Describe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and discuss how Maslow felt motivation is shaped. How does the contemporary hierarchy of needs (Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010) differs from Maslow’s? Which model do you prefer, and why??

What will be an ideal response?

ANSWER:
?Maslow viewed motivation as a hierarchy of needs, in which lower levels must be satisfied before the individual has the time and energy to pursue higher level needs. At the lowest level of the pyramid, we find “physiological needs,” including food, water, and shelter. These basic needs must be met on a daily basis, or life will be threatened. Consequently, if meeting these needs is a challenge for a person, Maslow predicted that the person is unlikely to care about needs appearing at higher levels of the hierarchy. Once physiological needs are generally met, Maslow suggests that we turn our attention to safety, and then to belongingness, represented by the love and affection of others. For Maslow, these three lower categories are essential to human life. Freed from the challenges of meeting basic needs, we begin to seek esteem, or the respect we receive from other members of the community. At the pinnacle of human striving, however, is the goal of self-actualization, according to Maslow. A person seeking self-actualization desires to fully meet his or her potential.
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Maslow’s classic theory received a recent modification that retained the overall hierarchical organization but added three new perspectives: the evolutionary functions of motives, the development of motives over the life span, and the cognitive priorities assigned to motives in response to environmental stimuli. This modified pyramid replaces self-actualization with mate acquisition, mate retention, and parenting. The authors of the revision noted that self-actualization was interesting, but they could not find an evolutionary explanation for why we would seek to reach this level. Many of the activities described by Maslow as helping people to reach self-actualization, such as art and poetry, might be better explained as efforts to gain status, which in turn would attract mates.