Maslow's pyramid of human needs. Need for recognition

In a broad sense, needs are defined as a source of activity and a form of communication between a living organism and the outside world.

Human social needs are desires and aspirations inherent as a representative of the human race.

Humanity - social system, without which personal development is impossible. A person is always part of a community of people. Carrying out social aspirations and desires, it develops and manifests itself as.

Belonging to a human society determines the emergence of human social needs. They are experienced as desires, drives, aspirations, brightly colored emotionally. They form the motives of activity and determine the direction of behavior, replacing each other as some desires are realized and others are actualized.

Biological desires and nature of people are expressed in the need to maintain vital activity and the optimal level of functioning of the body. This is achieved by satisfying a need for something. People, like animals, have special shape satisfying all types of biological needs - unconscious instincts.

The question of the nature of needs remains controversial in the scientific community. Some scientists reject the social nature of desires and drives, while others ignore the biological basis.

Types of social needs

Social aspirations, desires, and drives are determined by people’s belonging to society and are satisfied only in it.

1. “For myself”: self-identification, self-affirmation, power, recognition.
2. “For others”: altruism, free help, protection, friendship, love.
3. “Together with others”: peace on Earth, justice, rights and freedoms, independence.

• Self-identification lies in the desire to be similar to a specific person, image or ideal. The child identifies himself with the parent of the same gender and recognizes himself as a boy/girl. The need for self-identification is periodically updated in the process of life, when a person becomes a schoolchild, student, specialist, parent, and so on.
• Self-affirmation is necessary, and it is expressed in the realization of potential, well-deserved respect among people and a person’s assertion of himself as a professional in his favorite business. Also, many people strive for power and calling among people for their own personal purposes, for themselves.
• Altruism is free help, even to the detriment of one’s own interests, prosocial behavior. A person cares about another individual as about himself.
• Unfortunately, selfless friendship is rare in our time. A true friend- value. Friendship should be selfless, not for profit, but because relative position to each other.
• Love is the strongest desire of each of us. As a special feeling and type of interpersonal relationship, it is identified with happiness. It's hard to overestimate her. This is the reason for the creation of families and the appearance of new people on Earth. The overwhelming number of psychological and physical problems come from unsatisfied, unrequited, unhappy love. Each of us wants to love and be loved, and also have a family. Love is the most powerful stimulus for personal growth; it inspires and inspires. The love of children for their parents and parents for their children, the love between a man and a woman, for their business, work, city, country, for all people and the whole world, for life, for themselves is the foundation for the development of a harmonious, holistic personality. When a person loves and is loved, he becomes the creator of his life. Love fills it with meaning.

Each of us on Earth has universal social desires. All people, regardless of nationality and religion, want peace, not war; respect for your rights and freedoms, not enslavement.

Justice, morality, independence, humanity are universal human values. Everyone desires them for themselves, their loved ones, and humanity as a whole.

When realizing your personal aspirations and desires, you need to remember about the people around you. By harming nature and society, people harm themselves.

Classification of social needs

Psychology has developed several dozen different classifications of needs. Most general classification defines two types of desires:

1. Primary or congenital:

• biological or material needs (food, water, sleep and others);
• existential (security and confidence in the future).

2. Secondary or acquired:

• social needs (for belonging, communication, interaction, love and others);
• prestigious (respect, self-esteem);
• spiritual (self-realization, self-expression, creative activity).

The most famous classification of social needs was developed by A. Maslow and is known as the “Pyramid of Needs”.

This is the hierarchy of human aspirations from lowest to highest:

1. physiological (food, sleep, carnal and others);
2. need for security (housing, property, stability);
3. social (love, friendship, family, belonging);
4. respect and recognition of the individual (both by other people and by oneself);
5. self-actualization (self-realization, harmony, happiness).

As can be seen, these two classifications similarly define social needs as desires for love and belonging.

The importance of social needs

Natural physiological and material desires are always paramount, since the possibility of survival depends on them.

