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Abraham Maslow

 

They were problem centred; people treated life's difficulties as problems demanding solutions, the need for privacy and they were independent of culture and relied on their own experiences and judgments; they were, in the best sense, non conformists. Those who were self-actualized had democratic values; open to ethnic and individual variety, social interest and they enjoyed having intimate personal relationships with a few close friends.
             Maslow recorded these findings by observing a group of historical figures, which included Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein and others. In his findings, he also stated that self-actualizers have a pacifist sense of humour, which means they would rather tell jokes about themselves or at the world in general rather than at others. These people accepted people for who they were; they didn't try to change them to what they thought each person should be like and they prefer being themselves than being pretentious or artificial.
             With all these high-quality traits, there were some flaws with the self-actualizers studied by Maslow. These flaws were that the subjects that were being tested on suffered from anxiety and guilt. Some of them were absentminded, overly kind and, lastly, they had unexpected moments of ruthlessness and a loss of humour.
             All of these findings of Maslow have created a basic understanding of what things are necessities to humans and which are not. For example, in the 1960's, this was most important to those who were looking for meaning and purpose in their lives. This theory helped them look for a path to lead their life to success.
             Maslow's theory was also inspirational to Mihalyi Csikeszentmihalyi and Douglas McGregor. Mihalyi Csikeszentmihalyi continued Maslow's concept of "flow." This theory helped Douglas McGregor to make his theory of Theory X and Theory Y by being a building block. Without Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, these two people may not have come up with the idea/theory that they did.


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