4 - Maslow Flashcards
1
Q
What are some key features of humanistic theories?
A
- focus on meaning of life for individual
- desire to help person achieve understanding, wholeness, meaning (integration)
- focus on individual’s unique perception of the world (construal)
- avoid reductionism
(don’t believe you can understand a person through parts) - more idiographic than other approaches
2
Q
What are the humanistic principles?
A
- the primary study of psychology should be the experiencing person (phenomenology - conscious experience - of a person)
- choice, creativity, and self-realization
- only personally and socially significant problems should be studied (not because we don’t have the answers)
- dignity and enhancement of people
3
Q
What is Maslow’s instinctoid motivation?
A
- “instinctoid” = instinct-like
- animal instincts = uncontrollable patterns of behaviour
- human instincts = not dominating or uncontrollable
- human instincts develop organically, but are not dominating, can be controlled/repressed
can be modified and changed through cultural expectations and learning
4
Q
What are the three different ways that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are organized?
A
- biological → psychological = bottom of the pyramid are the foundational needs you need to survive
- phylogenetically old → recent = time in human evolution when needs emerged, we share the upper needs with fewer organisms
- early → late (autogentical development) = development period in our own lives
5
Q
How do needs develop?
A
- needs emerge incrementally
- when a lower level is only partially met, the other needs won’t appear
- when it starts to be met (around 50% met), then the next one will start to emerge, and so on
6
Q
What does having overdetermined needs mean?
A
- our behaviours are simultaneously motivated by a number of different needs
7
Q
What are the levels in the hierarchy of needs?
A
- physiological
- safety
- love and belongingness
- esteem
- self-actualization
8
Q
What are physiological needs?
A
food, water, oxygen, etc.
9
Q
What are safety needs?
A
- structure, order, predictability, security
- we get uncomfortable with ambiguity
- eg. free from attack, safe from natural disasters, etc.
10
Q
What are belongingness needs?
A
- strong instinctoid to be part of a human grouping
- need to feel that we belong
- as we get older, our identification become broader
11
Q
What are love needs?
A
- need to be loved by others
- need to give love (just as strong and important as receiving love)
- failure to meet this need is the most important source of human pathology, unhappiness
12
Q
What are esteem needs?
A
- recognition and respect from others
- recognition and respect from ourselves (self-esteem), feeling good about ourselves
13
Q
What are self-actualization needs?
A
- part of a higher hierarchy
- for most, this is what guides us through our lives (ongoing actualization)
- only 1 - 5% achieve full self-actualization
- if/when self-actualization appears, it brings about a psychological change in how we see and interact with the world
- intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism
14
Q
What are the additional needs?
A
- cognitive needs
- aesthetic needs
- both are continuously present from a very early age
15
Q
What are cognitive needs?
A
- to know, to understand, explore, curiosity
- doesn’t develop at any particular time
- can be a powerful motive for some people
- behaviour can still be over-determined
16
Q
What are aesthetic needs?
A
- beauty, artistic creativity, balance, symmetry
- some are made physically ill by ugliness
17
Q
What are the exceptions to the hierarchy?
A
- esteem comes before love and belongingness = don’t care if accepted by others, but want to be respected or feared
- long satisfied need may be undervalued =
when a need is taken away from someone who’s always had their needs met, the pyramid doesn’t collapse; you can go without them for a period of time - creativity may overwhelm all other drives
- satisfaction of constant lack = higher drives never occur in situations where the lower needs have never been satisfied
18
Q
What are D-motives?
A
- the bottom part of the pyramid are motives driven by needs (deficiency motives = D-motives)
- two characteristics while engaging in D-perception/D-cognition
- energetic = individual is active and doing
- narrow focus = focus on relevant actions
19
Q
What are B-motives?
A
- self-actualization is guided by being motives = B-motives (growth-motivated)
- values and desires
- “second naivete”, wise innocence, child-like
- two characteristics while engaging in B-perception/B-cognition
- passive = not striving for things, taking life as it comes, openness
- lack of focus = open to many experiences, taking in what’s around you (mindfulness)
20
Q
What are B-values?
A
- dichotomy transcendence = realizing that things aren’t black and white
- aliveness
- simplicity = recognizing that it isn’t important, not necessarily about throwing it away
- richness = seeing a lot in a little
- effortlessness = state of mind, doing something effortlessly (not about inactivity)
- playfulness = sense of humour, see the fun in things
- self-sufficiency = best love occurs when having them in your life enriches it
- meaningfulness = purpose, meaning, value (found in helping others)
21
Q
What is Maslow’s eightfold way?
A
- eight process that help us toward (or prepare us for) self-actualization
- borrowed from Buddhism
22
Q
What are the elements of Maslow’s eightfold way?
A
- self-awareness = need to know who you are
- self-development = using all of our skills to accomplish our goals,
- growth choices = not taking the safe choice
- trusting judgement = you are the only person who knows what is right for you
- peak experiences = brief intense period of B-cognition, sense of wonder and awe
- honesty = take responsibility for your choices and its consequences
- concentration = ability to get lost in something
- no ego defenses = being aware and open to information about yourself
23
Q
Who are Maslow’s probable self-actualizers?
A
- Jane Addams
- Albert Einstein
- Aldous Huxley
- Thomas Jefferson
- William James
- Albert Schweitzer
- Baruch Spinoza
24
Q
What are the characteristics of Maslow’s self-actualized individual?
A
- perceives reality fully, accurately
- accepts self and others
- identifies with humanity
- spontaneous and natural (authentic)
- freshness of appreciation
- detached, needs privacy (guided by a sense within themselves)
- few deep relationships
- independent of environment
- resists enculturation
- periodic peak experiences
- accepts democratic values (dignity of every human)
- strong sense of personal ethics
- well-developed sense of humour
- is creative
- problem rather than self-oriented
25
What are the barriers to self-actualization?
- inability to meet lower needs
- lack/fear of self-knowledge
- social/cultural norms
- failure to make growth choices
- absence of proper environment (freedom of speech and action, freedom of inquiry, proper level of challenge or stimulation)
26
What are the criticisms of Maslow's theory?
- non-scientific methodology
- personal criteria for self-actualization
- ambiguous, unclear terminology
- creativity when needs not met = under the worst possible circumstances, some still self-actualize
- little attention to development
