| Description |
The relationship between amount of an individual's financial income, the number of his financial resources, and extent of his self-actualization was investigated in 74 subjects, 54 women and 20 men, selected systematically from Salt Lake City, Utah. The hypotheses proposed relationships between: 1) amount of financial income and extent of self-actualization, and 2) number of financial resources and extent of self-actualization. The hypotheses were reasoned from Maslow's Theory of Basic Needs. Financial income defined as the exact annual income figure for all members of a household and financial resources defined as the total number of possessions of monetary value were purported to be fundamentally related to the basic needs of man to feel safe and secure in his environment and subsequently related to self-actualization which depends upon basic need satisfaction as a prerequisite toward growth. Two questionnaires were administered to the subjects. One was a measure of self-actualization, the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) by Shostrcm (1963), and the other was a Personal Data Sheet which measured potential influencing factors on the self-actualization process. Correlational analyses of the data collected did not provide statistically significant support for hypothesis 1 which states 1) there is a relationship between amount of financial income and extent of self-actualization, but it did partially support hypothesis 2 and the view that 2) there are statistically significant negative relationships, ranging between r = -.23 at P (.05 and r = -.33 at P<.01, between the number of financial resources and seven of the fourteen sub-scales of the POI. These sub-scales are 1) Support Ratio, 2) Inner-directedness, 3) Existentiality, 4) Spontaneity, 5) Self-Acceptance, 6) Acceptance of Aggression, and 7) Capacity for Intimate Contact. The number of financial resources was significantly correlated with financial income, r = .55, PC001, suggesting that they share a 30.25% common variance derived from r2 = .55 = .3025. Although none of the POI sub-scale correlations were statistically significant with financial income, the sub-scales with basic-need commonalities tended to decrease as financial income increased, and the sub-scales with growth-need camonalities tended to increase as financial income increased. The basic need sub-scales were: 1) Time Ratio, 2) Support Ratio, 3) Feeling Reactivity, 4) Self-Acceptance, 5) Acceptance of Aggression, and 6) Capacity for Intimate Contact. The growth-need sub-scales were: 1) Inner-directedness, 2) Time Competence, 3) Self-Actualization Value, 4) Existentiality, 5) Spontaneity, 6) Self-Regard, 7) Nature of Man Constructive, and 8) Synergy. This finding is interesting because it is in keeping with Maslow's conceptualization that basic needs are met before growth needs and also it is meaningful because it suggests that people in lower income levels have similar basic need and growth need tendencies as people in higher income levels. The data also suggest that the acquisition of financial resources beyond those which satisfy basic deficiency needs and basic growth needs do not support the self-actualization process. The range of the subjects' income was $1,400 to $45,000, with a mean of $12,483.50. Forty-nine subjects had an annual income below the mean income and twenty-five were above the mean. Sixteen of the seventy-four subjects were retired and ten were on welfare, indicating that a wide range of economic levels was sampled. The ages ranged from 18 to 80. The following POI sub-scales ranging between r = -.23, P<05 and r = -.43, P<.001 decreased significantly as age increased: 1) Inner-directedness, 2) Time Competence, 3) Self-Actualization Value, 4) Feeling Reactivity, 5) Spontaneity, 6) Self-Regard, and 7) Capacity for Intimate Contact. This finding is interesting because it is not in keeping with Maslow's studies in which he found greater degrees of self-actualization in people 60 years of age and older. The sub-scale of Nature of Man as constructive suggested significantly that the number of years of formal education, r = .43, P (1001, is associated with having a flexible view of sex-roles and that race other than white, R = -.36, P^.01, is associated with specifically assigned sex-roles for men and women. |
