Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in
psychology proposed by
Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in
Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human
developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.