In a broad sense, needs are defined as a source of activity and a form of communication between a living organism and the surrounding world.

Human social needs are desires and aspirations inherent as a representative of the human race.

Humanity is a social system, outside of which personality development is impossible. A person is always part of a community of people. Realizing social aspirations and desires, it develops and manifests itself as.

Belonging to a society of people determines the emergence of human social needs. They are experienced as desires, inclinations, aspirations, brightly colored emotionally. They form the motives of activity and determine the direction of behavior, replace each other as some desires are realized and others are actualized.

The biological desires and nature of people are expressed in the need to maintain vital activity and the optimal level of functioning of the body. This is achieved by satisfying the need for something. People, like an animal, have a special form of satisfying all types of biological needs - unconscious instincts.

The question of the nature of needs remains controversial in the scientific community. Some scientists reject the social nature of desires and drives, others ignore the biological basis.

Types of social needs

Social aspirations, desires, drives are conditioned by people's belonging to society and are satisfied only in it.

1. "For myself": self-identification, self-affirmation, power, recognition.
2. “For others”: altruism, gratuitous help, protection, friendship, love.
3. “Together with others”: peace on Earth, justice, rights and freedoms, independence.

• Self-identification consists in the desire to be similar, similar to a specific person, image or ideal. The child identifies with the parent of the same gender and is aware of himself as a boy / girl. The need for self-identification is periodically actualized in the process of life, when a person becomes a schoolboy, student, specialist, parent, and so on.
• Self-affirmation is necessary, and it is expressed in the realization of potential, deserved respect among people and the confirmation of a person himself as a professional in his favorite business. Also, many people strive for power and calling among people for their own personal goals, for themselves.
• Altruism is gratuitous help, even to the detriment of one's own interests, pro-social behavior. A person cares about another individual as about himself.
• Unfortunately, disinterested friendships are rare these days. A true friend is value. Friendship should be disinterested, not for the sake of profit, but because of the mutual disposition to each other.
• Love is the strongest desire of each of us. As a special feeling and type of interpersonal relationship, she is identified with and happiness. It is difficult to overestimate it. This is the reason for the creation of families and the appearance of new people on Earth. The overwhelming number of psychological and physical problems from unsatisfied, unrequited, unhappy love. Each of us wants to love and be loved, as well as have a family. Love is the most powerful stimulus for personal growth, it inspires and inspires. The love of children for their parents and parents for children, love between a man and a woman, for their business, work, city, country, for all people and the whole world, for life, for themselves are the foundation for the development of a harmonious, integral personality. When a person loves and is loved, he becomes the creator of his life. Love fills it with meaning.

All of us on Earth have universal human social desires. All people, regardless of nationality and religion, want peace, not war; respect for their rights and freedoms, not enslavement.

Justice, morality, independence, humanity are universal values. Everyone wants them for himself, his loved ones, humanity as a whole.

Realizing your personal aspirations and desires, you need to remember about the people around you. By harming nature and society, people harm themselves.

Classification of social needs

In psychology, several dozen different classifications of needs have been developed. The most general classification defines two types of desires:

1. Primary or congenital:

• biological or material needs (food, water, sleep, and others);
• existential (security and confidence in the future).

2. Secondary or acquired:

• social needs (for belonging, communication, interaction, love and others);
• prestigious (respect, self-respect);
• spiritual (self-realization, self-expression, creative activity).

The most famous classification of social needs was developed by A. Maslow and is known as the "Pyramid of needs".

This is a hierarchy of human aspirations from the lowest to the highest:

1. physiological (food, sleep, carnal and others);
2. the need for security (housing, property, stability);
3. social (love, friendship, family, belonging);
4. respect and recognition of the individual (both by other people and by oneself);
5. self-actualization (self-realization, harmony, happiness).

As you can see, these two classifications equally define social needs as the desire for love and belonging.

Significance of social needs

Natural physiological and material desires are always paramount, since the possibility of survival depends on them.

Human social needs are given a secondary role, they follow the physiological ones, but are more significant for the human personality.

Examples of such importance can be observed when a person suffers a need, giving preference to the satisfaction of a secondary need: the student, instead of sleeping, is preparing for the exam; mother forgets to eat while caring for the baby; a man is in physical pain to impress a woman.

The individual strives for activity in society, socially useful work, the establishment of positive interpersonal relations, wants to be recognized and successful in the social environment. It is necessary to satisfy these desires for successful coexistence with other people in society.

Social needs such as friendship, love, family are of absolute importance.

Using the example of the relationship between the social need of people for love with the physiological need for carnal relationships and with the instinct of procreation, one can understand how interdependent and connected these drives are.

The instinct of procreation is complemented by care, tenderness, respect, mutual understanding, common interests, love arises.

Personality is not formed outside of society, without communication and interaction with people, without meeting social needs.

Examples of children raised by animals (there were several such incidents in the history of mankind) are a vivid confirmation of the importance of love, communication, society. Such children, having got into the human community, have not been able to become its full-fledged members. When a person experiences only primary drives, he becomes like an animal and actually becomes it.

The needs of the individual (need) are the so-called source of personal activity, because it is the needs of a person that are his motivating reason for actions in a certain way, forcing him to move in the right direction. Thus, need or need is such a personal state in which the dependence of subjects on certain situations or conditions of existence is revealed.

Personal activity manifests itself only in the process of satisfying its needs, which are formed during the upbringing of the individual, familiarizing him with social culture. In its primary biological manifestation, need is nothing more than a certain state of the organism, expressing its objective need (desire) for something. Thus, the system of individual needs directly depends on the lifestyle of the individual, the interaction between the environment and the scope of its use. From the standpoint of neurophysiology, need means the formation of some kind of dominant, i.e. the appearance of excitation of special cells of the brain, characterized by stability and regulating the required behavioral actions.

Types of personality needs

Human needs are quite diverse and today there are a huge number of their classifications. However, in modern psychology, there are two main classifications of types of needs. In the first classification, needs (needs) are divided into material (biological), spiritual (ideal) and social.

