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Interdisciplinary and Applied
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Higher and Lower

Needs
a
A. H. Maslow
a
Department of Psychology , Brooklyn College ,
USA
Published online: 02 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: A. H. Maslow (1948) Higher and Lower Needs, The
Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 25:2, 433-436, DOI:
10.1080/00223980.1948.9917386

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 Published as a separate and in The Journal of Psychology. 1948, %, 433-436.

HIGHER AND LOWER NEEDS*

D e p a r t m e n t of Psychology, Brooklyn C o l l e g e

A. H. MASLOW

This paper attempts to prove that there are real psychological and
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operational differences between those needs called higher and those called
lower. T h i s should be sufficient to establish that the organism itself dic-
tates hierarchies of values, values which the scientific observer reports rather
than creates. I t is necessary thus to prove the obvious because so many
still consider that valhes can never be more than the arbitrary imposition
upon data of the writers own tastes, prejudices, intuitions, or other un-
proved or unprovable assumptions.
T h i s casting out of values from psychology not only weakens it, and
prevents it from reaching its full growth, but also abandons mankind either
to supernaturalism o r to ethical relativism. But if it could be demonstrated
that the organism itself chooses between a prior and a subsequent, a stronger
and a weaker, a higher and a lower, then surely it would be impossible
to maintain that one good has the same value as any other good, or that it
is impossible to choose between them on any permanent basis. O n e such
principle of choice has already been set forth in previous papers (3, 4).
T h e basic needs arrange themselves in a fairly definite hierarchy on the
basis of the principle of relative potency. T h u s the safety need is stronger
than the love need, because it dominates the organism in various demonstrable
ways when both needs are frustrated. I n this sense, the physiological needs
(which are themselves ordered in a sub-hierarchy) are stronger than the
safety needs, which are stronger than the love needs, which in turn are
stronger than the esteem needs. which are stronger than those idiosyncratic
needs w e have called the need for self-actualization.
But this is also an order which ranges from lower to higher in various
other senses which are listed in this paper.
1. T h e higher ticed is a l a t e r plijdetic or evo!utionary d e v z l o p m e n t . W e
share the need for food with all living things, the need for love with (per-
haps) the higher apes, the need for seli-actualization ( a t least through

*Received in the Editorial Office on January 5 , 1948, and published immediately

at Provincetown, Massachusetts. Copyright by The Journal Press.

433
 434 J O U R N A L O F PSYCIIOLOCX

creativeness) with nobody. T h e higher the need the more specificallv

human it is.
2. H i g h e r nerds are later ontogenetic d e v e l o p m z n t . Any individual at
birth shows physical needs, and probably also, in a very inchoate form, needs
safety, e.g., it can probably be frightened o r startled, and probably thrives
better when its world shows enough regularity and orderliness so that it can
be counted upon. It is only after months of life that an infant shows the
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first signs of interpersonal ties 2nd selective affection. Still later we may
see fairly definitely the urges to autonomy, independence, achievement, and
for respect and praise over and above safety and parental love. As for self-
actualization, even a M o z a r t had to wait until he was threc o r four.
3. T h e higher the need t h e less imperative it is f o r sheer survival, the
longer gratification can be postponed, a n d t h e easier it is f o r the need t o
disappear permanently. Higher needs have less ability to dominate, or-
ganize, and press into their service the autonomic reactions and other capa-
cities of the organism, e.g., it is easier to be single minded, monomaniac,
and desperate about safety than about respect. Deprivation of higher n e d s
does not produce as desperate a defense and emergency reaction as is pro-
duced by lower deprivations. Respect is a dispensable luxury when com-
pared with food or safety.
4. L i v i n g a t the higher need level means greater biological efficiency,
greater longevity, less disease, b e t t r r sleep, appetite, etc. T h e psychosomatic
researchers prove again and again that anxiety, fear, lack of love, domina-
tion, etc., tend to encourage undesirable physical, as well as psychological
results.
5. H i g h e r needs are less urgent subjectively. T h e y are less perceptible,
less unmistakable. more easily confounded with other needs by suggestion,
imitation, by mistaken belief o r habit. TObe able to recognize one's own
needs, i.e., to know what one really wants, is a considerable psychological
achievement. T h i s is doubly true for the higher needs.
6. H i g h e r need gratifications produi e m o r e desirable subjective resulls,
i.e., ,more profound happiness, serenity, a n d richness of t h e inner life. Satii-
factions of the safety needs produce at best a feeling of relief and relaxntion.
I n any case they cannot produce, e.g., the ecstasy and happy delirium of
satisfied love.
7. Pursuit a n d gratification of higher needs represents a general health-
ward trend, a trend a w a y f r o m psychopatholoqy. T h e evidence for this state-
ment is presented in another papcr (5).
 A. H . MASLOW 435

