To experience different needs is natural for man and all life in the world. Only by feeling the need for something and trying to make up for the missing element, the human body is able to dynamically develop, and the processes of advancement of civilization do not stop for a moment.
General classification of human needs
A general classification of human needs underlies all theories that explain this totality of conditions and factors of need from a scientific or semi-scientific point of view. First of all, all the needs of people are divided into two large groups according to awareness and unconsciousness of need. The former include human desires and goals that require the individual to make certain efforts to achieve them. The second group includes the needs necessary for the life of the organism and procreation.
The next indicator for determining the needs of the above two groups is their genesis. By origin, the needs are also divided into two types:
- primary - these are all basic human functions that lie in the field of unconscious needs;
- secondary - these are functions that are directly dependent on the environment of the object and other conditions responsible for the socialization of the individual in society.
Also, almost every author of the theory of needs can be divided into group and personal needs, basic and official, rational and irrational, classical and new, permanent and unstable.
Types of Maslow Needs
Abraham Maslow, a psychologist and neurophysiologist from America, in his research conducted in the mid-20th century, brought out the theory of human needs, which includes 7 main sections, divided into explanatory subparagraphs. To systematize the concept and make it more understandable, the scientist assigned each kind of human needs his own āorder of importanceā, starting from needs of primary importance and ending with secondary tasks of the personās social identity.
Later, A. Maslow, the compiler of the theory of the hierarchy of needs, supplemented the design of his seven-step pyramid with a list of the needs of a growing and spiritual person and called this list āhigher development needsā. It included such concepts as justice and honesty, the versatility of nature and the ability to take risks, simplicity and complete integrity. However, making these amendments, the scientist himself warned the followers of his theory of needs against the temptation to draw clear boundaries between the presented existential values. In his opinion, all these features are so interconnected and complementary that their descriptions would have echoed one with the other with only minor changes in the details.
The hierarchy of needs by A. Maslow
Maslow's hierarchical theory of needs is depicted in the form of a pyramid, conventionally divided into 7 horizontal sectors:
- Sector No. 1 (lower) is given the most important category of needs - physiological. These include: the fulfillment of natural needs, the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, sleep, sexual desires.
- Sector No. 2 is self-preservation (striving for security). Instincts provide a sense of confidence and avoid dangers.
- Sector No. 3 is the need for socialization and love. Skills developed by a person due to the need to be assigned to a particular social group determine his social status.
- Sector No. 4 is the need for worship (recognition). To satisfy his natural vanity and to win the respect of others, a person is able to make many sacrifices and even become the organizer of a powerful public egregore.
- Sector No. 5 is a craving for cognition, research. Some followers of Maslow's theory of needs combine 4 and 5 groups (human craving for knowledge and the need for recognition) into one sector, since both of these concepts are interconnected. The question of the order of these groups is also controversial, because it happens that a person who did a lot to get a high rating of his skills deliberately avoided recognizing this fact.
- Sector No. 6 is the pursuit of aesthetic enjoyment and the development of intellectual abilities.
- Sector No. 7 (the top of the pyramid) - the need of a person to identify his personal capabilities and the disclosure of spiritual resources.
Many researchers, including the Australian scientist John Vir Burton, without denying Maslow's theory of need levels in general, objected to assigning any priority to a personās primary needs. According to opponents of the concept, none of these needs of a person can be assessed as secondary, since all of them simultaneously constitute the essence of man and are its inseparable components.
ERG Alderfer Theory
The American psychologist Clayton Alderfer, another author of the theory of human needs, believed that all basic human needs can be combined into three groups:
- Needs of existence (physiology and self-preservation).
- Needs of communication (communication).
- Growth needs (personal development).
Group 1 includes factors included by Abraham Maslow in the first two steps of his pyramid and designated by him as the most important. K. Alderfer believed that the ability to fight for oneās existence: to be able to hide from the enemy, find food and take refuge from the weather - makes a personās life in principle possible, which means that its value is inseparable from the ability to meet natural needs.
The need to establish communication ties lies in the desire of a person to be part of a group and belong to society. Being a loner, a person is deprived not only of the opportunity to continue his family, he becomes practically defenseless against a stronger enemy and, forced to constantly fight for his life, he stops in development.
