Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Why do Different People Place Importance on Different Things?

Psychology is the study of human behaviour. It explores why we think and feel the way we do. What motivates us to behave in the way we do? Why do people of similar backgrounds behave differently from one another? In 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow published a paper titled “A Theory of Human Motivation”, where he attempted to explain what motivates us to pursue our different needs.  In this article, we will explore the theory commonly known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as Maslow organised the different needs humans have into a hierarchy, starting with physiological needs and ending with self-actualisation needs. 

What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Image of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (McLeod, 2025)

Fascinated by what made humans happy rather than the problems in the human psyche, Abraham Maslow looked towards what motivated us into pursuing our needs and goals (Cherry, 2024). From there, he categorised five main groups of needs, each leading into the next as each need below it gets fulfilled. The five categories of needs, from bottom to top, are: physiological needs, safety needs, love needs, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization.  

Physiological Needs 

The first level of needs would be physiological needs. This refers to the needs of our physical body, such as eating, drinking and sleeping. If a person’s physiological needs are not met, the person would prioritise meeting those needs as compared to every other need. 

Our body has a state known as homeostasis, where our body will make “automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream” (Maslow, 1943). Due to this, when a person is at this level of the hierarchy, they put all of their focus into achieving this need. At an extreme case where their physiological needs are not met, the person would focus only on achieving this need and ignore every other need, just to ensure that their body can survive. 

Maslow also believes that the physiological needs take the highest priority before anything else, which leads to him categorising this as the first level of needs any human should meet first. These physiological needs ensure that an individual’s body is able to survive before caring about other needs. 

Safety Needs 

After the physiological needs are fulfilled, the next level of needs would be safety needs. These needs refer to feeling safe against physical threats as well as in our environment, such as having order and control against the unpredictable (McLeod, 2025). 

Maslow (1943) mentioned that these needs are typically more obvious in children as compared to adults as adults have learnt not to show or express their feelings of distress when threatened. However, even if adults are able to hide their distress more easily, their feelings of endangerment should not be denied, and they would strive to seek protection for themselves as they prioritise the need to feel safe. This is why some people may get defensive against accusations, or run away from facing their problems. These are defence mechanisms meant to keep themselves from feeling threatened and harmed. 

For people who are in this level, their focus on safety is of a higher priority as compared to their other needs including their physiological needs, which leads to their behaviour being motivated to ensure they do not feel harm. When these needs are met and the individual is able to be in a place of security, another ‘higher level’ need would emerge. 

Love Needs

After meeting the physiological and safety needs, the next set of needs a person would seek towards meeting would be the love and affection and belongingness needs. According to Maslow (1943), these needs refer to our want for companionship and a sense of belonging to a certain group. The love needs include both giving and receiving love. 

As with the previous two needs, a person whose needs at this level are not met would have their actions and behaviours to be more motivated by these needs. They would focus more on seeking out other people to establish relationships so that they may feel loved. Without these needs met, a person might feel lonely, depressed or anxious (Cherry, 2024). 

Esteem Needs 

The next level of needs would be the esteem needs. Maslow (1943) mentioned that most people “have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others”. He explained the term “firmly based” as something that is real and existent, such as achievements or receiving respect from others. He classified these needs under two subsets: 

1. The first subset of desires would come from achieving things for themselves, where they are able to feel adequate and confident in the face of challenges.

2. The second subset of desires would come from being acknowledged by others, where the person seeks to be appreciated or respected by others. 

Meeting these needs would allow a person to feel confident in themselves and feel useful and important in the world (Maslow, 1943). However, when these needs are not met, a person would feel that they are inferior or weak and would use coping mechanisms to manage their feelings of not being good enough (Maslow, 1943). 

Self-actualisation Needs 

After meeting the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs, a person would seek towards fulfilling the needs known as self-actualisation. Maslow (1943) defined these needs as “the desire for self-fulfillment”, referring to a person seeking out their purpose in life. This could come in many shapes and forms as all of us are different. According to Cherry (2024), people at this stage are “self-aware, concerned with personal growth, less concerned with the opinions of others, and interested in fulfilling their potential”. Their behaviours and actions are motivated towards trying to find what they want to do, and what they should do to improve themselves. Only after achieving this need, where a person has found what they truly want to do in life and feel content with their current situation, only then can we consider these people to be “satisfied” (Maslow, 1943). 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivation theory that attempts to explain why all of us are motivated towards different needs. Some of us may focus on trying to feel safe, some of us may seek belonging in the presence of others. Wherever we are in this hierarchy would cause us to be motivated by different needs, which causes us to behave and react differently to the same thing. 

An important thing to note would be that this hierarchy is not usually strictly adhered to, as differences in our backgrounds and beliefs would cause us to place different importance on different needs (McLeod, 2025). Even so, learning about this theory allows us to better understand what motivates us and the people around us, so that we may better understand why we do things the way we do. 

Works Cited 

Cherry, K. (2024). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. [online] VeryWellMind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4136760 [Accessed 9 Oct. 2025].

Maslow, A.H. (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation. Originally published in Psychological Review, 50, pp. 370–396. Reprinted in Classics in the History of Psychology [online]. Edited by Green, C.D., York University, Toronto, Ontario. Available at: https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm. [Accessed on 1 Oct. 2025] 

McLeod, S. (2025). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. [online] Simply Psychology. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html [Accessed 7 Oct. 2025].