A Cognitive-Systemic Reconstruction of

Maslow's Theory of Self-Actualization



by Francis Heylighen1

PESP, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium



   Maslow's need hierarchy and model of the self-actualizing personality
are reviewed and criticized. The definition of self-actualization is found
to be confusing, and the gratification of all needs is concluded to be
insufficient to explain self-actualization. Therefore the theory is
reconstructed on the basis of a second-order, cognitive-systemic framework.
A hierarchy of basic needs is derived from the urgency of perturbations
which an autonomous system must compensate in order to maintain its
identity. It comprises the needs for homeostasis, safety, protection,
feedback and exploration. Self-actualization is redefined as the perceived
competence to satisfy these basic needs in due time. This competence has
three components: material, cognitive and subjective. Material and/or
cognitive incompetence during childhood create subjective incompetence,
which in turn inhibits the further development of cognitive competence, and
thus of self-actualization.



Key Words: humanistic psychology, self-actualization, competence,
cognition, autonomous systems, human motivation, problem-solving.


Introduction

One of the main values driving systems research is to provide concepts and
methods for stimulating learning, growth and development, as well in
individual persons as in society, thus enhancing well-being and the overall
quality of life. The same positive aim characterizes so-called humanistic
psychology [9], which defines itself as a "third force", in contrast with
clinical psychology, influenced by Freudian psycho-analysis, which studies
mental illness, i.e. the negative side of human behavior, and traditional
academic, experimental psychology, influenced by behaviorism, which tends
to reduce human behavior to statistical correlations between different
kinds of stimuli, responses and personality traits. Instead of merely
modelling normal behavior or of curing clear dysfunctions, a humanistic
psychologist tries to help people to develop in a better way, thus making
them more competent, more aware, more happy, in the hope of reaching some
state of "optimal" mental health [12].

   Probably the best known proponent of this approach is Abraham Maslow.
What distinguishes his work from that of other "humanists", such as Carl
Rogers or Erich Fromm [12], is that he proposes a model of how a happy,
healthy, well-functioning person behaves, which is based on concrete
observations of real people, rather than on formulating ideal requirements.
Moreover Maslow proposes a simple, and intuitively appealing theory of
motivation [8], which explains where such a "self-actualizing" personality
comes from. In parallel with systems theory, Maslow reacts against too much
reductionism in psychological modelling, and proposes an alternative
holistic approach of personality research [8].

   However, in academic psychology Maslow has been criticized for his lack
of scientificity. In recent years, Maslow's ideas have been taken up by the
so-called "transpersonal" psychologists [9], who study altered,
"ego-transcending" states of consciousness, inspired by mystical
traditions, Eastern philosophies and psychedelic experiences. Although the
transpersonalists claim to carry out scientific investigations, it is in
practice often difficult to draw a boundary between their research and
approaches characterized by irrationality and mysticism

   The general problem is that if holism as a reaction to reductionism is
understood in a too simple-minded way, then any type of scientific
analysis, of precise, formal modelling becomes meaningless. The main
advantage of the systems approach as a scientific method is that it allows
the integration holistic and reductionistic principles, leading to models
where both "the whole is more than the sum of the parts" and "you must
understand the behavior of the parts in order to understand the emergence
of the whole" applies. Hence the conceptual framework of systems science
appears particularly well-suited for reformulating holistic theories, such
as Maslow's, in a more precise, more explicit, more scientific way.

   That the time is ripe for integrating humanistic and systemic approaches
is also shown by the recent emergence of a "second" or "non-classical"
systems science, exemplified by the work of "second-order" cyberneticists
such as Maturana [10], Pask and de Zeeuw [1]. Mechanistic concepts are here
replaced by concepts such as self-organization, autonomy, cognition,
self-awareness, conversation, etc., which are clearly related to humanistic
concepts surrounding the central idea of self-actualization. However, most
"second-order" theories remain very abstract, lacking the simplicity,
concreteness and intuitive appeal of Maslow's descriptions.

   What I wish to do in this paper is to review Maslow's theory and the
criticisms raised against it, and try to reconstruct its main concepts on
the basis of a general "second-order" cognitive-systemic framework, in
order to make them more general, more precise and more coherent.



A review of Maslow's theory


Maslow's theory of personality [8, 9] is based on: 1) a theory of human
motivation, characterized by a hierarchy of needs; 2) a description of a
particular type of maximally healthy personality, called
"self-actualizing", which is supposed to emerge when all these needs are
satisfied.


Theory of motivation

According to Maslow human behavior is motivated by a set of basic needs.
Which needs are most active in driving behavior depends on two principles:
(1) a need which is satisfied is no longer active: the higher the
satisfaction, the less the activity (the exception to this rule is the need
for self-actualization, see further); (2) needs can be ordered in a
hierarchy, such that from all the non-satisfied needs, the one which is
lowest in the hierarchy will be the most active. A lower need is more
"urgent" in the sense that it must be satisfied before a higher need can
take over control.

   The lowest level of needs may be called physiological needs. These are
needs of the body as a physiological system which tries to maintain
homeostasis. They consist of the need to breath air, hunger, thirst,
avoidance of extreme heat and cold, etc. These needs are such that if they
are not satisfied the organism dies. If the threat of dying because of
perturbation of the physiological equilibrium has vanished, the organism
can direct its attention to more indirect threats, such as the danger of
being caught by a predator, and try to avoid them. This corresponds to the
second need level: the need for safety. Once safety and physiological needs
are met, higher, more typically "human" needs come to the foreground, in
the first place the need for love and belonging. This is the basic social
or affiliation motive, which drives people to seek contact with others and
to build satisfying relations with them. Satisfaction of belongingness
needs triggers the emergence of the esteem need. In this stage of need
gratification, persons also want to be esteemed, by the people they are in
contact with, as well as by themselves: they want to know that they are
capable of achievement and success.

   When all these needs are satisfied, we are left with the last one, the
highest need, the need for self-actualization. This need is fundamentally
different from the previous ones, in the sense that all the previous ones
can be conceived as drives towards the reduction of a deficiency. Such a
deficiency means that there is a discrepancy between the actual state of
the individual, and som e fixed optimal or equilibrium state, characterized
by adequate values of the basic variables, as well physiological variables
such as temperature, level of sugar in the blood, etc., as psychological
ones such as feeling of safety, of belongingness, of esteem. The control
which deficiency needs exert over the individual's behavior is implemented
as a negative feedback loop, which diminishes deviations from the goal
state.

