For years, much of what has informed our knowledge of human behaviour has been based on the acceptance of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - like the food pyramid, Maslow’s triangle depicting humanity’s evolution up through our basest desires towards enlightened self-actualisation is so ubiquitous that it is scarcely questioned.
It assumes that as our survival, or physiological, needs are met that we will evolve and move on to satisfying goals like safety, then social needs, followed by esteem and then self-actualisation which occupies the apex of the pyramid. It certainly fits how many of us would like to conceive of ourselves and in fact, many of us assume we already sit at the top of the pyramid. Essentially, the promise is, that as survival needs are met, human beings will evolve into far more “spiritual” or thoughtful creatures.
But the truth is, rather than rising up through the different levels of the pyramid, most of us have been too lazy to take the stairs and have simply added on to the ground floor and turned from needs to wants.
In fact. the abundant wealth most of the first world enjoys has lead to very little in the way of self actualisation. But is that really such a bad thing?
It turns out, our survival brain helped us do just that - survive, and their primary directive, which has lead to our success as a species, still calls dibs on most of our decision making.
Of course some of you might feel horribly impugned by the thought that you are driven by such base motives, you may even have grown a moustache for cancer research, protested to save an animal that was not even cute and you may even own a yoga mat!!!
But consider a series of experiments that was conducted by the American Journal of Psychology in the 1990s. Three separate studies revealed that, when leaving a car park space, human beings will reverse out more slowly if they know another person is waiting to take the spot. Even though it works directly against our goal of leaving the car park and heading home or to get on with our lives.
Now why would we behave that way? It turns out that despite the fact that we have enjoyed 65 million years of evolution, our primitive, possessive brains are still very territorial.
The reason our species-wide denial matters is, we have all drunk the Kool Aid and assume we are all rather more sophisticated than we in fact are. This leads us to adopt models of motivation and persuasion that are based on false assumptions, we invest a great deal of time, money and energy appealing to higher values such as meaning and contribution and seldom regard the survival instincts that have played such a critical role in our dominance on this planet.
The real issue is, if we really want to achieve change in our world, to persuade, to engage, we need to get real about who we really are and think more in terms of a needs bungalow than the pyramid.
Kieran Flanagan
creative director
McCann Worldgroup Australia and author of Selfish, Scared & Stupid