Security needs are important for survival, but they do not take precedence over the physiological needs. The third level of the hierarchy is belongingness and love needs. Simply put, this is the social needs level, which includes friendship, family, and sexual intimacy. This level concerns our sense of belonging, feeling accepted, and the need to be loved, feeling human contact and connection in the social sense as well as relationship wise. If we do not belong to someone (relationship) or something (group setting), for
Psychologist Abraham Maslow first introduced his concept of a hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation"1 and his subsequent book, Motivation and Personality. This hierarchy suggests that people are motivated to fulfil basic needs before moving on to other needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is most often displayed as a pyramid. The lowest levels of the pyramid are made up of the most basic needs, while the more complex needs are located at the top of the pyramid. Needs at the bottom of the pyramid are basic physical requirements including the need for food, water, sleep and warmth.
We satisfy these needs to avoid unpleasant feelings or consequences. Once we satisfy our basic needs, we can move on to our next level of needs, which are for safety and security. When our basic needs have been met, our needs become more psychological and social. The need for love, friendship, and intimacy will soon become very important to us. The need for personal esteem and feelings of accomplishment start to have a higher priority.
When the physical needs are taken care of, these second layers of needs comes into play. You will become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances, stability, and protection. You might develop a need for structure, for order and to have some limits. Looking at it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst, but with your fears and anxieties. In the ordinary American adult, this set of needs manifest themselves in the form of our urges to have a home in a safe neighborhood, have some job security, money saved up, a retirement plan and insurance, and so on.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation and personality developed by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970). Maslow's hierarchy explains human behavior in terms of basic requirements for survival and growth. These requirements, or needs, are arranged according to their importance for survival and their power to motivate the individual. The most basic physical requirements, such as food, water, or oxygen, constitute the lowest level of the need hierarchy. These needs must be satisfied before other, higher needs become important to individuals.
When these basic physiological needs are met people move onto the next level which is Safety. This includes security, stability, protection, and freedom from fear, anxiety, and chaos. The third level of needs is love and belonging. This encompasses the giving and receiving of affection through family, relationships, and work. When these needs are unmet a person will feel a sense of emptiness of these things.
At the base of the pyramid are the very basic but the strongest needs – physiological, followed by safety, love/belonging, self-esteem and at the very top of the pyramid is self-actualization. According to Maslow, each individual should fulfill fundamental needs first in order to move to another, more advanced, level of needs. Physiologic needs are the most primitive of all needs and include the need for water, food, sleep, warmth etc. In this stage, I included pictures of the basic needs such as water, food and sleep. When an individual fulfills this basic level of needs he or she is then motivated to move to another level, which is security or safety needs.
By us looking into the concepts and gaining knowledge and understanding of these stages, we can also apply them to our daily life experiences. Physiological needs or physical needs are our basic level needs. These are our necessary needs for survival. Without these needs other needs are meaningless and we can’t move upscale. Our appetite and body plays a role in this level.
The next level is known as security. This is the need of being secure, of being safe. “These needs can be satisfied by living in a safe area, medical insurance, job security, financial services.” (NetMBA, 2007) The two levels mentioned above are often classified as lower-order needs, while the remaining three are classified as higher-order needs. The third level is known as the belongingness level. People need to overcome feelings of loneliness.
He placed these needs into the shape of a pyramid, in which the bottom layer consists of our lower motivational needs such as physiological needs, leading up to the top layer consisting of the higher motivational needs such as self-actualization. He believed that when a person satisfies their basic needs, they can then move up the pyramid to fulfill their higher needs. Abraham Maslow’s theory on human motivation is an accurate portrayal of how human needs affect their behavior. Many people have agreed with Maslow on his theory. In order for people to continue on with their daily tasks or life goals, they need to satisfy their most basic needs.