   Self-actualization, on the other hand, may be called a growth need, in
the sense that deviations from the previously reached equilibrium state are
not reduced, but enhanced, made to grow, in a deviation-amplifying positive
feedback loop. The deviations to be amplified are changes which can be
interpreted as improvements in some way of the overall personality, as
development of remaining potentialities. If you eat food, your desire for
it becomes less and less, in accordance with principle (1). However, if you
develop your capacities, you want to develop them more and more.



Definition of self-actualization

Self-actualization is reached when all needs are fulfilled, in particular
the highest need. Because of the positive feedback, self-actualization is
not a fixed state, but a process of development which does not end. The
word derives from the idea that each individual has a lot of hidden
potentialities: talents or competences he or she could develop, but which
have as yet not come to the surface. Self-actualization signifies that
these potentialities of the self are made actual, are actualized in a
continuing process of unfolding.

   According to Maslow, self-actualization corresponds to ultimate
psychological health. Health is more than the absence of disease. On the
psychological level, diseases correspond to neuroses due to the frustration
of one of the basic needs. For example, a person whose safety need has not
been adequately fulfilled may develop paranoiac tendencies, and believe
that everybody and everything is threatening him.

   An interesting case is the situation where all the lower level needs
have been satisfied, but the highest need, self-actualization, has not. In
that case you have a person who apparently has everything to be happy: a
comfortable and safe environment, a loving family, friendship and respect
from peers, a sense of personal achievement... Yet the individual will not
be really happy, because he has no longer a goal to live for, he has
achieved everything he wanted. This will result in feelings of boredom and
meaninglessness, which might even lead to suicide, unless the person
becomes aware that there is more to life than reducing deficiencies, that
is to say unless he becomes aware of his need for self-actualization.
Though one may continue to live in a more or less stable manner, trying to
satisfy the deficiency needs without developing acute problems or neuroses,
he will not be really healthy unless he succeeds in satisfying his
self-actualization need, thus liberating his most profound capacities.

   This definition of self-actualization derives from Maslow's motivation
theory. However, Maslow has also undertaken an empirical observation of
existing healthy personalities, more or less independently of the theory.
Though he has tried to explain his empirical results by means of the
theory, the observations are more detailed than what the theory can
predict, and as we will see further they sometimes even seem to contradict
the theory. Though he uses the same word, "self-actualizing", to label the
personality type coming out of his observations, and the one coming out of
his theory, it is not obvious that it describes the same phenomenon.
Therefore it is important to study his observations in detail, and to try
to correlate them with theoretical explanations.

   I find it quite dangerous to summarize the observations, and I would
propose to read the original text [8] (and not [9], which was revised after
Maslow's death, and where several remarks-among other things about
love-were deleted), rather than simply take over one of the many existing
reviews such as the ones proposed in [3, 11, 12], or in this paper. In my
own experience, summaries by other authors do not carry the same intuitive
feeling of "this is it!" as the original, perhaps in part because they lack
the many concrete examples and illustrations of self-actualizing behavior
which Maslow proposes. Yet I will try to make a selection of the (at least
for me) most important features.

   Maslow's study was carried out by an analysis of the biographies of
historical and public figures (such as Lincoln, Spinoza, Einstein, Eleanor
Roosevelt, etc.) and by observation and interviewing of a few
contemporaries, who were rigourously selected on the basis of absence of
any signs of neurotic behavior, together with the presence of positive
signs of psychological health or well-being, the criteria for which were
derived from previous observations. To Maslow's amazement these highly
disparate personalities appeared to have many non-trivial characteristics
in common, which together could be taken to define a new personality type.
We will now review these basic character traits, not in the somewhat
arbitrary seeming order in which Maslow lists them, but building up from
the perception, to the behavior, and to the social relations, concluding
with what makes these personalities so unique.



Perception and experience

Perhaps the most striking feature of self-actualizing persons is their
openness to experience (see also [21]): they are eager to undergo new
experiences, learn new ideas and skills, try out new things. This also
applies if the new observations do no fit into their existing schemata or
contradict their previous opinions. The result is that in general they have
what Maslow calls an accurate perception of reality: in contrast to
ordinary people they do not tend to deny, repress or deform perceptions in
order to make them fit their prejudices, a tendency which is
well-documented in traditional psychology. There is also no contradiction
between what they experience or feel on a intuitive level, and what they
think on a conscious, rational level. A general reason for this openness
may be that self-actualizers are attracted towards the unknown, rather than
afraid of it like most people.

   Together with this openness to new stimuli, there is a tendency to
experience old, well-known stimuli in a new way, what Maslow calls
freshness of appreciation. A self-actualizer may walk for the thousandth
time through the same street, yet suddenly experience beauty and excitement
as if he or she saw it for the first time. Such sense of beauty, wonder or
revivification is usually triggered by the same type of objects or
situations; depending upon the individual, these may be: nature, children,
in certain cases sex or music. Sometimes these spontaneous feelings of awe
and wonder become so intense, that they may be called mystical or peak
experiences.



Attitude towards problems

The behavior of self-actualizers is generally characterized by spontaneity
or naturalness. They do not tend to wear masks or play roles, or feel
inhibited or restricted in their thoughts, feelings and actions. They are
not afraid that what they are doing might be wrong or that other people
might think so. This spontaneity is also expressed by their general
creativity, which is not of the specialized, "Mozart" type, where someone
may create outstanding things in one restricted area (e.g. music), but
behave in a quite inhibited and immature way in other areas.
Self-actualizing creativity consists rather of a general playful attitude
towards problem-solving and self-expression which assumes that the
conventional way to do it is not necessarily the best way. This applies as
well in the intellectual domains of art, science and philosophy, as in
everyday tasks such as decorating the house.

   This lack of inhibition or tension may be understood by their general
attitude of acceptance towards nature, people and themselves: they do not
feel unhappy, anxi ous, ashamed or guilty because of apparent constraints
or shortcomings they cannot change, such as the weather, physiological
processes (e.g. urination, pregnancy, menstruation, etc.), or old age. They
will only feel bad about discrepancies between what is, and what might be
or ought to be. Their intrinsic stability allows them to maintain a
relative serenity in situations of deprivation, failure or disaster.

   When confronted with problems, self-actualizers have little difficulty
in making decisions, because they know how to distinguish between what is
good and what is bad, and between means and ends, that is to say they have
a well-developed system of personal values, which is aided by their
unbiased perception. They will not tend to continuously vacillate or
hesitate between alternatives, asking the question "Am I making the right
decision?", because they are confident about themselves, and their capacity
to solve problems. However, in situations of uncertainty they will postpone
a decision rather than make a premature one, without feeling unhappy
because of the remaining ambiguity.

