Abraham Maslow's holistic-dynamic theory proposes a hierarchy of needs that motivates human behavior. It assumes people have an innate potential for psychological growth towards self-actualization. The hierarchy consists of physiological needs, safety needs, love and belongingness needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. Lower needs must be satisfied before higher needs can motivate behavior. Maslow studied self-actualized individuals to identify qualities like embracing personal growth, creativity, and living according to humanistic values rather than deficiency needs. His theory views people as inherently motivated towards fulfillment and psychological health.

1. HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC THEORY
Abraham Harold Maslow (Abe)
Brain Gyverne P. Agwilang, RPm
agwilangbrain@gmail.com

2. Overview
• Assumes that the whole person is constantly being motivated by one
need or another and that people have the potential to grow toward
psychological health, that is, self-actualization.
• Humans have a higher nature than either psychoanalysis or
behaviorism would suggest. He then spent the latter years of his life
trying to discover the nature of psychologically healthy individuals.

3. Biography
Name: Abraham H. Maslow
Birthday: April 1, 1908
Birthplace: Manhattan, New York
Father: Samuel Maslow
Mother: Rose Schilosky Maslow
Spouse: Bertha Goodman

4. Maslow’s View of Motivation
1. Holistic approach to
motivation- the whole person,
not any single part or function, is
motivated
3. People are continually
motivated by one need or
another- when one need is
satisfied, it ordinarily loses its
motivational power and is then
replaced by another need.
2. Motivation usually complex- a
person’s behavior may spring
from several separate motives
4. All people everywhere are
motivated by the same basic
need
5. Needs can be arranged on a
hierarchy.

5. HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

6. Hierarchy of Needs
• Lower needs must be satisfied or at least relatively satisfied before
higher level needs become motivators.
• CONATIVE NEEDS- they have a striving or motivational character
• Lower level needs have prepotency over higher needs; that is they
must be satisfied or mostly satisfied before higher level needs
become activated.

7. Physiological Needs
• Include food, water, oxygen etc.
• Most prepotent of all
Difference to other needs?
1. They are only needs that can be
completely satisfied or even
overly satisfied.
2. They are recurring in nature.
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

8. Safety Needs
• Include physical security, stability,
dependency, protection, etc.
• They cannot be overly satiated
• Children, however, are more often
motivated by safety needs because they
live with such threats such as darkness,
animals, etc.
• Adults feel relatively unsafe because they
retain irrational fears from childhood
that cause them to act as if they were
afraid of parental punishment and can
suffer basic anxiety.
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

9. Love and
Belongingness
• Desire for friendship, family, etc.
• Includes some aspects od sex and human contact
as well as the need to both give and receive.
3 Kinds of People
1. People who have had their love and
belongingness needs adequately satisfied from early
years do not panic when denied love.
2. People consists of those who have never
experienced love and belongingness, and, therefore,
are incapable of giving love.
3. People who have received love and belongingness
only in small dose, because they receive only a taste
of love and belongingness, they will be strongly
motivated to seek it.
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

10. Esteem Needs
• Includes self-respect, confidence,
competence and the knowledge others
hold them.
2 Levels of Esteem Needs
1. Reputation- perception of the prestige,
recognition, or fame of a person has
achieved in the eyes of the others.
2. Self-esteem- person’s own feelings of
worth and confidence; it reflects a
“desire for strength, for achievement,
for adequacy, mastery and
competence, confidence in the face of
the world, and for independence and
freedom.
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

11. Self-Actualization
• Potent when esteem needs have been
met
• Includes self-fulfillment, the realization
of all one’s potential, and a desire to
become creative in the full sense of the
word.
• Maintain their feelings of self-esteem
even when scorned, rejected, and
dismissed by other people.
• They become independent from the
lower level needs that gave them birth.
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

12. • Maslow identified three other
categories of need
1. Aesthetic
2. Cognitive
3. Neurotic
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love and Belongingness
Safety
Physiological

13. Aesthetic Need
• Motivated by the need for beauty
and aesthetically pleasing
experiences.
• Desire for beautiful and orderly
surroundings, and when these
needs are not met, they become
sick.

14. Cognitive Needs
• Desire to know, to solve mysteries,
to understand, and to be curious.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy is threatened
if blocked.
• Healthy people desire to know
more, to theorize, to test
hypotheses, to uncover mysteries
or to find out how something
works just for the satisfaction of
knowing.