Social needs of a person are given a secondary role; they follow the physiological ones, but are more significant for the human personality.

Examples of such significance can be observed when a person suffers a need, giving preference to satisfying a secondary need: a student, instead of sleeping, is preparing for an exam; a mother forgets to eat while caring for her baby; the man endures physical pain wanting to impress a woman.

A person strives for activity in society, socially useful work, the establishment of positive interpersonal relationships, and wants to be recognized and successful in a social environment. It is necessary to satisfy these desires for successful coexistence with other people in society.

Social needs such as friendship, love, and family are of unconditional importance.

Using the example of relationship social needs people in love with the physiological need for carnal relationships and with the instinct of procreation, one can understand how interdependent and connected these attractions are.

The instinct of procreation is complemented by care, tenderness, respect, mutual understanding, common interests, and love arises.

Personality is not formed outside of society, without communication and interaction with people, without satisfying social needs.

Examples of children raised by animals (there have been several such incidents in the history of mankind) are a clear confirmation of the importance of love, communication, and society. Such children, once in the human community, were never able to become full members of it. When a person experiences only primary drives, he becomes like an animal and actually becomes one.

The need for recognition is an attempt to assert oneself and all one’s manifestations. It is expressed, in turn, in the need to have one’s own unconditional right to one’s actions, ideas, plans, and the method of their implementation.

I often found myself in situations where the obviously erroneous opinion of others about the motives of my actions was overwhelming, strong, and I could not fight it. I tried in vain to defend my good intentions, but those around me did not even listen to me. And the more I defended the absence of evil intentions in my actions (I justified myself), the more I fell into the category of “guilty”. Perhaps an inquisitive reader will have doubts about the adequacy of the assessment of the events taking place. But, first of all, let’s agree on honesty - otherwise there’s no point in even writing to me and reading to you. A Secondly, let’s take as an axiom the statement that no one knows your (or my) motives, feelings and desires better than you (and, accordingly, me).

When there is malicious criticism, misunderstanding, unfair judgments and other unkind trends around, no matter how much you answer, you will still be misunderstood. The very fact of the presence of an incorrect and loud judgment of others speaks of their inability to understand and accept another person, his different point of view. It is pointless and useless to prove anything to them.

What kind of situations are these in which a person is forced to defend or prove something of himself or make excuses? After all, no one should be accountable to anyone for their actions.

Some psychologists recommend looking back to childhood to find the causes of painful experiences. Somewhere, at that age, the wrong attention was paid to me. This was not what a child needed to develop confidence in his own significance, importance, faith in himself, in his strength, in individuality, uniqueness. My achievements were not noticed. They didn't pay attention to my sorrows or joys. It was as if I hadn't lived. Sometimes I even thought: “What if I die? Then everyone will notice me! At least they will grieve..."

Someone will say that at this age a child really hasn’t accomplished anything yet, hasn’t achieved anything. And it is very small - nothing to even think about.

But I exist, and I am a person, I am worthy of respect, regardless of whether I “deserved” it or not! Why do I always “beg” someone for “permission” for my thoughts, actions and actions?! Every person is an individual, not from a certain age (when he “earns respect”), but certainly from the moment of his birth. “The bearer of an individual principle” – that’s what it says on Wikipedia. Does the individual principle require any external confirmation? It is with each of us. There will never be anyone like me or someone like you anywhere.

A healthy sense of self-worth and importance should be present from birth. From the very moment you knew (you definitely should know this!) that they were waiting for you and were very happy about your arrival. You are important to your parents. They hear you, give importance to your feelings and experiences. They respect your creative and exploratory impulses.

And today it’s already 30, 40 or 50 years. And you didn't become someone. You tried, you tried your best. Sincerely made every effort. But no one appreciated this. And you yourself didn’t appreciate it either. Yes, perhaps you, like everyone else, have children (or not), have a job, a house, an apartment, a car (or not - it doesn’t matter). But the important thing is that the most important thing is missing, what you have been working towards for so long and persistently.

