Abraham Maslow (PDF)

Abraham Maslow 261 The antidote for this self-defeating sequence is unconditional positive regard. When we experience unconditional positive regard, we know we will be accepted and loved no matter what we say or do. Rogers advised parents to communicate to their children that although they don’t a...

Abraham Maslow 261 The antidote for this self-defeating sequence is unconditional positive regard. When we experience unconditional positive regard, we know we will be accepted and loved no matter what we say or do. Rogers advised parents to communicate to their children that although they don’t approve of a specific behavior, they will always love and accept the child. Under these conditions, children no longer feel a need to deny thoughts and feelings that might lead their ­parents to withdrawal affection. They are free to incorporate faults and weaknesses into their self-concepts and thereby are better able to experience life. Fortunately, parents are not the only source of unconditional positive regard, and growing up in a family without this acceptance does not condemn a person to a less-than-full life. Adult relationships with friends and romantic partners can also be based on unconditional positive regard. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a close friend in whom you can confide anything without fear of losing that friendship. Psychologists can also create an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard during psychotherapy. In fact, Rogers maintained that this type of accepting environment is a requirement for effective treatment. We’ll examine more of Rogers’ ideas about psychotherapy later in this chapter. Abraham Maslow “I’m ­someone who likes plowing new ground then walking away from it. I get bored. I like discovery, not proving.“ Abraham Maslow A braham Maslow spent most of his career filling in the gaps he found in other approaches to personality. At a time when the field was largely concerned with psychological disorders, Maslow wondered what psychology could do for the happy, healthy side of personality. “Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology,” he wrote, “and we must now fill it out with the healthy half” (1968, p. 5). Maslow replaced Freud’s pessimistic and dismal view of human nature with an optimistic and uplifting portrayal. In addition, although he acknowledged the existence of unconscious motives, Maslow focused his work on conscious aspects of personality. Motivation and the Hierarchy of Needs For a moment, contrast the concerns of the average middle-class American today with those of the typical blue-collar worker during the Great Depression of the 1930s. People today often fret over their personal relationships and their standing in the social community. Many are concerned about making a contribution with their lives. Some find satisfaction working in community service projects and for charitable organizations. Others read good literature, get involved with social causes, and take classes to develop their appreciation for the arts. But things were very different when nearly a third of the workforce lost their jobs in the 1930s. Feeding oneself and one’s family became the dominant concern of many Americans. A job, any job, was of primary importance. Spending time contemplating the direction of one’s life and experimenting with various avenues to express one’s potential were luxuries reserved for those who did not have to worry about dayto-day existence. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Bettmann/Getty Images Abraham H. Maslow 1908–1970 The evolution of Abraham Maslow’s personal and professional life resembles in many ways the personal growth he described in his writings. Although generally regarded as a warm and gregarious adult, Maslow had a cold and lonely childhood. “I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood,” he recalled. “I was isolated and unhappy. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends” (cited in Hall, 1968, p. 37). His professional career also started on a path far from his eventual position as one of the fathers of humanistic psychology. His parents, uneducated Russian immigrants, encouraged Maslow to go to law school. He went to City College of New York with a law career in mind, but he found law uninteresting and dropped out during the first year. Maslow later went to Cornell and then to the University of Wisconsin to study psychology. Ironically, he was attracted to psychology by behaviorism, particularly the works of John B. Watson. “I was so excited about Watson’s program,” he said. “I was confident that here was a real road to travel, solving one problem after another and changing the world” (cited in Hall, 1968, p. 37). Although his enthusiasm for behaviorism would eventually wane, Maslow’s desire to solve the world’s problems through psychology never diminished. Maslow stayed at Wisconsin to finish his PhD in 1934. He remained a loyal behaviorist throughout this period, working closely with Harry Harlow in his animal lab. After graduation, Maslow went to Columbia University to work with the famous learning theorist E. L. Thorndike. But with the birth of his first daughter, Maslow went through a mystical experience similar to the peak experiences he later studied. Looking at his newborn child, Maslow realized that behaviorism was incapable of providing the understanding of human behavior he now needed. “I looked