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Critical Review of Maslow’s Hierarchy Theory


Abraham Maslow suggested that human needs exist at a number of different levels, from basic physiological needs such as hunger, to higher level needs such as self-development and self-fulfilment. People are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfil the next one, and so on. Maslow’s theory, believes that people possess a set of motivation systems without any rewards or unconscious desires (Maslow, 1943).

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This pyramid starts with the basic physiological needs such as shelter, air, food etc. And moves to safety needs such as warmth etc. and climbs up to social needs and later esteem needs and finally self-actualization. This pyramid shows us that people satisfy their lowest level of needs ultimately it reaches the highest needs such as self-actualization.

Critical evaluation of Maslow’s theory

There are some limitations concern on his methodology used in his theory. In his methodology he has used qualitative method called biographical analysis to prove his theory. In this biographical analysis, he has developed qualities as characteristic of specific group of people (McLeod, 2017). When analysing this from a scientific view there reveals lot of loop holes in this theory.

The methodology he has used is very subjective because it depends on the opinion of the researcher. Opinions normally lacks the validity of any data that is available. With this argument Maslows theory cannot be accepted as scientific fact. Another fact is the major difficulty associated with Maslow’s model, lies in its apparent rigidity (Trigg, 2004) .While few people would deny that there are lower level and higher-level needs. Many would dispute that people do tend to satisfy their need in relatively systematic way from the bottom to the top as it were. Another criticism of Maslow’s need theory is that no single motivation theory can explain any situation of all people that is not uniform. (Neher, 2000) This theory also fails to consider the cultural influence to people in a society.

As we have discussed, earlier there is no scientific evidence to prove this theory. This theory fails to illustrate and expand on the differences between social and intellectual needs of individualistic societies and those raised in collectivist societies. This is more evident as Maslow was from United States as a highly individualistic nation. The need that come from individualistic societies are more self centered than those in collectivist societies.

In conclusion Maslaws theory has its limitations and weaknesses, related to environment and cultural influences.

References

McLeod, (2017). 'Simply Psychology Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs', i(1), pp. 3-7.

Neher, A.,(2000). 'Maslow's Theory of Motivation' 31(3), pp. 89-112.

Trigg, A. B., (2004). 'Review of Social Economy. Social Critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, 62(3), pp. 393-406.


Maslow, A (1943). ‘A theory of human motivation’. Psychological review, 50(4); PP. 200-330.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 1, 2017 at 9:58 PM

    Good flow.. in the references Author, Year, Book title, Edition (If it is edited), City and Publisher to be mentioned.

    ReplyDelete

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