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In his 1943 article "Preface to Motivation Theory," Maslow rested his theory on the following thirteen propositions
In his 1943 article "Preface to Motivation Theory," Maslow rested his theory on the following thirteen propositions


# '''Motivation is a property of the ''person''''', not a body part or isolated subsystem. When someone is hungry (or afraid, or lonely), that state alters perception, memory, emotion, thinking, and behaviour broadly—not just “stomach activity.” A motivation theory that treats drives as separable pieces will miss how changes ripple through the whole organism. John Smith is hungry, not John Smith's stomach—the entire individual is motivated, not merely a part. When hungry, a person changes holistically: perceptions shift to notice food more readily, memories favour past meals, emotions become tense, and thoughts focus on obtaining sustenance rather than abstract problems. Satisfaction likewise comes to the whole person, making reductionist approaches that isolate bodily functions theoretically and experimentally unsound.
# '''Don’t use hunger as the paradigm for all motivation.''' Hunger looks “simple” because it has a clearer somatic base and is easier to isolate experimentally, but that makes it a misleading model for typical human motives. Most everyday motivations (status, belonging, approval, money, love) are less localizable and more entangled with personality and culture. Maslow argues we learn ''more'' about general motivation by studying complex motives like love than by treating hunger as the master template. We should not take a localizable, somatic, partial drive as paradigm for motivation theory. Hunger is a poor model because it's unusually isolated, less common than other motivations, and has a known somatic base—features atypical of most human desires. Better paradigms would be the desire for money or especially love, which clearly demonstrate that most drives cannot be separated from the whole organism or localized to specific bodily systems or even limited to a single base need. Using hunger as the standard case leads to trivial, invalid experiments rather than tackling the difficult but important problems of holistic motivation.
# '''Conscious desires are usually means, not ultimate ends (and unconscious motivation matters).''' Many surface wants (money, cars, clothes) function as instruments for ''deeper aims'' (security, safety, respect, love, self-worth, truth). Because those deeper aims often aren’t fully conscious, motivation theory must address unconscious goals and not just what people report at face value. In practice, this pushes theory toward interpreting “what a desire is for,” not merely cataloguing the desire. The study of motivation should stress ultimate rather than partial goals—ends rather than means to ends.  Through deeper analysis, these surface desires inevitably lead to fundamental needs that require no further justification, such as love, safety, or self-esteem. Therefore motivation theory must focus on these ultimate, largely unconscious goals rather than merely cataloguing conscious wishes.<blockquote>We  want money  so  that  we  may have an automobile. In tum we  want an automobile because the neighbors have one and we wish not to feel inferior to them so that we can retain our own self-respect and so that we can be loved and respected by others. <ref name=":0">“Preface to Motivation Theory.” ''Psychosomatic Medicine'' 5, no. 1 (1943): 85-92. p. 87.</ref></blockquote>
# '''Fundamental goals are more universal than the culturally shaped paths used to reach them.''' Different societies can channel the same underlying need (e.g., esteem) into very different visible behaviours (hunter, warrior, healer, ascetic). So if you classify motivation only by overt acts, you’ll mistakenly treat culturally different “routes” as different motives. Maslow’s point is that universality is more likely at the level of deep goals than at the level of specific, local desires. Also, not only conscious but also unconscious motivations must be accounted for in a theory of motivation. Since fundamental goals rarely appear directly in consciousness, sound theory cannot neglect unconscious processes that may be even more important than conscious content. Psychoanalysis demonstrates that the relationship between conscious desires and unconscious aims can be indirect or even negative, as in reaction formations where the surface desire masks its opposite. Exclusive study of conscious motivation leaves out crucial determinants of behaviour and results in incomplete, misleading theory.  This one is rather important because it provides a base for unifying humanity despite widespread cultural difference! As Maslow said "...There is now sufficient anthropological evidence to indicate that the fundamental or ultimate desires of all human beings do not differ nearly as much as do their conscious everyday desires."<ref name=":0" /> In other words, deep down we are all more alike than different. Further<blockquote>It may then be that, if we  think of ultimates, the one individual's desire  to  be a good hunter has the same dynamics and the same fundamental  aim  as  the desire  of  the other individual to be a good medicine man.  We may then assert that it would  be  more  useful for psychologists to combine these two seemingly disparate conscious  desires  into the  same category rather than to put them into different categories on purely behavioral grounds.  Apparently ends- in-themselves  are  far  more  universal  than  the roads taken to achieve those ends, for these roads are determined locally in the specific culture.<ref name=":0" /> </blockquote>
# '''A single behavior/desire can express multiple motives at once.''' Acts (including sexual behaviour, symptom formation, achievement striving) are often “channels” through which ''several needs flow simultaneously''. What looks like one motive on the surface may serve safety, esteem, closeness, revenge, belonging, or multiple aims together. That’s why purely behavioral classification tends to oversimplify and misread meaning. Maslow emphasizes that it is "unusual,  not usual that an act or a conscious wish has but one motivation."<ref name=":0" /> Sexual behavior, for instance, might simultaneously serve needs for masculinity assurance, closeness, safety, love, or prestige, though consciously experienced as simply sexual. Similarly, a hysterically paralyzed arm may fulfill multiple opposing wishes for revenge, pity, love, and respect all at once. Acts typically have plural motivations, and taking them at face value arbitrarily excludes the possibility of total understanding
# '''Motivation is constant and woven into nearly every organismic state.''' Maslow argues motivation is not a rare “special state” that switches on occasionally; it’s continuous, fluctuating, and complex. Even states like feeling rejected are inherently motivating because they generate cascades of striving, defense, hostility, and repair attempts. A sound theory treats “what is happening in the organism” as inherently directional and goal-linked. A static statement like "this person feels rejected" only begins the analysis—a dynamic psychology must add countless statements about the motivational consequences that automatically follow: tension, unhappiness, compulsive desires to regain affection, defensive efforts, hostility accumulation. The feeling itself generates new motivational processes, making motivation constant, fluctuating, and complex rather than a special, qualitatively distinct state. Every organismic condition, both somatic and psychic, carries motivational implications.
# '''Humans are perpetually wanting; needs interact and tend to form a hierarchy of prepotency.'''  Satisfaction is usually partial and temporary; when one desire is met, another comes forward. Importantly, which need appears depends on what’s already (relatively) satisfied—creative or “higher” strivings presuppose some baseline of safety, belonging, etc. This requires studying motivations as an interdependent system rather than isolated episodes