at this tiny, mysterious thing and felt so stupid,” he said. “I was stunned by the mystery and by the sense of not really being in ­control. … Anyone who had a baby couldn’t be a behaviorist” (cited in Hall, 1968, p. 56). After Columbia, Maslow taught at Brooklyn College for 14 years, where he came into contact with Karen Horney and Alfred Adler. Most important, he met Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, and Ruth Benedict, a cultural anthropologist. It was his desire to better understand these two individuals, whom he called “the most remarkable human beings,” that led him to his exploration of self-actualized people (Maslow, 1970). Maslow moved to Brandeis University in 1951 and remained there until shortly before his death in 1970. He hoped to leave a new movement in psychology as his legacy. “I like to be the first runner in the relay race,” he once said. “Then I like to pass on the baton to the next man” (cited in Hall, 1968, p. 56). The contrasting experiences of today’s middle-class citizens and those of Depression-era workers (and, sadly, the experiences of many impoverished people throughout the world today) illustrate a key aspect of Maslow’s theory of personality; that is, which needs affect our behavior depends on the circumstances in our lives. Maslow described two types of motives. Deficiency motives result from a lack of some needed object. Basic needs such as hunger and thirst fall into this category. Once we obtain the needed object, deficiency motives are satisfied and, for a period of time, stop directing our behavior. In contrast, growth needs are not satisfied simply by finding 262 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Abraham Maslow 263 Need for SelfActualization Esteem Needs Belongingness and Love Needs Safety Needs Figure 11.1 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Physiological Needs the object we desire. Rather, growth needs are satisfied by expressing the motive, such as unselfishly giving love to another person and taking steps to develop your unique potential. Satisfying a growth need may even lead to an increase in, rather than a ­satiation of, motivation. Maslow identified five basic categories of needs—both deficiency and growth— and placed them in his well-known hierarchy of needs. As shown in Figure 11.1, he arranged the five kinds of needs in order of prominence. That is, some needs demand our attention more than others. Although there are exceptions, we typically attend to needs at the lower levels before turning to higher level needs. If you are hungry, your attention will be focused on obtaining food. Until this need is met, you won’t be very concerned about making new friends or developing a romantic relationship. Of course, once satisfied, the lower need may return, causing you to divert your attention again. But over the course of a lifetime, most of us generally progress up the ­hierarchy. Let’s go through that hierarchy one step at a time. Physiological Needs Physiological needs, including hunger, thirst, air, and sleep, are the most demanding in that they typically must be satisfied before we can move to higher level needs. In many places today—and throughout much of human history—too many people’s lives are focused on meeting these basic needs. Finding enough food and water for survival takes priority over concerns like gaining the respect of peers or developing your potential as an artist. Safety Needs When physiological needs are met, we become increasingly motivated by our safety needs. These include the need for security, stability, protection, structure, order, and freedom from fear or chaos. These needs are likely to dominate our thoughts and actions when the future is unpredictable or when living in an area where political or Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 264 Chapter 11 / The Humanistic Approach social order is unstable. People motivated by safety needs may become obsessed about saving money for an uncertain future. They might settle for a job with a lot of security rather than pursue a more interesting but less certain career or an unhappy marriage if the arrangement provides stability and a sense of security. Belongingness and Love Needs For most middle-class American adults, the need for food and water and the need for security and stability are fairly well satisfied. Most have jobs, homes, and food on the table. But satisfaction of these lower level needs does not guarantee happiness. Soon the need for friendship and love is likely to make itself known. “Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children,” Maslow wrote. “He will hunger for affectionate relations with people … for a place in his group or family” (1970, p. 43). Although some adults remain slaves to their safety needs and devote most of their energy to their careers, others find their job unsatisfying if it requires them to sacrifice time spent with friends and loved ones. Maslow identified two kinds of love. D-love, like hunger, is based on a deficiency. We need this love to satisfy the emptiness we experience without it. It is a selfish love, concerned with taking, not giving. But it is a necessary step in the development of the second type of love. B-love is a nonpossessive, unselfish love based on a growth need rather than a deficiency. B-love is not satisfied once a relationship is established. Rather, B-love is experienced and grows as a result of being in the