Twelve: Maslow Misunderstood
The author opens the chapter with some basic biographical details about Abraham Maslow, who is a figurehead in the field of motivational psychology.
Maslow is most widely recognized for his five-stage hierarchy of needs, and uses this as a basis for his theory of motivation - namely, that people undertake action in order to fulfill their needs, that a person has many simultaneous and conflicting needs, and that his hierarchy describes the manner in which needs are prioritized, such that the higher-priority needs provide stronger motivation in a functional and rational individual.
(EN: It's a very solid theory, but often attacked by those who point out that people are not always rational, and who dwell on edge cases to dispute an otherwise plausible theory.)
Unfortunately, Maslow is quoted more often than he is read, and those who have merely seen a diagram of his hierarchy in a textbook or magazine often misrepresent the theory behind it, so it is worthwhile for those who deal in human motivation (marketers specifically) to become more familiar with the actual theory.
It is suggested that modern-day marketing has exploited and perverted the hierarchy of needs. It is in the interest of marketers to disrupt the hierarchy such that prospects prioritize the need for their products more than things that they should value more, as well as creating a sense that needs are never-ending and a person can never be completely satisfied.
Granted, that is taking the negative perspective: marketers often see themselves as helping people discover solutions to their needs, and prioritizing their products appropriately - of more often, they abdicate from this responsibility, suggesting that their sole business is to sell their product, and the decision to buy it (rather than something that is more valuable) is the responsibility of the consumer. No seller of a luxury product would ever claim/admit to attempting to prioritize his product above necessities, though this often seems to be the case.
The Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's theory of motivation is based on a five-stage hierarchy of needs, in which the primal needs must (or should) be addressed before seeking to address needs on the next level:
- Physical/Survival - The first level of needs pertains to personal survival: avoiding threats to life and limb, having food when hungry and water when thirsty, and other basic needs that humans have in common with all animal species.
- Security/Maintenance - The second level of needs pertains to having confidence in future survival by accumulating things that are not needed, but will be needed in future. In essence, it is knowing where your next meal is coming from - but in practice, a person may need to feel secure in their food supply for the next day, month, year, decade, or more (consider retirement planning).
- Social - The third level of needs addresses a desire to belong to a group, to have the connections with others that one needs to provide for future needs and the ability to count upon others.
- Esteem - The fourth level of needs addresses a desire to have a certain status within groups - to not merely have the company an assistance of others, but to have their respect. (EN: This is sometimes lumped together with social needs in a single level, but they are two different things.)
- Self-Actualization - The last level of needs represents the desire to feel growth and achievement as an individual, regardless of how others regard a person. The critical difference is the distinction between being respected and having self-respect.
The author does note that Maslow was a Marxist, which has likely skewed his ranking of needs. The need to belong to a group precedes the need to have self-respect, for example, supports collectivism over individualism. The fact that needs served by material goods are considered base and vulgar reflects a contempt for wealth and property. In spite of that influence, his hierarchy of needs remains sound and plausible.
(EN: This may also be the reason that the hierarchy is often criticized in western culture. The idea of belonging to a group at the expense of one's own interests is abhorrent to western thought - so the precise order of the top two or three layers is arguable and likely idiosyncratic.)
Occasional Collaboration
There is an ongoing debate over whether man is a social creature or an individual one. An adult human being is capable of survival on his own, but is more effective and efficient when working with a group. In essence, we are solitary creatures who engage in collaborative effort when it is in our interest.
A 2006 observational study of chimpanzees supports this perspective: chimps live in groups, but only occasionally engage in collaborative activities. The observers further experimented by rigging a contraption that provided food, but required two ropes to be pulled at the same time that were too far apart for a single chimp to do the task. Invariably, a chimp would attempt to do the task alone before seeking help.
Additionally, the experiment showed that chimps were selective in whom they recruited to assist - avoiding and even driving off those who would not assist in the task or those who would hoard the food once it had been accessed. The same held of a chimp's willingness to assist when another attempted to recruit it. The learning was instantaneous: bad collaborators never got a second chance.
This is analogous to human behavior in commercial efforts: each person seeks his own profit, but recognizes that he must engage others to achieve it. He will only engage in others who play fairly, and others will only engage with him if he plays fairly. It's possible to be exploitative of others, but only once.
