Sky Hawkins
April 16, 2019
MOA110
Maslow's theory may be discussed in light of employee motivation. While many psychologists and other theorists spend their time studying anomalies that make some individuals less successful than others, Maslow spent most of his time looking at those particularly successful people who had it all together and asking himself what happened to make them so successful. What Maslow found is that there are certain requirements that all humans share in order to be productive and happy. He grouped these requirements into categories of successive need. If an individual could meet the most pervasive needs, he could then become involved with trying to satisfy the needs at the next level.
One aspect of Abraham H. Maslow’s personality theory that is appealing is its tendency toward a comprehensive and inclusive view of psychological mechanisms. He forms his theories based on the obvious careful examination of many facets of the questions. For example, regarding the impact of environment on personality, Maslow says, the big point here is not to think that good conditions inevitably make all human beings into growing, self-actualizing, people. Another appealing aspect of Maslow’s personality theory is his extensive work regarding the qualities of self-actualizing people, and especially his theory of met motivation. Maslow uses this word to describe the higher forms of motivation experienced by the self-actualized individual, who is “already suitably gratified in their basic needs”. In his study of subjects he defined as self-actualized, he found similarities among these people. For example, all such people are devoted to some task, call, vocation, beloved work, and such vocation-loving individuals tend to identify with their work and to make it into a defining-characteristic of the self. It becomes part of the self”. Maslow also describes self-actualized individuals as those who “delight in bringing about justice, do not need or seek for or even enjoy very much flattery.
One aspect of Maslow’s personality theory found to be unappealing is found in his description of neurosis as a failure in terms of personal growth or actualization. Maslow states, that Counter-values are stronger in neurotic people, and for some people these evasions of one’s own growth are in fact defenses against grandiosity, arrogance, sinful pride, hubris. I think that this is an uncharacteristically limited viewpoint for Maslow to take regarding why many people fail to reach self-actualization.
Another aspect of Maslow’s personality theory that is found unappealing is in his statement that, “everybody expects professors to be crazy, anyhow, and it doesn’t make much difference to anyone”. I disagree completely with his statement, and I do not expect my professors to be crazy; in fact...
