism

    • This movement (including theories of Maslow, Allport, Rogers, May, Goldstein, and others) is more positive about human nature - not governed by tension reduction motives or rewards and punishments

  • Felt people should be free to themselves

  • Focused less on biological needs and more on self-actualization (the top of the hierarchy)

Maslow’s View of Motivation

  • Holistic approach to motivation

  • Motivation is complex - several different motivations can be working at the same time and may be either conscious or unconscious

  • People are continually motivated by one need or another

  • All people everywhere are motivated by the same basic needs

  • Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy

Hierarchy of Needs

  • Five Conative or Basic Needs (from lowest to highest level)

    1. Physiological

    2. Safety

    3. Love and belongingness

    4. Esteem

    5. Self-Actualization

Although conative needs are common to all, the following do not apply to everyone:

  • Aesthetic Needs

    • The need for order and beauty

  • Cognitive Needs

    • The need for curiosity and knowledge

  • Neurotic Needs

    • An unproductive relating to other people

  • Basic Physiological

    • Food, water, oxygen, sleep

  • Safety

    • Order, predictability, physical security

  • Belongingness and love

    • Affiliation with friends, family, groups, intimacy

  • Esteem

    • Attention and recognition from others, feelings of competence and achievement

  • Self-actualization

    • Development of one’s potential

Needs and Motivation

Let’s consider the following potential problems with Maslow’s original theory of needs arranged in a hierarchy:

  • Reversed order of needs

    • Satisfying the lower level needs before higher ones is not an absolute rule, as it turns out (you can skip or reverse steps), but is most commonly the case

  • Some behavior is unmotivated (not driven by needs), especially those caused by reflexes, maturation, expressiveness, and drugs

  • Expressive and Coping Behavior

    • Expressive: takes naturally and spontaneously and is often unmotivated; continues even without reward. Examples: emotion, play, natural movements and voice

    • Coping: generally a conscious effort to meet a need through interacting with one’s environment

  • Deprivation of Needs

    • Deprivation leads to pathology, deprivation of self-actualization needs leads to metapathology

  • Instinctoid Nature of Needs

    • Human needs that are innately determined and persist, resulting in pathology when frustrated

  • Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs

    • All of the 5 basic needs are instinctoid, but higher needs are associated with more developed species and appear later in individual human development

Self-Actualization

Maslow’s quest for the self-actualized person

  • Estimated that only 1% of US adults were self-actualizing

  • Of those who he believed were, few would meet with him (seemed to value their privacy, and probably weren’t overly concerned with what others thought of them)

  • Decided to analyze biographies to better define the self-actualizing person

  • Criteria for Self-Actualization

    • Are free from psychopathy

    • Have progressed through the hierarchy of needs

    • Embracing of the B-values:

      • truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice, simplicity, totality, effortlessness, humor, and autonomy

    • Value of Self-Actualizers

      • Motivated by eternal truths or “Being” values, rather than deficiencies in needs

      • Meta motivation is the term used for motives of self-actualizing people

  • Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People

    • More efficient perception of reality

    • Acceptance of self, others, and nature as they are — Can be concerned with self while also recognizing needs and desires of others

    • Spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness

    • Problem-centering, or task-oriented toward a mission beyond themselves

    • The need for privacy, which is associated with a level of detachment

    • Autonomy, especially independence from the approval (or disapproval) of others

    • Continued freshness of appreciation, gratitude

    • The peak experience, called “flow” by Csikszentmihalyi

    • Gemeinschaftsgefuhl (social interest, recall Adler)

    • Profound interpersonal relations — Capable of responding to uniqueness of people and situations, rather than using stereotyped or mechanical responses

    • Democratic character structure - desire and ability to learn from anyone, regardless of class, color, age, gender

    • Enjoy doing things for own sake (aware of means) rather than focusing only on then end reward; clear sense of right and wrong conduct

    • Philosophical, non-hostile sense of humor

    • Creativeness and spontaneity

    • Resistance to blindly following the culture

Peak Experience or Flow

  • Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi and The Flow Experience - optimal experience resulting from a match between your skills and the challenges provided by the environment

    Characterized by: Optimal level/ type of challenge

  • Focused attention

  • Involvement in the activity - time flies

  • Intrinsic enjoyment - feeling of being intensely alive and satisfied