Acceptance | Access to Outdoors & Natural Environments |
Accomplishments | Aesthetic Life |
Affection | Air |
Bodily Integrity & Personal Sovereignty | Clean Air, Water & Environments |
Clothes | Comfort |
Community | Creative Expression |
Cultural Life | Dignity |
Doing Good | Emotional Development |
Emotional Experiences | Emotional Safety |
Empathy | Entertainment |
Epic Experience | Exercise |
Existence | Family |
Financial Security | Free Assembly & Association |
Free Expression of Ideas | Freedom |
Friendship | Going to Bathroom |
Growth | Health |
Hygiene | Imagination |
Independence | Information |
Intimacy | Joy |
Justice | Know-how |
Knowledge | Life Experience |
Light | Love |
Mastery | Moral & Ethical Behavior |
Movement | Music, Art & Literature |
Parenting | Personal Reflection |
Personal Security | Personal Space |
Physical Intimacy | Play |
Political Participation | Prestige |
Privacy | Pursuit of Happiness & Goals |
Recognition | Relatedness |
Reputation | Resilience |
Respect | Responsibility |
Romance | Romantic Partnerships |
Safety | Self-Realization |
Sex | Shelter |
Skills | Sleep |
Social Acceptance | Social Belonging |
Social Bonding | Social Interaction |
Social Roles | Social Stability |
Social Status | Spirituality & Religion |
Talents | Temperate Environment |
Thinking | Touch |
Transcendence | Trust |
Understanding | Water |
Wellness | Work & Productive Life |
Needs vs Wants
Needs are core motivations. Wants are things that we feel will fulfill needs. As such, these are essentially different manifestations of the same thing. You need food and you want breakfast cereal. It is common for educational materials to present needs as essential and wants as non-essential whereby they rank needs and claim that some are more important than others. This tends to produce questionable claims whereby one human need is presented as essential and another as non-essential by labeling it as a want. For example, school worksheets for children that claim that friendship is a want and a job and car is a need.Summary
Human needs are things that a person needs to survive and to feel fulfilled in life. This ranges from basic survival needs such as the need for water up to high level social, cognitive and spiritual needs. These high level needs are inherently personal whereby people have different perspectives on what they need from the human experience and life.
Overview: Human Needs | ||
Type | ||
Definition | Tangible and intangible things that sustain and enrich the life of a person. | |
Related Concepts |