Maslow, Abraham (1908–1970)

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist whose work on human needs, self-actualization, and higher levels of consciousness was extremely influential in the third quarter of the twentieth century. He played an important role in establishing the tradition of humanistic psychology. He was born in New York and first studied law then psychology, achieving a doctorate in 1934 at the University of Wisconsin. He chaired the psychology department at Brandeis from 1951 to 1969.

Of greatest relevance to consumer studies is his account of a hierarchy of needs. The core notion here is that basic material needs (“scarcity needs”) have to be satisfied before people become interested in pursuing higher goals (“growth needs”). Experience of particular problems in satisfying one or other needs in early life may result in people continuing to be preoccupied by this need, even when the scarcity is removed. Maslow's needs hierarchy is widely used in consumer and management research and practice, well away from his own interests in psychotherapy and personal growth. Often it is adopted in a diluted form—the list of needs is simplified, or the notion of a firm hierarchy is abandoned.

In consumer studies, Maslow's ideas have been invoked to help explain differences between consumers in terms of the objects of consumption that are sought and in the meanings that are attached to them. For example, consumers may be more oriented toward consumption that satisfies hunger or security needs, demonstrates social status, or enables progress toward higher aspirations such as attaining knowledge or aesthetic satisfaction. Furthermore, a specific item of consumption may be valued in different ways and have different meanings for different consumers—clean clothes may be desired to be hygienic or to display wealth, TV news may be watched to learn about personally threatening events or to gain greater understanding of social affairs.

Maslow was an early advocate of humanistic psychology. This was seen as a “third way” between what in the postwar period were the dominant approaches in American psychology: behaviorism and psychoanalysis. (Only in the last quarter of the twentieth century did the cognitive approach rise to prominence in psychology.) Behaviorism was criticized for its reductionist focus on animal behavior and neglect of mental processes. Psychoanalysis was criticized for its emphasis on morbid processes and neurotic people (though Maslow borrowed quite a few elements of his needs theory from Sigmund Freud and his followers—including breakaway figures, such as Alfred Adler, of inferiority complex fame). Maslow advocated a humanistic psychology that explored—and could be used to improve—the mental lives of ordinary people. This meant understanding what constituted positive mental health and how to understand and help realize higher levels of human potential. From the late 1950s, he set about bringing together a community of like-minded humanistic psychologists and therapists and helped establish the American Association of Humanistic Psychology in 1961.

With its stress on personal growth and self-realization, humanistic psychology was to become a significant strand of thought around the world in the next decades. The personal growth movement led to a flourishing of encounter groups and alternative therapies in the 1970s, which have left their mark on consumer culture into the twenty-first century. The counterculture (1960/70s) and new age (1980s on) movements drew in rather cavalier manner on these ideas, too, which continue to resonate in self-help, community development, and motivational philosophies of many kinds.

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