   In general they will focus on a problem or task outside themselves,
rather than continuously question their own motives. This task may become a
general "mission" to which they have devoted their life. Accomplishing this
task is what they like most, and they do not tend to separate work from fun
or vacation.

   Following the old dictum, we might summarize their attitude towards
problems as follows: they have the patience to endure the things that
cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that can be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the ones from the others.



Social interactions

Their relations with other people, society and culture are characterized
first of all by their autonomy. They do not really need other people, and
they make their decisions for themselves, without having to rely on the
opinions of others, or on the rules, conventions and values imposed by
society. They like solitude and detachment, and have a need for privacy and
independence. Their world view is generally independent of the particular
culture or society in which they live, and they pay little attention to the
social conventions, though they will superficially respect them if
transgressing the rules would bring about needless conflicts.

   On the other hand, self-actualizers have a general feeling of empathy
and kinship towards humanity as a whole. They tend to be friendly towards
everybody they meet, especially towards children. They are willing to
listen to, and especially learn from, people of any class, race, age,
religion or ideology, without being inhibited by prejudices (Maslow calls
this a democratic character structure).

   They are capable of more intense and profound interpersonal relations
than other people, though they are highly selective about which people they
relate to, preferring that company which allows them to be spontaneous. The
intimate friends and lovers of self-actualizers are in general close to
self-actualization themselves. Self-actualizing relationships are
characterized by extreme sincerity, self-disclosure and intimacy, by the
dropping of all defense mechanisms. Sexuality can be deeply enjoyed, yet it
does not take an important place in the system of values of a
self-actualizer. They are quite uninhibited about sex, willing to
experiment with different roles (which may go as far as resembling
sado-masochism), but they are in no way obsessed by it, and will in general
not look for sex without affection. Self-actualizing love is characterized
as well by respect for the other's autonomy as by ego-transcending
identification of the partners' needs, as well by profound concern and care
for the other's well-being as by playfulness and laughter.



Imperfections and peculiarities

The above description may have created an impression of an almost saintly
perfection, but it must be understood that self-actualizers have their
weaknesses and difficulties too. From the principle of bounded rationality
we may infer that self-actualizers make errors as well as other persons,
though in general they will be faster in admitting and correcting them.
Moreover reaching self-actualization is not a matter of all-or-none, but a
never-ending, gradual process of improvement. In spite of this continuity
between more and less self-actualizing levels of development, there are
clear qualitative differences between self-actualizers and "normal" people.

   This may be exemplified by problems and difficulties which are typical
for self-actualizers. Since society is based on the behavior and values of
the majority, we may expect that self-actualizers, which form a very small
minority (Maslow is not clear about which percentage of the population they
constitute, though we may estimate less than 1 in 1000), will not be really
at home in or adapted to their culture. According to Maslow, "they
sometimes feel like spies or aliens in a foreign land and sometimes behave
so". Their detachment and unconventionality will often be interpreted as
discourtesy, lack of respect or affection, or even as hostility. Their
unemotional and clear-cut decision-making in the treatment of others, e.g.
in cutting off unsatisfactory relations, may seem cold and ruthless. Their
philosophical, unhostile sense of humor, makes them look rather serious in
the eyes of ordinary people. In certain situations their problem
concentration may be exacerbated into stubbornness, absent-mindedness and
shortness of temper.

   A more general difficulty "normal people" have with self-actualizers is
simply to understand them, since they behave and think in a quite unusual
manner. In particular it is difficult to situate them along one of the many
dimensions or polarities which are used to describe ordinary personality
types and behaviors, such as: selfish-altruistic, extravert-introvert,
active-passive, intuitive-rational, sensual-spiritual, serious-playful,
etc. Self-actualizers are neither selfish (extravert, active, etc.), nor
altruistic (introvert, passive, etc.), nor somewhere in between: their
behavior is somehow selfish and altruistic at the same time, because what
they like for themselves is in general also good for others.

   This is what Maslow calls transcendence of dichotomies. They often do
not make a choice between two apparently opposite behaviors, but find a way
of solving the problem which synthesizes the advantages of the two
alternatives, without the disadvantages. This capacity for "dialectical
synthesis" is perhaps the characteristic which most fundamentally
distinguishes them from average people, and which makes it difficult to
situate them in one of the conventional psychological classifications of
personality types.



Criticisms of Maslow's theory



Theoretical framework

Maslow's ideas have been criticized for their lack of an integrated
conceptual structure. His writings are heterogeneous (his major book [8] is
based on a collection of papers published in the 1940's and 1950's), and
consist often of apparently unstructured lists of remarks. According to
Ewen [3, p. 368]: "Maslow's eclecticism [...] seems insufficiently thought
out and includes too many confusions and contradictions. His study of
self-actualizers has been criticized on methodological grounds, and his
theoretical constructs have been characterized as overly vague, equivocal
and untestable".

   Though the need hierarchy seems relatively simple and consistent, the
concept of self-actualization is not clearly defined. There is a difficulty
with the concept of "actualization" itself, because it presupposes that
there is somehow a well-defined set of potential talents an individual is
capable of developing, but a human system is much too complex to allow the
discrimination between "potential" developments and "impossible" ones.
Moreover the definition of self-actualization as fulfilment of all the
basic needs does not always correspond with self-actualization as observed
in existing persons: Maslo w himself acknowledges that sometimes
self-actualization seems to spring from the frustration of a certain need
rather than from its gratification [8].

   Another criticism [11] stresses the subjectivity and specifically
American bias of Maslow's criteria for psychological health, and suggests
that in different societies, such as Japan, an individualistic, autonomous
personality like Maslow's self-actualizer, would not be considered healthy
or well-adapted. To Maslow's defense, I can remark that the state of
ultimate well-being as conceived by Japanese Zen Buddhism, "satori", seems
quite similar to "self-actualization", especially in its emphasis on the
openness to experience, the not deficiency-motivated behavior and the
transcendence of dualities, and this reinforces my tendency to believe in
Maslow's statement about the culture independence of self-actualizing
behavior.



Empirical validation

The problem with Maslow's observations is that they are difficult to
reproduce (though there does exist a validated test for measuring the
degree of self-actualization a person has reached [13]). Maslow is rather
vague about how he selected his subjects, and he acknowledges that his work
could not conform to the conventional criteria of psychological
experimentation because of the complexity of the problem. Yet I would agree
with his defense that it is preferable to carry out methodologically
primitive research about fundamental problems, such as the conditions of
human well-being, rather than restrict oneself to technically sophisticated
observations about minor issues.

