Beyond Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

What Do People Strive For?

by Kimberly A. Gordon Rouse

oes Maslows hierarchy of needs come to mind when you think about what
people struggle for in terms of motivation development? First developed in
1954, Maslows hallmark theory has endured for years. However, performers
may be motivated to achieve by more than just those five goals. A novel
theory of motivation developed in 1992 integrates a variety of modern theories of motivation and delineates 24 goals for which we humans strive.

Beginning With Maslow

Abraham Maslow can be characterized as a humanistic actualization psychologist. His
theory of personality is concerned with needs of normal and creative people (Maddi,
1977; Maslow, 1970), and has yielded a hierarchical list of needs with physiological
needs at its base and psychological needs at the top. Needs at the bottom of the list must
be fulfilled before motivation can be derived from the needs at the top of the hierarchy.
In other words, once the physiological needs are met, the psychological needs serve as
motivators of action. From highest to lowest, the needs are sequenced as follows:
Self-actualization
Self-esteem
Belongingness needs
Safety needs
Physiological needs
Maslow defined these needs as goal states that motivate and drive people to increase and
reduce tension (Maddi, 1977; Maslow, 1970).
Physiological needs refer to needs such as food, water, and sleep. Safety needs refer to
the need for shelter and protection from danger. Belongingness needs refer to the need
to be part of a group and also to the need to love and be loved. Esteem needs concern the
need to feel good about oneself, ones abilities and characteristics. At the top of Maslows
hierarchy of motivators is self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the process of fulfilling ones potential. This requires increasing tension
by going beyond a homeostatic state of being (internal equilibrium) by doing something creative (or having peak experiences) that reorganize one and create another higher-level
homeostatic state. Peak experiences are exciting, overwhelming experiences that allow one
to fulfill all of ones potential (Maddi, 1977). As a person self-actualizes, he or she becomes
more complex, differentiated, and effective (Maddi, 1977). Self-actualized individuals are
unique yet universal. This means that they are different than the majority of people in
some significant way but that they can relate to and identify with the majority of people.
That is, they are independent, but they also identify with others (Frame, 1996).

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Challenges to Maslows Needs

The Heirarchys Application in Modern Life

Many performance technology theorists and practitioners are

adherents of Maslows hierarchy, but there are also those
who raise challenges (Bellott & Tutor, 1990; Frame, 1996;
Maddi, 1977; Sackett, 1998). Some have questioned the
practicality and reality of the hierarchy, the process by
which people proceed through the hierarchy, and its relevance and applicability to modern society.

A third challenge presents itself when one considers the

hierarchys application in modern society (Bellott & Tutor,
1990; Frame, 1996). For instance, one way self-esteem
comes about is through recognition from maximizing ones
potential (self-actualization) (Bellot & Tutor, 1990). This
would imply that self-actualization is required to have selfesteem, which would make self-esteem follow self-actualization in the hierarchy. Therefore, self-esteem can be
argued to be on at least equal footing with self-actualization
as a motivator in todays society. This may be important to
todays employees in some professions (Bellot & Tutor,
1990) . Additionally, in todays society, many people realize
only the first two needs: physiological needs and safety
needs; some people never reach belongingness or selfesteem, not to mention self-actualization (Frame, 1996).
Through media messages, this society emphasizes fulfillment through meeting lower-level needs. It may be that
people who emphasize these lower-level needs over higher
level needs can be just as motivated to perform as those
reaching for self-actualization. This would lead to the conclusion that a person can accomplish much and be satisfied
in life by only focusing on lower-level needs.

Practicality and Reality of the Hierarchy

Maslow admits that only a few people reach self-actualization.
If this is true, self-actualization is likely not the highest level
motivator for the majority of the people. Frame (1996) states
that it is hard to imagine the existence of a large number of
self-actualized people, because while Maslow claims that the
value system of a self-actualized person is unique and different from the majority, he also suggests that these individuals are somehow more completely socialized. But how
can a person be more socialized if his or her value system is
different from the majority in society? Even some supporters
of Maslows hierarchy point out that it is possible for people
to develop self-esteem without a need or desire for self-actualization (Sackett, 1998). For instance, a teacher who does
not make an exorbitant salary may have peak experiences in
the classroom on a daily basis. Without a high salary, the
teacher may have trouble fulfilling physiological and safety
needs. But belongingness and self-esteem needs can be met
daily, and the teacher may be satisfied without ever reaching
self-actualization.
How People Proceed Through the Hierarchy

Although Maslows hierarchy has stood the test of time,

research and theorizing have continued. A new theory has
emerged that purports that people are motivated by a number
of goals that are not in a permanent and universal hierarchy.
This theory came about as a method of integrating current
motivational theories. This is the motivational systems
theory (MST) (Ford, 1992, 1995), and its taxonomy of goals
serves as an alternative to Maslows needs.

