What makes Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs notable?

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Activate when: "why isn't the bonus motivating them," "already paid well but disengaged," "what need does this product really serve," "team is in survival mo... Skill: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Owner: deciqai Summary: Activate when: "why isn't the bonus motivating them," "already paid well but disengaged," "what need does this product really serve," "team is in survival mo... Tags: latest:1.0.5 Version history: v1.0.5 | 2026-07-16T18:05:54.316Z | user Description tail link + agents machine-readable metadata line (deciqai.com/s/maslow-hierarchy.json) v1.0.4 | 2026-07-09T11:

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Safety

Downloads

1.1k

Updated

Oct 11, 2026

Version

1.0.5

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CLAWHUB

About

What it does, and when to use it.

Capability contract not published. No trust telemetry is available yet. 1.1K downloads reported by the source. Last updated 10/11/2026.

Avoid when

Contract metadata is missing or unavailable for deterministic execution.

Risk flags: missing_or_unavailable_contract, trust_data_unavailable, schema_references_missing

Public facts

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Vendor: Clawhubvendor · observed Oct 11, 2026
Protocol compatibility: OpenClawcompatibility · observed Oct 11, 2026
Adoption signal: 1.1K downloadsadoption · observed Oct 11, 2026
Latest release: 1.0.5release · observed Jul 16, 2026
Handshake status: UNKNOWNsecurity

Install and run

Setup complexity: low.

clawhub skill install s17a4mqcnk515kvaca5ze55d0x88pfpx:maslow-hierarchy

Setup complexity is classified as HIGH. You must provision dedicated cloud infrastructure or an isolated VM. Do not run this directly on your local workstation.
Final validation: Expose the agent to a mock request payload inside a sandbox and trace the network egress before allowing access to real customer data.

Contract: missing

curl -s "https://www.xpersona.co/api/v1/agents/clawhub-deciqai-maslow-hierarchy/snapshot"

Documentation

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Extracted files

5 files captured from the source.

SKILL.md

---
name: maslow-hierarchy
description: >
Activate when: "why isn't the bonus motivating them," "already paid well but disengaged,"
"what need does this product really serve," "team is in survival mode," "they need to feel safe
before caring about the mission," or diagnosing why a standard incentive is failing.
Do NOT activate when: formal motivational science is required (use SDT); cross-cultural nuance
makes the five-level hierarchy unreliable; precise empirical rank-ordering of needs is load-bearing.
More: deciqai.com/c/maslow-hierarchy
---

# Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

## Overview

Maslow's Hierarchy proposes needs organize into levels of *prepotency* — lower needs must be at least partially met before higher needs become motivationally dominant. Five levels: physiological → safety → love/belonging → esteem → self-actualization. The empirically supported insight is *deficiency-dominance*: severely unmet lower needs crowd out higher-level motivation. The strict sequential hierarchy is empirically weak (Wahba & Bridwell 1976; Tay & Diener 2011) — use as a diagnostic heuristic, not a strict theory. Supplement with Self-Determination Theory for high-stakes design.

Composes with `jobs-to-be-done` · `okr-goal-setting` · `founder-mindset` · `principal-agent` · `pmf-crossing-the-chasm`.

## When to Use

- A motivation strategy (compensation, perks, career path) is being designed and isn't working
- An incentive that "should work" produces no engagement
- A product is being positioned and the underlying customer need is unclear
- A team can't engage with higher-order work because basic needs are unmet
- "Why isn't the bonus motivating them?" is being asked
- An AI strategy (AI capex push, AI adoption mandate, AI-native competition) triggers job-security fear that blocks engagement with the mission

**Not when:** formal motivational science is required; cross-cultural application is non-trivial; SDT fits better.

## Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

- **Engine mode:** user has a concrete motivation case → run The Process directly.
- **Coach mode:** user is unfamiliar or has no concrete case → guide step by step.

In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output only that step's question, then stop.

1. One-line: when an incentive isn't working, check whether lower-level needs (safety, security, belonging) are met first — higher-level rewards don't compensate for unmet basics.
2. Check fit: if the situation requires precise motivation science, use SDT. Maslow is a diagnostic heuristic.
3. Elicit the specific motivation situation: who is being motivated, with what, and why isn't it working?
> **[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]**
4. One question at a time: are physiological/safety needs met? Are belonging needs met? What level is the incentive targeting? What need is the person actually trying to meet?
> **[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]**
5. Close: matched-level intervention + ackn

_meta.json

{
  "ownerId": "kn754b8sk22s8c6gjxt02bftbn88q7ye",
  "slug": "maslow-hierarchy",
  "version": "1.0.5",
  "publishedAt": 1784225154316
}

references/sources.md

# Sources — maslow-hierarchy

> *Primary sources for the [maslow-hierarchy](../SKILL.md) skill.*

- Maslow, A. H. (1943). "A theory of human motivation." *Psychological Review*, 50(4), 370-396. The foundational paper.
- Maslow, A. H. (1954). *Motivation and Personality.* Harper & Brothers. (1970 second edition; 1987 third edition.) The book-length development.
- Maslow, A. H. (1968). *Toward a Psychology of Being* (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand. The later refinement.
- Wahba, M. A., & Bridwell, L. G. (1976). "Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory." *Organizational Behavior and Human Performance*, 15(2), 212-240. The canonical empirical critique.
- Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011). "Needs and subjective well-being around the world." *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 101(2), 354-365. The cross-cultural test.
- Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Neuberg, S. L., & Schaller, M. (2010). "Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations." *Perspectives on Psychological Science*, 5(3), 292-314.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). "The 'what' and 'why' of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior." *Psychological Inquiry*, 11(4), 227-268. The modern alternative (SDT).
- Pink, D. H. (2009). *Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.* Riverhead Books. ISBN 978-1594488849. Popular SDT synthesis.
- Pew Research Center (2025). "U.S. Workers Are More Worried Than Hopeful About Future AI Use in the Workplace." Contemporary evidence that AI-era job-security fear (a Maslow safety-need threat) is widespread among knowledge workers.
- World Economic Forum (2025). *Future of Jobs Report 2025.* Employer expectations that AI and automation will both displace and create roles across 2025–2030 — the labor-market context behind AI-anxiety motivation cases.