   The hierarchical emergence of needs seems easier to test in an objective
way, and some empirical research has effectively been done, mostly in the
area of management and work satisfaction, but the results are mixed at
best, sometimes seeming to support the theory, sometimes contradicting it
[14, 15]. In particular the specific order in which needs (e.g. love and
esteem) emerge, seems to be ambiguous.

   Mook [11] illustrates another problem by means of two case studies, one
about an African tribe which has lived in conditions of misery and
insecurity for generations, and one about the behavior of people in Nazi
death camps. In the first case, Maslow's theory seems to be confirmed: the
frustration of the safety and sometimes even the physiological needs seems
to have erased any behavior aimed at the satisfaction of the higher needs:
there is no sign of love, of affiliation, of esteem or achievement among
the people of the tribe. In the second case, however, in spite of the
continuous threat to safety and to life, people still retain some form of
dignity and altruism.



Specific problems

This last example points to where the basic problem lies: though it seems
intuitively evident that somebody who has been fighting for survival during
his whole life will have difficulty to develop a higher sense of love,
understanding and creativity, need gratification alone does not seem
sufficient to explain in which circumstances self-actualization will or
will not emerge. Other factors must be involved. The main difference
between the African tribesmen and the Jews in the concentration camps seems
to be that the first ones never experienced need gratification in their
life, while the second ones probably have led a relatively satisfying life
before their persecution by the Nazis. So one important factor seems to be
the period during which basic needs were or were not satisfied. Maslow
partly acknowledges this when he remarks that self-actualizers can endure
need frustration much better than other people, because they have already
received so much gratification in the past.

   I want to propose another fundamental factor: cognition. It is striking
that many, if not most, of the characteristics of self-actualizers listed
by Maslow are cognitive: accurate perception, creative problem-solving,
effective decision-making, high capacity for learning, etc.
Self-actualizers give an impression of a superior, flexible intelligence.
Though Maslow mentions the existence of a cognitive motive [8], cognition
is absent in his need hierarchy explaining the emergence of
self-actualization.



A systemic framework for need theory


Autonomous systems

An analysis of the shortcomings of Maslow's theory has led us to the
conclusion that in addition to need gratification we must introduce a
temporal factor, specifying when particular needs were gratified, and a
cognitive factor. If we want to build a well-structured, transparent model,
we will have to integrate these factors into a theory of the development of
intelligent, goal-directed action. Non-classical or second order
cybernetics has recently led to an insight into the relations between
autonomy (self-steering) and cognition [5, 7].

   An autonomous system can be defined as a system which is able to
actively maintain or reconstruct its basic organization (which defines its
identity), by counteracting or compensating the perturbations, induced by
changes in the environment, or by internal processes (e.g. entropy
production). The appearance of autonomous systems can be understood from
evolution through natural selection [5, 6]. Typical examples are biological
organisms, whose organization has been analysed as autopoietic (i.e.
self-producing) by Maturana and Varela [10].

   Autonomy presupposes cognition since in order to effectively compensate
perturbations, the system must be able: a) to distinguish or recognize
specific perturbations, b) to know which action will be adequate to
compensate for the potentially destructive effects of that specific
perturbation. The compensation process can be conceived as problem-solving,
where the problem is defined by the discrepancy between the actual
"perturbed" state of the system, and the desired or goal state where the
perturbation has been compensated, restoring the stable organization of the
system. Solving the problem means finding an adequate sequence of actions
which brings the perturbed state back to the desired state.

   If perturbations are conceived as simple deviations from an equilibrium,
which can be controlled by negative feedback, the system reduces to a
cybernetic homeostat. This may provide an adequate model for Maslow's
physiological needs, but not for the higher needs. However, the "goal" of
an autonomous system is not a fixed equilibrium, but a dynamic process
which continuously reconstructs the system's identity. This leads to the
following extensions.



Maintenance and growth of identity

The identity or organization to be maintained is a rather abstract,
high-level property emerging from a continuously changing network of
interactions. Though initially corresponding to the "life" or survival of
the organism, it may develop into something even more abstract, such as a
concept of "self", or as the survival of an idea with which the actor has
identified.

   This allows us to explain the motivation of a martyr who gives his life
for his religion or country. Though his biological organism has died, in
the eyes of the martyr he has succeeded to ensure the survival of his
higher-order identity. The shift of the organization to be maintained from
biological organism to abstract idea carried inside the organism is
normally a continuous process, so that we cannot say that at any point
there was a lack or disappearance of identity. A conceivable exception
would be a sudden conversion or brain-washing, where the actor is induced
to shift his identity in a discontinuous way, but this is from the point of
view of the actor an unexpected process, which she did not "will", and
which hence does not need to be explained by a theory of motivation.

   A good way to ensure the long-term survival of a particular type of
organization consists in maximally reproducing this organization: the more
copies of the initial organization there are, the smaller the chance that
all of them would be destroyed. Hence the biological need for reproduction
(and thus sexuality) may als o be understood as a special case of the
general need for identity reconstruction. More generally, the "growth" or
"development" of a particular organization, in the sense of making the
organization larger, more numerous, more adaptive, stronger, etc., can be
conceived as a long-term strategy for survival. This leads us to
distinguish between short-term and long-term processes.



Urgency of perturbations and needs

A perturbation in this conception is not assumed to cause an immediate
annihilation of the system if it is not compensated, but to "announce" or
"direct the attention towards" a possible annihilation in some far or near
future. The threat posed by a perturbation depends on two factors:

a) how probable is the future annihilation, given the present perturbation?

b) how far in the future is the expected annihilation, i.e. how much time
does there remain for compensating the perturbation?

   Since the system cannot cope with all perturbations at once, there will
be a problem of resource allocation: the system must order the
perturbations according to their "urgency", starting with those where the
probability for destruction is highest, and the time for compensation
shortest. This provides a first model for Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

   In general-though not necessarily in specific circumstances-direct
physiological perturbations such as hunger or thirst are more urgent than
indirect threats, e.g. because of the presence of predators in the
environment: in the first case the probability of destruction without
compensation is maximal, and the time horizon relatively short, depending
upon the type of perturbation (hunger is less urgent than thirst, for
example). In the second case the probability is smaller than 1, and the
time horizon is in general longer, though an attack by a lion may of course
be imminent. This case corresponds to the safety need.

   In order to explain the higher needs, we must look at cases where the
probability becomes even lower, and the time horizon even larger. These are
situations where we cannot not really speak about a "perturbation", but
rather about a "potential perturbation". For example, as I am sitting
behind my desk now, I do not experience any actual threat to my health, yet
I know that statistically there is a non-negligible probability that I
would die from a heart attack sometime in the years to come. If I want to
compensate for this potential perturbation, there is no obvious equilibrium
to be restored or danger to be fled. The only thing I can do is trying to
understand as well as possible all the possible factors increasing the
probability of a heart attack, and to find a protective environment and
life-style where these factors are minimally present.