The realization of material or biological needs is associated with the individual-specific existence of the individual. These include - the need for food, sleep, clothing, security, home, intimate desires. Those. need (need), which is due to biological need.

Spiritual or ideal needs are expressed in the knowledge of the world that surrounds, the meaning of existence, self-realization and self-respect.

The desire of an individual to belong to any social group, as well as the need for human recognition, leadership, domination, self-affirmation, affection of others in love and respect is reflected in social needs. All these needs are divided according to important types of activity:

• labor, work - the need for knowledge, creation and creation;

• development - the need for training, self-realization;

• social communication - spiritual and moral needs.

The needs or needs described above have a social orientation, therefore they are called sociogenic or social.

In another type of classification, all needs are divided into two types: need or need for growth (development) and conservation.

The need to preserve combines such needs (needs) - physiological: sleep, intimate desires, hunger, etc. These are the basic needs of the individual. Without their satisfaction, the individual is simply not able to survive. Further the need for security and preservation; abundance - all-round satisfaction of natural needs; material needs and biological.

The need for growth combines the following: the desire for love and respect; self-actualization; self-respect; cognition, including the meaning of life; needs for sensory (emotional) contact; social and spiritual (ideal) needs. The above classifications make it possible to single out the more significant needs of the subject's practical behavior.

OH. Maslow put forward the concept of a systematic approach to research in the psychology of the personality of subjects, based on a model of personality needs in the form of a pyramid. The hierarchy of individual needs according to A.Kh. Maslow represents the behavior of an individual that directly depends on the satisfaction of any of his needs. This means that the needs at the top of the hierarchy (realization of goals, self-development) guide the behavior of the individual to the extent that his needs, which are at the very bottom of the pyramid, are satisfied (thirst, hunger, intimate desires, etc.).

They also distinguish between potential (non-actualized) needs and actualized ones. The main driver of personal activity is an internal conflict (contradiction) between the internal conditions of existence and external ones.

All types of personality needs that are at the upper levels of the hierarchy have a different level of severity in different people, but without society, not a single person can exist. The subject can become a full-fledged personality only when he satisfies his need for self-actualization.

Social needs of the individual

This is a special kind of human need. It consists in the need to have everything necessary for the existence and life of an individual, any social group, society as a whole. It is an internal motivating factor for activity.

Social needs are the need of people for work, social activity, culture, spiritual life. The needs created by society are those needs that are the basis of social life. Without motivating factors for satisfying needs, production and progress in general are impossible.

Also, social needs include the needs associated with the desire to form a family, joining various social groups, collectives, with various spheres of production (non-production) activities, the existence of society as a whole. Conditions, environmental factors that surround the individual in the process of his life, not only contribute to the emergence of needs, but also form opportunities to satisfy them. In human life and the hierarchy of needs, social needs play one of the defining roles. The existence of an individual in society and through it is the central area of ​​manifestation of the essence of a person, the main condition for the realization of all other needs - biological and spiritual.

Social needs are classified according to three criteria: the needs of others, their own needs, joint needs.

The need of others (needs for others) are needs that express the generic basis of the individual. It consists in the need for communication, protection of the weak. Altruism is one of the expressed needs for others, the need to sacrifice one's own interests for others. Altruism is realized only through the victory over egoism. That is, the need "for oneself" must be transformed into the need "for others."

Your need (need for yourself) is expressed in self-affirmation in society, self-realization, self-identification, in the need to take your place in society and the team, the desire for power, etc. Such needs, therefore, are social, which cannot exist without needs “for others ". Only through doing something for others, it is possible to realize their desires. Take any position in society, i.e. to achieve recognition for yourself, it is much easier to do without hurting the interests and claims of other members of society. The most effective way to realize your egoistic desires will be such a path in the movement along which there is a share of compensation to satisfy the claims of other people, those who can claim the same role or the same place, but can be satisfied with less.

Joint needs (needs "together with others") - express the motivating power of many people at the same time or society as a whole. For example, the need for security, freedom, peace, a change in the existing political system, etc.

The needs and motives of the individual

The main condition for the vital activity of organisms is the presence of their activity. In animals, activity is manifested in instincts. But human behavior is much more complex and is determined by the presence of two factors: regulatory and incentive, i.e. motives and needs.

The motives and system of individual needs have their own basic characteristics. If need is a need (scarcity), the need for something and the need to eliminate something in excess, then the motive is a pusher. Those. need creates a state of activity, and motive gives it direction, pushes activity in the required direction. Necessity or necessity, first of all, is felt by a person as a state of tension inside, or manifests itself as reflections, dreams. This prompts the individual to search for the object of need, but does not give direction to the activity for its satisfaction.

The motive, in turn, is an incentive to achieve the desired or, conversely, to avoid it, to carry out the activity or not. Motives can be accompanied by positive or negative emotions. Satisfaction of needs always leads to the release of tension, the need disappears, but after a while it can arise again. With motives, the opposite is true. The goal and the motive itself do not coincide. Because the goal is where or what the person is striving for, and the motive is the reason for which he strives.

You can set a goal for yourself following different motives. But such a variant is also possible in which the motive is shifted to the goal. This means the transformation of the motive of activity directly into a motive. For example, a student at first teaches lessons, because the parents are forcing, but then interest wakes up and he begins to learn for the sake of learning. Those. it turns out that the motive is an internal psychological stimulus of behavior or actions, which is stable and encourages the individual to carry out activities, giving it meaningfulness. And need is an internal state of feeling of need, which expresses the dependence of a person or animals on certain conditions of existence.

Personal needs and interests

The category of interests is inextricably linked with the category of need. The origin of interests is always based on needs. Interest is an expression of the purposeful attitude of the individual to any kind of his needs.

A person's interest is not so much directed specifically at the subject of need, but rather directed at such social factors that make this subject more accessible, basically these are various benefits of civilization (material or spiritual), which ensure the satisfaction of such needs. Interests are also determined by the specific position of people in society, the position of social groups and are the most powerful incentives for any activity.

Interests can also be classified depending on the focus or the carrier of these interests. The first group includes social, spiritual and political interests. The second is the interests of society as a whole, group and individual interests.

