Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Maslow: Holistic
Dynamic Theory
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Companies, 2009Havercamp, 2006). In this study, participants completed a questionnaire that asked
about their fulfillment of needs. These needs were divided into two types of motiva-
tion: lower motivation (e.g., eating and physical exercise) and higher motivation
(e.g., honor, family, and idealism). The results supported Maslow’s theory. The re-
searchers found that the lower motives were stronger in younger people, whereas the
higher motives were stronger in older people. Recall that in order to focus on fulfill-
ing the highest order needs such as esteem and self-actualization, people must first
have fulfilled the lower order needs. Therefore, as Maslow theorized and as Reiss and
Havercamp (2006) found, if people can secure the most basic needs early in life, they
have more time and energy to focus on achieving the highest reaches of human ex-
istence later in life.
Positive Psychology
Positive psychologyis a relatively new field of psychology that combines an em-
phasis on hope, optimism, and well-being with scientific research and assessment.
Many of the questions examined by positive psychologists stem directly from hu-
manistic theorists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers (see Chapter 11). Like
Maslow and Rogers, positive psychologists are critical of traditional psychology,
which has resulted in a model of the human being as lacking the positive features
that make life worth living. Hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage,
spirituality, responsibility, and positive experiences are ignored (Seligman &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
One area of positive psychology where Maslow’s ideas have been particularly
influential is in the role of positive experiences in people’s lives. Maslow referred to
extremely positive experiences that involve a sense of awe, wonder, and reverence as
peak experiences. While such experiences are more common among self-actualizers,
they can be experienced to various degrees by other people as well. Recently, re-
searchers have investigated the potential benefits that come from reexperiencing,
through writing or thinking, such positive experiences. In one such study, partici-
pants were instructed to write about a positive experience or experiences for 20 min-
utes each day for 3 consecutive days (Burton & King, 2004). Instructions given to
participants before starting were derived directly from Maslow’s writings on peak
experiences, and they asked participants to write about their “happiest moments, ec-
static moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love, from listening to
music or suddenly ‘being hit’ by a book or painting or from some great creative mo-
ment” (p. 155). Experiencing such positive awe-inspiring events will undoubtedly
enhance positive emotion, and, as this study tested, perhaps simply recalling such
events from the past by writing about them can also enhance positive emotion. The ex-
perience of positive emotion is generally a good thing and has been associated with
enhanced coping resources, better health, creativity, and prosocial behaviors
(Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). Therefore, Burton and King predicted that writ-
ing about these peak or intensely positive experiences would be associated with better
physical health in the months following the writing exercise. Indeed, Burton and King
(2004) found that those who wrote about positive experiences, compared to those in a
control condition who wrote about nonemotional topics such as a description of their
bedroom, visited the doctor fewer times for illness during the 3 months after writing.
Chapter 10 Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic Theory 301