Everyone knows their own important but unfulfilled life goals.

So what now? And now the hero, who has not taken place, does not respect himself, splashing with saliva, proves to others his opinion, worth, and begs for the right to be.

Whoever you are, stop!

Give yourself all the rights to yourself. You shouldn’t try to be with others and yourself at the same time – it’s impossible. Stay alone for now. Because this is your relationship with yourself, not with others. And understand to the depths of your soul - as much as you can - a few simple truths that do not require any explanation or evidence.

1. You have the right to life. You are given this right by the very fact of life. And no one has the authority to decide how you go through your life.

1. By the mere fact of your birth, you have the unconditional right to be yourself. You were already born as yourself, therefore, you were designed that way. Is there any point in arguing with the idea of ​​nature or God?

1. Every person has the right to their own opinion.

1. Each person decides for himself what to do. All your actions are justified by your views on life, needs, priorities, feelings, life experiences.

1. You have the right to own desires and even mistakes. These are your mistakes. And you are responsible for them. You do not have to answer to anyone for your actions (we are talking about legal actions, not unnatural behavior).

1. You have the right to yours personal experience. To your decisions. On your own life path, in the end. Because your life can completely belong only to you.

All this is your personal territory. Within its limits (without affecting the interests of other people), you have the right to anything.

However, having given yourself these rights, grant them to others as well. Within their own space, another person has as many rights to everything that is theirs as you do.

This article is part of a series of articles dedicated to the series Books "Men from the Closet" The first part has already been published on the Internet (there are seven in total). How to become a self-sufficient person? How to break away from society? How to stop depending on the attitude or judgment of strangers? And how, finally, can you learn to accept yourself despite even the hostile attitude of others? – All the answers are in the voiced books.

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Theory of human needs - Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs

There are 5 basic human needs (according to A. Maslow’s theory):

• Physiological needs (food, water, warmth, shelter, sex, sleep, health, cleanliness).
• The need for safety and protection (including stability).
• The need to belong to social group, involvement and support. IN in this case it's about partner, family, friends, intimacy and affection.
• The need for respect and recognition (self-esteem, self-esteem, confidence, prestige, fame, recognition of merit).
• The need for self-expression (realization of one’s abilities and talents).

The pyramid of needs reflects one of the most popular and well-known theories of motivation - the theory of the hierarchy of needs.

Maslow distributed needs as they increase, explaining this construction by the fact that a person cannot experience needs high level, for now it needs more primitive things. The basis is physiology (quenching hunger, thirst, sexual need, etc.). A step higher is the need for security, above it is the need for affection and love, as well as to belong to a social group. The next stage is the need for respect and approval, above which Maslow placed cognitive needs (thirst for knowledge, desire to perceive as much information as possible). Next comes the need for aesthetics (the desire to harmonize life, fill it with beauty and art). And finally, last step pyramids, highest, - aspiration to the disclosure of internal potential (this is self-actualization). It is important to note that each of the needs does not have to be satisfied completely - partial saturation is enough to move to the next stage.

As lower-lying needs are satisfied, higher-level needs become more and more relevant, but this does not mean that the place of the previous need is taken by a new one only when the previous one is fully satisfied.

At the base of this pyramid are the so-called basic needs. These are physiological needs and the need for safety.

Physiological: need for food, water, sexual satisfaction, etc. If for some reason it is impossible to satisfy them, a person can no longer think about anything and cannot move on to satisfying other, higher needs in the hierarchy. Probably everyone has experienced the feeling severe hunger, which prevents you from doing or even thinking about anything else. V. Frankl described this very eloquently in his book “Saying Yes to Life.” Psychologist in a concentration camp." About how people living in constant fear, anxiety for themselves and their loved ones, could not talk about anything else except food. They talked about food at any time during their vacation, but the work was very hard, they described the dishes that they had once prepared, and talked about the restaurants that they visited. One of the most important needs that guarantees life, the need for food, was not satisfied for them, and therefore declared itself constantly.