An Alternative Theory
Sackett (1998) asserts that some people seem to be self-actualized without first meeting the lower needs of Maslows
hierarchy. This brings us to another challenge: the process by
which a person proceeds through the hierarchy.
The prevalent belief is that one can proceed to the next level
of the hierarchy only after fulfilling the lower-level need
(Maddi, 1977; Maslow, 1970). The process or mechanism by
which one proceeds to the next need is not delineated clearly
by Maslow (Frame, 1996). In fact, the leap from self-esteem to
self-actualization involves operating from a feeling need to a
cognitive need (Frame, 1996). That is, self-esteem brings
about feelings of fulfillment, but self-actualization focuses on
cognition and thoughts. In addition, Sackett (1998) claims
that self-actualization may be a process itself, not necessarily
an end state. Perhaps the process of becoming self-actualized
and having peak experiences causes one to advance from
need to need. If this is true, is self-actualization the terminal
need in the hierarchy or a mechanism for traversing through
the hierarchy? Maslows final works did not clearly state his
beliefs on this issue.

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MST (Ford, 1992, 1995) is a theory of motivation that

espouses 24 human goals. It is based on psychological and
biological science. Fords theory is based on systems theory
that has been put forth by others as a good theory within certain business settings (Tesone, 2000). This theory focuses on
motivation and defines motivation as goals, emotions, and
personal agency beliefs. (Personal agency beliefs are beliefs
about ones abilities as well as beliefs about support for ones
abilities and goals within the environment). Fords theory
was created separately and without any knowledge of
Lichtenbergs MST (1983), which is based on psychoanalysis
and espouses only five goals (Ford, personal communication,
July 20, 2004).
MST integrates other theories of motivation and elaborates on
them. MST includes goals in its motivational equation in
accordance with goal-orientation theory, one aspect of which
is the belief that humans are motivated by goals. However,
goal orientation theory only espouses a small number of goals
that motivate people in the educational arena (Ames, 1992).

According to MST, there are 24 categories of needs or goals

for which individuals may strive (see Figure 1). These needs
are not hierarchical. In fact, according to MST, it is possible to
fulfill more than one need (that is, achieve more than one
goal) at the same time. Moreover, according to MST, more
motivating experiences help an individual achieve more
than one goal at the same time.

Other contemporary theories of motivation have contributed

to MST as well. Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1990)beliefs
one holds about his or her ability to complete a certain task
also undergirds MST. Personal agency beliefs (Ford, 1992,
1995) are similar to self-efficacy beliefs; however, personal
agency beliefs include beliefs about environmental support
in addition to beliefs about ability. Expectancy-value theory

DESIRED WITHIN-PERSON CONSEQUENCES

Affective Goals
Entertainment
Tranquility
Happiness
Bodily sensations
Physical well-being

Experiencing excitement or heightened arousal; avoiding boredom or stressful inactivity

Feeling relaxed and at ease; avoiding stressful over-arousal
Experiencing feelings of joy, satisfaction, or well-being; avoiding feelings of emotional distress or dissatisfaction
Experiencing pleasure associated with physical sensations, physical movement, or bodily contact; avoiding unpleasant or
uncomfortable bodily sensations
Feeling healthy, energetic, or physically robust; avoiding feelings of lethargy, weakness, or ill health

Cognitive Goals
Exploration
Understanding
Intellectual creativity
Positive self-evaluation

Satisfying ones curiosity about personally meaningful events; avoiding a sense of being uninformed or not knowing whats going on
Gaining knowledge or making sense out of something; avoiding misconceptions, erroneous beliefs, or feelings of confusion
Engaging in activities involving original thinking or novel or interesting ideas; avoiding mindless or familiar ways of thinking
Maintaining a sense of self-confidence, pride, or self-worth; avoiding feelings of failure, guilt, or incompetence

Subjective Organization Goals

Unity
Transcendence

Experiencing a profound or spiritual sense of connectedness, harmony, or oneness with people, nature or a greater power; avoiding
feelings of psychological disunity or disorganization
Experiencing optimal or extraordinary states of functioning; avoiding feeling trapped within boundaries of ordinary experience

DESIRED PERSON-ENVIRONMENT CONSEQUENCES

Self-Assertive Social Relationship Goals
Individuality
Self-determination
Superiority
Resource acquisition

Feeling unique, special, or different; avoiding conformity with others

Experiencing a sense of freedom to act or make choices; avoiding the feeling of being pressured, constrained, or coerced
Comparing favorably to others in terms of winning status, or success; avoiding unfavorable comparisons with others
Obtaining approval, support, assistance, advice, or validation from others; avoiding social disapproval or rejection