8. T h e higher need has more preconditions. T h i s is true if only because

prepotent needs must be gratified before it can be. T h u s it takes more quanta
o f satisfactions for the love need to appear in consciousness than for the safety
need. In a more general sense, it may be said that life is more complex at

the level of the higher needs. T h e search for respect and status involves more
people, a larger scene, a longer run, more means, and partial goals, more
subordinate and preliminary steps than does the search for loye. T h e same
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may be said in turn of this latter need when compared with the search for
safety.
9. H i g h e r needs require b e t t e r outside conditions t o make t h e m possible.
Better environmental conditions (familial, economic, political, educational,
etc.) are all more necessary tu alIow people to love cach other than merely
to keep them from killing each othei.
10. A greater value is usually placed upon t h e higher need than upon
the l o w e r b y those w h o have been chronically gratifird in both. Such people
will sacrifice more for the higher satisfaction, and furthermore will more
readily be able to withstand lower deprivation. For example, they will
find it easier to live ascetic lives, to withstand danger for the sake of principle,
to give up money and prestige for the sake of self-actualization.
11. T h e hig1~t.rthe nzed, the w i d e r is the circle of loue-identification, i.e.,
the greater is t h e n u m b e r of people love-identified w i t h , a n d t h e greater is
the average degree of looe-identification.2 W e may define love-identification
as in principle? a merging into a single hierarchy of prepotency of the r i d s
of two o r more people. T h i s is, of course, a matter of degree. T w o people
who love each other well will react to each others needs and their own
indiscriminately. Indeed the others need is his own need.
12. T h e pursuit a n d the gratification of the higher needs have desirable
civic a n d sociul consequences. T o some extent, the higher the need the less
selfish it must be, Hunger is highly egocentric; the only way to satisfy
it is to satisfy oneself. But the search for love and respect necessarily in-
volves other people. Moreover, it involves satisfaction for these other
people. Moreover, people who have enough basic Satisfaction to look for

It should be easy enough to define better impersonally, e.g., of t w o educationa

systems which purport to teach arithmetic, that system is better which actually does so.
A fuller explanation of thir principle will be presented in a book now being
prepared. T h e writer considers the principle of love-identification of prime im-
portance to the theory of inter-personal relations and of sociological phenomena in
general. Oi course, it also supplies the answer to those, e.g., the Gestalt p s i -
chologists who consider any need to be a selfish nerd, and who synonymize the
study of motivation and the study of selfishness.
 436 J O U R N A L OF PSYCHOLOGY

love and respect (rather than just food and safety) tend to develop such
qualities as loyalty, friendliness, and civic consciousness, and to become
better parents, husbands, teachers, public servants, etc. ( 5 ) .
13. Satisfaction of higher needs is closer t o self-actualization ( 2 ) than is
lower need satisfaction. If the theory of self-actualization ( t o be presented
in another publication) be accepted, then this is an important difference.
Among other things, it means that w e may expect to find in people living
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a t the higher need level, a larger number and greater degree of the qualities
found in self-actualizing people.
14. T h e pursuit and gratification of the higher needs lead t o greater,
stronger, and truer individualism. This may seem to contradict the pre-
vious statement that living at higher need levels means more love-identifica-
tion, i.e., more socialization. However it may sound logically, it is never-
theless an empirical reality. People living at the level of self-actualization
are, in fact, found simultaneously to love mankind most and to be the most
developed idiosyncratically. T h i s completely supports Fromms contention
that self-love ( o r better, self-respect) is synergic with rather than antagonistic
to love for others ( 1 ) . H i s discussion of individuality, spontaneity, and
robotization is also relevant?

REFERENCES
1. FROMM,E. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar k Rinehart, 1941.
2. GOLDSTEIN, K. The Organism. New York: American Book, 1937.
3. MASLOW, A. H. Preface to motivation theory. Prychcromat. Mcd., 1943, 6, 85-92.
4. - . A dynamic :heory of human motivation. Prychol. Rra., 1943, 60,
370-396.
5. -. Some consequences of basic need gratification. (To be published.)
P . 0. B o x 398
Pleasant on, California

T h e points listed in this paper also tend to support and confirm the order of the
hierarchy of needs presented in ( 4 ) .