Is Maslow's hierarchy of needs a pernicious doctrine?

I recently heard a distinguished economist claim that Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a ‘totally pernicious doctrine’. He expressed a strong objection to the idea that ‘first you have to satisfy the body and, only when you have done this can you satisfy the spirit’. I will refrain from naming the individual and providing a link to his remarks because I am not sure that the comment represents his considered view. He might have just been intending to provoke further thought about Maslow’s theory.


Maslow presented his hierarchy of needs as a theory of motivation in a paper written in 1943. He suggested that a person who is lacking in food, safety, love and esteem would probably hunger for food more strongly than anything else. He hypothesized that humans are motivated by a hierarchy of needs, which they seek to satisfy in the following order: physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-realization. He acknowledged that the order of need gratification might not be as rigid as this ranking implies and that it was not necessary for a particular need to be entirely satisfied before a higher need emerged.

It seems to me that the idea at the core of Maslow’s theory is that gratification of the most basic needs releases a person to focus on higher needs. This idea of natural progression to satisfaction of higher needs is the opposite of extreme asceticism which implies that higher needs can only be met through denial of desire. There may also be some tension between Maslow’s view and the Buddhist view that gratification of desires can be addictive, as explained by Lam Goembo Dorji in a recent paper.

In testing Maslow’s theory it seems to me that the central issue is the extent to which people actually move on to satisfy higher needs as their incomes rise. Maslow’s theory should be rejected if most people do not respond to rising incomes by moving on to satisfy higher needs. It ought not to be rejected just because a few relatively enlightened people are able to flourish even though they have relatively low incomes.

A recent study by Louis Tay and Ed Diener tests Maslow’s theory using data from the Gallup World Poll as indicators of the needs identified by Maslow. The authors found some support for Maslow’s theory in that people tend to achieve basic and safety needs before other needs. They also found that fulfilling the various needs has relatively independent effects on subjective well-being, so humans can derive happiness by simultaneously working on a number of needs regardless of the fulfillment of other needs. (The paper, entitled ‘Needs and Subjective Well-Being Around the World’, JPSP (2011) can be obtained here, and Bridget Grenvill-Cleave has written a good summary here.)

There are some other posts on this blog that are relevant to the priority that people give to various needs. In a recent post I discussed evidence presented by Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart that as the contribution of greater financial satisfaction to overall life satisfaction has become ‘saturated’ to a greater extent with higher levels of economic development, people tend to achieve higher life satisfaction to a greater extent through activities that enhance feelings of agency.

In the post entitled ‘Does the law of diminishing returns apply to a level of achievement?’ I used Australian survey data to explain life satisfaction in terms of levels of satisfaction with seven domains: standard of living, health, safety, relationships, community connectedness, future security and achievement. Best fit was obtained from a linear function, suggesting that the various domains have independent effects on life satisfaction. However, satisfaction ratings in the various domains are correlated - for example, there is a relatively high correlation between satisfaction ratings for relationships and achieving.

In a related study (reported here) I attempted to identify whether high satisfaction in any particular domains of life are more necessary than others to high satisfaction with life as a whole. The criterion used was the percentage of respondents with high satisfaction with life as a whole among those with low ratings on particular domains of quality of life. The relevant percentages were follows (ranked in order of importance of each domain): personal relationships 10.8%, achieving in life 11.8%, standard of living 12.8%, future security 15.6%, health 15.9%, community connectedness 19.0% and safety 20.3%. The results suggest that satisfaction with personal relationships and achieving are more necessary to high life satisfaction of Australians than is satisfaction with standard of living and future security.

A post entitled ‘Are the world’s poor motivated solely by survival needs?’ discusses survey evidence about the ways very poor people spend their incomes. Surprisingly, they tend to spend a substantial proportion of their income on entertainment, suggesting that they are not motivated entirely by survival needs. The post discusses why this might be so and also why some wealthy people stay fixated at a materialistic level. The way people respond to experiences depends importantly on what those experiences mean to them. It is possible for wealthy people to feel deprivation and for poor people to feel that living means a lot more than meeting physiological needs.

So, where do I end up? I like the idea that self-realization is a fundamental human need that people seek to satisfy if they are able, but I don’t think gratification of desires is a particularly helpful frame of mind - individuals are more likely to realize their potential if they seek equanimity rather than pleasure. Yet, it seems obvious that human flourishing is not possible unless basic physiological needs to be met. I am impressed by the evidence that there is a general tendency for people to move on to satisfy other needs as their basic physiological needs are met. At the same time, there is plenty of evidence that some people achieve high levels of satisfaction with life at relatively low incomes and that some wealthy people are not satisfied with their high income levels. The extent to which people perceive increased economic opportunity as an opportunity to satisfy higher needs may be strongly influenced by culture, values, frames and beliefs.