Integrative Social Relationship Goals

Belongingness
Social responsibility
Equity
Resource provision

Building or maintaining attachments, friendships, intimacy, or a sense of community; avoiding feelings of social isolation
or separateness
Keeping interpersonal commitments, meetings social role obligations, and conforming to social and moral rules; avoiding social
transgressions and unethical or illegal conduct
Promoting fairness, justice, reciprocity, or equality; avoiding unfair or unjust actions
Giving approval, support, assistance, advice, or validation to others; avoiding selfish or uncaring behavior

Task Goals
Mastery
Task creativity
Management
Material gain
Safety

Meeting a challenging standard of achievement or improvement; avoiding incompetence, mediocrity, or decrements in performance
Engaging in activities involving artistic expression or creativity; avoiding tasks that do not provide opportunities for creative action
Maintaining order, organization, or productivity in daily life tasks; avoiding sloppiness, inefficiency, or disorganization
Increasing the amount of money or tangible goods one has; avoiding the loss of money or material possessions
Being unharmed, physically secure, and free from risk; avoiding threatening, depriving, or harmful circumstances

Figure 1. The Ford and Nichols Taxonomy of Human Goals (Source: Adapted from Ford, 1992).

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(Wigfield, 1994)which states that people are more motivated by goals that they both value and expect to accomplishis another important building block for MST. MST
examines the importance or value that one places on goals.
MST also examines emotions, which few other motivational
theories consider (Ford, 1992). MST states that emotions provide energy for pursuing goals and help one to evaluate
whether a goal is obtainable.
The 24 goals of MST were discovered over years of research
and clinical work with a variety of students, clients, and professionals (Ford & Nichols, 1987, 1991, 1992). Each of these
goals is a category of goals that represents a set of outcomes
that are similar in meaning. They have evidenced internal
consistency reliability as well as face, content, and construct
validity ( Ford & Nichols, 1992; Gordon Rouse, 2001).
These 24 human goals are divided into two overarching categories with three subcategories each. The overarching categories are desired within-person consequences and
desired person-environment consequences. Desired
within-person consequences are goals that involve a single
performer and are usually positioned within that person and
his or her own subjective experience. Desired person-environment consequences are goals that minimally involve a
single performer and something or someone within that
persons environment. These are goals that relate to experiences involving a person and something outside that person.
For example, resource acquisition may be the goal of a
person obtaining support from his or her environment.
The three subcategories of goals related to desired withinperson consequences are affective, cognitive, and subjective
organization goals. Affective goals are those that relate to
feelings and emotion states. Cognitive goals concern thought
processes, and subjective organization goals are complex and
involve both affect and cognition. There are five affective
goals: entertainment, tranquility, happiness, bodily sensations, and physical well-being. Happiness equates to feelings
of satisfaction, while tranquility involves avoiding stress.
Entertainment equates with experiencing excitement; bodily
sensation is experiencing pleasing physical movement and
contact; and physical well-being is defined as feeling healthy
and robust.
There are four cognitive goals: exploration, understanding,
intellectual creativity, and positive self-evaluation.
Understanding includes gaining knowledge and intellectual
creativity concerns thinking interesting ideas. Exploration
involves satisfying curiosity, and positive self-evaluations
maintain self-worth.
There are only two subjective organization goals: unity and
transcendence. Unity equates to experiencing harmony or
oneness, while transcendence involves having experiences
that are not bound by ordinary life.

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The three subcategories of goals related to desired personenvironment consequences are self-assertive social relationship, integrative social relationship, and task.
Self-assertive social goals bring attention and aid to oneself.
Integrative social goals provide for the maintenance and
enrichment of a group. Task goals relate to specific activities.
There are four self-assertive social relationship goals: individuality, self-determination, superiority, and resource
acquisition. Individuality means feeling unique, and superiority involves obtaining feelings of reaching a desired status.
Self-determination concerns making ones own choices, and
resource acquisition involves obtaining support.
There are four integrative social relationship goals: belongingness, social responsibility, equity, and resource provision.
Belongingness equates to maintaining attachments, while
equity promotes equality. Social responsibility concerns fulfilling obligations, and resource provision involves giving
support to others.
Finally, there are five task goals: mastery, task creativity,
management, material gain, and safety. Mastery seems to
improve an ability, skill, or level of knowledge; safety concerns being physically secure. Task creativity involves
engaging in artistic expression; management aims at maintaining order; and material gain concerns increasing ones
amount of money and goods.