The interests of an individual express its orientation, which largely determines its path and the nature of any activity.

In its general manifestation, interest can be called the true cause of social and personal actions, events, which stands directly behind the motives - the motives of the individuals taking part in these very actions. Interest is objective and objective social, conscious, realizable.

An objectively efficient and optimal way to satisfy needs is called objective interest. Such an interest of an objective nature does not depend on the consciousness of the individual.

An objectively effective and optimal way to meet the needs in public space is called objective social interest. For example, there are a lot of stalls, shops on the market and there is definitely an optimal path to the best and cheapest product. This will be a manifestation of an objective social interest. There are many ways to make different purchases, but there will certainly be one objectively optimal for a particular situation among them.

The subject's idea of ​​how best to satisfy his needs is called conscious interest. Such interest may coincide with the objective one or differ slightly, or it may have an absolutely opposite direction. The immediate cause of almost all actions of subjects is precisely the interest of a conscious nature. This interest is based on the person's personal experience. The path that a person takes to meet the needs of the individual is called realizable interest. It can completely coincide with the interest of a conscious nature, or absolutely contradict it.

There is one more type of interests - this is the product. This type is both a way to satisfy needs and a way to satisfy them. The product can be the optimal way to meet the needs, and it can appear to be so.

Spiritual needs of the individual

The spiritual needs of a person are a directed striving for self-realization, expressed through creativity or through other activities.

There are 3 aspects of the term spiritual needs of the individual:

• The first aspect concerns the pursuit of mastery of the results of spiritual productivity. It includes an introduction to art, culture, science.

• The second aspect is the forms of expression of needs in material order and social relations in today's society.

• The third aspect is the harmonious development of the individual.

Any spiritual needs are represented by a person's inner motivations for his spiritual manifestation, creativity, creation, creation of spiritual values ​​and their consumption, for spiritual communications (communication). They are conditioned by the inner world of the individual, the desire to withdraw into oneself, to focus on what is not related to social and physiological needs. These needs encourage people to engage in art, religion, culture, not in order to satisfy their physiological and social needs, but in order to understand the meaning of existence. Their distinctive feature is unsaturation. Since the more internal needs are satisfied, the more intense and stable they become.

There is no limit to the progressive growth of spiritual needs. The limitation of such growth and development can only be the amount of spiritual wealth accumulated earlier by mankind, the strength of the individual's desires to participate in their work and his capabilities. The main signs that distinguish spiritual needs from material ones:

• needs of a spiritual nature arise in the consciousness of the individual;

• needs of a spiritual nature are inherent in necessity, and the level of freedom in choosing ways and means of satisfying such needs is much higher than that of material ones;

• the satisfaction of most needs of a spiritual nature is associated mainly with the amount of free time;

• in such needs, the connection between the object of need and the subject is characterized by a certain degree of selflessness;

• the process of meeting spiritual needs has no boundaries.

Yu. Sharov singled out a detailed classification of spiritual needs: the need for work; the need for communication; aesthetic and moral needs; scientific and educational needs; the need for health improvement; the need for military duty. One of the most important spiritual needs of a person is knowledge. The future of any society depends on the spiritual foundation that will be developed by today's youth.

Psychological needs of the individual

The psychological needs of an individual are those needs that are not reduced to bodily needs, but also do not reach the level of spiritual needs. These needs usually include the need for affiliation, communication, etc.

The need for communication in children is not an inborn need. It is formed through the activity of the surrounding adults. Usually it actively begins to manifest itself by the age of two months. Adolescents, on the other hand, have the conviction that their need for communication gives them the opportunity to actively use adults. Lack of satisfaction of the need for communication affects adults in a detrimental way. They sink into negative emotions. The need for acceptance is the desire of an individual to be accepted by another by a group of individuals or by society as a whole. Such a need often pushes a person to violate generally accepted norms and can lead to antisocial behavior.

Among psychological needs, basic needs of the individual are distinguished. These are needs that, if not met, young children will not be able to fully develop. They seem to stop in their development and become more susceptible to certain diseases than their peers, who have such needs satisfied. So, for example, if a baby is regularly fed but grows up without proper communication with his parents, his development may be delayed.

The basic needs of the personality of adults of a psychological nature are divided into 4 groups: autonomy - the need for independence, independence; the need for competence; the need for interpersonal relationships that are significant for the individual; the need to be a member of a social group, to feel loved. This also includes a sense of self-worth and the need to be recognized by others. In cases of dissatisfaction with basic physiological needs, the physical health of the individual suffers, and in cases of dissatisfaction with basic psychological needs, the spirit (psychological health) suffers.

Personal motivation and needs

The motivational processes of an individual have in themselves the direction of achieving or, conversely, avoiding the set goals, to realize a certain activity or not. Such processes are accompanied by various emotions, both positive and negative, for example, joy, fear. Also, during such processes, some psychophysiological stress appears. This means that motivational processes are accompanied by a state of excitement or agitation, and a feeling of decline or surge of strength may also appear.

On the one hand, the regulation of mental processes that affect the direction of activity and the amount of energy required to perform this very activity is called motivation. On the other hand, motivation is still a certain set of motives, which gives direction to the activity and the innermost process of motivation. Motivational processes directly explain the choice between different options for action, but which have equally attractive goals. It is motivation that affects perseverance and perseverance, with the help of which an individual achieves his goals, overcomes obstacles.

The logical explanation for the reasons for actions or behavior is called motivation. Motivation can be different from real motives or deliberately used in order to disguise them.

Motivation is closely related to the needs and requirements of the individual, because it appears when desires (needs) or lack of something arise. Motivation is the initial stage of an individual's physical and mental activity. Those. it is a kind of incentive to perform actions by a certain motive or process of choosing reasons for a particular direction of activity.

It should always be borne in mind that absolutely different reasons can be behind completely similar, at first glance, actions or actions of the subject, i.e. their motivation can be very different.

