Basic needs and motivation

In one line: Maslow argued that pressing basic needs, like hunger or fear, tend to take over until they’re largely met. It’s a famous idea, but the paper didn’t test it, and later research has given it little support.

What he did

This isn’t an experiment or a survey. It’s an argument. Maslow, a psychologist, drew on his clinical work, other people’s research and his own reasoning to propose a theory of what drives people. The paper appeared in Psychological Review in 1943. It’s free to read online.

What he argued

• Five kinds of need, in a rough order. Physiological (hunger, thirst, warmth, rest). Safety (security, stability, freedom from fear). Belonging and love. Esteem, meaning both self-respect and respect from others. And self-actualisation: becoming everything you’re capable of becoming. Maslow said this last one looks different in each person.
• Unmet lower needs take priority. A very hungry person is mostly driven by food. As one need is largely met, the next kind starts to matter more.
• It isn’t a strict ladder. Maslow said the order is “not nearly as rigid” as his own description might suggest, and he listed exceptions. He also said most needs are only partly met at any one time.
• Curiosity sits apart. He treated the wish to know and understand as a separate drive, not one of the five levels.
• There’s no pyramid. The paper has no pyramid in it. The earliest known version appeared in 1960, in a business magazine article by a management consultant, Charles McDermid. The pyramid makes the idea look more rigid than Maslow meant, as if each need is either met or not.

How much should you trust it?

A famous idea with weak evidence: useful as a prompt, not as a tested model.

• The paper is theory, not data. Maslow didn’t test the hierarchy.
• When others did test it, support was thin. A 1976 review of the research found very little support for the order of needs (Wahba and Bridwell).
• Self-actualisation is hard to pin down or measure. It may reflect a Western, individual view of a good life. Some researchers think the order may differ between cultures, for example with belonging coming before safety.
• The idea lasts because it feels right and is easy to use, not because the evidence is strong.

If you need to convince someone

In our words (a paraphrase, not a quotation): Maslow never drew a pyramid, and he didn’t think needs were met one level at a time. His point was looser: pressing unmet needs pull attention away from other things, learning included.

What it means for you

1. Look beyond the session. If someone is exhausted, worried about their job, isolated in their team or feels disrespected, even good teaching may not land as well as you hoped. Check what else is going on before you redesign the session.
2. Don’t use it to label people. It’s a prompt to ask a question, not a way to sort someone into a level.
3. Pay attention to the setting. A good session can’t make up for a team where people are afraid to speak. That’s a separate idea with better evidence behind it: psychological safety.

How it appears in Teaching That Lands

It doesn’t. Maslow isn’t part of the programme. The facilitator guide suggests that if someone raises it, you mention that the hierarchy has weak research support. It’s in the library because people often ask about it.

The small print

• Pre-potency. Maslow’s word for one need taking priority over another. He meant it as a matter of degree, not on or off.
• What kind of review? Wahba and Bridwell (1976) wrote a narrative review: a careful reading of the studies so far. It wasn’t a meta-analysis, which pools the numbers from many studies into one overall result.
• Rebuilding the pyramid. Kenrick and colleagues (2010) proposed a revised version based on evolutionary psychology. It’s an interesting update, but it’s also a theory rather than a tested result.
• Who built the pyramid? Bridgman, Cummings and Ballard (2019) traced it to McDermid’s 1960 article, and from there into management textbooks.