The question remains, what is fairness? An employee will not continue to work if he gets no benefit from it - but at the same time he will often abide horrible conditions for a meager paycheck until a better offer comes along. And "comes along" is often quite accurate: people stuck in dead-end jobs seldom take the initiative to find a better deal.
Meanwhile, employers seek to make the greatest profit by paying as little as they can to employees - but at the same time they recognize that if the pay is insufficient for the work (or the environment is too unpleasant for the pay), they will constantly lose their best people. So they, too, have to gauge what is a fair deal.
(EN: I've found that much depends on the labor market. In the booming nineties, employers treated their workers very well because it was difficult to find good help. In the recession a decade or so later, employers became miserly because it was easy to replace departing workers. So it waxes and wanes with the market for labor.)
It's also noted that what's "fair" depends on perception. A separate study with capuchin monkeys found that the animals were happy to perform a task in exchange for a slice of cucumber - but when they saw another monkey being rewarded with grapes for the same task, they became quite upset and refused to work. The same can be said of both employers and employees - their satisfaction depends on whether they perceive that others are getting a better deal.
Belief and Desire
An individual finds a product to be desirable when he believes that he can gain value by having it - that it will address a need. The term "believes" is critical, because until the product is owned, he does not know for a fact that it will provide the value he hopes to achieve.
Arguably, past experience is the most reliable guide - but even that is subjective. What worked before won't necessarily work again, because conditions may be different in ways that an individual does not perceive or recognize. But the positive experience does tend to both reinforce and broaden beliefs.
But because there are multiple competing needs and limited resources, a person must decide which needs to address presently and which may be delayed. A person who is contented in general may feel a greater sense of urgency about a specific need than a person who has several problems to solve.
Further, problems receive greater attention that opportunities because problems threaten the status quo whereas opportunities are options to improve conditions.
And aside of the fulfillment of functional necessities, needs are highly idiosyncratic. Particularly in luxury goods, people seem to have very eccentric tastes, as these reflect which options they have chosen to pursue.
Conspicuous consumption defines "who I am" to an observer, but luxury consumption defines it for oneself. Which is prioritized depends on the individual's personality, chiefly extraversion or introversion. The relationship between consumption and identity is interdependent, as each drives the other - I am therefore I consume, and I consume therefore I am. In reference to the present topic, what a person wants depends on whom he believes himself to be.
As an aside, it's mentioned that materialism is a strong sign of an identity crisis. A person with a well defined sense of self knows what he needs because he knows who he is. A person who does not have a well defined sense of self does not know who he is, does not know what he needs, and his consumption habits are erratic.
(EN: The analogy of grocery shopping comes to mind. When you know what you're going to make for dinner, you can buy the few items that you need. When you don't, you buy many things in case you might need them.)
Self-Actualization is Unattainable
The highest of Maslow's needs, self-actualization, is unattainable. There is always something more, something different, or something better for a person to aspire to become. So a person who achieves a goal, fits very well into a specific station in life, is seldom happy for long. Eventually, doubts set in as to whether they are on the right path in life, and they seek to become something else.
Few are content to accept "their lot" in life. There is often the sense that the grass is greener in some other pasture. This gives rise to discontent and consistently unfulfilled hopes.
Nostalgia is mentioned as a kind of self-torture when taken to extremes. A healthy nostalgia is a pleasant remembrance of the past, a brief escape from the unpleasantness of the present (facilitated by remembering only the good things, and ignoring the bad, about that previous time). However this remembrance may evolve to the point that it creates dissatisfaction with the present, giving birth to an impossible goal of returning things to a state from which they have evolved and are never to return.
There is opportunity and danger for brands that cater to dissatisfaction. The opportunity is that there is a seemingly never-ending procession of needs that have no functional requirements, only psychological desires. The danger is that once people realize that the consumption of the product does not lead to satisfaction of the desire, they will abandon it. This is the reason fashions and fads, and the products that support them, go in and out of fashion.
Thanataphobia and Consumption
The author then switches to the lowest end of Maslow's hierarchy: the needs that are created by an immediate fear of death - and to some degree, the security needs are more of a long-term fear of death, the "existential dread" that mortality is inevitable. On the most basic level survival requires consumption, and the need to consume drives all our commercial activities: we work to produce things to consume in order to sustain our lives. To consume is to live, and to avoid death.