Motivation can be external (extrinsic) or internal (intrinsic). The first is not related to the content of a specific activity, but is conditioned by external conditions in relation to the subject. The second is directly related to the content of the process of activity. Also distinguish between negative and positive motivation. Motivation based on positive messages is called positive. And motivation, which is based on negative messages, is called, respectively, negative. For example, a positive motivation would be “if I behave well, they will buy me ice cream,” negative, “if I behave, I will not be punished.”

Motivation can be individual, i.e. aimed at maintaining the constancy of the internal environment of his body. For example, avoidance of pain, thirst, striving to maintain an optimal temperature, hunger, etc. It can also be a group. It includes taking care of children, finding and choosing one's place in the social hierarchy, etc. Cognitive motivational processes include various play and research activities.

Basic needs of the individual

The basic (leading) needs of an individual's needs can differ not only in content, but also in the level of conditioning by society. Regardless of gender or age, as well as social background, everyone has basic needs. A. Maslow described them in more detail in his work. He proposed a theory based on the principle of hierarchical structure ("Hierarchy of individual needs" according to Maslow). Those. some individual needs are primary in relation to others. For example, if a person is thirsty or hungry, they will not really care if their neighbor respects or not. The absence of an object of need Maslow called scarce or scarce needs. Those. in the absence of food (an item of need), a person will strive by any means to fill such a deficit in any way possible for him.

Basic needs are divided into 6 groups:

1. These include primarily the physical need, which includes the need for food, drink, air, sleep. This also includes the individual's need for close communication with subjects of the opposite sex (intimate relationships).

2. The need for praise, trust, love, etc. is called emotional needs.

3. The need for friendship, respect in a team or other social group is called a social need.

4. The need to get answers to the questions posed, to satisfy curiosity are called intellectual needs.

5. Belief in divine authority or simply the need to believe is called a spiritual need. Such needs help people find peace of mind, experience troubles, etc.

6. The need for self-expression through creativity is called creative need (s).

All of the listed individual needs are a part of every person. Satisfaction of all basic needs, desires, needs of a person contributes to his health and a positive attitude in all actions. All basic needs necessarily have a cyclical nature of processes, direction and intensity. All needs in the processes of their satisfaction are fixed. Initially, the satisfied basic need temporarily dies down (fades away) in order to arise with even greater intensity over time.

The needs, expressed more weakly, but many times satisfied, gradually become more stable. There is a certain pattern in the consolidation of needs - the more diverse the means used to consolidate the needs, the more firmly they are fixed. In this case, needs are made the foundations of behavioral actions.

The need determines the entire adaptive mechanism of the psyche. At the same time, objects of reality are reflected as probable obstacles or conditions for satisfying needs. Therefore, any basic need is equipped with a kind of effectors and detectors. The emergence of basic needs and their actualization directs the psyche to determine the corresponding goals.

The existence of social needs is due to a person's life with other individuals and with constant interaction with them. Society influences the formation of the structure of the personality, its needs and desires. Harmonious development of the individual outside of society is impossible. The need for communication, friendship, love can be satisfied only in the process of interaction between a person and society.

What is "need"?

It is a need for something. It can be both physiological and psychological, serves as a motive for action and "forces" the individual to take steps aimed at satisfying his needs. Needs appear in the form of emotionally colored desires and, as a consequence, her satisfaction is manifested in the form of evaluative emotions. When an individual needs something, he feels negative emotions, and as his needs and desires are satisfied, positive emotions appear.

Failure to meet physiological needs can lead to the death of a living organism, and psychological needs can cause internal discomfort and tension, depression.

Satisfaction of one need entails the emergence of another. Their limitlessness is one of the features of the development of the individual as a person.

Needs force to perceive the surrounding reality selectively, through the prism of their needs. They focus the individual's attention on objects that contribute to the satisfaction of the current need.

Hierarchy

The diversity of human nature is the reason for the existence of various classifications of needs: by object and subject, spheres of activity, temporal stability, significance, functional role, etc. The most widely known is the hierarchy of needs proposed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow.

• The first stage is physiological needs (thirst, hunger, sleep, sexual desire, etc.).
• The second stage is safety (lack of fear for one's existence, confidence).
• The third stage is social needs (communication, friendship, love, caring for others, belonging to a social group, joint activity).
• The fourth step is the need for respect from others and from oneself (success, recognition).
• The fifth step is spiritual needs (self-expression, disclosure of inner potential, achieving harmony, personal development).

Maslow argues that meeting the needs that are at the lower levels of the hierarchy leads to the strengthening of the higher ones. A thirsty person concentrates his attention on finding a source of water, and the need for communication fades into the background. It is important to remember that needs can exist simultaneously, the question is only in priority.

Social needs

Human social needs are not as acute as physiological, but they play an important role in the interaction of the individual and society. The implementation of social needs is impossible outside of society. Social needs include:

• the need for friendship;
• approval;
• love;
• communication;
• joint activities;
• caring for others;
• belonging to a social group, etc.

At the dawn of human development, it was social needs that contributed to the development of civilization. People united for protection and hunting, fighting the elements. Their satisfaction in joint activities contributed to the development of agriculture. The realization of the need for communication pushed the development of culture.

Man is a social being and he tends to communicate with his own kind, therefore the satisfaction of social needs is no less important than physiological ones.

Types of social needs

Distinguish social needs according to the following criteria:

1. "For oneself" (desire for self-affirmation, recognition from others, power).
2. “For others” (the need for communication, protection of others, selfless help, abandonment of one's desires in favor of others).
3. “Together with others” (expressed in the form of a desire to be part of a large social group for the implementation of large-scale ideas that will benefit the entire group: unification for the sake of confronting the aggressor, for the sake of changing the political regime, for the sake of peace, freedom, security).

The first kind can be realized only through the need “for others”.

Classification by E. Fromm

German sociologist Erich Fromm proposed different needs:

• connections (the desire of the individual to be part of any social community, group);
• affection (friendship, love, desire to share warm feelings and receive them in return);
• self-affirmation (the desire to feel significant to others);
• self-awareness (desire to stand out against the background of others, to feel their own individuality);
• landmark (an individual needs a standard for comparing and evaluating his actions, which can be religion, culture, national traditions).

