Definition
Within Maslow’s hierarchical organization of motives and theory of personality development (Maslow 1968, 1970), growth needs refer to people’s strivings for self-actualization, knowledge, and understanding. Maslow adapted the concept of self-actualization from Goldstein (1939) and used it to describe a person’s desire to realize his or her latent potential, the striving of one “to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming” (Maslow 1970, p. 46). Maslow described the needs for knowledge and understanding as a set of two closely related motives. These refer to people’s desires to satisfy their curiosities and interests, learn new information, and systematize their knowledge. Maslow also posited aesthetic needs (i.e., desires for beauty) as a somewhat distinct aspect of the needs for knowledge and understanding. He noted, for example, that in “some individuals there is truly a basic aesthetic need … they crave...
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Di Domenico, S.I., Ryan, R.M. (2017). Growth Needs. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1480-1
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