Maslow’s Pyramid Is a Marketing Lie
1960s-era consultants mistranslated a valuable lesson for growth
Chances are you’re familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a pyramid with self-actualization depicted at the top. You likely learned about it in your Introduction to Psychology course in college or saw it diagrammed on Facebook. As it’s typically presented, the hierarchy indicates that humans are motivated by increasingly “higher” levels of needs. The basic needs — physical health, safety, belonging, and esteem — must be satisfied to a certain degree before we can fully self-actualize, becoming all that we are capable of becoming.
The familiar pyramid shape suggests that once we complete each step, we’re done dealing with that need forever. As if life were a video game, and once we complete each level, we unlock the next, with no looking back. It’s an appealing concept. It’s also a gross misrepresentation of the humanistic vision that propelled Maslow’s work.
In fact, Maslow never actually created a pyramid to represent the “hierarchy of needs.”
Some modern-day writers have interpreted Maslow’s notion of self-actualization as individualistic and selfish. That was by design — but not Maslow’s. Todd Bridgman, a management professor at Victoria University of Wellington, recently concluded that…