The pursuit of internal progress and learning, according to Alderfer, is the crown and essence of the theory of needs. Unlike Maslow, who argued that a personās needs always go from primitive to complex, the Austrian scientist was convinced that, depending on the circumstances, the dynamics of movement can be either upward or downward. What does it depend on?
In his theory of the hierarchy of needs, Alderfer used concepts such as:
- "satisfaction";
- "Frustration."
The individualās desire to rise above primitive needs towards personal growth and social development was called by the scientist āsatisfaction of needsā. The inability to overcome the next bar of the hierarchical ladder and return to the previous step spoke already of the frustration of the body.
Need for achievement in mcclelland theory
The theory of acquired needs from the American psychologist David McClelland almost does not consider the primitive needs of man. The scientist devoted his work to the study of motivational levers that force objects to engage in a given activity, and to the study of the desire of some people to prevail over others.
In the course of his work, the scientist concluded that only an individual who makes efforts to satisfy his needs of a higher order and moves in this direction is able to develop with increasing efficiency. The basis of each successive achievement of the object is the experience gained by him during the period of overcoming the previous stage.
Gradually, a person who has chosen the right tactics of his dynamic growth develops the so-called step length. This means that all the goals that he sets for himself do not exceed his real capabilities and do not require him to exert his strength, and upon reaching them a person can move on without any pause. Responsible decisions are subject to people of this order, and the individual tasks that they take on are always carried out with high clarity.
Further studies of the psychologist showed that the described need for achievement is characteristic not only of individuals, but also of certain societies. Groups united by high aspirations and having a clear goal, have successfully developed in the economic and educational sphere, while societies with a low need for results had a very weak internal structure.
McClelland complicity and dominion
The next point in the theory of acquired needs, McKeland calls complicity as the need to establish friendly contacts with those who are impressed by the object. The higher a personās need for someone elseās approval, as well as a good attitude of everyone around him, the more developed his communication skills are and the easier it is for him to make new acquaintances. The intolerance of loneliness can be an acquired or initial quality of a person, but the ability to form a friendly environment near him comes to a person with experience.
The need to rule is expressed in people in both positive and negative terms. In the first case, the individual seeks to manipulate other people, suppress their resistance and control all processes and reactions that occur in the environment. In the second case, the subject feels the need to abandon any responsibility and tries to get away from situations where possible, in which he will have to be responsible for his actions or the actions of other people.
Based on the theory of human needs of McClelland, we can conclude that all three acquired components of a developed personality not only do not need to be arranged in a hierarchy, but each one can take on a prevailing value. So, with the increased need for power and well-developed leadership or dictatorial abilities, the need for complicity can manifest itself minimally.
Herzberg concept
The main theories of needs include the interesting concept of two factors by Frederick Irwin Herzberg, who established that all human needs can be conditionally divided into two groups:
- motivating - determine the actions and behavior of a person who is satisfied with their work activities;
- hygienic - needs that eliminate all negative factors that impede normal work activities.
Drawing conclusions in his theory of needs, the American psychologist came to the conclusion that hygiene factors are a set of external conditions that can be satisfactory or unsatisfactory for a person. These conditions: payment for labor, social guarantees, working relationships, leadership loyalty, labor safety. If the quality of these conditions is poor, and the employee is not motivated to succeed, then his general condition is regarded as uncomfortable.
The following conclusion, relating to the same theory of needs, states that the personās internal working conditions, such as respect, career growth, responsibility and authority, are important motivating levers for enhancing an individualās beneficial activities. If these conditions are absent in whole or in part, this does not introduce a state of severe discomfort into a person's life. In the presence of all the components of the system, a person has a feeling of absolute satisfaction.
The formation and formation of modern needs
Since the beginning of the period of the primitive communal system, the importance of socialization among cavemen has stood on a par with human needs. The concept of āIā did not exist as such, since in solitude a person could neither feed himself nor protect himself. All the needs of an individual were reduced to the needs of a primary (urgent) and secondary nature:
- Primary necessities included the administration of natural needs, eating, seeking shelter, heating oneself and one's home. Without the full satisfaction of these needs, human life was impossible.
