Review of Maslows A Theory of Human Motivation (1943) Brent Auble January 27, 2010 CSS 635 Maslows hierarchy

of needs has certainly stood the test of time, at least in the public consciousness (of course Freud is still popular with the general public), and given the 3519 citations for this article in Google Scholar, Id guess that it has stood the test of time academically as well. I was familiar with the hierarchy before reading the article (although I probably couldnt have identified the levels in the right order other than physiological and selfactualization), but it was nice to read Maslows actual description of it. The hierarchy of needs physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization seems to make sense, and more importantly, Maslow caveated the hierarchy by saying that in some people and situations the levels could be in a different order. Any claim that needs were invariably in that order for everyone wouldve been easy to demolish. The article was almost entirely theoretical, so there was empirical little support for the hierarchy, but Maslows arguments seemed sound and logical. Maslow also went back and forth on whether needs had to be completely satisfied before someone could move up to the next level or whether is was sufficient for needs to be partially satisfied (expressed as a percentage) before a person could start satisfying a higher level need. The percentage satisfaction at each level makes more sense to me, so I wish Maslow had used that throughout; however, arguing percentages doesnt sound like its as good an argument as complete satisfaction of a level. This was Maslows initial description of the hierarchy, and he said he expected the hierarchy to be used as a framework that researchers could fill in. But it would be interesting to have some detail around what constitutes a 50% level of physiological need satisfaction, versus a 20% or 75% level. Then, given that definition, at what point does or can a person start to focus on the next level up in the hierarchy 50%, 60%, higher, lower? The entirely new thing I learned from this article was that Maslow also proposed a hierarchy of cognitive needs, which seems to have been lost, perhaps because Maslow could only describe it as applying to intelligent people, which may not have met the threshold of political correctness even back in the 40s. The cognitive hierarchy also wasnt defined as clearly. It seems to consist of only two levels: a need to know and a need to understand. Even those two levels could be a starting point to explore modeling cognitive needs. From a complexity theory perspective, it is interesting that Maslow describes the next higher order needs emerging once the lower order needs are met. Since emergence is such an important term for complexity theory, Maslows use of the term immediately brings to mind the question of how each of the levels of needs could arise from the interactions of lower order objects. I generally think of emergence across a range of related things as being caused by the interactions of qualitatively different objects at each level. For example, the interactions of electrons, protons and neutrons emerges as an atom, the interactions of different types of atoms

emerges as a molecule, the interactions of H2O molecules between 0 and 100 degrees centigrade emerges as water, and so on. Emergence from one level of the hierarchy of needs to the next is different though. Essentially, it happens internally within an individual based on the persons interactions with the environment and other people, and the persons reaction to those interactions. The individual, the other people and the environment can remain the same in a general sense (because everything is constantly changing to some degree), while the individual can progress through each of the levels of the hierarchy. For example, imagine two strangers (one named John and another named Mary) shipwrecked on a deserted island. John and Marys first needs are physiological finding food and water. Next they needs safety, so they build a hut and find some sturdy sticks to use as weapons in case there are dangerous animals on the island. Once theyve established those levels comfortably, John and Mary have time to fall in love. John develops great skill at finding food and firewood, and Mary at preparing food and making clothes and household items, each of them developing a sense of self-esteem from these new skills and from the other persons appreciation of it. Finally they have children and develop a strong enough feeling that they were meant to be parents and providers for their children and reach the level of self-actualization. I dont have an answer for this question yet, but how could we model the emergence of each person from one level to the next in the above example or other situations? A computer model that provides an answer to that question would be pretty impressive. On the other hand, if a sufficiently accurate model of human cognition and social/environmental interactions doesnt exhibit an emergence of these different levels, would that invalidate Maslows hierarchy? These are interesting questions that Im sure were many years away from being able to answer, but theyre likely to be reasonable goals.