When he first laid out the 5 stages in the original version of “A Theory of Human Motivation,” they were presented as a strict hierarchy, meaning that each level of the hierarchy had to be satisfied before moving on to the next one. So what actually makes up this pyramid? According to Maslow, all people have the same needs which motivate our behavior. Beyond academia, Maslow’s thinking can often be found in educational and management training circles. It’s also remained relevant for certain kinds of psychotherapy, such as Carl Rogers’ humanistic approach, which emphasises the concept of self-actualization. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs continues to be highly influential, especially in the field of positive psychology and related approaches such as Ryff and Singer’s theory of eudaimonic well-being. Rather than operating on the assumption that local cultures defined the behavior of their inhabitants in fundamental ways, Maslow insisted on the existence of common psychological forms which could be applied to anyone, anywhere. Maslow’s theory was striking from the beginning, as it ran directly against one of the dominant intellectual trends of his day: the cultural relativism first theorized by the anthropologist Franz Boas. We’ll talk more about the specifics of each of these levels in the next section. And finally, it arrives at a desire for self-actualization at the top. Subsequently, it proceeds through needs for individual security and stability, personal and social bonds, and different kinds of esteem. Often represented as a pyramid, this hierarchy begins with basic physiological requirements at the bottom. In his essay “A Theory of Human Motivation,” first published in 1943 in the academic journal Psychological Review and subsequently included in Maslow’s book Motivation and Personality (1954), he defined a hierarchy of human needs which in his assertion motivate the behavior of all people. Abraham Maslow, developmental psychologist.

Pavlov hierarchy of needs