15. Neurotic Needs
• Lead to stagnation and pathology
• Nonproductive
• Reactive; they serve as
compensation for unsatisfied basic
need

16. General Discussion of Needs
Physiological 85%
Safety 70%
Love and
Belongingness
50%
Esteem 40%
Self-actualization 10%
• The more the lower level need is
satisfied, the greater the
emergence of the next level
need.
• Needs, therefore, emerge
gradually, and a person may be
simultaneously motivated by
needs from two or more levels.
Hypothetical Average Person

17. Reversed order of needs
• Fro some people, the drive fro creativity may take precedence over
safety and physiological needs.
• Reversals, however, are usually more apparent than real, and some
seemingly obvious deviations in the order of needs are not variations
at all.

18. Unmotivated Behavior
• Some behaviors are not motivated.
• Some behavior is not caused by needs but by other factors such as
conditioned reflexes, maturation, or drugs.
• “Expressive behavior” is unmotivated.

19. Expressive and Coping Behavior
Expressive Behavior
• an end in itself and serves no other purpose than to be.
• Unconscious and usually takes place naturally and with little effort.
• Can continue even in the absence of reinforcement and reward.
• A person, for example, may express a methodical, compulsive personality
simply because she is what she is and not because of any need to do so.
• Usually unlearned, spontaneous, and determined by forces within the
person rather than by the environment.

20. Coping Behavior
• Ordinarily conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by the
external environment.
• It involves the individual’s attempts to cope with the environment.

21. Deprivation of Needs
Need Deprivation
Physiological Need Malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy, obsession with
sex, etc.
Safety Fear, insecurity, dread
Love and Belongingness Defensive, overly aggressive, socially timid
Esteem Self-doubt, self-deprecition, lack of confidence
Self-actualization Pathology, metapathology
Metapahology- absence of values, that lack of fulfillment, and loss
of the meaning of life

22. Instinctoid Nature of
Needs
• Some human needs are innately
determined even though they can
be modified by learning.

23. 1. One criterion from separating instinctoid needs from noninstinctoid
needs is the level of pathology upon frustration.
2. Second criterion is that instinctoid needs are persistent and their
satisfaction leads to psychological health. Noninstinctoid needs, in contrast,
are usually temporary and their satisfaction is not a prerequisite for health.
3. The third distinction is that instinctoid needs are species-specific. Only
humans can be motivated by esteem and self-actualization.
4. Though difficult to change, instinctoid needs can be molded, inhibited, or
altered by environmental influences.

24. Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs
• Degree and not of kind.
1. Higher level needs are later on the phylogenetic or evolutionary
scale.
2. Higher level needs produce more happiness and more peak
experiences, although satisfaction of lower level needs may
produce a degree of pleasure.

25. MASLOW’S
Quest for the
Self-Actualizing
Person

26. Criteria for Self-Actualization
1. They were free from psychopathology.
2. They had progressed through the hierarchy of needs and therefore
lived above the subsistence level of existence and had no
ever=present threat to their safety.
3. They embrace the B-values.
4. Full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.;
they fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly
become what they were capable of becoming.

27. Values of Self-Actualizers
• Motivated by b-values- indicators
of psychological health and are
opposed to deficiency needs,
which motivate non self-
actualizers.
• Metamotivation- motives of self-
actualizing people; are capable of
giving and receiving love, possess a
great amount of confidence and
self-esteem, and yet to fail to pass
over the threshold to self-
actualization.
TRUTH
GOODNESS
BEAUTY
UNITY
ALIVENESS
UNIQUENESS
PERFECTION AND
NECESSITY
COMPLETIO
JUSTICE AND ORDER
SIMPLICITY
RICHNESS
EFFORTLESSNESS
PLAYFULNESS
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
MEANINGFULNESS
B-VALUES

28. Characteristics of Self-actualizing People
• People must be regularly satisfied in their other needs and must also
embrace the B-values.
• Maslow listed 15 tentative qualities that characterizes self-actualizing
people.

29. 15 Qualities of Self-actualizing People
1. More efficient perception of reality
2. Acceptance of self, others, and Nature
3. Spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness
4. Problem-centering
5. The need for privacy
6. Autonomy
7. Continued freshness of appreciation
8. The peak experience

30. 9. Gemeinschaftsgefuhl
10. Profound interpersonal relations
11. The democratic character structure
12. Discrimination between means and ends
13. Philosophical sense of humor
14. Creativeness
15. Resistance to enculturation

31. Reference
• J. Feist et al (2018) Theories of Personality, New York:
McGraw-Hill Education

32. THANK YOU