===Proposition===
==Abraham Maslow Index==
==Abraham Maslow Index==


Revision as of 16:16, 6 January 2026

Human Motivation

According to Abraham Maslow's 1943 Theory of Human Motivation,[1] humans are motivated by a set of biologically rooted needs that they are driven to fulfill. Fulfilling these needs creates healthy, happy, fully realized human beings. Thwarting these needs creates miserable, diminished, neurotic and psychotic human being.

Concept Map

Key Terms

Eupsychia > Eupsychian Theory >

Eupsychian Theory

Human Motivation >

Related LP Terms

Human Motivation > Ego Mode

Non-LP Related Terms

Human Motivation >

Notes

In his 1943 article "Preface to Motivation Theory," Maslow rested his theory on the following thirteen propositions

  1. Motivation is a property of the person, not a body part or isolated subsystem. When someone is hungry (or afraid, or lonely), that state alters perception, memory, emotion, thinking, and behaviour broadly—not just “stomach activity.” A motivation theory that treats drives as separable pieces will miss how changes ripple through the whole organism. John Smith is hungry, not John Smith's stomach—the entire individual is motivated, not merely a part. When hungry, a person changes holistically: perceptions shift to notice food more readily, memories favour past meals, emotions become tense, and thoughts focus on obtaining sustenance rather than abstract problems. Satisfaction likewise comes to the whole person, making reductionist approaches that isolate bodily functions theoretically and experimentally unsound.
  2. Don’t use hunger as the paradigm for all motivation. Hunger looks “simple” because it has a clearer somatic base and is easier to isolate experimentally, but that makes it a misleading model for typical human motives. Most everyday motivations (status, belonging, approval, money, love) are less localizable and more entangled with personality and culture. Maslow argues we learn more about general motivation by studying complex motives like love than by treating hunger as the master template. We should not take a localizable, somatic, partial drive as paradigm for motivation theory. Hunger is a poor model because it's unusually isolated, less common than other motivations, and has a known somatic base—features atypical of most human desires. Better paradigms would be the desire for money or especially love, which clearly demonstrate that most drives cannot be separated from the whole organism or localized to specific bodily systems or even limited to a single base need. Using hunger as the standard case leads to trivial, invalid experiments rather than tackling the difficult but important problems of holistic motivation.
  3. Conscious desires are usually means, not ultimate ends (and unconscious motivation matters). Many surface wants (money, cars, clothes) function as instruments for deeper aims (security, safety, respect, love, self-worth, truth). Because those deeper aims often aren’t fully conscious, motivation theory must address unconscious goals and not just what people report at face value. In practice, this pushes theory toward interpreting “what a desire is for,” not merely cataloguing the desire. The study of motivation should stress ultimate rather than partial goals—ends rather than means to ends. Through deeper analysis, these surface desires inevitably lead to fundamental needs that require no further justification, such as love, safety, or self-esteem. Therefore motivation theory must focus on these ultimate, largely unconscious goals rather than merely cataloguing conscious wishes.

