Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In 1943 Abraham Maslow introduced a new theory, the hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy of needs is Maslow’s way of interpreting what the needs of an audience are and how the lower level needs must be addressed before the higher levels can be met. In Maslow’s original theory he never mentions a Pyramid shape, but instead simply implies that low level needs must be fulfilled before higher level needs can be addressed, in this way it was later interpreted as a pyramid, because like a pyramid, must be built from the ground up.
The needs, like mentioned above must be addressed in a specific order, and when giving a persuasive speech, must be addressed. The five needs are as follows:

• Physiological
• Safety & Security
• Belonging
• Esteem
• Self-Actualization

Physiological Needs

This is the easiest and most obvious piece of the pyramid to fulfil and often times has already been fulfilled before you even begin your speech. Maslow states in his theory that in order to reach higher levels in the hierarchy of needs this is the first of the needs that you must address. This means you have to ensure that simple needs such as food, rest, procreation and water have been met. this does not mean however that you should bring food and drinks to every speech you give. In today’s society these needs are almost always met. Food is readily available to a large majority of people and therefore won’t go hungry. Same for water, Canada has some of the cleanest water in the world, and Air of course is just as clean and readily available.

If these needs aren’t met the human body will begin to fail, and at that point you shouldn’t be worried about persuading someone. Like mentioned above this is one of the needs that you will not have to directly care for, however this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider it when writing a speech. What is meant by that is when creating your speech consider these as constraints. Perhaps you are giving you speech just before lunch, then maybe you should thank everyone for showing up to listen to you despite lunch being soon.

This is the lowest of the needs and is therefore most easily met, but must be completely met before moving onto the next level of the hierarchy.

Safety & Security Needs

Safety and security needs are the second level of Maslow’s Hierarchy, this level covers the safety requirements that are required for our continued existence as living, breathing, humans. To satisfy this level and allow ourselves to continue up the pyramid we must have protection from dangers imposed by the environment, such as extreme cold or heat, both of which can be potential dangers in Canada. This could also mean protection from predators, harsh weather or natural disasters. This all essentially boils down to readily available shelter and clothes, while widely available in Canada many still go without these essentials both in Canada and abroad.

One would not commonly be addressing Safety & Security needs in a speech, at least not in the sense of relating them directly to your audience, as it one of the lower and base needs which is needed for the upper levels of the Hierarchy and essentially is implying that those levels are left unsatisfied in your audience.

Belonging Needs

In applying Maslow’s theory to persuasive appeals, we must:

• Decide which appeal would be most effective for the intended audience. This may mean predicting the needs level of our audience at the time of our persuasive effort.
• Shape a message that capitalizes on the audience’s needs.
• Persuade the audience that the desired action would satisfy those needs.

That said after physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third level of human needs is interpersonal and involves feelings of belongingness. The belonging needs are shown below:

• Friendship –we need to show in the speech that we are friendly through smile, humour and a sense of belonging.
• Intimacy – we need to show that we care about our audience in our speech by showing commitment to action we want them to take, by respecting them, and being honest as well as trustworthy.
• Family- according to Maslow, we humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance among our social groups, regardless if these groups are large or small. We should to appeal to these needs in our speeches if we want our action remediated. In other words the audience must feel that they belong and accepted.

As speakers we need to persuade our audience by appealing to the belonging needs if we need to have them change their minds to remediate the exigence.

Esteem Needs

The Fourth level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and is after a person has reached a point where they feel as though they belong. It is then that we start to search for a degree of importance in our social settings or groups or a degree of healthy pride in our accomplishments. This is the human need to feel as though we have “made the grade”, which can be accomplished through many different methods. These methods are simply the way that we are achieving these needs, such as a sense of legitimate achievement, the feeling that we are good at something or worthy of regard. These esteem needs can also categorized by their motivator, either external or internal. An internal motivation is defined and fulfilled by ourselves where as the external motivator requires action from others to fulfill (a sort of exigence).

Some examples of different Esteem needs that we could choose to fill, as well as their respective motivator classification are as follows.

• Recognition – an external motivator
• Attention – an external motivator
• Social Status – an external motivator
• Accomplishment – internal motivator
• Self-respect -internal motivator

As a speakers it is important to keep in mind the esteem needs and appeal to them as many of the esteem needs require an external force or action to satisfy and by using those appeals properly one can become a very persuasive speaker.

Self-Actualization Needs

Self-actualization is the summit of Maslow’s motivation theory. It is about the quest of reaching one’s full potential as a person. Unlike lower level needs, this need is never fully satisfied; as one grows psychologically there are always new opportunities to continue to grow.

Self-actualized people tend to have motivators such as:

• Truth – our fact and personal stories must be truth
• Justice – the speech must respect audience by being just
• Wisdom – the action in our speech must be stimulating and have a sense of wit that audience will enjoy
• Meaning – speech must have meaning to the audience

As such our speeches must be true, just, have wisdom, and meaning if we want to appeal to our audience using Maslow’s motivation theory. Self-actualized persons have frequent occurrences of peak experiences, which are energized moments of profound happiness and harmony and we need to recognize that in our speeches. We need to be aware that not all us are at this stage in our walk in life. The needs below this stage must be met before we can use this Maslow’s motivation theory in our speeches. According to Maslow, only a small percentage of the population reaches the level of self-actualization.

We therefore  use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to select an unsatisfied need for our speeches as motivational appeals. The lower level needs such as Physiological and Safety needs will have to be satisfied before higher level needs, such as achievement or self-actualization can be addressed.