[Neurons] 2010 Meta Reflections #47

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2010 - #47

Sept. 20, 2010

 

 

MORE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

OF MASLOW AND HIS MODEL

                                                                        

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

    August 21, 2010 

 

Every once in a while I will read something that is so ridiculous and absurd
that while I read I continually shake my head back and forth from
side-to-side not believing the non-sense.  This happens this week when I
read an article about some "psychologists" who tried their best to discredit
Abraham Maslow and they did so by mis-representing what he actually wrote
and, in my opinion, completely failed to understand the model they want to
replace with their own.

 

Here's the scoop: These evolutionary psychologists want to replace
self-actualization at the top of the hierarchy of needs and replace it with
"parenting" as the "paramount" human need, the ultimately "evolutionary
fundamental need" and along with it put "mate acquisition and mate
retention."  Incredible!

 

Now what is so unscientific and unprofessional about all of this is some of
what I consider their adolescent language which they use in putting down
Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs model.  It is unscientific because they
make statements without taking ownership for them.  When I first read the
following, I wondered, "Who is making these judgments and based on what?"

"Maslow's time-tested pyramid, first proposed in the 1940s, had begun to
look a bit weathered and outdated."

"The pyramid was increasingly viewed as quaint and old-fashioned and badly
in need of updating."

 

True enough, Maslow first developed the Hierarchy of Needs in 1941 and
published it in 1943, but he then spent another 13 years researching and
supporting the model.  It was in 1954 that his classic work was published,
Motivation and Personality.  Then in January of 1970, Maslow updated it with
all of the research that had occurred and the new edition was published soon
thereafter, just about the time of his death in June 1970.

 

In all of this works, Maslow himself never called the Hierarchy of Needs a
"pyramid."  Whoever first did that I still do not know.  I just know that
there is no record in all of Maslow's writings about that.  And in
Motivation and Personality he never said that "those at the bottom take
precedence over those higher up."  Instead he wrote about the emergence of
human needs as lower needs are truly satisfied.  He never said that they had
to be completely 100 percent or absolutely satisfied.

"The degree of fixity of the hierarchy of basic needs: we have spoken so far
as if this hierarchy were a fixed order, but actually it is not nearly so
rigid as we may have implied.  (p. 51)

"If one need is satisfied, then another emerges.   But it doesn't have to be
satisfied 100% before the next emerges.  We could assign arbitrary numbers:
85% of physiological needs satisfied, 50% of love, 40% of self-esteem needs,
10% of self-actualization needs." (1970, p. 54).  

 

Kenrick and Neuberg et. al. further mis-represent Maslow when they write:
"For Maslow, once a need was met, it disappeared as the individual moved on
to the next level."  That is blatantly false.  Maslow said that all of the
needs keep operating, they operate simultaneously, and everyday all of the
needs reassert themselves.  Writing in this way creates "a false-man
argument" - they present something that Maslow did not say, then criticize
it, and present a fuller picture (which the person original did also) and
hope in the process to be seen as updating and improving the original.

 

He never said "if you are starving and craving food that will trump all
other goals."  He never said that and he especially did not use that
language.  What he did say was that such needs as "mate acquisition, mate
retention, and parenting" would fall into the category of the love and
affection needs-the needs for bonding, connecting, being a part of a group.
Somehow Douglas Kenrick and Steven Neuberg missed that.  Maslow indeed
included finding a mate and having children as one biological "need" in the
hierarchy.  But he also discovered from his interview of thousands of
psychologically healthy people that there were "needs" beyond marrying and
having children. 

 

Kenrick and Neuberg also seemed to not have carefully read Maslow's work or
they would not have written that "while self-actualization is interesting
and important, it isn't an evolutionarily fundamental need."  They would
have learned that self-actualization is human development at its highest
level- seeking knowledge, meaning, justice, truth, love, contribution,
altrusism, making a difference, creativity.  So in terms of "evolutionarily
fundamental need" - our one and only "instinct" as humans is to learn, to
gain knowledge, to create meaning, and so on.  So given all of this, then of
course, "self-actualization" is an evolutionary need.  In the evolution
model, it is how we evolve.

 

Comparing self-actualization to "artistic creativity" and then declaring
that that is about gaining status also completely mis-understands and
mis-represents what Maslow actually said.

 

In my opinion, what I see that Kenrick and Neuberg have done is to impose
their own limited views onto the Hierarchy of Needs in an attempt to hijack
Maslow's work to give their work some credibility.  But it does not work.
"Reproductive goals are ultimate causes..." they write.  And what evidence
do they point to for that?  Birds!  Birds migration(!).

 

Anyway, if you also want to shake your head side-to-side and read something
unbelievably uninformed- what follows here is the article that appeared at
the University of Arizona website.  It is a brief summary of the original
article published in Perspectives on Psychological Society.  The original
article is better than this summary.  Yet in both the problem with all of
this is the frame that they start with, use to judge Maslow, and reject
"self-actualization."  Their frame is that of animal psychology (and not
human psychology) and of evolutionary psychology (not humanistic
psychology).

 

Maslow's frame came as he interviewed and modeled self-actualizers.  So he
started with real live people (starting with Max Wertheimer and Ruth
Benedict).  He looked at people who were psychologically healthy and who
were making significant contributions that were enriching the lives of many
others.