- Secondary necessities also constituted an important part of human life, however, as a result of their complete or partial absence, the existence of the individual did not become endangered. The needs of the secondary importance of the ancient man included sex and personal affection.
In an effort to facilitate their food production and increase their overall comfort, primitive people over time expanded their needs to the framework of a modern understanding of this structure. The conquest of nature and the positioning of oneās personality above its laws has become the starting point for the formation of full-fledged work with its needs of recognition, success and growth.
Since gaining knowledge about the world was the only way to develop labor, a person had a thirst for knowledge and a tendency to streamline the information received. In the same period, one of the very first legislative mechanisms, morality, began to work in primitive society. However, at the very beginning, the only principle guarded by the new concept was the order of observance of interests. In all cases, a person was ordered to first satisfy the needs of the collective and only then his own.
The ability of the first people to translate visual models of the social system in the form of cave paintings, clay figures and oral transmission allowed humanity to take a big step in its development and opened new horizons for it. If we apply the theory of personality needs of Dr. Maslow to the structure of the lifestyle of that time, it will become clear that with the achievement of such a high stage of development as the need for spiritual food, a person has completed his path of formation of a rational personality.
Economic theory
The economic needs of a person are met by a complex commodity-money system, which includes document management, production manipulation, exchange and a range of services at different levels. It is on these factors that the economic theory of needs is based. At this stage of the development of mankind in all civilized countries, the totality of the economic needs of the individual is limited by the available funds.
If you collect and summarize all the realizable needs of a single society, then you can get data on the solvent demand of its population. This means that the motivating key for the acquisition of goods and services by the population is their needs.
The economic needs of society affect the production process in a stimulating way:
- based on the theory of needs motivation, it is clear that the specific needs of the person serve to create conditions and factors that satisfy them to the extent necessary.
- it is human nature to change requests, increasing or decreasing the amount of the required product, strengthening or weakening claims to its quality, which also affects production processes;
- a personās economic needs are met according to the āprimary to secondaryā scheme, that is, goods and services that respond to lower-level requests will always be in high demand among the population.
So, the population motivates production by demand, reflecting the real needs of society, but not all human needs are formed into the requested unit. This happens for several reasons:
- low solvency of the population does not allow him to purchase all the goods and services in need;
- there is a moral factor or features of legal restrictions.
It turns out that a person has a need to satisfy a specific request, but there is no demand motivating the production of this product or service. From this it follows that production does not respond to the direct needs of the population, but to the demand for the indicated products and services, which can be significantly lower than necessary to fully satisfy the needs.
Conditions affecting the effectiveness of meeting the needs of the individual
The theory of satisfaction of needs takes into account that each individual forms his own list of requests that will meet his personal preferences, his attitude to moral and ethical principles, and his desire to develop in a spiritual direction.
It is proved: the higher the personās aspirations lead him away from the needs of a primary nature, the more closely his needs are associated with obtaining knowledge, gaining harmony and spirituality. Conversely, the primitive life of the subject, aimed only at satisfying his lower needs, constantly keeps a person in the framework of an unspiritual environment, preventing him from developing.
A large role in the formation of needs is played by factors independent of the will of the person:
Needs tied to these factors are of stable importance and are not subject to strong fluctuations in demand. These include: medicines and medical equipment, compulsory hygiene products, etc.
Other internal factors that regulate a personās needs are the result of his inclinations, lifestyle, education and work. The individual is free to voluntarily refuse to meet these needs or to meet them. It should be noted that there is a complex system of relationships. On the one hand, a person seeks to satisfy the needs formed by his personal preferences, and on the other hand, his desires gradually change under the influence of the methods available to him to eliminate the deficit.
External conditions affecting the organization of a personās needs are a consequence of his choice of place of residence, since their immediate manifestations are not directly related to the desires of the individual. These are the weather, climatic, seismic features and environmental conditions of the area. The regulation of needs arising from environmental conditions usually consists in eliminating health hazards and bringing a person closer to a state that they perceive as comfortable.