   There are two aspects here: the need for external care or protection,
and the need for individual knowledge. I might find the first one by having
a loving family which cares for me if I am ill, and a good doctor and
hospital, which can discover the symptoms of a threatening heart attack and
protect me against it by adapted medicine. The need for protection is a
prolongation of the need for safety. It explains part of Maslow's "love and
belonging" need, because we will find external help and protection in the
first place by our belonging to a group and by our interpersonal
relationships.

   If the external protection is good enough, there is no need for personal
knowledge: if I do not know how to avoid a heart disease, the doctor will
know it for me. However, the doctor's knowledge will be restricted to
general, statistical properties of heart diseases, and cannot include all
the individual peculiarities of my own life-style and sensitivity to
diseases. This is a general principle: no existing knowledge will be
perfectly adapted to all the specific situations an autonomous system will
encounter. The only way to compensate for that is to equip the autonomous
actor with a capacity for individual learning.

   A basic paradigm for learning is the strengthening or weakening of
associations by positive or negative reinforcement, as exemplified by
operant conditioning. This learning mechanism explains the emergence of a
motive or need for reinforcement or feedback: if you are trying to solve a
problem or doing something about which you have some expectancies, but no
certainties, you would like to get some reaction, which either confirms
your expectancies (this is of course the best case), or disconfirms them.
However, you would feel quite unsatisfied if you did not get any reaction,
feedback, or reinforcement at all, positive or negative. It is because of
the feedback you get, that you can strengthen your confidence or improve
your knowledge about which results can be expected in which circumstances.
This feedback motive may explain Maslow's esteem need, because receiving
acknowledgment from others, and experiencing personal achievement is
clearly a basic form of feedback or reinforcement. It also explains part of
the love motive, because interpersonal relations do not only provide
protection, they also provide interaction and conversation, i.e. a
continuing process of mutual feedback.

   Getting knowledge by feedback is still quite limited, however, because
it presupposes that there is already a sensitivity or recognition for
certain variables between which an association could exist. It is not
sufficient if you want to learn completely new variables and associations.
What you need to do then is exploration, i.e. trying out things without any
a priori expectations which can be confirmed or disconfirmed. This defines
a next motive, the curiosity or exploration need, which may explain part of
Maslow's self-actualization need. The difference between self-actualization
as a drive to maximally develop one's competences, and simple exploration,
is that the first one integrates everything which has been achieved before
by satisfaction of the lower needs: the confidence about the situation of
the actor developed from the satisfaction of the safety and protection
needs, and the confidence the actor has about his own competence for
problem-solving and capacity for learning achieved by the satisfaction of
the feedback need. This is the highest level of needs, because exploration
has the least direct effect on short-term perturbations, but has the most
potentiality for securing and developing the identity in the long term.

   We may summarize the analysis until now as follows: all different needs
can be understood from the basic need of maintenance and reconstruction of
the organization, defining the identity, of an autonomous system. They can
be ordered according to their degree of "urgency" which corresponds to the
probability of, and expected shortness of time before, destruction,
associated with a specific perturbation. Though this ordering of needs is
continuous, it is possible to distinguish approximately separate classes of
needs: homeostasis, safety, protection, feedback, and exploration. Maslow's
basic needs are just special cases of these more general need classes. We
must not forget that the urgency ordering is not absolute, since it
consists of (at least) two dimensions, probability and duration, and since
the estimation of the value of these dimensions is in general
context-dependent, and not very reliable. The strict ordering of the needs
proposed by Maslow must hence be considered as merely a rough
approximation.



Self-Actualization and Cognitive Development


Self-actualization as perceived competence

Now that we have reconstructed Maslow's need hierarchy, we can look again
at his explanation for self-actualization (SA). According to him SA is the
result of the gratification of all the lower needs, making the energy
available for the continuous gratification of the highest need, the need
for SA.

   However, we must remark that the gratification of a need [i.e. the
compensation of a (potential) perturbation] is not objectively given, but
depends on how the subject perceives his needs and his external situation.
The subjectivity of this perception is obvious for higher needs, such as
esteem, but it can be illustrated for lower needs as well. For example in
the case of anorexia, the subject does not experience any need to eat food
(i.e. hunger), though physiologically the intake of food may be urgently
required for survival.

   In particular the relative urgency of different needs is subjective, and
this may account for empirical findings in which Maslow's postulated order
for emergence of the needs seems violated. For example, someone may think
that getting esteem is more urgent than building up a love relationship. We
have defined urgency in terms of probability and expected duration, but it
is clear that no model is capable of exactly calculating these variables
for realistically complex situations. The approximate perception of urgency
will depend on the cognitive system with which the subject interprets the
world. The only guarantee for some sort of objectivity is that if the
difference between perceived and actual urgency is too large, the
autonomous system will be eliminated by natural selection. This means that
in practice the postulated "objective" ordering of needs according to
urgency will only be valid in a rough approximation, with many exceptions.

   What seems essential for SA, however, is not the (subjective or
objective) actual gratification of needs, but the fact that the subject
feels competent to find gratification. For example, it is not because a
self-actualizer feels thirsty (frustration of his physiological need), or
is alone (frustration of his belongingness need), that suddenly he is not
longer a self-actualizer. Such a need frustration will not change the
personality structure, world view or self-image of the subject, as long as
the subject knows that he is able to get gratification in due time (i.e. in
a short term for urgent, lower needs, in a longer term for higher needs).
The subject is aware that he can solve the problem easily, e.g. by drinking
a glass of water in case of thirst (in ten minutes), by going to see a
friend in case of solitude or lack of feedback (next week), or by getting
enroled for a university program in case of frustration of the need for
learning (next year).

   Having redefined the origin of SA as the perceived competence to satisfy
basic needs in due time, we must proceed to analyse the components of this
competence. First, in order to be competent, you must obviously dispose of
the needed resources for solving the problem: you cannot satisfy your
thirst, if you are in a desert without water; you cannot go and see a
friend if you are marooned on an uninhabited island; you cannot enrol in a
university course if you are in jail. This may be called material
competence. Second, it is not sufficient that the needed resources are
there, you must also be able to recognize them, find them and apply them
effectively. Except in trivial cases, problem-solving demands cognitive
competence, i.e. knowledge, intelligence and creativity. Finally, the third
component of perceived competence is the subjective awareness of
competence. It is not sufficient that the resources are there, and that you
are capable to find them: if you are convinced that you cannot solve the
problem, you will not be motivated to do the necessary search for the
resources, even if they are very easy to find. This component may be called
subjective competence.