 

In a reply to the reviews of their paper, the authors later write the
following which gives a sense of their frames and therefore attitude:

"From an evolutionary perspective, people do not matter, per se.  Rather,
people are essentially vehicles for genes, and they are designed by genes to
do the kinds of things that facilitate the replication of those genes."
(Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5 (3) pp. 335) 

"Meaning and wisdom matter, but they have no particular place in the
pyramid..." (337, reference: http://pps.sagepub.com)

 

 

 <http://asunews.asu.edu/20100819_maslowspyramid>
http://asunews.asu.edu/20100819_maslowspyramid

 

Maslow's Pyramid Gets a Much Needed Renovation

 

If you have ever felt that your children are your life's work, then you may
in fact be recognizing a high-level psychological need. Caring for your
children, feeding them, nurturing them, educating them and making sure they
get off on the right foot in life - all of the things that make parenting
successful - may actually be deep-rooted psychological urges that we fulfill
as part of being human.

 

This is according to a team of psychologists who have updated a cornerstone
of modern psychology - Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs. Maslow's pyramid
describes human motivations from the most basic to the most advanced. But
Maslow's time-tested pyramid, first proposed in the 1940s, had begun to look
a bit weathered and outdated.

 

So a team of psychologists, including two from Arizona State University,
recast the pyramid. In doing so, they have taken on one of psychology's
iconic symbols and have generated some controversy along the way.

 

The revamp of Maslow's pyramid reflects new findings and theory from fields
such as neuroscience, developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology,
said Douglas Kenrick, an ASU professor of psychology and lead author of the
paper, "Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon
ancient foundations." The paper was published in the May issue of
Perspectives on Psychological Sciences.

 

Despite being one of psychology's most memorable images, Maslow's pyramid
hasn't always been supported by empirical research, said Steven Neuberg, an
ASU Foundation professor and co-author of the paper.

 

"Within the psychological sciences, the pyramid was increasingly viewed as
quaint and old-fashioned, and badly in need of updating," Neuberg added.

 

"It was based on some great ideas, several of which are worth preserving,"
Kenrick said. "But it missed out on some very basic facts about human
nature, facts which weren't well understood in Maslow's time, but were
established by later research and theory at the interface of psychology,
biology and anthropology."

Maslow developed the pyramid of needs to represent a hierarchy of human
motives, with those at the bottom taking precedence over those higher up. At
the base of Maslow's pyramid are physiological needs - hunger, thirst and
sexual desire.

 

According to Maslow, if you are starving and craving food that will trump
all other goals. But if you are satisfied on one level, you move to the
next. So, once you are well fed, you worry about safety. Once you are safe,
you worry about affection and esteem and so forth. Perhaps most famously, at
the top of Maslow's pyramid sat the need for self-actualization - the desire
to fulfill one's own unique creative potential.

 

The research team - which included Vladas Griskevicius of the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Mark Schaller of the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver - restructured the famous pyramid after observing how
psychological processes radically change in response to evolutionarily
fundamental motives, such as self-protection, mating or status concerns.

 

The bottom four levels of the new pyramid are highly compatible with
Maslow's, but big changes are at the top. Perhaps the most controversial
modification is that self-actualization no longer appears on the pyramid at
all. At the top of the new pyramid are three evolutionarily critical motives
that Maslow overlooked - mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting.

 

The researchers state in the article that while self-actualization is
interesting and important, it isn't an evolutionarily fundamental need.
Instead, many of the activities that Maslow labeled as self-actualizing
(artistic creativity, for example) reflect more biologically basic drives to
gain status, which in turn serves the goal of attracting mates.

 

"Among human aspirations that are most biologically fundamental are those
that ultimately facilitate reproduction of our genes in our children's
children," Kenrick said. "For that reason, parenting is paramount."

 

The researchers are not saying that artists or poets are consciously
thinking about increasing their reproductive success when they feel the
inspiration to paint or write.

 

"Reproductive goals are ultimate causes," Kenrick added, "like the desire of
birds to migrate because it helps them survive and reproduce. But at a
proximate (or immediate psychological) level, the bird migrates because its
brain registers that the length of day is changing. In our minds, we humans
create simply because it feels good to us; we're not aware of its ultimate
function."

 

"You could argue that a peacock's display is as beautiful as anything any
human artist has ever produced," Kenrick said. "Yet it has a clear
biological function - to attract a mate. We suspect that self actualization
is also simply an expression of the more evolutionarily fundamental need to
reproduce."

 

But, Kenrick adds, for humans reproduction is not just about sex and
producing children. It's also about raising those children to the age at
which they can reproduce as well. Consequently, parenting sits atop the
revamped pyramid.

 

There are other distinctions as well. For Maslow, once a need was met, it
disappeared as the individual moved on to the next level. In the reworked
pyramid, needs overlap one another and co-exist, instead of completely
replacing each other. For example, certain environmental cues can make them
come back. If you are walking down the street thinking about love, art or
the meaning of life, you will revert quickly to the self-protection level if
you see an ominous-looking gang of young men headed your way.

 

The new pyramid already has generated some controversy within the field. The
published article was accompanied by four commentaries. While the
commentaries agreed with the basic evolutionary premise of the new pyramid,
they take issue with some of the specific details, including the removal of
self-actualization and the prominence of parenting in the new pyramid.

 

"The pyramid of needs is a wonderful idea of Maslow's," Kenrick said. "He
just got some of it wrong. Now people are talking about it again, which will
help us get it right."

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

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