Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs Analysis

Generally, factors that influence choices that people make are fundamental physical needs, societal pressure, personal desires, and past experiences. Often, fundamental physical needs dominate people’s choices. For example, the need for food could cause a person to steal or to beg, which ultimately comes down to their moral stance on both decisions. However, as basic human needs are fulfilled, more complex influences such as personal desires begin to affect people’s actions. In fact, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs delineates this relationship by stating that once the physiological needs of a person are fulfilled, “higher” needs such as safety and a sense of love and belonging arise. Outside of this relationship, peer pressure and past experiences …show more content…
For physical needs, belonging to a group provides benefits such as food and shelter. Similarly, the reason why a sense of love and belonging provides both psychological and physical benefits is that a sense of love and belonging is crucial to human development. Pertaining to this, statistics show that a child without a loving home sufferers physically and psychologically. According to these statistics, not only do children living in homes with a despondent parental environment suffer from stunted growth, being among the shortest 10% of their age, but out of a group of 136 children in an orphanage, the 69 that were moved into foster homes demonstrated higher IQ levels. Furthermore, this demonstrates that not belonging to a group is detrimental to both physical and mental health. By conveying the importance of belonging to a family, one can conclude that belonging to a group is essential for humans, which is the reason why humans gravitate towards conformity. In fact, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs states that a sense of love and belonging is one of the more complex needs of humans. Without conforming to a group, an individual risks being expelled from it and losing all the benefits that accompany being a part of a group. In conclusion, conformity is an inherent part of human nature because it provides essential benefits to an …show more content…
Depending on an individual’s moral convictions, a direct order from an authority to violate one’s own ethical beliefs is often depicted as hostile and the right choice is to disobey. Currently, an incident relating to people disobeying authority due to personal beliefs is the religious persecution in Syria. Rather than simply converting to Islam, Christians and other religious people choose to face the consequence of death at the hands of ISIS, who controls the region. As a result, these martyrs are depicted as extremely strong-willed and intrepid. One reason why this occurrence demonstrates an instance where disobeying authority is acceptable is that the people who were persecuted died for disobeying ISIS, but the group is hailed as martyrs rather than criminals. Overall, individuals who disobey authority due to moral convictions are perceived as morally