It is healthy to consume enough to survive, but "enough" is a balance between consuming too little (neglect and deprivation) and consuming too much (gluttony and hoarding). This balance is determined by the individual and subject to cultural norms - a person determines how much he needs to sustain himself.
But of course, this is too rational to be realistic for most individuals: they look to the consumption of others as a model, or they allow their emotions to drive their consumption habits. Thanatophobia (fear of death) drives much irrational behavior, including gluttony, hoarding, and other forms of overconsumption. Ironically, it also drives underconsumption, as it is common for individuals to taunt death by consuming too little, often in a ritual display such as religious fasting or anorexia.
In western culture, thanatophobia manifests itself through an array of behaviors related to consumption. The person who takes pleasure in shopping for things they do not need, the one who makes a social display of their expensive purchases, and the hoarder are all examples of overconsumption. The present fad for diet and exercise to extremes is an example of underconsumption.
In the end, the proper balance is difficult to define - everyone has their limits, and reasonable deviations. The precise point where "collecting" or "saving from the future" crosses over into hoarding is difficult to define, as there are rational or rationalized defenses of any given level.
Security, Accumulation, and Hoarding
Security needs, the second level of Maslow's hierarchy, stipulates that once an individual's immediate survival needs are met, they feel they feel the urge to accumulate products (primarily goods, but also services) in order to assure that their survival needs are met in the future. A starving man wants something to eat right away, and once he is fed he wants to have something in the cupboard for his next meal.
But the question arises: how much does a person need to accumulate in order to feel adequately secure? The topic becomes politicized when individuals presume to judge for others and seek to deliver benefits to the "poor" who do not have enough or forcibly take from the "rich" who have too much, or to defend themselves when they disagree with the estimation of others whom they perceive to be a threat to their own security.
Objectively, there is a plausible case for the extremes. A person can be said to have "not enough" when they suffer physical symptoms as a result of exhausting their inventory and doing without some necessary good. Economically, A person can be said to have too much when their inventory goes to waste before it is used or when the amount they have accumulated exceeds the lifetime consumption of their household.
But psychologically, it's all about the way a person feels, which is highly subjective: the amount that gives one person a sense of security and comfort may seem insufficient to a second person and superfluous to a third. It may be based upon a rational estimation of survival needs, consumption and replenishment rates, but it is in fact an entirely emotional matter that is often more rationalized than rational.
The author vaguely references a few studies into the phenomenon of hoarding: one in which subjects were asked to sort through a variety of old items to decide what should be thrown away. Individuals who had difficulty disposing of things showed much higher levels of activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that is associated to emotional discomfort. That is, disposing of something that is believed to be useful activates the same mental processes that occur when there is a sudden loss.
It's mentioned that the same region of the brain shows activity when religious people are asked to contemplate that god may not exist. It is suggested that this is because religion is a palliative that provides comfort when faced with the unknown and the fear of non-existence, which is a form of psychological security.
Loose Bits
The analysis of motivation is often confounded because there are multiple possible motivations to undertake a given action, and because some of them are extrinsic and cannot be understood when the action is considered in isolation. So when we observe someone acting, we do not know why he is really doing it - and even if we were to ask him, his answer may be inaccurate.
Giving customers extrinsic rewards is often necessary when they are not rational enough to perceive the intrinsic reward of an activity, or when the intrinsic reward is regarded as not worth the effort, or even when they recognize but do not wish to admit the intrinsic reward (buying sweets because the brand donates to a charity, not because the person has a childish desire to consume the sweets themselves).
The "security" level of needs also includes the development of skills to address future needs. A person undertakes effort to master a task and learn new skills and resources for future use - so behavior in the moment may not be motivated by immediate rewards, but rewards that will be gained further in the future.
A brief passage on tribalism suggests that the "society" of the present age is not a singular thing. People belong to various groups and play various roles within them - ideally, but not always, maintaining a certain integral identity across the various tribes to which they belong. The allure of tribalism is so strong that people create tribes that have no functional necessity, nor any purpose except to give people a way to identify themselves. Whether it's a religious denomination or being a fan of a specific sports team, there is a drive to create the contention of "us versus them" and if there is no reason to be contentious, people will create a group to provide that.