Maslow may have been too simplistic in suggesting that gratification of the most basic needs releases a person to focus on higher needs, but that doesn’t mean his theory is a pernicious doctrine.

Should advertising be allowed in schools?

Nicola has sent me a message presenting the following views and providing links to a range of different web sites discussing the issues involved:

‘A school should be a simulating learning environment for our children. We trust our schools with our children to provide them with an opportunity to learn and grow. The school breaks this trust by allowing corporations to influence and manipulate their minds. As adults we have the ability to be critical of advertising, however, a school environment is one of trust, therefore, children are more likely to take the advertising at face value. Furthermore, the advertising appears to be endorsed by the school that heightens its power when compared to other contexts.

America has led the way on this form of advertising in schools. The present push by the major supermarkets to put advertising billboards on our school gates and in our schools in the form of voucher collectors is the first step. The use of TV screens with commercials and product placement in our classrooms is not far behind this. Is this the direction we want to take our education system and the welfare of our children?

There should be a blanket ban on advertising in schools as it exploits our children. In the interest of your children, please speak to your children's school management and lobby for the removal of banners and voucher collection.’

It seems to me that this is a matter that should be decided by parents’ organisations in individual schools. If parents think that some form of commercial sponsorship is an appropriate method of fund raising, why should I object?

However, there is probably no harm in expressing a personal view. In my view schools must be really desperate for ways to raise money to allow commercial organizations into schools to give prizes to kids for singing advertising jingles. What is the world coming to?

For further explanation of what Nicola is writing about, see this story in ‘The Australian’. There is a paper here discussing the methods of modern marketing being applied in schools.

Postsript:
I neglected to say that Nicola Moir is a Sydney artist.  The emphasis of her work is on what she describes as 'the forgotton spaces we inhabit between work, home and leisure' - 'the spaces where we come together as a community'. Her web site is well worth visiting. Among other things it might prompt you to consider whether you really are 'a happy little vegemite'. (For the benefit of non-Australians, the vegemite song is probably the most successful advertising jingle ever aimed at children in Australia.)

Would we be more satisfied with life if we lived in the best of all possible worlds?

How would we know if we lived in the best of all possible worlds? A possible world is not a perfect world. If we lived in the best possible world we would still be fallible humans. If you asked someone living in the best possible world how satisfied they are with their life it seems to me that they would be likely to look around at the lives that other people live and use that as the basis for their response. If Australia was the best of all possible worlds my guess is that average life satisfaction of Australians would not be much higher than their average life satisfaction has been over the last decade or so.


My point is not that life in Australia is close to the best possible, but that life satisfaction may not be a reliable indicator of whether our lives are getting better. If we lived in the best of all possible worlds, many of us would have greater opportunities than we have now and would take advantage of those opportunities to achieve better lives. However, since most of us would adapt fairly quickly to our new lives, average life satisfaction would not be much higher than it is now. We would readily acknowledge that our lives had improved, but our level of contentment would not be much greater.

Why do I think that? Well, take a look at the ABS web site showing Measures of Australia’s Progress. The picture presented there is of improvement in many aspects of well-being over the last decade, including health and education as well as income. The negative outcomes are in respect of environmental outcomes that tend not to be at the front or our minds when we think of our personal well-being. (In the best possible worlds our consciences might be more troubled by negative environmental impacts of our actions, but this would have led us to reduce such impacts.) On balance, the indicators suggest that the personal well-being of most Australians has improved substantially over the last decade.

Now, take a look at the chart below showing what has happened over the last decade to average life satisfaction and the personal well-being index produced by Australian Unity and the Australian Centre on Quality of Life. The life satisfaction rating is derived by asking respondents to give a rating from 0 to 10 in response to a single question: ‘Thinking about your own life and personal circumstances, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole?’ The personal well-being index is the average of satisfaction for a range of life domains including standard of living, health, achieving in life, personal relationships, feeling part of the community and future security.

Australians were apparently more satisfied with life than usual at the time of 2004 Olympics and less satisfied than usual during the onset of the global financial crisis, but there is not much change in either index over the decade as a whole. The same survey asks respondents how satisfied they are with the economic situation in Australia. Ratings of the economic situation fluctuate far more than the life satisfaction responses, but there is still not much evidence of an upward trend reflecting the growth in real income levels over the decade.

The chart also shows that ratings of the economic situation have fluctuated more or less in line with the consumer confidence index produced by Roy Morgan research. This consumer confidence index is constructed from answers to questions about current economic conditions and economic conditions over the next five years as well as family finances and whether or not this is a good time to buy major household items.

The following chart shows how responses to the question about economic conditions over the next five years have fluctuated in the recent past. Over the last year or so, a lot of us have tended to become more pessimistic about the economic outlook.

