Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy Of Perception

Abraham Maslow originally developed his influential hierarchy of needs to understand personal growth and help people attain spiritual “peak experiences.”. The structure of the pyramid is fixed so that we must attain a certain level before we activate a need for the next, higher one. (McLeod, 2016) At the bottom of the pyramid is physiological needs which includes water, sleep, and food. When they are not fulfilled, people become preoccupied with filling those needs above all else. For example, starving people in a war zone can be oblivious to danger when in search of food Next, you have the need for safety which includes shelter, protection, and security. While safety needs are less immediate or demanding than the physiological needs, when one loses one's job, family, home, life savings, health insurance, etc, one is likely to feel terribly insecure and

Stage one is exposure. Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes within the range of someone’s sensory receptors. Consumers concentrate on some stimuli, are unaware of others, and even go out of their way to ignore some messages. Subliminal perception refers to a stimulus below the level of the consumer’s awareness. There is no virtual proof that this process has any effect on consumer behavior.

Stage two is the attention given to the advertisement. Attention refers to the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus. Interesting advertisements are obviously more effective than less interesting advertisements because they are more likely to stick in your mind. One thing that can can often mess with your perception is sensory overload. We live in an “information society,” but there can be too much of a good thing. Sensory overload is where we are exposed to far more information than we can process. In our society, much of this overload comes from competition between advertisers for our