A need is dissatisfaction at a point of time and in a given context. Needs are distinguished from
want
The idea of want can be examined from many perspectives. In secular societies want might be considered similar to the emotion desire, which can be studied scientifically through the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Want might also be exami ...
s. In the case of a need, a deficiency causes a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. In other words, a need is something required for a safe, stable and healthy life (e.g.
air
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing f ...
,
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
land
Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of the planet Earth that is not submerged by the ocean or other bodies of water. It makes up 29% of Earth's surface and includes the continents and various isla ...
,
shelter
Shelter is a small building giving temporary protection from bad weather or danger.
Shelter may also refer to:
Places
* Port Shelter, Hong Kong
* Shelter Bay (disambiguation), various locations
* Shelter Cove (disambiguation), various locatio ...
) while a
want
The idea of want can be examined from many perspectives. In secular societies want might be considered similar to the emotion desire, which can be studied scientifically through the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Want might also be exami ...
is a desire, wish or aspiration. When needs or wants are backed by
purchasing power
Purchasing power is the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if one had taken one unit of currency to a store in the 1950s, it would have been possible to buy a greater number of items than would ...
, they have the potential to become economic
demand
In economics, demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given time. The relationship between price and quantity demand is also called the demand curve. Demand for a specific item ...
s.
Basic needs such as air, water, food and protection from environmental dangers are necessary for an organism to live. In addition to
basic needs
The basic needs approach is one of the major approaches to the measurement of absolute poverty in developing countries globally. It works to define the absolute minimum resources necessary for long-term physical well-being, usually in terms of ...
, humans also have needs of a social or societal nature such as the human need to socialise or belong to a family unit or group. Needs can be
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
and physical, such as the need for food, or psychical and subjective, such as the need for self-esteem. The concept of "unmet need" arises in relation to needs in a social context which are not being fulfilled.
Needs and wants are a matter of interest in, and form a common substrate for, the fields of philosophy,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
,
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
,
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
,
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
and
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...
.
Psychological definition
To most psychologists, need is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a goal, giving purpose and direction to behavior.
The most widely known academic model of needs was proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943. His theory proposed that people have a hierarchy of psychological needs, which range from basic physiological or lower order needs such as food, water and safety (e.g. shelter) through to the higher order needs such as self-actualization. People tend to spend most of their resources (time, energy and finances) attempting to satisfy these basic before the higher order needs of belonging, esteem and self-actualization become meaningful. Maslow's approach is a generalised model for understanding human motivations in a wide variety of contexts, but must be adapted for specific contexts. While intuitively appealing, Maslow's model has been difficult to operationalize experimentally. It was developed further by
Clayton Alderfer
Clayton Paul Alderfer (September 1, 1940 - October 30, 2015) was an American psychologist and consultant known for further developing Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Biography
Born in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, Alderfer obtained his BA in psychol ...
.
The academic study of needs, which was at its zenith in the 1950s, receives less attention among psychologists today. One exception involves
Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett (born 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Center on Capitalis ...
's work on the importance of respect.
One difficulty with a psychological theory of needs is that conceptions of "need" may vary radically among different cultures or among different parts of the same society. For a psychological theory of human need, one found compatible with the Doyal/Gough Theory, see
self-determination theory
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's innate growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It pertains to the motivation behind people's choices in the absence of extern ...
.
Doyal and Gough's definition
A second view of need is presented in the work of
political economy
Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
professor Ian Gough, who has published on the subject of human needs in the context of social assistance provided by the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equita ...
Len Doyal Len Doyal FRSA FRSocMed is emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London and a medical ethicist. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1944 and studied philosophy and sociology at Georgia State University, earning his under ...
, he published ''A Theory of Human Need'' in 1991.
Their view goes beyond the emphasis on psychology: it might be said that an individual's needs represent "the costs of being human" within society. A person who does not have their needs fulfilled—i.e., a "needy" person—will function poorly in society.