   We have here assumed that perceived competence is a special case of
actual competence, but of course we can also imagine situations where a
subject believes to be competent, yet is unable to solve the problems.
However, we may suppose that such situations are not very stable: if the
actual need of the subject is not satisfied, when the subject expects it to
be, the subject will normally review his expectations. Of course the
reliability of this natural self-correcting mechanism will depend on the
urgency of the frustrated need: in case of long-term, non-urgent needs the
incompetent subject could maintain for a long period that he is competent;
in case of urgent needs, self-delusion would rapidly lead to fatal errors.
In general, though, it seems improbable that someone would continue to
actually believe (and not simply publicly state) that he is competent to
solve all his personal problems, while he is not.



Cognitive competence and distinction systems

We will not analyse material competence, since this falls outside the scope
of personality theory, but proceed directly with cognitive competence. We
must remark first that cognitive competence is not some form of
"expertise", i.e. specialized knowledge which can be applied to a
particular class of problems. It is not even "intelligence", in the sense
of what is measured by IQ-tests. Though a certain type of expertise, or a
high IQ, may obviously help to reach competence, they are not sufficient.
Like Maslow notes [8], many people with a high IQ limit their activities to
unimaginative "puzzle-solving". This corresponds to the solving of
well-defined problems, e.g. mathematical or chess problems.

   Satisfying one's basic needs is not a well-defined problem, however: it
is not a priori clear what the needs or goals are, or which means can be
used. Attaining gratification on all need levels requires not only
intelligence, but also a profound self-knowledge and the ability to
formulate one's own goals, and to question values and basic assumptions.
This is something which clearly cannot be measured by traditional IQ-tests.
Therefore we will have to analyse more deeply how problems which are not a
priori well-structured, can be solved.

   A problem is defined by a goal or end, and by possible means to reach
this end. Solving it requires: a) the ability to distinguish satisfactory
from non-satisfactory situations (value or ends distinctions); b) the
ability to distinguish relevant objects and properties (means
distinctions); c) the knowledge about how the different states, defined by
the objects and properties, are causally connected. Distinctions and
connections together define a distinction system [4, 5, 6], which is a
basic model of a cognitive structure allowing problem-solving. A problem is
well-structured if all the fundamental means and ends distinctions are
explicit, precise and invariant. An ill-structured problem, on the other
hand, is characterized by lacking, ambiguous or variable distinctions.

   In general, the more urgent the need, the better it is to have a
well-structured problem, because this reduces the search needed to find a
satisfying solution. This explains why homeostatic needs correspond to
biologically inherited, fixed distinctions between satisfactory and
non-satisfactory situations (e.g. thirst as distinguishing between
sufficient and insufficient concentration of water in the tissues). If each
time something is going wrong in your physiology, you would have to think:
"What do I lack? Am I hungry, or am I thirsty or am I sleepy?", you would
not be very well-equipped for survival. In the same way, when confronted
with a predator it is better not to begin doubting about whether the animal
is a jaguar, or a leopard, or perhaps a panther: it suffices to make the
clear-cut observation: "This animal is dangerous!"

   On the other hand, for the higher-order needs, it is not so urgent to
make clear distinctions. Moreover, it is more difficult to make early
distinctions since these needs correspond by definition to situations which
belong to a still far away and uncertain future. In such problems it is
wise to question whether some conceived future situation would or would not
be satisfactory, since its effects will in general extend over a much
longer period than the effects of drinking or escaping a predator. For
example, if you consider marrying, it is normal to ask: "Am I really in
love with her?"

   The "least urgent" needs correspond to completely ill-defined problems:
if your goal is learning or exploration, then there is no criterion w hich
tells you when you have achieved your goal, i.e. when you can stop
learning. Moreover, if you want to explore unknown domains, then by
definition there is not much knowledge available which can help you to
choose the most effective way to do it. Everything is vague and uncertain.

   Cognitive competence in the gratification of basic needs can hence be
conceived as requiring a stable foundation, consisting of invariant
distinctions representing low-order needs, pertaining to the short-term
maintenance of the self, and an open-ended flexible superstructure,
consisting of variable, easily adaptable distinctions, pertaining to
long-term potentialities for development. This type of cognitive
organization can be easily recognized in Maslow's description of SA
behavior.

   Self-actualizers are characterized by: a simple, accepting attitude
towards their physiological needs, a great self-confidence, autonomy and
stability in the face of frustration and danger, yet a profound flexibility
and creativity in learning and discovering new ideas. This is particularly
clear in their problem-solving attitude: their stable system of values
allows them to make decisions without hesitation if this is necessary, yet
they will withhold judgment and explore alternative distinctions, if there
is still insufficient certainty to make an informed decision, and if a
decision is not urgently needed. The flexible superstructure provides the
platform for all the typical traits of self-actualizers: creativity,
openness, spontaneity, unconventionality and especially transcendence of
dichotomies. Indeed, what Maslow calls a "dichotomy" is just a rigid
distinction, which is not necessarily adapted to the specific context. In
contrast to other people, self-actualizers are not bound to the once
learned distinctions, but are able to change them in a way which takes into
account the unique characteristics of the specific situation.



Developmental requirements for self-actualization

Let us now try to understand which are the requirements for developing
perceived competence, i.e. SA. We will assume that in our present Western
society there are sufficient resources for most people, so we will not
consider the obvious case of material competence. Another requirement is a
sufficiently high level of genetically inherited intelligence (and perhaps
also other traits which may be influenced by inheritance, such as curiosity
or emotional stability): we do not expect children born with mental defects
to achieve high competence. We may expect that the higher the "inherited"
component of someone's IQ, the easier he or she may reach
self-actualization. However, this is far from sufficient, and relative
deficiencies in genetically determined IQ can be compensated by good
education and other externally stimulated forms of cognitive development.

   This determines a second component necessary for SA: most of the
distinctions we make are learned from other people. So if our parents,
teachers, and cultural environment propose adequate distinction systems
(i.e. adapted to the external reality and to our basic needs), it will be
easier for us to build up a competent system of personal values and
concepts. For example, a strictly puritanical education may fail to convey
a distinction between natural sexual desire and sexual pathology, and this
may lead to a personality which is incompetent to satisfy its sexual needs.
This educational and cultural component must especially stimulate the
individual learning of new distinctions, i.e. it should entice us to
explore things for ourselves, and not to accept ideas on the basis of pure
authority. Thus a liberal, open-minded education should be more effective
in reaching self-actualization, than one based on the unquestioned
transmission of traditional concepts and rules, however positive those
traditions may be.