D. McClelland classification

American psychologist David McClellad proposed his classification of social needs based on personality typology and motivation:

• Power. People gravitate towards influencing others and being able to control their actions. There are two subtypes of such individuals: those who desire power for the sake of power itself, and those who seek power in order to solve other people's problems.
• Success. This need can be satisfied only if the business started has been successfully completed. It forces the individual to take the initiative and take risks. However, in case of failure, the person will avoid repeating the negative experience.
• Involvement. Such people strive to establish friendly relations with everyone and try to avoid conflicts.

Meeting social needs

The main feature of social needs is that they can be satisfied only through interaction with society. The very emergence of such needs is associated with society at the current stage of cultural and historical development. Activity is the main source of satisfaction of the social needs of the individual. Changing the content of social activities contributes to the development of social needs. The more diverse and complex, the more perfect the system of individual needs becomes.

Significance

The influence of social needs should be considered from two sides: from the point of view of the individual and from the point of view of society as a whole.

Meeting social needs helps a person feel complete, needed, increases self-esteem and self-confidence. The most important social needs are communication, love, friendship. They play a primary role in the formation of the individual as a person.

From the point of view of society, they are the engine for the development of all spheres of life. A scientist, desiring recognition (satisfaction of the need "for himself") invents a method of treating a serious illness that saves many lives and contributes to the development of science. An artist who dreams of becoming famous, in the process of satisfying his social need, contributes to culture. There are many such examples, and all of them will confirm that satisfying the needs of an individual is as important for society as for the person himself.

Man is a social being and cannot develop harmoniously outside of him. The main social needs of the individual include: the need for communication, friendship, love, self-realization, recognition, power. Diversity contributes to the development of the individual's system of needs. Failure to meet social needs causes apathy and aggression. Social needs contribute not only to the improvement of the individual as a person, but are also the engine of the development of society as a whole.

Unlike biological and material needs, social needs do not make themselves felt so persistently, they exist as a matter of course, do not prompt a person to their immediate satisfaction. It would be, however, an unforgivable mistake to conclude that social needs play a secondary role in the life of a person and society.

On the contrary, social needs play a decisive role in the hierarchy of needs. At the dawn of the emergence of man, to curb zoological individualism, people united, created a taboo on the possession of harems, jointly participated in the hunt for a wild beast, clearly understood the differences between "theirs" and "aliens", jointly fought the elements of nature. Due to the prevalence of needs "for another" over needs "for oneself", man has become a man, has created his own history. Being a person in society, being for society and through society is the central sphere of manifestation of the essential forces of a person, the first necessary condition for the realization of all other needs: biological, material, spiritual.

Social needs exist in an infinite variety of forms. Without trying to present all the manifestations of social needs, we will classify these groups of needs according to three criteria-criteria: 1) needs for others; 2) needs for yourself; 3) needs together with others.

Needs for others are needs that express the generic essence of a person. This is the need for communication, the need to protect the weak. The most concentrated need "for others" is expressed in altruism - in the need to sacrifice oneself in the name of another. The need "for others" is realized, overcoming the eternal egoistic principle "for oneself". An example of the need "for others" is the hero of Y. Nagibin's story "Ivan". "It gave him much more pleasure to try for someone than for himself. Probably, this is love for people ... But gratitude did not spill out of us. Ivan was shamelessly exploited, deceived, robbed."

The need "for oneself": the need for self-affirmation in society, the need for self-realization, the need for self-identification, the need to have one's place in society, in the collective, the need for power, etc. Needs "for oneself" are called social because they are inextricably linked with needs " for others ", and only through them can be realized. In most cases, the needs "for oneself" act as an allegorical expression of the needs "for others." P. M. Ershov writes about this unity and interpenetration of opposites - needs "for oneself" and needs "for others": "The existence and even" cooperation "in one person of opposite tendencies" for oneself "and" for others "is possible, while we are not talking about individual and not about deep needs, but about the means of satisfying one or the other - about the needs of service and derivatives. The claim even for the most significant place "for oneself" is easier to realize if at the same time, if possible, do not touch the claims of other people; the most productive means of achieving selfish goals are those that contain some compensation "for others" - those who claim the same place, but can be content with less ... "

Needs "along with others". A group of needs that expresses the motivating forces of many people or society as a whole: the need for security, the need for freedom, the need to curb the aggressor, the need for peace, the need for a change in the political regime.

The peculiarities of needs "together with others" are that they unite people to solve urgent problems of social progress. Thus, the invasion of the German fascist troops into the territory of the USSR in 1941 became a powerful stimulus for organizing a resistance, and this need was of a universal nature. Today, the blatant aggression of the United States and NATO countries against Yugoslavia has formed a common need of the peoples of the world to condemn the unprovoked bombing of Yugoslavian cities, helped to rally the Yugoslav people in their determination to wage an uncompromising struggle against the aggressor.

The most respected person is a person who possesses a wealth of social needs and directs all the efforts of his soul to satisfy these needs. This is a man - an ascetic, a revolutionary, a tribune of the people, who brings his whole life to the altar of the fatherland, to the altar of social progress

Social behavior is a person's behavior in society, calculated to have a certain impact on society and the people around him. This behavior is governed by special motives, which are called motives of social behavior.

The types of social behavior governed by corresponding motives and needs include: behavior aimed at achieving success or avoiding failure, attachment-type behavior, aggressiveness, the desire for power, affiliation (the desire for people and the fear of being rejected), helping behavior ( English), type A behavior, type B behavior, altruism, helpless and deviant behavior. All types of social behavior, depending on what they are and what benefits they bring to people, are divided into three main groups: prosocial, asocial and antisocial behavior.

Motives, like social behavior itself, can be positive and negative. Positive - these are the motives of social behavior that stimulate the prosocial behavior of a person, aimed at providing assistance and psychological development of other people.

