Hierarchy of Needs

While many social theorists resist the notion that humans are driven by innate forces, the term need is well established in everyday use and various traditions of social and economic thought and practice. Need can be explicitly normative, pointing to conditions to be met for human beings to be healthy, happy, free, fully human, fulfilling their potentials, and so on. Such needs do not necessarily become wants, because people may not know that particular conditions are required, or may reject the struggle to be more fulfilled (having decided that it is easier, less painful, or more rewarding to settle for immediate gratification). One critique of consumer culture is that it creates wants (e.g., for junk food) detrimental to satisfaction of needs (for health, etc.). Proponents of consumer sovereignty, seeing this as “we know better than you do what is good for you” elitism, argue that people should be free to satisfy their needs through the exercise of consumer choice. (Though when it comes to children, adults often believe that they know best—hence efforts to restrict advertisements aimed at creating new wants among children.)

Another use of needs is more akin to the notion of motives (many social researchers prefer this term). Needs for achievement, affiliation, and the like have been popular topics of psychological research. Such needs are properties of individuals, deep-seated desires that drive peoples' behavior. The relative strength or mode of expression of such needs may be seen as a personality trait that can vary across people. Conscious wants are interpreted as being expressions of needs, mediated through cognitive structures and social circumstances shaping the perception of how far specific activities and choices are likely to satisfy them. Thus, a need to achieve may be expressed in efforts to excel at sports, business, professional, political, or artistic life. It may even take the form of ambitions to be a particularly effective consumer—getting the best value for money, being knowledgeable about a particular class of goods, and so on.

Particular social theorists may stress one or another need (Sigmund Freud on sex, David McClelland on achievement, Thorstein Veblen on status). But most users of the need concept would agree that individuals have multiple needs. Then the question arises of how the different needs interact. A course of activity may simultaneously satisfy several needs—dining out with friends may satisfy both hunger and social needs, buying an expensive car may satisfy needs for mobility and for status. But often we face options that would satisfy different needs to different extents, quite possibly satisfying some at the expense of others. Many psychologists and behavioral economists see individuals as making choices based on calculations of the probable amount of satisfaction (and the risk of frustration) associated with different options.

One need may be particularly dominant in an individual, but the relative strength of different needs is liable to fluctuate over time, as internal and external conditions change (time elapses since the last meal, a bad experience leads an individual to feel devalued in terms of achievements). Advertising may be oriented to making consumers dissatisfied with what they have or enhancing the salience of specific needs, or it may be more aimed at changing cognitions, convincing consumers that one way of spending money (e.g., on one particular brand) will be most satisfying.

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