relationship. Esteem Needs Although poets and songwriters might disagree, there is more to life than love. Satisfying our belongingness and love needs is likely to direct our attention to the esteem needs. Maslow divided these needs into two basic types: the need to perceive oneself as competent and achieving and the need for admiration and respect. These two needs often go hand-in-hand. It is difficult for others to admire you if you don’t feel good about yourself, and knowing that you have earned the respect of people who are important to you most likely will contribute to your sense of personal esteem. Need for Self-Actualization Nearly every culture has a story about someone who, by virtue of a magic lamp or contact with a supernatural being, receives everything he or she wishes. But inevitably, the lucky individual discovers that acquiring wealth, love, and power is not enough to guarantee happiness. As Maslow explained, when all our lower level needs are satisfied, a new source of discontent often surfaces. We turn our attention inward and ask ourselves what we want out of life, where our lives are headed, and what we want to accomplish. The need for self-actualization is satisfied when we identify our true self and reach our full potential. “A musician must make music,” Maslow wrote. “An artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature” (1970, p. 46). Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Abraham Maslow 265 Misconceptions About Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Maslow was quick to acknowledge that the five-level hierarchy is an oversimplification. Although the arrangement makes sense most of the time, there are some noteworthy exceptions. Some people have to satisfy their needs for self-esteem and respect before they can enter a romantic relationship. Occasionally, artists become so intent on expressing their creative desires that they forego a few basic needs. And then there are martyrs who may sacrifice life itself for an ideal. People first encountering Maslow’s need hierarchy sometimes assume that lower needs must be satisfied 100% before we turn to higher needs. But that was never Maslow’s intent. He maintained that at any given moment our behavior is potentially influenced by needs from all five levels. Moreover, we rarely satisfy any of the five levels of need for very long. Maslow estimated that for the average person in our culture, 85% of physiological needs, 70% of safety needs, 50% of belongingness and love needs, 40% of esteem needs, and 10% of self-actualization needs are satisfied. Another oversimplification of Maslow’s theory is that any given behavior is motivated by a single need. Maslow maintained that most behavior is the result of multiple motivations. He used the example of sexual activity. It is easy to see that physiological needs are satisfied through sexual behavior. But that behavior can also be motivated by a desire to express affection, a need to feel masterful and competent, or a desire to act masculine or feminine. People engage in sexual activity to satisfy one or any combination of these needs. The Study of Psychologically Healthy People “Selfactualizing individuals have more free will than average people.” Abraham Maslow As a rule, psychologists are focused on understanding and helping people resolve psychological and social problems. But Maslow’s research took him in the opposite direction. Instead of studying people who suffer from traumatic experiences or psychological disorders, Maslow turned his attention to psychologically healthy individuals. By learning what self-­a ctualized people are like, he reasoned, we can better understand how individuals reach their true potential. Maslow identified and interviewed people he knew who appeared to have satisfied their need for self-actualization. He also turned to records and documents to learn about historic figures who seemed to have lived a self-actualized life. That list included Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Albert Schweitzer. By his own admission, Maslow’s methods were far from scientifically rigorous. Rather than using statistical analyses, he relied on what he called “holistic analysis.” He considered all the information he collected about an individual and arrived at his own general impressions of that person. From these impressions, he created a list of characteristics common to psychologically healthy people. What are self-actualized people like? Not surprisingly, they sound a lot like the fully functioning individuals Rogers described. To begin, self-actualized people tend to accept themselves for what they are. They admit to personal weaknesses, and they work to improve themselves where they can. But they don’t spend a lot of time Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 266 Chapter 11 / The Humanistic Approach Assessing Your Own Personality Self-Actualization Indicate the extent to which each of the following statements applies to you, u ­ sing this 4-point scale: 1 = Disagree, 2 = Disagree somewhat, 3 = Agree s­ omewhat, 4 = Agree. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. I do not feel ashamed of any of my emotions. I feel I must do what others expect of me. I believe that people are essentially good and can be trusted. I feel free to be angry at those I love. It is always necessary that others approve of what I do. I don’t accept my own weaknesses. I can like people without having to approve of them. I fear failure. I avoid attempts to analyze and simplify complex domains. It is better to be yourself than to be popular. I have no mission in life to which I feel especially dedicated. I can express my feelings even when they may result in undesirable consequences. 