Motivation of social behavior is a dynamic, situationally changing system of factors that, in a single space and time, act on a person's social behavior, motivating him to perform certain deeds and actions. In addition to the very motive of such behavior, motivational factors can also include the value of the goal, the likelihood of its achievement in the current situation, the person's assessment of his abilities and capabilities, the division in his mind and the exact definition of what depends on luck (coincidence of circumstances) and on the efforts made. Motives and factors of motivation for social behavior represent a single system in which they are functionally linked to each other both in terms of influencing social behavior and in the dynamics of development.

Asocial behavior - behavior that is contrary to socially accepted norms and principles, acting in the form of immoral or illegal norms. It manifests itself in minor offenses, behavior that does not pose a social danger and does not require administrative action. Its assessment is carried out at the microenvironmental and personal levels in the forms of communicative, psychological and behavioral manifestations.

With such behavior, a person is not aware of the damage inflicted on society, does not realize the negative direction of his actions. Examples of asocial behavior can be infantilism, the actions of persons of the mentally deranged, that is, those cases when people are unable to understand the social meaning of their actions. Asocial or antisocial behavior generates negative motives, stimulating activities that interfere with the psychological growth of a person and harm people.

Crises naturally occurring at different stages of a person's life can become the cause of various forms of asocial behavior and personality disorders. Difficulties and the stressful states they cause, which a person encounters, require certain strategies to overcome obstacles.A person either forms effective adaptive behavior that corresponds to the forward movement of the personality, or undergoes maladjustment and finds a way out in various forms of non-optimal behavior.

Drug addiction and alcoholism, vandalism, hooliganism, escape from reality, parasitism, lack of interest in learning, membership in sects are not neuroses in the strict sense of the word, but represent a problem for society and for those of its institutions that are included in the process of socialization of the new generation of citizens

The source of antisocial behavior can be unresponsive negative experiences of different periods of life, inability to withstand failures and difficulties, lack of clear guidelines, inability to take responsibility for one's life and other reasons. Each of them can lead to the imprinting of an inadequate form of personal protection.

The result of an acute dissatisfaction with deep and actual motives and needs of the individual "is, according to V. Merlin, an intrapersonal conflict, which is characterized by a long and stable disintegration of adaptive activity. Depending on which value-motivational components of the personality come into mutual contradiction, there are six main types of intrapersonal conflict.

Motivational conflict - between "I want" and "I want", a clash of two different desires, motives, needs, equally attractive to the individual. “I don’t want - I don’t want to” - a choice between two equally undesirable opportunities against the background of the desire to avoid each of the alternatives. "I choose the lesser of two evils."

Moral conflict - between "I want" and "I must", between desire and duty, moral principles and desires, between duty and doubt about the need to follow it.

The conflict of unfulfilled desire, between "I want" and "I can", between desire and the impossibility of satisfying it due to various subjective and objective reasons (physical and mental characteristics of a person, time and space constraints). “I want - I can’t” - fear, fear associated with its achievement, either with the goal itself, or with the process of achieving it, keeps from achieving the goal.

Role conflict - between "It is necessary" and "It is necessary", between two values, principles, strategies of behavior that are significant for the individual, when it is impossible to combine several social and psychological roles at the same time, or associated with different requirements of the personality for this role.

Adaptation conflict - between "I must" and "I can", the discrepancy between the mental, physical, professional and other capabilities of a person and the requirements for him.

Conflict as a result of inadequate self-esteem - between “I can” and “I can”. Self-esteem depends on the degree of criticality of the individual towards himself, towards his successes and failures, real and potential opportunities, the ability to self-analyze. It can be subjectively overestimated or underestimated when comparing it with the assessment of others.

As a reaction to difficulties in resolving internal contradictions, to the impossibility of achieving a meaningful goal, to deceiving expectations, a person may experience frustration. It combines the full range of negative emotions and behaviors from depression to aggression. If it was not possible to overcome the obstacle that caused the frustration, then it is necessary to find another way to solve the problem, for example: to replace the means of achieving the goal; replace goals; lose interest in the goal on the basis of new information.

The group of social needs includes all the needs and forms of behavior associated with communication with other creatures, most often - with representatives of their own species. Communication may not be direct, but only imaginary. However, in almost everything we do, we carry out, taking into account the existence of other people. Each person belongs to more than one social group and plays different roles in them. The degree of involvement in each of these groups is different, therefore, the need for self-identification becomes the main social need of a person.

By social self-identification, a person is saved from the fear of loneliness - one of the existential, that is, inherent in all people, problems.

Every person has a need to feel like a member of a community. All human behavior and the inner world of his emotional experiences are built on the basis of identifying oneself with a certain group: a family, a specific state, a people, a work collective, a football fan, a group in social networks, etc. Sometimes communities are formed according to random, insignificant signs. It can be the same surname if it is rare or if it is worn by some outstanding person. Or a general illness or even hair color. It is important that joining a community improves the mental well-being of people.

At different moments in life, different groups become the most important for a person, that is, his priorities change. As a rule, he identifies himself with the most successful community at the moment.

Often, social identification is emphasized by certain attributes. The concept of "honor of the uniform" was equivalent to the concept of "honor of the regiment". The features of clothing were strictly regulated in the class society. A person does many things only because it is "so accepted" in the society of which he considers himself a member. To behave in a certain way only because "it is so accepted" is the satisfaction of this need. For example, the Greeks and Romans did not wear pants. This is not always convenient, for example, patients had to wrap the shins and thighs with tissue. But they considered it impossible to use such a practical thing as pants, since for them it was a sign of barbarism. In modern European society, behavioral features, including the choice of costume, also play a huge role in meeting the need for social self-identification.

A person considers himself a member of a community, not because most of the members of this group are somehow sympathetic to him. In the absence of another group, people consider themselves members of what they are. For example, one of the existing definitions of the concept of "relatives" sounds like this: this is a group of completely outsiders who periodically gather to drink and have a snack due to a change in their number. Indeed, when answering the question: "List 20 people, communication with whom gives you the most pleasure," the subjects mention no more than two relatives, and these are, as a rule, family members. An analysis of the subjects' descriptions of their relationship to relatives shows that in most cases these people are perceived by them as alien personalities with different interests, a different value system, a different lifestyle and a different sense of humor. Nevertheless, communicating with relatives at weddings, commemorations and anniversaries, a person feels uplifting due to the fact that at the same time his need for social self-identification is satisfied.