    We  want money  so  that  we  may have an automobile. In tum we  want an automobile because the neighbors have one and we wish not to feel inferior to them so that we can retain our own self-respect and so that we can be loved and respected by others. [2]

  4. Fundamental goals are more universal than the culturally shaped paths used to reach them. Different societies can channel the same underlying need (e.g., esteem) into very different visible behaviours (hunter, warrior, healer, ascetic). So if you classify motivation only by overt acts, you’ll mistakenly treat culturally different “routes” as different motives. Maslow’s point is that universality is more likely at the level of deep goals than at the level of specific, local desires. Also, not only conscious but also unconscious motivations must be accounted for in a theory of motivation. Since fundamental goals rarely appear directly in consciousness, sound theory cannot neglect unconscious processes that may be even more important than conscious content. Psychoanalysis demonstrates that the relationship between conscious desires and unconscious aims can be indirect or even negative, as in reaction formations where the surface desire masks its opposite. Exclusive study of conscious motivation leaves out crucial determinants of behaviour and results in incomplete, misleading theory. This one is rather important because it provides a base for unifying humanity despite widespread cultural difference! As Maslow said "...There is now sufficient anthropological evidence to indicate that the fundamental or ultimate desires of all human beings do not differ nearly as much as do their conscious everyday desires."[2] In other words, deep down we are all more alike than different. Further

    It may then be that, if we  think of ultimates, the one individual's desire to  be a good hunter has the same dynamics and the same fundamental  aim  as  the desire  of  the other individual to be a good medicine man.  We may then assert that it would  be  more  useful for psychologists to combine these two seemingly disparate conscious  desires  into the  same category rather than to put them into different categories on purely behavioral grounds.  Apparently ends- in-themselves  are  far  more  universal  than  the roads taken to achieve those ends, for these roads are determined locally in the specific culture.[2]

  5. A single behavior/desire can express multiple motives at once. Acts (including sexual behaviour, symptom formation, achievement striving) are often “channels” through which several needs flow simultaneously. What looks like one motive on the surface may serve safety, esteem, closeness, revenge, belonging, or multiple aims together. That’s why purely behavioral classification tends to oversimplify and misread meaning. Maslow emphasizes that it is "unusual,  not usual that an act or a conscious wish has but one motivation."[2] Sexual behavior, for instance, might simultaneously serve needs for masculinity assurance, closeness, safety, love, or prestige, though consciously experienced as simply sexual. Similarly, a hysterically paralyzed arm may fulfill multiple opposing wishes for revenge, pity, love, and respect all at once. Acts typically have plural motivations, and taking them at face value arbitrarily excludes the possibility of total understanding
  6. Motivation is constant and woven into nearly every organismic state. Maslow argues motivation is not a rare “special state” that switches on occasionally; it’s continuous, fluctuating, and complex. Even states like feeling rejected are inherently motivating because they generate cascades of striving, defense, hostility, and repair attempts. A sound theory treats “what is happening in the organism” as inherently directional and goal-linked. A static statement like "this person feels rejected" only begins the analysis—a dynamic psychology must add countless statements about the motivational consequences that automatically follow: tension, unhappiness, compulsive desires to regain affection, defensive efforts, hostility accumulation. The feeling itself generates new motivational processes, making motivation constant, fluctuating, and complex rather than a special, qualitatively distinct state. Every organismic condition, both somatic and psychic, carries motivational implications.
  7. Humans are perpetually wanting; needs interact and tend to form a hierarchy of prepotency. Satisfaction is usually partial and temporary; when one desire is met, another comes forward. Importantly, which need appears depends on what’s already (relatively) satisfied—creative or “higher” strivings presuppose some baseline of safety, belonging, etc. This requires studying motivations as an interdependent system rather than isolated episodes

Abraham Maslow Index

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ Specified in Maslow, A. H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–96. https://doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.115.179622. and Maslow, A. H. “Preface to Motivation Theory.” Psychosomatic Medicine 5, no. 1 (1943): 85. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006842-194301000-00012
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 “Preface to Motivation Theory.” Psychosomatic Medicine 5, no. 1 (1943): 85-92. p. 87.


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