13. I do not feel responsible to help anybody. 14. I am bothered by fears of being inadequate. 15. I am loved because I give love. To calculate your score, first reverse the values for items 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 14 (1 = 4, 2 = 3, 3 = 2, 4 = 1). Then add the values for all 15 items. The higher the score, the more self-actualized you are said to be at this point in your life. You can compare your score with the norms for college students reported by the test developers: Standard Mean Deviation Men 45.02 4.95 Women 46.07 4.79 Scale: Index of Self-Actualization Source: Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin by A. Jones and R. Crandall. Copyright © 1986 by SAGE Publications Inc. Journals. Reproduced with permission of SAGE Publications Inc. Journals in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center. worrying about things they might have done. They aren’t perfect, but they respect and feel good about themselves for what they are. Psychologically healthy people are also less restricted by cultural norms and customs than the average person. They express their thoughts and desires in a way that suits them, regardless of whether society approves. Self-actualized people often dress differently, live differently, and spend their free time differently than the Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. The Psychology of Optimal Experience 267 typical citizen. It’s not that they’re insensitive to or unaware of social rules and societal expectations. On the contrary, Maslow described them as very perceptive. They understand how they are “supposed” to act; they simply feel little need to structure their lives like everyone else’s. Maslow was surprised to find that every psychologically healthy person he studied was in some way quite creative. But not all expressed their creativity through traditional outlets like poetry or art. Rather, they often exhibited novel approaches to in the way approached routine tasks, what Maslow called self-actualizing creativity. A self-­actualized teacher might develop innovative ways to communicate ideas to students. A self-actualized businessperson might think of clever new approaches to improve sales. People are often surprised to learn that self-actualized individuals have relatively few friends. However, the friendships they do have are deep and rewarding. Self-actualized people also have a “philosophical, unhostile” sense of humor. They poke fun at the human condition and at themselves but do not make fun of specific individuals or groups. Self-­actualized people also have a strong need for solitude, as we’ll explore in the next chapter. Perhaps the most intriguing characteristic Maslow discovered in psychologically healthy people is the tendency to have peak experiences. During a peak experience, time and place are transcended. Anxieties and fears are replaced by a sense of unity with the universe and a momentary feeling of power and wonder. However, peak experiences are different for each person. Maslow likened them to “a visit to a personally defined Heaven.” Above all else, they are growth experiences. Often problems that concerned people before a peak experience no longer seem as important afterward. However, not all self-actualized people have peak experiences. Maslow found that the “nonpeakers” are “the social world improvers, the politicians, the workers of society, the reformers, the crusaders.” In contrast, the “peakers” tend to be less conventional. They are “more likely to write the poetry, the music, the philosophies, and the religions” (1970, p. 165). The Psychology of Optimal Experience W hat makes people happy? This question threads its way through much of the writings of the humanistic personality theorists. Of course, most of us point to family and friends as important sources of happiness. But what sorts of activities make us happy? That is, to increase our sense of well-being and happiness, how should we spend our time? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick-­SentMe-High) has one suggestion. He maintains that opportunities for happiness lie all around us in many of the everyday, routine activities that fill our lives. Optimal Experience Can people structure the events in their daily lives in a way that promotes a sense of personal fulfillment and self-worth? One starting point for answering this question is simply to ask people to describe the activities that make them happy. That’s what Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 268 Chapter 11 / The Humanistic Approach Csikszentmihalyi did. Try it yourself. Think of a time when you felt alive and totally engaged in an activity, when what you were doing was more than pleasurable, but truly enjoyable. When Csikszentmihalyi asked people to identify an experience that fits this description, he found a wide variety of answers (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1999; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). Some people talked about mountain climbing, others about playing tennis, and others about performing surgery. But when he asked people to describe the experience in their