Patriotism is most often based on the self-identification of people as members of metaphysical, that is, without material objects that can serve as a symbol of unity, communities. A classic example of the influence of subjective categories on a completely material development of events is the renaming of streets in besieged Leningrad. Indeed, hostilities were conducted more successfully by people who live in a city where there is Nevsky Prospect, Sadovaya Street and Palace Square than by residents of a city with 25 October Avenue, July 3 Street and Uritsky Square.

To satisfy the need for social self-identification, a person must determine which of the social groups is most important to him at the moment. A person's behavior and the inner world of his emotional experiences are built on the basis of self-identification as a member of a certain group: a family member, a citizen of a particular state, a representative of a nation, a member of a labor collective, a fan of a football team, etc. Change of self-identification is common. A person unconsciously associates himself with the most successful community at the moment (it is more pleasant to root for a champion, and not for an eternal average).

The need for friendly relationships is one of the social needs. Direct physical contact (hugging, patting, stroking, etc.) is present in the relationship of loved ones. We can observe similar behavior in many animals - this is the so-called crowding and mutual cleaning.

Some social needs are transformed into artificial ones, which is most clearly manifested in the prices of art objects. A picture can hang for decades until some expert discovers that it was not painted by an unknown artist, but by a famous one. The price of the canvas will immediately increase hundreds of times. Neither the artistic, nor the historical value of the object of art has changed, but now people are ready to pay huge sums of money for it. At the heart of this phenomenon is their need for vanity.

Regular satisfaction of social needs is as necessary for human health as vital. But the fundamental difference between social needs and vital needs is that in order to satisfy the former, the presence of other people is necessary - human society, society.

Mental disorders of children, deprived for one reason or another of the opportunity to meet social needs, prove the vital importance of the latter. An example would be the so-called non-frustrated children who are brought up without denying them any request or forbidding anything. When they grow up, they experience more than communication problems. Typically, they develop a range of cognitive and emotional disorders. This is due to the fact that in childhood they were deprived of the opportunity to satisfy the child's natural need to "follow the leader."

There are many classifications of needs. The first classification divides all needs by origin into two large groups - natural and cultural (Fig. 1). The first of them are programmed at the genetic level, and the second are formed in the process of social life.

Fig. 1.

The second classification (by level of difficulty) divides needs into biological, social and spiritual.

The biological one can include the desire of a person to maintain his existence (the need for food, clothing, sleep, safety, to save energy, etc.).

Social needs include a person's need for communication, for popularity, for domination over other people, for belonging to a particular group, for leadership and recognition.

The spiritual needs of a person are the need to know the world around him and himself, the desire for self-improvement and self-realization, in knowing the meaning of his existence.

Usually, a person simultaneously has more than ten unfulfilled needs at the same time, and his subconsciousness arranges them in order of importance, forming a rather complex hierarchical structure known as the "pyramid of Abraham Maslow" (Fig. 2). According to the theory of this American psychologist, the lower level is made up of physiological needs, then comes the need for security (realizing which a person seeks to avoid the emotion of fear), higher is the need for love, then the need for respect and recognition, and at the very top of the pyramid is the desire of the individual to self-actualization. However, these needs are far from being exhausted by the set of actual human needs. Needs for knowledge, freedom and beauty are no less important.

Rice. 2.

A person is aware of the freedom of his actions, and it seems to him that he is free to act in one way or another. But a person's knowledge of the true cause of his feelings, thoughts and desires often turns out to be false. A person is far from always aware of the true motives of his actions and the deep reasons for his actions. As Friedrich Engels said, "people are accustomed to explaining their actions from their thinking, instead of explaining them from their needs."

social need behavior motivation

The states and needs of people that arise when they need something are the basis of their motives. That is, it is precisely the needs that are the source of the activity of each individual. A person is a willing creature, therefore, in reality, it is unlikely that it will turn out so that his needs are fully satisfied. The nature of human needs is such that, as soon as any need is satisfied, the next one comes first.

Maslow's pyramid of needs

Abraham Maslow's concept of needs is perhaps the most well-known of all. The psychologist not only classified the needs of people, but also made an interesting assumption. Maslow noted that each person has an individual hierarchy of necessities. That is, there are basic human needs - they are also called basic, and additional.

According to the psychologist's concept, absolutely all people on earth experience the needs of all levels. Moreover, there is the following law: basic human needs are dominant. However, high-level needs can also remind of themselves and become behavioral motivators, but this only happens when the basic ones are satisfied.

The basic needs of people are those that are aimed at survival. At the base of Maslow's pyramid are the basic necessities. Human biological needs are the most important. Next comes the need for security. Meeting a person's needs for security ensures survival, as well as a sense of the constancy of living conditions.

A person feels the needs of a higher level only when he has done everything to ensure his physical well-being. The social needs of a person lie in the fact that he feels the need to unite with other people, in love and recognition. After satisfying this need, the following are highlighted. A person's spiritual needs are self-respect, protection from loneliness, and feeling worthy of respect.

Further, at the very top of the pyramid of needs is the need to unleash your potential, to fulfill yourself. Maslow explained this human need for activity as the desire to become who he originally is.

Maslow assumed that this need is innate and, most importantly, common to each individual. However, at the same time, it is obvious that people are strikingly different from each other in their motivation. For a variety of reasons, not everyone manages to get to the pinnacle of necessity. Throughout life, people's needs can vary between physical and social, so they are not always aware of the needs, for example, in self-realization, because they are extremely busy with the satisfaction of lower desires.

The needs of man and society are divided into natural and unnatural. Moreover, they are constantly expanding. The development of human needs occurs due to the development of society.

Thus, we can conclude that the higher needs a person satisfies, the more vividly his individuality manifests itself.

Are hierarchy violations possible?

