Another example that comes to mind is popular understandings of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It was a few years ago that I read Maslow’s actual paper, but I remember being surprised to find he was pretty clear that this was somewhat speculative and would need testing, and that there are cases where people pursue higher-level needs without having met all their lower-level ones yet. I’d previously criticised the hierarchy for overlooking those points, but it turned out what overlooked those points was instead the version of the hierarchy that had moved towards simplicity, apparent usefulness, and lack of caveats.
Yeah, that seems correct.
Another example that comes to mind is popular understandings of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It was a few years ago that I read Maslow’s actual paper, but I remember being surprised to find he was pretty clear that this was somewhat speculative and would need testing, and that there are cases where people pursue higher-level needs without having met all their lower-level ones yet. I’d previously criticised the hierarchy for overlooking those points, but it turned out what overlooked those points was instead the version of the hierarchy that had moved towards simplicity, apparent usefulness, and lack of caveats.
Thanks, interesting point.