Application
What does all this mean for performance technologists? For
one, rather than five types of needs or goals, a bevy of motivators can be seen to motivate performance. Second, this
affords performance technologists more goals by which to
motivate performers. Third, situations can be created that tap
into more than one goal in order to motivate employees more
effectively. Fourth, performers individual goals can better be
identified and aligned with the companys goals. Last, it is
possible to more discreetly identify which goals motivate
individuals to greater levels of performance.
The 24 needs of MST are not hierarchical; more than one
goal may be fulfilled at a time. Therefore, performers may
have several goals that they are pursuing at once. They may
simultaneously be searching for happiness, transcendence,
mastery, management, and safety in their job duties. While
one of these goals may be stronger than others, performers
may still be searching for them all in their jobs.
Maximally motivating situations can be created by accomplishing more than one goal at a time (Ford, 1992, 1995).
Work tasks that tap into more than one goal are more motivating. The business literature has suggested that having support for peak experiences and transcendence leads to a
happier, more productive work force (Keil, 1999; Tesone,
2000). Part of performance technologists role is to engineer

situations that simultaneously fulfill more than one goal. For

example, if a performer is motivated by mastery, management, and understanding, he or she might be given the task
of designing a system to organize stock reports by topic. By
completing this task the individual is learning, organizing,
and improving competence. Other tasks that need to be completed can be assigned to other employees based on their
own particular combination of goals. For instance, an
employee who is motivated by tranquility, self-determination, and resource provision may be interested in researching
a business problem and creating a manual for other
employees to use to solve the problem. Again, while this task
would only be assigned if it is a company need, knowing
which goals motivate which employees helps task assignment and keeps productivity high.
To create motivating environments for performers it is necessary to ascertain what their goals are. Ford and Nichols
(1992) have created an assessment of personal goals that contains questions related to each of the 24 goals in the MST taxonomy. Knowing which goals performers attend to is of
tremendous value when trying to motivate performance.

Conclusion
MST moves beyond Maslows five needs and presents more
goals that lead to various avenues for motivating performers to
succeed. MST presents a powerful alternative to Maslows hierarchy of needs for helping performers attain increased levels of
productivity. It also offers a more practical and systemic
approach to understanding the relationship between goals,
emotions, and personal agency beliefs of performers.

References
Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 191-215.
Bandura, A. (1990). Perceived self-efficacy in the exercise
of personal agency. Applied Sport Psychology, 2, 128-163.
Bellott, F.K., & Tutor, F. D. (1990). A challenge to the conventional wisdom of Herzberg and Maslow theories.
Presented at Mid-South Educational Research Association,
New Orleans: LA.

Ford, M., & Nichols, C. (1987). A taxonomy of human goals

and some possible applications. In M.E. Ford & D.H. Ford
(Eds.), Humans as self-constructing living systems: Putting
the framework to work (289-311). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Earlbaum.
Ford, M., & Nichols, C. (1991). Using goal assessments to
identify motivational patterns and facilitate behavioral regulation and achievement. In M.L. Maehr & P.R. Pintrich
(Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement (vol. 7,
pp. 51-84). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
Ford, M., & Nichols, C. (1992). Manual: Assessment of personal goals. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Frame, D. (1996). Maslows hierarchy of needs revisited.
Interchange, 27(1), 13-22.
Gordon Rouse, K.A. (2001). Resilient students goals and
motivation. Journal of Adolescence, 24, 461-472.
Kiel, J.M. (1999). Reshaping Maslows hierarchy of needs to
reflect todays educational and managerial philosophies.
Journal of Instructional Psychology, 26(3), 167.
Lichtenberg, J. (1983). Psychoanalysis and infant research.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Maddi, S.R. (1977). Personality theories: A comparative
analysis (3rd ed.). Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.
Maslow, A.H. (1970). Motivation and personality. New
York: Harper & Row.
Sackett, S.J. (1998). Career counseling as an aid to self-actualization. Journal of Career Development, 24(3), 235-244.
Tesone, D.V. (2000). Leadership and motivating missions: A
model for organization from science literature. Journal of
Leadership Studies, 7(1), 60-71.
Wigfield, A. (1994). Expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation: A developmental perspective.
Educational Psychology Review, 6(1) 49-78.

Ford, M. (1992). Motivating humans: Goals, emotions, and

personal agency beliefs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications, Inc.

Kimberly A. Gordon Rouse is an Assistant Professor in the College of

Ford, M. (1995). Motivation and competence development

in special and remedial education. Intervention and School
Clinic, 31(2), 70-82.

Resilience appeared in this journal in 1998. She is thankful to Bill Coscarelli for

Education at California State University, Sacramento. Her main areas of research

are motivation and educational resilience. Her article Recognizing and Fostering
his comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Kimberly may be reached at
kagrouse@csus.edu.

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