Fortunately, our satisfaction with our own lives does not fluctuate to the same extent as our assessments of the economic situation. Both types of measure have the same deficiency, however, as indicators of progress or regress. When we are asked to rate our own lives or the state of the economy we tend not to look back and reflect upon changes that have occurred unless we are asked explicitly to do so.

The Gallup World Poll asks respondents to rate their lives five years ago and five years ahead as well as their life today, all relative to the best possible life. The results provide an indication of whether survey respondents perceive that their lives are getting better. The average rating Australians give for their current life in 2011 is 7.4 and their rating of life in five years is 8.0 . In 2008, Australians rated their life five years previously at 6.8 . I don’t know why the data is so patchy, but it does suggest, nevertheless, that Australians perceive that their lives have improved over the last decade.

Which is the more appropriate policy objective: opportunity or contentment?

Carol Graham’s new book, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, makes an important contribution to consideration of the relevance of happiness research to government policy because it considers explicitly which dimensions of happiness are most relevant as public policy objectives. Happiness researchers have previously argued in favour of particular definitions of happiness - for example positive feelings, emotional well-being, satisfaction with life, capability or opportunity – without much consideration of the relevance of their favoured definitions to public policy.

Early in the book, Carol suggests: ‘A plausible assumption is that most societies would be interested in maximizing the number of citizens who believed they were leading purposeful lives but less concerned about how often people had smiled yesterday. Yet even that statement reflects normative priors that might not apply to all cultures and societies, some of which might emphasize the importance of contentment in day-to-day living more’ (p.30).

Near the end, she comes to the conclusion that a policy that aims to guarantee contentment to all citizens, rather than the opportunity to pursue a fulfilling life, ‘might be unacceptable in most societies’ (p 122). Carol also acknowledges that measures of subjective well-being can contribute to better government policies by making policy process better informed, irrespective of whether any particular dimension of happiness is pursued explicitly as a national objective.

The public policy choice between pursuit of contentment and widespread opportunity is characterised in this book as a choice between Bentham and Aristotle, with Bentham in favour of maximizing the contentment (or pleasure) of the greatest number and Aristotle in favour of maximizing the number of people who have the opportunity to lead a meaningful life (i.e. to flourish). This might be a little unfair to Bentham, who held that utility includes anything that ‘tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness’, which would certainly encompass the opportunity to lead a meaningful life. Nevertheless, many Benthamites have tended to equate happiness with pleasure and even J S Mill, who sought to distinguish between the merits of higher and lower pleasures, saw both tranquillity (contentment) and excitement as the main constituents ‘of a satisfied life’.

The opportunity to lead a meaningful life implies agency, which Carol defines as ‘the capacity to make choices and act on them’ (p 41). She perceives individual agency to be limited by income, education and information constraints as well as institutional constraints, i.e. by all factors that limit individual opportunity.

So, doesn’t greater agency or opportunity lead to greater contentment? Not necessarily. Carol points out that people with limited wealth often report being very happy while people who are in the process of obtaining higher levels of wealth (frustrated achievers) often report feeling miserable. She suggests that the way people answer happiness questions in surveys is to a large extent determined by their agency. The process of acquiring agency may produce short term unhappiness because of uncertainty associated with the adjustment process (e.g. in relocation away from family and friends) and if expectations of a more fulfilling life do not materialize this could result in lasting unhappiness.

Doesn’t this make contentment a more appropriate objective than agency? If the peasants are happy with their lives as they are, why seek to improve the opportunities available to them? I think Carol provides a good answer to these questions. She points out that while adaptation to circumstances is usually positive from an individual psychological perspective, it can lead to collective tolerance for a bad equilibrium. For example, crime and corruption have less effect on subjective well-being in countries where crime and corruption have become an entrenched feature of society. This should not make it any less desirable to reduce crime and corruption in such places.

The numerous examples that Carol draws from her research experience to illustrate the points she is making help make this book a pleasure to read. Readers are told about happy peasants and frustrated achievers in Latin America; about survey respondents in Afghanistan who are apparently happier than the world average despite objective conditions that are markedly worse; about migrants who are markedly less happy than the average for the countries they have migrated to; and about obese people who are less happy than the non-obese, but much less unhappy when there are more obese people around them.

My only reservation about the book is that I am not persuaded that the unhappy growth paradox – lower average happiness in countries with relatively high rates of economic growth after controlling for per capita income levels – is largely attributable to unhappiness associated with the process of acquiring agency. As I have suggested before, I think the unhappy growth phenomenon might disappear if researchers could control for wealth rather than income levels. The appearance of unhappy growth might largely reflect the influence on well-being of wealth (reflected in quality of housing, financial assets, human capital, public infrastructure, social capital etc.) which may take several decades to accumulate.

However, that is a minor reservation. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone who is interested in the role of government in the pursuit of happiness.

Postscript:
A recent conference presentation by Carol Graham on 'Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires' is available here.