examples/maslow-1943-and-the-subsequent-refinements.md

# Method in Action: Maslow 1943 and the Subsequent Refinements

> *Example for the [maslow-hierarchy](../SKILL.md) skill.*

Maslow's 1943 paper was the founding statement of humanistic psychology — a third movement positioning itself between behaviorism (which Maslow viewed as too reductive about human motivation) and psychoanalysis (which Maslow viewed as too pathology-focused). Maslow's project was to develop a psychology of healthy, thriving people — not a psychology of mental illness.

The 1943 paper presented the five-level hierarchy in its now-canonical form. Maslow's framing of the prepotency principle:

> "If all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is then dominated by the physiological needs, all other needs may become simply nonexistent or be pushed into the background. ... When there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled, at once other (and higher) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism."
>
> — Maslow (1943), p. 374.

And on self-actualization:

> "This need we may call self-actualization. ... It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."
>
> — Maslow (1943), p. 382.

The framework was developed in Maslow's 1954 book *Motivation and Personality*. The book added detail to each level and articulated the methodology Maslow used to identify "self-actualizing" individuals — biographical study of historical figures Maslow judged as having reached high levels of personal development.

In subsequent editions and his later book *Toward a Psychology of Being* (1962, 1968), Maslow softened the strict hierarchy claim and emphasized that real motivation is usually multi-determined.

The empirical literature on the framework:

**Wahba, M. A., & Bridwell, L. G. (1976).** "Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory." *Organizational Behavior and Human Performance*, 15(2), 212-240. The canonical meta-analysis. Reviewed 10+ years of empirical studies attempting to test the prepotency claim. Found:

> "The empirical evidence we reviewed does not support Maslow's strong proposition that needs are arranged in a strict hierarchy of prepotency, with lower-level needs requiring satisfaction before higher-level needs become operative. We did find empirical support for the weaker proposition that severely deprived needs receive disproportionate motivational attention; this is consistent with deprivation-domination logic but does not require the full Maslow hierarchy. We recommend that researchers and practitioners treat the hierarchy as a useful organizing heuristic rather than as a tested theory."
>
> — Wahba & Bridwell (1976), pp. 230-231.

**Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011).** "Needs and subjective well-being around the world." *Journal of Personality

examples/motivating-teams-through-ai-anxiety-2024-2026.md

# Method in Action: Motivating a Team Through the AI-Anxiety Era (2024–2026)

> *Example for the [maslow-hierarchy](../SKILL.md) skill.*

Between 2023 and 2026, generative AI moved from novelty to a standing feature of knowledge work. Large employers publicly tied restructuring to AI, tech-sector layoffs continued at scale, and survey after survey found that a large share of workers worried AI could reduce or eliminate their jobs. In that climate, a familiar management move stops working: leaders roll out an ambitious "become an AI-native team" mission — new tools, frontier projects, upskilling budgets — and find the team disengaged, anxious, or quietly resistant rather than energized. This example walks that case through the skill's six-step Process.

## Step 1 — State the situation

- **Who is being motivated:** a knowledge-work team (say, 20 people in engineering, product, and ops) at a mid-size company that has just announced an "AI-first" strategy.
- **Desired behavior:** enthusiastic adoption of AI tooling, volunteering for frontier projects, self-directed upskilling, and creative use of the new capability.
- **Current incentive:** the mission itself ("do meaningful frontier work"), a training budget, access to premium AI tools, and public praise for early adopters.
- **Observed response:** low uptake, hedged questions in all-hands ("does this mean fewer of us next year?"), private slumps in morale, some quiet job-searching. The incentive that "should" excite ambitious people is landing flat.

## Step 2 — Map need-state

For each level, mark substantially met / partially met / unmet — from the *team's* perceived reality, not the leader's assumption.

| Level | State | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Physiological | Substantially met | Salaries paid; no one is going hungry. |
| **Safety** | **Unmet / threatened** | The AI-first announcement, read against public news of AI-linked layoffs, is heard as "the company is automating my job." Job security, income predictability, and professional-identity security are all in question. |
| Belonging | Partially met, eroding | Layoff rumors and internal competition to "prove you're AI-proof" fray team cohesion. |
| Esteem | Threatened | If the skills a person built a career on are being automated, their sense of competence and status is under attack. |
| Self-actualization | The *target* of the incentive | "Master AI, do frontier work" is a self-actualization appeal. |

The key observation: the incentive is aimed at the top of the hierarchy while the operative unmet need sits near the bottom.

## Step 3 — Identify incentive level

Mapping the current incentives to the levels they address:

- Mission / "meaningful frontier work" → **self-actualization**
- Training budget, mastery of a new tool → **self-actualization + esteem**
- Premium tool access, public praise for early adopters → **esteem**

None of the current incentives addresses **safety**. There is no credible signal about job security, and "praise for ea

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