own words, he found they used surprisingly similar terms. Csikszentmihalyi’s participants talked about becoming so involved in what they were doing that nothing else seemed to matter. Whether it was climbing a mountain or performing surgery, the activity demanded all their attention. Although each step seemed to flow automatically to the next, the task was almost always challenging and demanded full concentration. Reaching their goal provided participants with a sense of mastery, but the real pleasure came from the process rather than the achievement. Csikszentmihalyi refers to these kinds of moments as optimal experience. Because people typically describe a feeling of being caught up in a natural, almost effortless movement from one step to the next, psychologists sometimes refers to the experience as flow. Optimal experiences are intensely enjoyable, but they usually are not restful, relaxing moments. On the contrary, most flow experiences are quite demanding (Abuhamdeh & Csikszentmihalyi, 2012; de Manzano, Theorell, Harmat, & Ullen, 2010). “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile,” Csikszentmihalyi explained. “Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen” (1990, p. 3). Interestingly, people of all ages and cultures tend to describe the flow experience in similar terms. After examining thousands of descriptions of people’s most satisfying and enjoyable moments, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) identified eight characteristics that make up the flow experience (Table 11.1). Not every flow experience contains each of these eight, but any flow experience you can think of probably includes many of these components. Finding Happiness in Everyday Activities In a perfect world, we all could enjoy life to its fullest by doing what we wanted when we wanted and filling our lives with one flow activity after another. But reality does not grant such luxury. Most of us face a seemingly endless series of demands, with free time an increasingly rare commodity. This observation raises an important question: When are people more likely to experience flow—at work or during leisure hours? Most of us believe that our leisure hours are far happier than time on the job. In fact, people often point to long working hours as a source of unhappiness. However, research suggests the opposite. Certainly, people often have flow-like experiences when engaging in recreational activities like playing a musical instrument or competing in sports (Stein, Kimiecik, Daniels, & Jackson, 1995). But flow experiences are far more likely to happen when people are at work than during Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. The Psychology of Optimal Experience 269 Table 11.1 Eight Components of Optimal Experience 1. The Activity Is Challenging and Requires Skill. The task is sufficiently challenging to demand full attention, but not so difficult that it denies a sense of accomplishment. 2. One’s Attention Is Completely Absorbed by the Activity. People stop being aware of themselves as separate from their actions, which seem spontaneous and automatic. 3. The Activity Has Clear Goals. There is a direction, a logical point to work toward. 4. There Is Clear Feedback. We need to know if we have succeeded at reaching our goal, even if this is only self-confirmation. 5. One Can Concentrate Only on the Task at Hand. During flow, we pay no attention to the unpleasant parts of life. 6. One Achieves a Sense of Personal Control. People in flow enjoy the experience of exercising control over their environment. 7. One Loses Self-Consciousness. With attention focused on the activity and the goals, there is little opportunity to think about one’s self. One Loses a Sense of Time. 8.  Usually hours pass by in what seems like minutes, but the opposite can also occur. off-hours (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989). A challenging job creates numerous opportunities to experience a sense of mastery and accomplishment (Keller & Bless, 2008). Moreover, finding happiness in our work is not limited to glamorous professions or even to paid positions. Mowing the lawn or making dinner can be a source of happiness, if we look at these chores as challenges and take pride and satisfaction in a job well done. Rather than thinking of every job as something we have to do or something others expect us to do, we can approach daily tasks by asking what we can get out of them. This advice also applies to students (Schmidt, Shernoff, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007). High school students are most content when they face academic assignments that are ­ sikszentmihalyi, challenging but still within their power to accomplish (Moneta & C 1996). Researchers in one study identified students who were motivated to work hard because they found learning the material to be fascinating and satisfying (Wong & Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Interestingly, these students’ grades were not particularly high. But they did take more advanced courses than grade-driven students, probably because they wanted to learn more about the subjects they found most interesting. Intrinsically motivated undergraduates in another study were more likely to lose track of time and to report that study time passed more quickly than did students who were less interested in the learning experience (Conti, 2001). Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.