Author: Paul Ratner / Source: Big Think
- Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy of Needs” describes different levels of human motivation.
- A new study updates the hierarchy through modern methods.
- The research shows that self-actualized people share 10 specific traits.
Are you a self-actualized person? The American psychologist Abraham Maslow famously proposed in 1954 the “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” which theorized that psychological health culminated in self-actualization. Maslow saw that as being able to fulfill your potential, becoming your true self.
Now the psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, from Columbia University, published a study that updates Maslow’s work with modern statistical methods and proposes 10 specific characteristics that are shared by self-actualized people.
The pyramid of human needs devised by Maslow was based on the idea that human motivations follow a prioritizing pattern. The 5-level hierarchy of needs goes from purely “physiological” towards “love”, and “esteem,” with each stage needing to be satisfied before moving on to the next.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s ideas are regarded as humanistic psychology, arising in part as a reaction to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism. This line of thought sees individuals as inherently striving towards self-actualization, where their capabilities and creativity are fully expressed. This point of view also regards all people as…
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