Examples of violation of the hierarchy in the satisfaction of needs are known to everyone. Probably, if the spiritual needs of a person were experienced only by those who are well-fed and healthy, then the very concept of such needs would have long ago sunk into oblivion. Therefore, the organization of needs abounds in exceptions.

Meeting the needs

An extremely important fact is that the satisfaction of needs can never occur on the principle of "all or nothing." After all, if this were so, the physiological necessities would be saturated once and for the whole life, and then there would be a transition to the social needs of a person without the possibility of returning. There is no need to prove otherwise.

Human biological needs

The lower level of Maslow's pyramid is those needs that ensure human survival. Of course, they are the most urgent and have the most powerful motivating force. In order for an individual to be able to feel the needs of higher levels, biological needs must be satisfied at least minimally.

Security and protection needs

This level of vital or vital needs is a need for safety and protection. It can be safely argued that if physiological needs are closely related to the survival of an organism, then the need for security ensures its long life.

The needs of love and belonging

This is the next level of Maslow's pyramid. The need for love is closely related to the individual's desire to avoid loneliness and be accepted into human society. When the needs of the previous two levels are met, motives of this kind take a dominant position.

In our behavior, almost everything is determined by the need for love. It is important for any person to be involved in a relationship, be it family, work team, or something else. A baby needs love, and no less than satisfaction of physical needs and the need for security.

The need for love is especially pronounced in the adolescent period of human development. At this time, it is the motives that grow out of this need that become the leading ones.

Psychologists often say that typical behaviors appear during adolescence. For example, the main activity of a teenager is communication with peers. Also characteristic is the search for an authoritative adult - a teacher and mentor. All teenagers subconsciously strive to be different from everyone else - to stand out from the crowd. Hence, there is a desire to follow fashion trends or belong to any subculture.

The need for love and acceptance in adulthood

As a person matures, their needs for love begin to focus on more selective and deeper relationships. Now needs are pushing people to start families. In addition, it is not the number of friendships that becomes more important, but their quality and depth. It is easy to see that adults have far fewer friends than adolescents, but these friendships are necessary for the individual's mental well-being.

Despite the large number of diverse means of communication, people in modern society are very fragmented. Today, a person does not feel like a part of a community, except perhaps a part of a family that has been going on for three generations, but many do not have this either. In addition, children who have experienced a lack of intimacy tend to fear it later in life. On the one hand, they neurotically avoid close relationships, as they are afraid of losing themselves as a person, and on the other, they really need them.

Maslow identified two main types of relationships. They are not necessarily matrimonial, but may well be friendly, between children and parents, and so on. What are the two types of love identified by Maslow?

Scarce love

This type of love is aimed at striving to make up for the lack of something vital. Deficient love has a specific source - it is unmet needs. The person may lack self-esteem, protection, or acceptance. This kind of love is a feeling born of selfishness. It is motivated by the desire of the individual to fill his inner world. A person is not able to give anything, he only takes.

Alas, in most cases, the basis of long-term relationships, including marital ones, is precisely scarce love. The parties to such an alliance can live together all their lives, but much in their relationship is determined by the internal hunger of one of the members of the couple.

Deficient love is a source of addiction, fear of loss, jealousy and constant attempts to pull the blanket over yourself, suppressing and subduing your partner in order to tie him closer to you.

Existence love

This feeling is based on the recognition of the unconditional value of a loved one, but not for any qualities or special merits, but simply for what he is. Of course, existential love is also designed to satisfy human needs for acceptance, but its striking difference is that there is no element of possessiveness in it. There is also no desire to take away from your neighbor what you yourself need.

The person who is capable of experiencing existential love does not seek to remake a partner or somehow change him, but encourages all the best qualities in him and supports the desire to grow and develop spiritually.

Maslow himself described this kind of love as a healthy relationship between people, which is based on mutual trust, respect and admiration.

Self-esteem needs

Despite the fact that this level of needs is designated as the need for self-esteem, Maslow divided it into two types: self-respect and respect from other people. Although they are closely related to each other, it is often extremely difficult to separate them.

A person's need for self-esteem lies in the fact that he must know that he is capable of much. For example, what will successfully cope with the tasks and requirements set before him, and what feels like a full-fledged person.

If this kind of need is not met, then there is a feeling of weakness, dependence and inferiority. Moreover, the stronger such experiences, the less effective human activity becomes.

It should be noted that self-esteem is healthy only when it is based on respect from other people, and not on status in society, flattery, and so on. Only in this case, the satisfaction of such a need will contribute to psychological stability.

Interestingly, the need for self-esteem manifests itself in different ways at different times in life. Psychologists have noticed that young people who are just starting to start a family and look for their professional niche, more than others need respect from the outside.

Self-actualization needs

The highest level in the pyramid of needs is the need for self-actualization. Abraham Maslow defined this need as the desire of a person to become what he can become. For example, musicians write music, poets write poetry, artists paint. Why? Because they want to be themselves in this world. They need to follow their nature.

For whom is self-actualization important?

It should be noted that not only those who have any talent need self-actualization. Each person, without exception, has their own personal or creative potential. Each person has his own vocation. The need for self-actualization is to find your life's work. The forms and possible ways of self-actualization are very diverse, and it is at this spiritual level of needs that the motives and behavior of people are most unique and individual.

Psychologists say that the desire to maximize self-realization is inherent in every person. However, there are very few people whom Maslow called self-actualizing. No more than 1% of the population. Why, then, the incentives that should induce a person to activity do not always work?

Maslow has identified the following three reasons for this adverse behavior in his writings.

First, a person's ignorance of their capabilities, as well as a lack of understanding of the benefits of self-improvement. In addition, there are ordinary doubts about their own abilities or fear of failure.

Second, the pressure of prejudice - cultural or social. That is, a person's abilities can run counter to those stereotypes that society imposes. For example, stereotypes of femininity and masculinity can prevent a young man from becoming a talented makeup artist or dancer, and a girl from achieving success, for example, in military affairs.

Third, the need for self-actualization can run counter to the need for security. For example, if self-realization requires a person to take risky or dangerous actions or actions that do not guarantee success.