Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Overview

Maslow's Hierarchy proposes needs organize into levels of prepotency — lower needs must be at least partially met before higher needs become motivationally dominant. Five levels: physiological → safety → love/belonging → esteem → self-actualization. The empirically supported insight is deficiency-dominance: severely unmet lower needs crowd out higher-level motivation. The strict sequential hierarchy is empirically weak (Wahba & Bridwell 1976; Tay & Diener 2011) — use as a diagnostic heuristic, not a strict theory. Supplement with Self-Determination Theory for high-stakes design.

Composes with jobs-to-be-done · okr-goal-setting · founder-mindset · principal-agent · pmf-crossing-the-chasm.

When to Use

• A motivation strategy (compensation, perks, career path) is being designed and isn't working
• An incentive that "should work" produces no engagement
• A product is being positioned and the underlying customer need is unclear
• A team can't engage with higher-order work because basic needs are unmet
• "Why isn't the bonus motivating them?" is being asked
• An AI strategy (AI capex push, AI adoption mandate, AI-native competition) triggers job-security fear that blocks engagement with the mission

Not when: formal motivational science is required; cross-cultural application is non-trivial; SDT fits better.