Psychological Hierarchy

Psychology is the study of the mind and any of its aspects, including the phenomena of consciousness and behavior. While the study of consciousness is not completely relevant to the technologist who wishes to manipulate biological systems, the study of behavior is relevant. We have already considered emotions, personality, and personal spaces. Each of these can influence an engineering or architectural design for structures to enclose humans or animals. 

For centuries, humans have tried to interpret their own behaviors in order to understand their purposes and to predict what behaviors would follow (Harbaugh, 1972). There are several general schools of psychological theory that attempt to frame motivation and behavior. One that would seem to be most relevant is the Maslow Hierarchy of Basic Needs (Maslow, 1954)  

Physiological. Food, drink, sex, requirements to sustain life. 

Belongingness, giving and receiving affection, social acceptance. 

Self-actualization. Development of one s fullest potential, helping others to do the same. 

---

Wilkinson, R. G. (1999), Health, hierarchy, and social anxiety , in N. E. Adler, M. Marmot, B. S. McEwen and J. Stewart (Eds), Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations Social, Psychological and Biological Pathways, Vol. 896, New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 48-63. 

The first step in using the AHP to analyze a decision problem is to hierarchically break down the decision problem (objective) into its constituent components and identify the alternatives to be evaluated. The resulting hierarchy consists of the overall objective (goal) and one or more levels of sub-objectives. The alternatives to be evaluated are added at the lowest level of the hierarchy. According to Saaty (1980, pp. 79-83) a cluster should not contain more than 7 elements because results from psychological tests show that 1+1-2 are the maximum number of elements a person can effectively compare simultaneously. 

A textbook of psychology has been written which embodies a conceptualization of a hierarchy of living systems like that I advance in the present work (see Coleman, J. C. Personality dynamics and effective behavior. Chicago Soott-Foresman, 1%0). 

FIGURE 6.22.9 Maslow s hierarchy of human needs and motivation. (From Smith, B.D., Psychology Science and Understanding, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998. With permission.)... 

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions. Based on mathematics and psychology, it was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s and has been extensively studied and refined since then. The procedure for using the AHP can be summarized as ... 

Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2006). Rediscovering the later version of Maslow s hierarchy of needs Self-transcendence and opportunities for theory, research, and unification. Review of General Psychology, 10(4), 302-317. 

Psychology and Safety The Human Element in Loss Prevention / 237 Figure 11-2. Maslow s Needs-Hierarchy model of motivation. 

This section deals with the psychological principles of learning. A number of authors have classified learning processes into a hierarchy of levels, building from the simplest stimulus response learning to the most complex processes of research and problem solving. Three levels of learning are particularly relevant ... 

Lee, F. 1993. Being polite and keeping MUM how bad news is communicated in organizational hierarchies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 23(14), 1124-49. 

Organizational psychology (or neo-human relations) was originally inspired by a theory of human motivation produced by A. H. Maslow (1943 and 1954). Maslow depicted human needs as based on the principle that once basic needs such as food and shelter were satisfied, other needs emerge, such as safety, which in turn once satisfied lead to the emergence of further higher order needs. In this context Maslow s theory is usually referred to as the hierarchy of needs, and is conventionally represented as shown in Figure 7.1. 

---