In the view of Gough and Doyal, every person has an objective interest in avoiding serious harm that prevents that person from endeavoring to attain their vision of what is good, regardless of what exactly that may be. That endeavour requires a capacity to ''participate'' in the societal setting in which the individual lives. More specifically, every person needs to possess both physical health and personal autonomy. The latter involves the capacity to make informed choices about what should be done and how to implement it. This requires mental health, cognitive skills, and opportunities to participate in society's activities and collective decision-making.
How are such needs satisfied? Doyal and Gough point to twelve broad categories of "intermediate needs" that define how the needs for physical health and personal autonomy are fulfilled:
# Adequate nutritious food and water
# Adequate protective housing
# A safe work environment
# A supply of clothing
# A safe physical environment
# Appropriate health care
# Security in childhood
# Meaningful primary relations with others
# Physical security
# Economic security
# Safe birth control and child-bearing
# Appropriate basic and cross-cultural education
How are the details of needs satisfaction determined? The authors point to rational identification of needs, using up-to-date scientific knowledge; consideration of the actual experiences of individuals in their everyday lives; and democratic decision-making. The satisfaction of human needs cannot be imposed "from above".
This theory may be compared to the ''
capability approach
The capability approach (also referred to as the capabilities approach) is a normative approach to human welfare that concentrates on the actual capability of persons to achieve lives they value rather than solely having a right or freedom to d ...
'' developed by
Amartya Sen
Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...
and Martha Nussbaum. Individuals with more internal "assets" or "capacities" (e.g., education, mental health, physical strength, etc.) have more capabilities (i.e., more available choices, more positive freedom). They are thus more able to escape or avoid poverty. Those individuals who possess more capabilities fulfill more of their needs.
Pending publication in 2015 in the Cambridge Journal of Economics of the final version of this work, Gough discussed the Doyal/Gough theory in a working paper available online.
Other views
The concept of
intellectual need
Intellectual need is a specific form of intrinsic motivation; it has been defined as "a learner’s subjective need to address a problem by learning something new." It has been recognized as critical in effective education and learning. Intellect ...
has been studied in
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
, as well as in social work, where an Oxford Bibliographies Online: Social Work entry o Human Need reviewed the literature as of 2008 on human need from a variety of disciplines. Also see the 2008 and pending 2015 entries on Human Needs: Overview in the Encyclopedia of Social Work.
In his 1844 ''Paris Manuscripts'',
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
famously defined humans as "creatures of need" or "needy creatures" who experienced suffering in the process of learning and working to meet their needs. These needs were both physical needs as well as moral, emotional and intellectual needs. According to Marx, human development is characterized by the fact that in the process of meeting their needs, humans develop new needs, implying that at least to some extent they make and remake their own nature. This idea is discussed in more detail by the Hungarian philosopher
Ágnes Heller
Ágnes Heller (12 May 1929 – 19 July 2019) was a Hungarian philosopher and lecturer. She was a core member of the Budapest School philosophical forum in the 1960s and later taught political theory for 25 years at the New School for Social Res ...
in ''A Theory of Need in Marx'' (London: Allison and Busby, 1976). Political economy professor Michael Lebowitz has developed the Marxian interpretation of needs further in two editions of his book ''Beyond Capital''.
Professor
György Márkus
György Márkus (13 April 1934 – 5 October 2016) was a Hungarian philosopher, belonging to the small circle of critical theorists closely associated with György Lukács and usually referred to as the Budapest School.