   These two components, genetic and educational, are not sufficient,
however. Everybody knows people who are highly intelligent, well-educated,
and with a broad cultural background, yet who are unhappy and neurotic. The
"mad scientist" or "crazy artist" have become a cliche', and history
provides many examples of creative geniuses who had deep psychological
problems (e.g. Van Gogh or Newton). For the third component, we must go
back to the origin of subjective competence.

   Suppose that one of the basic needs (physiological, safety, protection,
feedback...) has been frustrated during prolonged periods in early
childhood, i.e. at a stage of development where there is not yet a
sufficiently stable cognitive system of distinctions, then the child will
develop a feeling of insecurity and incompetence with respect to this
particular need or needs. Even if the need is satisfied later on, the child
(and later the adult) will always suspect that it may be suddenly
frustrated once again, and that it will not be able to compensate the
perturbation. In other words, the child will experience a continuous threat
to the need, even if there is no objective, actual threat. This will in
general lead to a lack of self-confidence, and to different types of fears.

   This may be understood because the distinction system, representing the
possible ways to formulate and solve the problem corresponding to the need
frustration, has not received sufficient reinforcement: the child was not
able to solve the problem because of external deficiencies, or cognitive
incompetence. Hence the child will (consciously or unconsciously) doubt
about the adequacy of the learned distinction system, so that the
distinction system will not be stabilized.

   Because of the lack of internal stability of the system of personal
concepts of values, the person will now look for external stability and
reinforcement, clinging to what looks like a stable support. Mostly this
will be found in society at large, or in one of its subcultures, in the
form of conventions, fashions, traditions, ideologies, religions, etc. The
problem with collective distinction systems like these is that they are
directed at a kind of "largest common denominator", and hence not very
flexible: like in the example of the doctor, they cannot take into account
all the idiosyncrasies characterizing a particular person in a particular
situation.

   The result will be a person who is uncertain about basic aspects of his
or her personality: sense of physical well-being, of security, of
protection, of self-confidence, yet who tends to be rigid about less basic,
less intimately personal concepts and rules, such as social conventions,
metaphysical ideas and everyday knowledge. In other words, the opposite of
a self-actualizing person, who is basically confident about issues
pertaining to the maintenance of his or her identity, and thus free to
doubt about more abstract, more distant concepts and rules (and even to
doubt about certain of the more basic aspects, if the rest of the system is
stable enough to support this questioning).

   If in a later stage of life the basic needs are nevertheless satisfied,
after initial frustration, it will be quite difficult to reorganize the
hierarchy of distinction systems in order to reach a more self-actualizing
system. The perception of incompetence and hence insecurity will tend to
maintain, even though all actual danger has disappeared, because subjective
incompetence tends to create actual incompetence. Even if after many years
the person has sufficiently gained confidence about his basic values and
competences, there will still be the problem of the rigidity of
higher-order distinctions which restricts the openness to experience and
thus thwarts further development. In such cases it may be necessary to
break open the rigid perception of reality, by radical interventions, such
as profound psychotherapy, mystical experiences, hallucinogenic drugs, etc.

   If this does not happen, the typical situation will be that the person
continues to look for more and more gratification of the lower needs, even
thou gh the level of gratification he or she has reached may be more than
sufficient. For example, though the safety and protection needs require a
certain level of material well-being, let us say sufficient to buy or rent
a house, they do not require a level sufficient to buy a castle. Though the
feedback need may be satisfied by the love and esteem of a few persons, it
does not require that one be loved and respected by everybody. The
remaining uncertainty about basic needs together with the inability to make
new distinctions, will lead the non-self-actualizer to want more and more
of the same, without ever getting satisfied.

   Let us now consider the opposite development pattern: gratification of
needs during childhood in due time. Under "in due time" we must understand:
not too late, i.e. before the frustration has had destructive effects on
the sense of safety and self-confidence, but not too early either, i.e. not
immediately after the child has expressed its need. Otherwise, the child
will become spoilt: its tendency to solve problems and learn by itself will
not be reinforced, and it will get lazy. How long "due time" is, will
depend on the specific need: short for urgent needs, longer for higher
needs. If the early gratification is accompanied by sufficient inherent
intelligence and by the presentation of adequate distinctions systems by
parents and educators, we may assume that the person will succeed in
building up a well-adapted hierarchy of distinction systems, with stable
foundations and a flexible superstructure, leading to an overall perception
of competence. If such a person is in adulthood confronted with a situation
of extreme deprivation and threat to the basic needs, for example in a Nazi
concentration camp, this will have little effect on his or her perceived
competence. Indeed the flexibility of the higher-order distinctions will
allow the person to formulate the problem situation in such a way that the
external causes of the problem become clear, so that there is no reason to
doubt about one's own competence or system of values.

   In conclusion, although we have started by separating material,
cognitive and subjective competences, we see that they interact in a quite
intricate way: if during the period of basic cognitive development, the
child experiences either material or cognitive incompetence, or both, this
will create subjective incompetence, and this will in turn hinder the
further development of cognitive competence because of the resulting
cognitive rigidity and lack of motivation. In other words, subjective
incompetence acts as a self-fulfilling prophesy: once you start to believe
that you are incompetent, you effectively become incompetent. Conversely,
if you believe you are competent (and if this belief is not brutally
falsified by the facts), you tend to be less inhibited by possible threats
to your self-image, and hence you have more energy and are more motivated
for further developing your competence by learning and exploration. Hence
we see that both self-actualization and non-self-actualization are
reinforced by positive feedback loops.

   It looks as though a child at birth stands before a bifurcation, with
two "attractors": perceived competence and perceived incompetence.
Positions in between the attractors are unstable: any not directly resolved
frustration of a basic need, due to external scarcity of the needed
resources (insufficient food, unsafe environment, lack of love and
reinforcement by the parents, etc.), or to cognitive incompetence to solve
the problem (insufficient intelligence, inadequate models proposed by
education, complexity of the problem), during development may be sufficient
to push the child into the attractor of incompetence. We should hence not
be surprised that self-actualizers form such a small minority. Yet I
believe that this picture in its simplicity is a little too pessimistic,
and that one may develop a feeling of competence for many needs, even
though not for all, and that if this domain of perceived competence is
large enough from the start, it may continue to grow during the whole
childhood and adulthood.



Discussion


Summary

A review of Maslow's theory and the criticisms raised against it has led us
to pin-point the following shortcomings: the conceptually and empirically
confusing definition of self-actualization, and the insufficiency of simple
need gratification to account for its emergence. Apart from gratification,
we have proposed to include temporal and cognitive factors.

