Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of human motivation proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review, depicting motivation as a layered structure in which lower-tier needs must be reasonably satisfied before higher-tier needs activate as the dominant drive.
The familiar five-tier pyramid runs from physiological needs (food, water, shelter, sleep) through safety, belonging and love, esteem, to self-actualization at the top. Maslow later extended the model to include self-transcendence as a sixth tier, framing it as the move from individual fulfillment to purposes beyond the self. The pyramid representation, while iconic, was not in Maslow's original paper — it was a later visualization that became culturally dominant.
The model has been both enormously influential and widely critiqued: cross-cultural studies challenge the universality of the ordering, organizational psychology has shown that higher and lower needs frequently activate in parallel rather than sequentially, and Maslow's own later writing complicated the strict hierarchy. The frame nonetheless remains a default starting point for any discussion of motivation in management, education, and clinical psychology.