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Review
. 2010 May;5(3):292-314.
doi: 10.1177/1745691610369469.

Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations

Affiliations
Review

Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations

Douglas T Kenrick et al. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2010 May.

Abstract

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, proposed in 1943, has been one of the most cognitively contagious ideas in the behavioral sciences. Anticipating later evolutionary views of human motivation and cognition, Maslow viewed human motives as based in innate and universal predispositions. We revisit the idea of a motivational hierarchy in light of theoretical developments at the interface of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology. After considering motives at three different levels of analysis, we argue that the basic foundational structure of the pyramid is worth preserving, but that it should be buttressed with a few architectural extensions. By adding a contemporary design feature, connections between fundamental motives and immediate situational threats and opportunities should be highlighted. By incorporating a classical element, these connections can be strengthened by anchoring the hierarchy of human motives more firmly in the bedrock of modern evolutionary theory. We propose a renovated hierarchy of fundamental motives that serves as both an integrative framework and a generative foundation for future empirical research.

Keywords: development; evolutionary psychology; humanistic psychology; life-history theory; motivation; positive psychology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interests with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
An updated hierarchy of fundamental human motives. This figure integrates ideas from life-history development with Maslow’s classic hierarchy. This scheme adds reproductive goals, in the order they are likely to first appear developmentally. The model also depicts the later developing goal systems as overlapping with, rather than completely replacing, earlier developing systems. Once a goal system has developed, its activation will be triggered whenever relevant environmental cues are salient.

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