When physiological needs are satisfied, a person stops thinking about them, forgets for a while, until the body gives another sign. Then you can switch your attention to satisfying other needs. Of course, we learned to abstain and endure for a while. But only for a while, until the discomfort becomes very strong.

The next level of needs is the need for security.. It is very difficult to realize any of your plans, dreams, work, develop, without feeling safe. If this need is not satisfied, a person organizes all his activities (sometimes neglecting even physiological needs) to make your life safer. A threat to security can be global cataclysms, war, disease, loss of property, housing, as well as the threat of dismissal from work. You can track how, during a period of social instability in the country, the level of general anxiety increases.

To maintain a sense of security, we are looking for any guarantees: insurance, work with a guaranteed social package, a car with modern technologies that provide passenger protection, we study the legislation, hoping to receive protection from the state, etc.

The third and fourth stages belong to the zone of psychological needs. If we are not bothered by unsatisfied basic needs, or simply put, if we are not hungry, thirsty, sick, not in a war zone, and have a roof over our heads, we strive to satisfy psychological needs. These include: a sense of significance, belonging to a particular social system(family, community, team, social connections, communication, affection, etc.), the need for respect, for love. We create systems for this, communities, without which we cannot survive. We strive for love, respect, friendship, we strive to be members of a group, a team.

When these needs are not met, we acutely experience the absence of friends, family, partner, and children. What we most want is to be accepted, heard, understood. We are looking for how to fulfill such a need, sometimes neglecting basic needs, so great is the torment of experiencing loneliness.

Sects and criminal groups often exploit this need. Teenagers have a particularly strong desire to be in a group. And therefore, a teenager, often without thinking, obeys the rules and laws of the group he strives to join only in order not to be rejected by it.

The next step is the need for recognition, selfexpression, respect for others, recognition of one’s own worth, stable high self-esteem. It is important for us to occupy some significant social position. We want our strengths to be recognized, our competence to be appreciated, our skill to be noticed. This may include the desire to have a good reputation, status, fame and glory, superiority, etc.

And sometimes we ourselves should think about how much these needs are satisfied in our lives, for example, in percentage terms. And, if these numbers are less than the statistical averages cited by A. Maslow (85% physiological, 70% in safety, 50% in love, 40% in respect and 10% in self-actualization), then it’s probably worth thinking about what we can change in our lives.

It is more convenient for us, as sales specialists, to use a different classification, with the help of which we find out what needs potential clients have.

There are several basic needs that every person strives to satisfy throughout life. If one of the desires is satisfied, the person strives to satisfy the next need.

The need for survival. The survival instinct is the most powerful instinct of a human being. Every person wants to save his life, protect his family, friends, and compatriots from danger. Only after receiving a guarantee of survival does a person begin to think about satisfying other desires.

Need for security. Once a person receives guarantees of survival, he begins to think about the safety of every aspect of his life.

Financial security– every person is afraid of poverty and material losses and strives to overcome them. It is expressed in the desire to save and increase wealth.

Emotional safety necessary for a person to feel comfortable.

Physical Security– every person, to a certain level, needs food, warmth, shelter and clothing.

The need for security does not mean that a person needs an armored door. He may well want to purchase high-quality wallpaper that will serve him for a long time.

Need for comfort. As soon as a person reaches a minimum level of security and safety, he begins to strive for comfort. He invests great amount time and money to create a cozy home environment, strives to create comfortable conditions at work. A person strives for comfort in any situation and chooses products that are convenient and easy to use.

Need for image. The client focuses on the attractiveness and prestige of the product.

Need for free time. People want to relax as much as possible and look for any opportunity to stop work and relax. The focus of most people is evenings, weekends and vacations. Leisure activities playing central role in human behavior and decision making.

