A human need, is “an innate and in-built requirement for each human to thrive in our current stage of evolution.”
What is a human need? – Human needs
Human needs are consistently defined as something necessary for a human being to live a healthy life, and survive. Also, it is agreed widely that there are needs that are objectively necessary for survival, like food, water and air, and there are those aspects that are more subjectively considered necessary, like living in a community.
We can measure how quickly a human will die without these objective needs, but the subjective ones are more complicated to measure, though not impossible. These are psychological needs, and so the outcomes of their removal is less predictable. However, we do know that there are essential psychological drivers without which humans cannot live healthy lives. Why would they be a need? We know that human psychology is so intertwined with our physical health that we can also actually die from persistent and extreme detriment to our mental health. If we are prevented from acting in the way in which we are wired, our other areas of regulation, even our physical health, will decline.
How we measure and categorise these needs is not simple, and somewhat a matter of opinion. For the many psychologists that have studied our psychological needs, it is widely agreed that human needs are drivers of human behaviour. Psychologists believe that needs equal motivation.
What is a human need? – Human needs
A human need, is “an innate and in-built requirement for each human to thrive in our current stage of evolution.”
It is clear to me that in order for something to be classified as a need, it must be something that universally drives all humans to some extent, and in certain circumstances, in order to thrive. Thriving as a human being does not and cannot be a perfect state of being, because nothing is permanent, nor would be best served by being static. Therefore, at the most basic level, humans need to be regulated. They need to oscillate between states within a spectrum, and to constantly correct towards relative balance. The aspects of being human that need regulation include:
- Physical body
- Emotions
- Senses
- Cognition
- Psychology
Understanding that every human needs to be regulated is a good start, but more detail in useful and careful categories will make this much more helpful. For instance, within psychological regulation, we need:
What is a human need? – Human needs
- Regulation of the other areas above
- Protection
- Predictability
- Connection
- Recognition
- Novelty
- Autonomy
Regulation Needs
Humans are complex, and our brains are unique in many ways. In order to look at human needs and behaviour holistically, we must look at all five systems that directly influence our behaviour. These are interdependent. They interact with each other consistently:
The Wilding theory overview – Human needs
- Physical regulation (body) – Needs for things such as nutrition, hydration, temperature etc.
- Cognitive regulation (mind) – Our need to be able to think clearly, and make choices.
- Sensory regulation (sensation) – The need to feel comfortable in our environment and within our own body.
- Emotional regulation (feelings) -Our need to experience emotion, but not feel overwhelmed by it.
- Psychological regulation (drivers of behaviour) – The regulation of our behaviour requires that the above elements are regulated as well as the drivers mentioned below. These are the broad categories that explain what our brain is wired to make us do beyond the regulation of the above.
Fundamentally, humans need regulation. All of our behaviour is driven by us seeking relative balance depending on our own personal neurology, and our current circumstances.
We, as humans, function best when we are wholly well regulated, in the five broad areas above.
The Wilding theory overview – Human needs
To be psychologically regulated means to be acting to support the wiring of our brains. Our behaviour is driven by all of the above aspects, so we act to keep ourselves physically, sensorily, cognitively and emotionally regulated. Those aspects impact our psychological regulation (shown on the wheel in red). Further to this, there are six drivers of behaviour that our brains are wired for. These are:
The Wilding theory overview – Human needs
- Protection
- Predictability
- Connection
- Recognition
- Autonomy
- Novelty
When Self-Actualization Is the Norm
According to Blood and Heavy Head’s lectures (2007), 30-year-old Maslow arrived at Siksika along with Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks. He intended to test the universality of his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance of some people over others. However, he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population” (video 7 out of 15, minutes 13:45–14:15). As Ryan Heavy Head shared with me on the phone, “Maslow saw a place where what he would later call self-actualization was the norm.” This observation, Heavy Head continued, “totally changed his trajectory.” (For the reader wondering what self-actualization is, Maslow offered this definition, influenced by Kurt Goldstein, in his 1943 paper: “This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” The word itself does not exist in the Siksika language, but the closest word is niita’pitapi, which Ryan Heavy Head told me means “someone who is completely developed, or who has arrived.”)
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilience
Maslow then wondered whether the answer to producing high self-actualization might lie in child-rearing. He found that children were raised with great permissiveness and treated as equal members of Siksika society, in contrast to a strict, disciplinary approach found in his own culture. Despite having great freedom, Siksika children listened to their elders and served the community from a young age (ibid, minutes 16:35–17:07).
According to Heavy Head, witnessing the qualities of self-actualization among the Blackfoot and diving into their practices led Maslow to deeper research into the journey to self-actualization, and the eventual publishing of his famous Hierarchy of Needs concept in his 1943 paper.
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilience
Maslow appeared to ask, “how do we become self-actualized?”. Many First Nation communities, though they would not have used the same word, might be more likely to believe that we arrive on the planet self-actualized. Ryan Heavy Head explained the difference through the analogy of earning a college degree. In Western culture, you earn a degree after paying tuition, attending classes, and proving sufficient mastery of your area of study. In Blackfoot culture, “it’s like you’re credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend your life living up to that.” While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them space to express who they are (as perhaps manifested by the permissiveness with which the Siksika raise their children) rather than making them the best they can be. For many First Nations, therefore, self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity. Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world. (As some readers have commented, this concept appears in other belief systems, such as Paulo Freire’s challenge to the “banking concept of education” and the Buddhist notion that all beings contain Buddha-nature.)
