Open thread, June. 19 - June. 25, 2017

Elo

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

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Aside from not being sure how valid the Maslow hierarchy is

Basically, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a myth, and everyone would be better off forgetting about it entirely.

... critics point to dozens of counter-examples. What about the famished poet? Or the person who withdraws from society to become a hermit? Or the mountaineer who disregards safety in his determination to reach the summit?

Muddying things slightly, Maslow said that for some people, needs may appear in a different order or be absent altogether. Moreover, people felt a mix of needs from different levels at any one time, but they varied in degree.

There is a further problem with Maslow's work. Margie Lachman, a psychologist who works in the same office as Maslow at his old university, Brandeis in Massachusetts, admits that her predecessor offered no empirical evidence for his theory. "He wanted to have the grand theory, the grand ideas - and he wanted someone else to put it to the hardcore scientific test," she says. "It never quite materialised."

However, after Maslow's death in 1970, researchers did undertake a more detailed investigation, with attitude-based surveys and field studies testing out the Hierarchy of Needs.

"When you analyse them, the five needs just don't drop out," says Hodgkinson. "The actual structure of motivation doesn't fit the theory. And that led to a lot of discussion and debate, and new theories evolved as a consequence."

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a myth

It's certainly not a myth because it's a theory (or a hypothesis) which actually exists. Its weak forms are rather obvious, famished poets notwithstanding. Psychology is not physics and should not pretend to be physics, it deals in weak generalizations and fuzzy conclusions. Maslow's hierarchy should not be thought of as an iron law which applies everywhere to everyone -- it's merely a framework for thinking about needs.

2komponisto9y

Not necessarily; it depends on what one's default or alternative theory would be. Let's be Bayesian, after all. As I interpret it, "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" is little more than the claim that people's goals depend on their internal sense of security and status (in addition to whatever else they might depend on). When I speak about it, I'm usually talking about something like a spectrum of exogenous vs. endogenous motivation: at one end you have someone being chased by a wild animal (thus maximally influenced by the environment), and at the other, the Nietzschean "superhuman" who lives only according to their own values, rather than channeling or being a tool of anyone or anything else (thus minimally influenced by the environment in some sense, although obviously everything is ultimately a product of some external force).