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Maslow's hierarchy of needs and its relationship with psychological health and materialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

Shaun Saunders ,
Don Munro  and
Miles Bore
Shaun Saunders
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, Australia
Don Munro
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, Australia
Miles Bore
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, Australia
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Abstract

Maslow's (1954) theory of a hierarchy of human needs has generated little research, perhaps because of the lack of specific, concrete operationalisation of concepts such as ‘psychological well-being’ and basic need satisfaction. The Need Satisfaction Inventory (NSI: Lester, 1990) was developed to measure basic need satisfaction and 157 undergraduate subjects completed both it and the Beck Depression (BDI) and Anxiety Inventories (BAI), as well as Spielberger's (1986) Anger-Expression questionnaire (AX). The latter three questionnaires represent an operationalisation of Spielberger, Ritterband, Sydeman, Reheiserdc Unger's (1995) notion that emotions act as indicators of psychological well-being. The hypothesis that scores on the NSI would be significantly correlated with the BDI, BAI, and AX was supported. Ss also completed the Richins and Dawson (1992) materialism index, and it was hypothesised that if hoarding material goods does in fact represent compensatory neurotic behaviour, then materialism would also be negatively correlated with the NSI. The hypothesis was confirmed, providing further evidence for Maslow's (1970) theory that basic need satisfaction is associated with psychological health. However, in the absence of norms for the NSI, there was no conclusive evidence to suggest that basic needs reside in a consistent, and strict global hierarchy.

Type
Articles
Information
South Pacific Journal of Psychology , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , 1998 , pp. 15 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © University of Papua New Guinea and the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Territory University, Australia 1998

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