According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, there are several levels of needs that each person must strive to meet before he or she can achieve the highest level of personal fulfilment. Thus, a person must be able to fulfil the primary (biological) needs at the lowest level, as indicated in Figure 1. Once these needs are met then safety becomes important, followed by need to belong and to love and be loved. The desire to belong to groups such as family, friends, and religious groups makes us feel loved and accepted by others. If we succeed in satisfying the mentioned needs then we feel the need to have self esteem, confidence, and feeling of self worth. Next come cognitive needs which include need for knowledge and understanding, followed by need for order and beauty. Finally a person moves towards reaching the full potential called self-actualization. Such a person has the qualities of self awareness, is socially responsive, and is open to the challenges of life. This type of organisation of needs is called a hierarchy, or ranking in a series.

As life goes on people gain wisdom and knowledge of how to handle situations, thus they move up the ladder or hierarchy. A person may move up and down the hierarchy depending upon the situation he or she finds himself in. This hierarchy may not hold true for different cultures. It has been found that in countries like Sweden and Norway quality of life is very important and social needs are more sought after than self-actualization. In some cultures security needs are more dominant than self-actualization making job security more important than job satisfaction.