The needs (or goals) that motivate human behavior were proposed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. According to Maslow’s original formulation, there are sets of basic needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization. Later, he added transcendence of self. He found that humans were not motivated to reach for higher levels of basic needs before lower needs were achieved.

Physiological needs include: air, water, food, heat, clothes, reproduction, shelter and, sleep.

Safety needs include: health, personal security, emotional security, and financial security.

Social belonging needs include: family, friendship, intimacy, trust, acceptance, and receiving and giving love and affection.

Esteem needs: The need for respect from others may include a need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The need for self-respect, can include a need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom.

Cognitive needs crave meaning, information, comprehension and curiosity – this creates a will to learn and attain knowledge.

Aesthetic needs to beautify one’s life. This would consist of having the ability to appreciate the beauty within the world around oneself.

Self-actualization; the realization of one’s full potential. Maslow describes this as the desire to accomplish everything that one can, to become the most that one can be. Self-actualization needs include: partner acquisition, parenting, utilizing and developing talents and abilities, and pursuing goals.

Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos. It is about the desire to help others be all they can be.