fei75766_ch09_271-308.indd 300  02/06/20 12:09 PM
Part III    Humanistic/Existential Theories300
cansecure themost basic needs early inlife,theyhavemore timeandenergy tofocus 
onachieving thehighest reaches ofhuman existence laterinlife.
Empirical Testing and an Evolutionary Update  
to the Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s insight intheearly 1940s while watching theveterans’ dayparade sparked 
hisideathatneeds arehierarchical, meaning thathigher levelneeds canbefocused 
upon onlyafterlower levelneeds arerelatively well-satisfied. ThiswasMaslow’s the-
ory,butaswithmost ofhisideas, henever tested them scientifically. Inthemean -
time, afewothers have. 
Twokeytenants ofMaslow’s theory ofhierarchy ofneeds arethatneeds ofa
lower levelmust bemostly metbefore theneeds atthenextlevelcanbeworked on
andsatisfied. Onewaytoassess thisistoseeifsatisfaction ofneeds atonelevelhas
strong positive correlations withthesatisfaction ofneeds atthenexthigher level. 
Additionally, thiscorrelation should bestronger thantheonebetween onelevelof
twolevels higher. Forexample, physiological needs should bemore strongly cor-
related withsafety (onelevelhigher) thanwithloveandbelongingness (twolevels 
higher). Thisideawastested byTaormina andGao(2013) inasample of386Chi-
neseadults. They firstdeveloped aquestionnaire forthefivelevels ofneeds, namely, 
physiological, safety, loveandbelongingness, esteem, andself-actualization. Thefirst
fourscales had15items each, whereas theself-actualization scale had12items (total 
of72items). Thefirstfourscales wererated ona1(strongly disagree) to5(strongly 
agree) scale tothestatement “Iamcompletely satisfied with….” Sample questions 
from scale arepresented inTable 9.2.
Thefiveneedscales wereallconsistent, withinternal reliability scores ranging 
from0.81to0.91(0.80 orhigher isthegoal). These scores imply thatitems foreach
scalewereinternally consistent witheachother andmeasured thesame thing. Taormina 
andGoa(2013), however, found inconsistent support forthetestofthehierarchy of
needs. Ingeneral, adjacent needs werethemost strongly correlated toeachother, but
notalways. Forinstance, Physiological Needs correlated 0.50, 0.37, 0.40, and0.53with
Safety-Security, Belongingness, Esteem, andSelf-Actualization, respectively. Unexpect -
edly,however, Physiological Need satisfaction wasmore strongly correlated withSelf-
Actualization satisfaction thananyother needsatisfaction. Inaddition, Safety-Security 
correlated 0.38withBelongingness, 0.31withEsteem, and0.35withSelf-Actualization. 
Belongingness correlated 0.50withEsteem and0.34withSelf-Actualization. Lastly, 
Esteem correlated 0.50withSelf-Actualization. Insum,thepredicted pattern tended to
befound butnotinevery case.Interestingly, gender andeducation wereunrelated to
satisfaction ofeachneed—meaning there wasnodifference between menandwomen or
more educated andlesseducated people when itcame tosatisfaction ofneeds. People 
withhigher family support, more traditional values, higher lifesatisfaction, andlower 
anxiety weremost satisfied withtheirneeds ateachlevel. 
Other attempts tomeasure thehierarchy ofneeds haveproduced lessreliable 
andvalid results. Forexample, onewaytoassess whether ameasure isvalid and
measures what itpurports tomeasure istocorrelate itwithanestablished measure of
thatconstruct (inthiscase, hierarchy ofneeds). Iftheymeasure thesame thing, there Final PDF to printer