COURSE NOTES: Personality

denotes a term that you should know how to define, and to recognize and give examples. denotes an important person. You should remember this person's name and what (s)he has done. denotes an important research finding. denotes an issue that you should be able to discuss or explain.

Chapter 15: 

Maslow: Need Hierarchy Theory

Need Hierarchy Theory: Maslow

Maslow's Vision of Psychology

• problem-centered (not method-centered)
• experiential knowledge
• third force psychology
• Taoist science

human potential movement

Hierarchy of Needs

Deficiency Motivation

• physiological needs
• safety needs
• belongingness & love needs
• esteem needs

Being Motivation

• self-actualization

Basic [deficiency] needs have these 4 characteristics:

1. Failure to gratify a basic need leads to a directly related form of dysfunction or disturbance, either physiological or psychological.
   • ex: malnutrition (from lack of food)
   • ex: depression (from lack of love)
2. Restoration of gratification remedies the dysfunction or disturbance.
3. Continued gratification of need brings health and growth.
4. In a free choice situation, the gratification of one basic need will be preferred over the gratification of others.
   • i.e., the need hierarchy
5. The prolonged satisfaction of a basic need will reduce its demands to a low ebb or render it inactive.

Differences between D-Motivation and B-motivation

B-motivation: being; "metamotivated"

D-Love and B-Love

• D-love is jealous
• B-love is trusting

B-values (metaneeds)

• beauty
• truth
• justice

B-cognition

• more passive
• letting oneself be reached, touched, or affected by what is there
• giving a richer perception

Research Testing the Need Hierarchy

Self-Actualization

Characteristics of Self-Actualized People

• efficient perception of reality
• acceptance
• spontaneity
• problem-centered
• need for privacy (solitude)
• independence of culture & environment (autonomy)
• freshness of appreciation
• peak experiences
• human kinship
• humility and respect
• interpersonal relationships
• ethics and values
• discrimination between means and ends
• sense of humor
• creativity
• resistance to enculturation
• resolution of dichotomies
  • Eupsychia
  • A quick lesson in word derivations...
    • eu means "well, pleasant, or beneficial"
    • from Latin and Greek eus, meaning "good"
  • therefore, "Eupsychia"

But self-actualized people are not perfect. They can seem very cold when they end relationships. They can have temper outburst. They can be silly, wasteful, and thoughtless.

Measurement and Research on Self-Actualization

• 150 forced-choice item pairs

Two Major Scores

• Time Competence
  • the degree to which one lives in the present
  • with full awareness, contact, and full feeling reactivity
  • The Time INcompetent person:
    • lives in the PAST (guilts, regrets, resentments), and/or
    • lives in the FUTURE (idealized goal, plans, expectations, predictions, fears)
• Inner Directed Supports
  • the degree to which one is his/her own sense of support

POI scores are higher in

• normals, compared to clinical groups
• people at the end of marathon therapy sessions, as compared to the beginning
• people with lower depression and neuroticism on other tests
• people with high creativity on other tests
• people who are autonomous, on other tests
• people who have higher academic achievement

POI Research

• criterion measure of mental health
• convergent validity with other measures

Growth occurs spontaneously, if lower order needs are met.

• "Growth takes place when the next step is subjectively more delightful, more joyous, more intrinsically satisfying than the last. The only way we can ever know what is right for us is that it feels better subjectively than any alternative." (Maslow, 1956, p. 36)

Obstacles to Self-Actualization

• choice between safety & growth
• unmet lower-order needs
• higher needs are weaker, only “instinctoid”

Jonah complex: A "Jonah" is a loser, in poker: "One thought to bring bad luck"

Applications and Implications of Maslow's Theory

Therapy

Growth Centers

Workplace

Consumerism

Religion and Spirituality

Education

Gender

Maslow's Challenge to Traditional Science

• such as individualism

science persuades

• "to cram truth down the reluctant throat"

values emerge from his theory

Taoist science

vision of “Fourth Psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interests”

To many, it seems “pie in the sky” (unduly optimistic).

Other Growth Themes in Psychological Theory

Self-Determination Theory and Intrinsic Motivation

intrinsic motivation: motivation to perform an activity for its inherent satisfaction (rather than as a means to some other goal)

• playing a musical instrument for pleasure, rather than for pay
• gardening or fishing as a hobby, instead of as a means of getting food

Positive Psychology

• http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

• The Association for Transpersonal Psychology
  http://www.atpweb.org/

Back to Top