Maslow never proposed a pyramid
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Related paper: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.5465/amle.2017.0351
Maslow always emphasized the relative satisfaction of needs. To quote from his famous paper[3]:
[quote]
... As for the concept of emergence of a new need after satisfaction of the prepotent [i.e. dominant] need, this emergence is not a sudden, saltatory phenomenon but rather a gradual emergence by slow degrees from nothingness. For instance, if prepotent need A is satisfied only 10 per cent then need B may not be visible at all. However, as this need A becomes satisfied 25 per cent, need B may emerge 5 per cent, as need A becomes satisfied 75 per cent need B may emerge 90 per cent, and so on.
[/quote]
If you want to understand Maslow, there's no escaping his two seminal books:
• Motivation and Personality, 1954
• Toward a Psychology of Being, 1962
He writes with superb clarity, and is an absolute joy to read. If you're really, really short on time, at least read his paper, A Theory of Human Motivation[3].
[1] https://scottbarrykaufman.com/who-created-maslows-iconic-pyr...
[2] https://scottbarrykaufman.com/sailboat-metaphor/
[3] http://worrydream.com/refs/Maslow%20-%20A%20Theory%20of%20Hu...
He's is still the 9th most cited psychologist. That wouldn't happen if it's all "fiction".
Which doesn't seem like it relates to the shape of the diagram (or any other representation of the hierarchy) at all.
If managers are doing things higher on the hierarchy but employees want higher wages, that just means they're further down the hierarchy and that need hasn't yet been fulfilled.
It is arguable that the "absolute" interpretation is not fundamental to either the pyramid or the hierarchy. It's still probably a good first order approximation to get the point across: you're gonna have trouble with upper layers if you have any serious deficiencies in lower layers.
So to counter the idea, all you really need to do is find examples of self esteem and self actualization before achieving the physical needs.
The familiar pyramid shape suggests that once we complete each step, we’re done dealing with that need forever. As if life were a video game, and once we complete each level, we unlock the next, with no looking back. It’s an appealing concept. It’s also a gross misrepresentation of the humanistic vision that propelled Maslow’s work.
Maslow emphasized that we are always in a state of becoming and that one’s “inner core” consists merely of “potentialities, not final actualizations” that are “weak, subtle, and delicate, very easily drowned out by learning, by cultural expectations, by fear, by disapproval, etc.”
That said, this tweet does have a huge dose of "acccchhhtually......" in it.
A classic map vs territory confusion.
I think the ordinary, uncritical reader who hears about "Maslow's hierarchy" and sees a pyramid (1) isn't necessarily committing themselves to any high-stakes claim about what Maslow originally did or didn't intend and (2) they aren't being mislead by seeing a pyramid (as opposed to anything else) to represent a hierarchical structure.
I understand that mis-quotations and misattributes are a thing, and the cultural forces that lead to them, and the ripple effects they cause, merit attention. But there's a second, parallel tradition that centers on "correcting" supposed misperceptions over trivial distinctions.
Same here from when I was in college in the 80's.
The bigger issues are that:
(1) Maslow’s research explicitly was focussed on elites that he referred to as a “master race”,
(2) The universal heirarchy he proposed has not been substantiated by subsequent research without the express problematic focus Maslow started from,
(3) Research tends to show fewer, and more culturally variable, categories, with the heirarchies in which they fall also culturally variable.
That's fascinating! Do you have any source or useful search terms? I'd love to read more
"No claim is made that it is ultimate or universal for all cultures. The claim is made only that it is relatively more ultimate, more universal, more basic, than the superficial conscious desires from culture to culture [...]"
(Where "it" == Maslow's classification of basic needs.)
* * *
Maslow studied what he called the master race of people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy." Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs#Me...
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric...
When I accuse someone of being a Nazi, the word “Nazi” will absolutely appear in the accusation.
Please just provide a reference for your quote. I’d be interested to read it.
> Maslow studied what he called the master race of people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[11]: 236 > … > Maslow, A (1954). Motivation and personality. New York, NY: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-041987-5.
I took a read through the text in question ( https://archive.org/details/motivationperson00masl_0 ) and while the quoted text seems to have been quoted accurately, the phrase "master race" doesn't appear in that book. What Maslow seems to be saying in that section (from an extremely quick skim) is that he is talking about the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, although he uses the phrase "healthy people" to refer to the people he's writing about.
Also see the ERG theory which builds off of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERG_theory
That series of tweets suggests that people have misinterpreted what Maslow himself was theorizing, so it kind of sounds like what people are criticizing is a strawman that did not originate with Maslow himself.
Few ideas are born into the world fully-formed, but we should still attribute them to those that birthed them.
Or more distorted and self-serving.
Or is the concern here more that this (or hierarchies in general) should not be conveyed via pyramidal structures?
Is this a regional thing, or common in a specific discipline?
I conclude that the pyramid terminology isn't a strawman completely out of left field, but also isn't representative of the way most people understand Maslow's theory.
In practice always accompanying a thing with a metaphor isn't too different from naming the thing after the metaphor.
[0] https://www.esalen.org/podcasts/abraham-maslows-1966-lecture...
I knew "self-actualization" smelled like bullshit.
Being taught Freud and Maslow at least contributed to the reasons I dropped out of college. You can lack personal safety but still have self-esteem and self-realization. In fact some of the most self-realized people in history lived in some of the most dangerous times and places. I'm sure there are Monks who are more self-realized than any of the people Maslow would consider to be at the top of his hierarchy, and they definitely don't need Prestige or a Feeling of Accomplishment (aka the narcissistic human ego) to reach a higher level of human consciousness.
To your sentence "You can lack personal safety but still have self-esteem and self-realization." I would not agree. You may have a very low need for personal safety so that it is satisfied, but those are so far apart you're unlikely to reach self-actualization if your safety needs are not met.
This is literally the definition of pseudoscience. If it can't be replicated, it's not science. If it can't fit within the bounds of the scientific method, it's not fact, it's wishful thinking. Statements like "it's a map not a territory" and it "varies...between people" is indoctrination, not education. You'll hear exactly the same statements and circular reasoning come out of cults and religious institutions.
> You may have a very low need for personal safety so that it is satisfied, but those are so far apart you're unlikely to reach self-actualization if your safety needs are not met.
Ghandi did not have personal safety, but he was certainly self-actualized. Nelson Mandela spent his life in prison, and yet raised an entire country to a higher level of consciousness. Some of the greatest scientists, leaders, and artists in history were the most persecuted. But today, in the 21st century, we live in the safest time in history, with the least struggles in history, the most abundance, and what do we have? Millions of people with depression and mental illness, who are the farthest thing from being self-actualized. From this the only conclusion I can come to is that people like Abraham Maslow were quacks, trying to rationalize their own ego, and don't deserve any place in modern academia.
His need for personal safety was low and probably satisfied.
>> Nelson Mandela spent his life in prison, and yet raised an entire country to a higher level of consciousness.
"higher level of consciousness" sounds like that pseudo-science stuff you don't like.
>> Some of the greatest scientists, leaders, and artists in history were the most persecuted. But today, in the 21st century, we live in the safest time in history, with the least struggles in history, the most abundance, and what do we have? Millions of people with depression and mental illness, who are the farthest thing from being self-actualized.
And? One might conclude that overcoming adversity is a solid path to self-actualized, even though - again - you think that whole concept is pseudo-science ;-)