Biography
Márkus w ...
systematised Marx's ideas about needs as follows: humans are different from other animals because their vital activity, work, is mediated to the satisfaction of needs (an animal who manufactures tools to produce other tools or his/her satisfactory), which makes a human being a universal natural being capable to turn the whole nature into the subject of his/her needs and his/her activity, and develops his/her needs and abilities (essential human forces) and develops himself/herself, a historical-universal being. Work generates the breach of the animal subject-object fusion, thus generating the possibility of human conscience and self-conscience, which tend to universality (the universal conscious being). A human being's conditions as a social being are given by work, but not only by work as it is not possible to live like a human being without a relationship with others: work is social because human beings work for each other with means and abilities produced by prior generations. Human beings are also free entities able to accomplish, during their lifetime, the objective possibilities generated by social evolution, on the basis of their conscious decisions. Freedom should be understood both in a negative (freedom to decide and to establish relationships) and a positive sense (dominion over natural forces and development of human creativity) of the essential human forces. To sum up, the essential interrelated traits of human beings are: a) work is their vital activity; b) human beings are conscious beings; c) human beings are social beings; d) human beings tend to universality, which manifests in the three previous traits and make human beings natural-historical-universal, social-universal and universal conscious entities, and e) human beings are free."Necesidades humanas" - Julio Boltvinik (in Spanish)
In his texts about what he calls "moral economics", professor Julio Boltvinik Kalinka asserts that the ideas exposed by
David Wiggins
David Wiggins (born 1933) is an English moral philosopher, metaphysician, and philosophical logician working especially on identity and issues in meta-ethics.
Biography
David Wiggins was born on 8 March 1933 in London, the son of Norman ...
about needs are correct but insufficient: needs are of a normative nature but they are also factual. These "gross ethical concepts" (as stated by Hilary Putnam) should also include an evaluation: Ross Fitzgerald's criticism of Maslow's ideas rejects the concept of
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
human needs and uses instead the concept of
preferences
In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are central to decision the ...
.
Marshall Rosenberg's model of Compassionate Communication, also known as Nonviolent Communication (NVC) makes the distinction between universal human needs (what sustains and motivates human life) and specific strategies used to meet these needs. Feelings are seen as neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, but as indicators of when human needs are met or unmet. In contrast to Maslow, Rosenberg's model does not place needs in a hierarchy.
Rosenberg's model supports people developing awareness of feelings as indicators, of what needs are alive within them and others, moment by moment; to forefront needs, to make it more likely and possible for two or more people, to arrive at mutually agreed upon strategies to meet the needs of all parties. Rosenberg diagrams this sequence in part like this: Observations > Feelings > Needs > Requests where identifying needs is most significant to the process.
People also talk about the needs of a community or organisation. Such needs might include demand for a particular type of business, for a certain government program or entity, or for individuals with particular skills. This is an example of metonymy in language and presents with the logical problem of reification.
Medical needs.
In clinical medical practice, it may be difficult to distinguish between treatment a patient needs; treatment that may be desirable;and treatment that could be deemed frivolous. At one end of this spectrum for example, any practising clinician would accept that a child with fulminating meningococcal meningitis needs rapid access to medical care. At the other end, rarely could a young healthy woman be deemed to need breast augmentation. Numerous surgical procedures fall into this spectrum: particularly, this is so in our ageing Western population, where there is an ever-increasing prevalence of painful, but not life-threatening disorders: typified by the ageing spine.
See also
*
Consumer behaviour
Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. Consumer behaviour consists of how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and p ...
Homeostasis
In biology, homeostasis (British also homoeostasis) (/hɒmɪə(ʊ)ˈsteɪsɪs/) is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning for the organism and ...
Mental health
Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental hea ...
*
Murray's system of needs
In 1938, Henry Murray developed a system of needs as part of his theory of personality, which he named ''personology''. He argued that everyone had a set of universal basic needs, with individual differences on these needs leading to the uniquenes ...
*
Needs assessment
A needs assessment is a systematic process for determining and addressing needs, or "gaps", between current conditions and desired conditions or "wants".
Needs assessment is part of planning. It can be used to clarify problems and identify appr ...
*
Need theory Need theory, also known as Three needs theory, Umuc.edu. Retrieved July 16, 2014. proposed by
Want
The idea of want can be examined from many perspectives. In secular societies want might be considered similar to the emotion desire, which can be studied scientifically through the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Want might also be exami ...