Abraham Maslow Facts For Kids

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who lived from 1908 to 1970. He wanted to understand what people need to grow and be happy. His best-known idea is called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a way of thinking about how different needs build on each other, from basic things like food to the highest goal of becoming your best self.

Maslow taught psychology at several schools, including Brooklyn College and Brandeis University. He asked questions that looked for people’s strengths instead of just their problems. Because of his ideas, many people today still study how to help others learn, feel safe, and grow.

Maslow left a mixed legacy. His best-known idea, the hierarchy of needs, helped people think about how things like food, safety, and friendship matter before higher goals like creativity. He also introduced words such as metaneeds, metamotivation, and peak experiences to describe big moments of joy or meaning. Teachers and counselors still use his ideas to help students stay in school and plan learning.

Some experts say Maslow chose people who shared his values, so his conclusions were limited. Still, by 2002 he was one of the ten most cited psychologists of the 20th century. What would you put at the top of your own pyramid?

Maslow grew up in Brooklyn, New York, as the oldest of seven children. His parents had come from a part of Europe long ago and worked hard in a busy, mixed neighborhood. As a child he did not have many friends and sometimes faced mean treatment because of his background. He loved books and spent lots of time in libraries, which helped him learn on his own.

At school he joined academic clubs and worked on school papers. After high school he studied at City College of New York, tried one term at Cornell, and then went to the University of Wisconsin for graduate work in psychology. He married a childhood friend in 1928 and began research on how animals and people learn.

Maslow also held ideas that many people today find wrong and harmful. He supported eugenics, the belief that human worth is tied to birth, and he thought intelligence came mostly from genes. These views led him to say things that were hurtful to groups of people and to praise harsh ideas about who should survive. He was influenced by teachers who shared these beliefs.

He also had controversial side ideas—like starting a movement called Eupsychianism and thinking altered states might help certain people grow—which made critics worry. Many scholars say his harmful beliefs must be named and rejected when we study his work.

Maslow imagined that people have different kinds of needs that often build on one another. The first, most basic needs are physical ones: food, water, sleep, and a healthy body. Next come safety needs, like having a steady home and feeling secure. After those come social needs for family and friends, and then esteem needs, which are about feeling capable and respected.

Above these are needs for learning and for enjoying beauty, and at the top is self-actualization — doing what makes you most yourself, using your talents and creativity. Maslow did not draw a strict rule that you must finish one level before moving up; he said needs can change and often happen at the same time. His idea helps teachers and schools think about how to support students, and even shows up as jokes about needing Wi‑Fi first.

Maslow taught at Brooklyn College from the late 1930s into the early 1950s, and then he became a professor at Brandeis University for many years. After World War II he helped start a way of thinking called humanistic psychology, which focuses on the good in people and how they can grow. Some teachers and friends, like Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer, shaped his ideas.

Maslow wrote about things such as self-actualization, peak experiences, and why people feel motivated. He did not like the idea of one single leader for the humanistic movement and once declined a presidency of the group. Later in life he had a heart attack in 1967 and died in 1970 while jogging, at age 62.

Self-actualization means a person uses their talents and interests as fully as possible and becomes the truest version of themselves. Maslow saw self-actualized people as reality-centered: they notice problems, solve them, and care more about what is real than about what others expect. They often have a few close friends, are creative and spontaneous, and focus on things outside themselves, like helping others or making art. Famous people Maslow studied were Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Eleanor Roosevelt as examples of this kind of growth.

Metamotivation is the special drive that moves self-actualized people. It’s not about filling a need like hunger; it’s about seeking truth, beauty, wholeness, justice, and the feeling of being alive. Maslow called some creativity a “B‑creativity,” coming from this higher growth, while “D‑creativity” comes from trying to fix a lack.