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilience
As Maslow witnessed in the Blackfoot Giveaway, many First Nation cultures see the work of meeting basic needs, ensuring safety, and creating the conditions for the expression of purpose as a community responsibility, not an individual one. Blackstock refers to this as “Community Actualization.” Edgar Villanueva (2018) offers a beautiful example of how deeply ingrained this way of thinking is among First Nations in his book Decolonizing Wealth. He quotes Dana Arviso, Executive Director of the Potlatch Fund and member of the Navajo tribe, who recalls a time she asked Native communities in the Cheyenne River territory about poverty:
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilience“They told me they don’t have a word for poverty,” she said. “The closest thing that they had as an explanation for poverty was ‘to be without family.’” Which is basically unheard of. “They were saying it was a foreign concept to them that someone could be just so isolated and so without any sort of a safety net or a family or a sense of kinship that they would be suffering from poverty.” (p. 151)
More Human Than a Ladder or Pyramid: Behaviorism vs Humanism
Abraham Maslow, who co-developed the theory, pointed out that humans are not just a list of components to be improved or rejected, but people with creative, value-driven lives. Maslow believed there were two types of existence: Deficiency and Being. When you control people through rewards and punishments, you automatically destroy human expression as people are reduced to tools – the Deficiency model (e.g. behaviorism). Instead of manipulating people, he wanted to bring about people’s intentionality and individual uniqueness – their Being.
The overall impact of behaviorism on teaching and learning has warped the way educators understand humanistic psychology. Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs stated that people needed their basic needs met, along with safety, love, security, and acceptance, and then finally people would give the world their authentic self: unique traits and gifts they offered the world. Importantly, Maslow believed that people were constantly shifting between each level of the hierarchy, able to reach the pinnacle at multiple points, as well as improve within multiple levels at the same time. He never displayed his thoughts as the often cited pyramid.
More Human Than a Ladder or Pyramid: Psychology, Behaviorism, and Better Schools | Human Restoration Project | Chris McNutt
The reason why Maslow’s hierarchy appears as a pyramid is due to how industry interpreted humanistic psychology. Douglas McGregor, a business management professor in the 1950s/60s, simplified Maslow’s hierarchy into a series of steps to make the theory applicable to entrepreneurship. McGregor created the management style “Theory X” and “Theory Y”:
- Theory X had managers who saw their employees as not liking their work. It is centered on rewards and direct supervision.
- Theory Y had managers who saw their employees as wanting to further a specific mission or vision. It is centered on self-motivation and fulfilling work.
Although McGregor believed that only incorporating Theory X wouldn’t work in the long term, he believed both theories were necessary to be a great manager – which is quintessential behaviorism. This is no different than B.F. Skinner’s critique of Taylorism – that people need praise and other forms of motivation to be successful – and Theory X & Y are essentially the table of contents for business management technique books.
Charles McDermid, a psychologist, translated the simplified version of Maslow’s hierarchy into a pyramid in the 1960 issue of Business Horizons: “How money motivates men”, which argued that the pyramid can be used to “maximize motivation at the lowest cost.” Professors Todd Bridgman, Stephan Cummings, and John Ballard found that much criticism of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was/is directly associated with McGregor’s interpretation and McDermid’s accompanying illustration of the pyramid. Because it was such a simple graphic to easily include on PowerPoints and in textbooks, the pyramid became the defining force of Maslow’s legacy.
Schools have embraced behaviorism and limited their incorporation of humanistic psychology. Pedagogy and teaching practices that utilize humanistic ideas are warped through managerial mindsets that are dominated by radical behaviorism and dehumanizing practice. It’s difficult to find resources that aren’t shaped by a business management approach.
More Human Than a Ladder or Pyramid: Psychology, Behaviorism, and Better Schools | Human Restoration Project | Chris McNutt
You may notice that the needs have been depicted here as a wheel or a spectrum, and not as a hierarchy, as is common with needs following Maslow’s famous theory. As a result, it is depicted as such because all human beings experience all of these needs to differing degrees at all times. The intensity of these needs differs from person to person due to their own personal neurology, and from moment to moment as situations change and as needs are left more or less met. My preferred way to represent this in the Wilding theory, is to show a spectrum of needs where complex balances occur. This is regularly depicted as a wheel.
Having said this. it is true to some extent that a hierarchy can play a role in how we prioritise behaviours that seek to address imbalances. When trying to regulate in a given moment, we are more likely to prioritise some needs over others initially. However, there are many occasions when the hierarchy just doesn’t represent the complexity of human behaviour and so is not helpful. Both depictions can be useful.
The Wilding theory overview – Human needs
The triangular models above suggest that there’s a place to start meeting our needs and a place we end up. But is it true that our needs follow Maslow’s hierarchy of “prepotency”, where some needs consistently take priority over others? Maslow (1943) himself indicates there are many exceptions to his hierarchy and Blackstock (2011) agrees, citing Seneca First Nation member and psychologist Terry Cross:
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilienceCross (2007) argues that human needs are not uniformly hierarchical but rather highly interdependent […] [P]hysical needs are not always primary in nature as Maslow argues, given the many examples of people who forgo physical safety and well-being in order to achieve love, belonging, and relationships or to achieve spiritual or pedagogical objectives. The idea of dying for country is an example of this as men and women fight in times of war.
Resources
- What is a human need? – Human needs
- The Wilding theory overview – Human needs
- More Human Than a Ladder or Pyramid: Psychology, Behaviorism, and Better Schools | Human Restoration Project | Chris McNutt
- Sailing Away From the Pyramid: A Revised Visual Representation of Maslow’s Theory Z – Timothy T. F. Yu, 2022
- The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy – resilience