   This has led us to study cognitive development from the point of view of
an autonomous system trying to maintain its identity in a complex and
changing environment. This allowed us to reformulate Maslow's need
hierarchy, in terms of the "urgency" of (potential) perturbations
experienced by the system, such that urgent perturbations correspond to
situations where the destruction of the system has high probability and
short time horizon, whereas non-urgent "perturbations" correspond to
long-term phenomena, with a weak probability of destruction, but with a
high potentiality for "growth". The urgency ordering of perturbations led
to a corresponding ordering of the needs to avoid such perturbations,
generalizing Maslow's hierarchy: the need for homeostasis, the need for
safety, the need for protection, the need for feedback and the need for
exploration.

   Unsatisfied needs or perturbations correspond to problems which must be
solved. This led us to redefine self-actualization as the perceived
competence to solve these basic problems in due time, where the required
time depends on the (subjective) urgency of the need. Perceived competence
has three components: material, cognitive and subjective. Cognitive
competence requires adequate distinction systems: lower-order needs demand
well-structured, closed cognitive systems, with invariant, precise
distinctions; higher-order needs require open-ended systems with variable
distinctions. Self-actualization is hence characterized by the successful
implementation of the following principle: stable low-order distinctions
form the basis for flexible high-order distinctions. This allows us to
explain most of Maslow's observations of self-actualizing behavior.

   However, if a distinction system is not sufficient to solve a problem
and thus to satisfy a need, the corresponding distinctions will not be
reinforced and hence will remain unstable. The inability to reduce a low
order deficiency during the period in which basic distinctions are
developed, will lead to subjective incompetence, and to a hierarchy of
distinctions systems which is not well balanced-in the sense that higher
order distinctions are more rigid than lower order ones-and thus to
perceived incompetence. Perceived incompetence tends to be self-enforcing
since it diminishes the motivation to solve problems, to learn from
experience, and hence to increase competence.

   This inability can have two types of causes: absence or scarcity of the
needed resources, and cognitive incompetence to solve the problem. The
first, motivational type of cause corresponds to Maslow's theory stating
that self-actualization requires the gratification of all the basic needs
by the environment. The second, cognitive type of cause is omitted in
Maslow's theory, and may explain some of its shortcomings. In particular it
allows us to explain why the frustration of a basic need at a later age
does not impede self-actualization, and may in certain cases even stimulate
it, by forcing the subject to reconsider his or her rigid system of
distinctions.

   This cognitive-systemic reconstruction of Maslow's theory gives us some
hints on how to promote self-actualization in society. An obvious way to
eliminate the first type of cause is to make society wealthier and more
democratic so that everybody can get what he or she needs. This is the
traditional socio-economic solution, which is the driving force behind
political systems such as social democracy. However, the second factor
reminds us that this is not sufficient, and that we also need to develop
subjective and cognitive competence. This can be stimulated by traditional
educational programmes, which provide their pupils with a variety of
distinctions systems which have shown their adequacy in different contexts.
However, this must be further complemented by an education where
individuals are taught to develop their own distinctions, partly by opening
up or de-automatizing [2] their existing rigid distinction systems (this is
the "transpersonal" solution [9]), partly by providing them with powerful
methods and support systems for constructing more adequate distinction
systems, thus enhancing their creative intelligence [1, 6] (this is the
"cybernetical" solution).


Issues for further research

It is clear that a problem as complex as the promotion of human well-being
demands a much more detailed study than what could be offered in the
present paper. Such study might allow the formulation of more general and
more concrete guide-lines for enhancing self-actualization in individuals
and in society.

   The classification of basic needs, their emergence from more or less
urgent perturbations, and the way they interact, must be further
elaborated. Also the different components of perceived competence and their
very complex interactions must be analysed with much more detail, and their
effect on concrete behavior, such as social interaction, must be examined.

   In particular, the newly introduced theoretical concepts and assumptions
should be empirically tested. It would be interesting to measure the
correlation between different types of competence, different types of need
gratification, and self-actualizing personality traits, at different stages
of psychological development. This might help to check and elaborate the
conceived interaction mechanisms stimulating or inhibiting
self-actualization. Partly, this would require the development of
operational definitions (psychological tests) for the newly introduced
concepts, in particular the concepts of perceived competence to satisfy
basic needs in due time, stability of low order distinctions, and
flexibility of high order distinctions.

   A possible avenue to approach this problem might be found in attribution
theory [16, 17], which examines how people attribute causes to perceived
events, such as success or failure to solve a personal problem. The theory
basically states that causes are attributed on the basis of covariation
between effects and their antecedent conditions, as they are experienced.
Fundamental dimensions of attribution include stability (is the cause
likely to maintain?), control (is the subject capable to change the
cause?), and locus (is the cause external or internal to the subject?) [17,
18]. In particular the factor of attributed control is clearly related to
the concept of perceived competence. We might hypothesise that control too
has a "material" component (does the subject dispose of the resources
necessary to produce the desired effect?), and a "cognitive one" (is the
subject capable to make an adequate choice from the repertoire of available
actions or resources?). Experiments on the attribution of controlability
might shed more light on the emergence of perceived competence and its
components.

   Other constructs related to perceived competence are "self-efficacy
expectancy" [20], which measures the belief concerning one's ability to
adequately execute actions, and "locus of control" [19], which measures the
degree to which a subject feels capable to control events through his or
her actions. Though these constructs are to some degree ambiguous or
controversial, and though they lack a clear theory about where the
"competence" they measure comes from, they have the advantage of offering
more or less reliable psychological tests. They could hence be used as
provisional tools for testing the basic model proposed in this paper.

   For example, these constructs could function as partial measures for the
postulated independent factor ("cause"), perceived competence. The
dependent factor ("effect"), SA or one of its necessary components, could
then be measured by Shostrom's test [13], or through the well-established
construct of "openness to experience" [21], which is similar to what we
called "flexibility of high order distinctions". A significant correlation
between independent and dependent variables would confirm the present
theory, a lack of correlation would point to basic difficulties. However,
one should not rely too much on such tests, since perceived competence
presupposes an analysis of basic needs and their relative urgency, which is
as yet absent in any of the existing "control" or "efficacy" measures.



Acknowledgments

The concept of this paper has taken shape during conversations and
correspondence with several friends and colleagues: Elizabeth Dykstra,
Zlatka Naydenova, Danny Rouckhout, Frank Van Overwalle, Zorislav Soyat and Brigitte Quenet.



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(Manuscript received July 1991)

1 Senior Research Assistant NFWO (Belgian National Fund for Scientific
Research



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