Need for love. People have an urgent need to build and maintain love relationship. Everything a person does is aimed either at achieving love or at compensating for a lack of love. An adult personality is formed in the conditions of love received or not received in childhood. The desire to create reliable conditions for love is the main reason for human behavior.

The need for respect. A person strives to earn the respect of other people. The bulk of human activity is aimed at this. Loss of respect can be a significant cause of dissatisfaction, and obtaining a high-ranking position can be a greater incentive than money.

The need for self-realization. The highest desire of man is realization creative potential personality, talents and abilities. A person's motivation is aimed at achieving whatever they are capable of achieving. Throughout his life, he strives to use the most talents and abilities. The need for self-realization can be stronger than all other motivations.

Why do you dream of respect? The dream book explains: the meaning depends on whether the dreamer shows such an attitude or whether they show him respect. Seeing in a dream portends receiving new information, help in a difficult matter, service from an influential person, career advancement, good relationships with management.

New news, information

Did you dream of showing signs of attention and respect to someone? Receive important news that will enable you to make the right decision.

Have you seen in a dream how you ask someone you respect for their opinion on an issue that is very important to you? Information received from a high-ranking person will allow you to navigate a certain field in time and outline next steps.

You will be protected

Why do you dream of showing respect to your elders (giving way, showing attention, etc.)? The dream book explains: the advice of experienced people is important to you. They appreciate this, so they can provide protection on occasion.

Did you dream about your own respect shown to someone you know? In reality he will provide a service. Do not hesitate to ask for it - this person treats you very kindly.

Cope with difficulties, implement the project

Feeling, seeing in a dream self-respect, pride in a certain action means: despite the difficulties, obstacles or lack of resources to implement your plan, you will be able to achieve it. The dream book tells you: you will soon find the necessary investments and achieve your goal.

A dream about respect promises timely support. You will find useful connections or find yourself in the right place in time. This will give you the opportunity to cope with difficulties and successfully implement your project.

Do something worthy

Why do you dream of respect from friends and strangers? The dream book indicates: this is an excellent omen. The sleeper goes through life on the right path, commits correct actions, for which you will not be ashamed later.

Did you have such a vision? The interpretation of the dream is very favorable: soon, with the support of loved ones or acquaintances, you will be able to accomplish something significant and worthy. This act will affect many and will be of great importance to them.

Who showed it?

Remember who showed respect to you in a dream:

• relatives - your opinion will always be asked on a controversial issue;
• colleagues will support your endeavors;
• your own children always listen to your words, trying not to disappoint;
• students (if you are a teacher) - enjoy authority, even if you do not give concessions.

Miller's Dream Book: get help

Why do you dream of respect from others? The dream promises: you can count on help in a matter that is significant to you.

Good afternoon. A specific character from real life nothing to do with it. It's just an image. The meaning of the dream is that the dreamer is waiting for a new relationship. Although he understands that this relationship will not be serious, that it will be childishly naive (bear) and will lead to separation (yellow roses). Then why such a relationship? Why flirt and search for a candidate among the group of people in which the dreamer has to move. For status? Stupid. Best regards, Desdichado

Dream Interpretation - Dead Friend

In this case, it seems to me that the deceased Friend is a symbol of the spiritual sphere, and the Child is a symbol inner child Dreamers, unknown People - the predominant and as yet unconscious human emotional sphere. The Unknown House is the Dreamer’s internal sense of self and understanding of himself, that is, not knowing himself from the emotional side. The deceased Friend comes up and says that he loves the Dreamer with the presence of tact/contact - this phenomenon in the dream suggests that the Dreamer and his friend did not understand each other, were completely different, which unconsciously brought them closer and attracted them to each other. And the dream that the time has come to understand the very sphere that brings people together is a deep mystery emotional sphere. The waking dreamer grows up and asks questions about who I am, that I am among people, and who People are. If self-awareness is successful, the Dreamer will no longer dream of unknown Houses, or the Dream will be completely straight.

Interpretation of dreams from the Dream Interpretation of the House of the Sun