Dr Clare W Graves (1914-1986) was the psychologist on whose work Spiral Dynamics
and several other powerful and practical conceptual models have been built.
Although he achieved the emminent position of 'Professor of Psychology Emeritus'
at Union College, Schenectady, New York State, when he retired through ill health
in 1978, he was not particularly well known outside of certain academic and management
theory networks and he has been largely ignored since his death.
However, his model and the theory that supports it are without doubt amongst the
most powerful and certainly the most cohesive and comprehensive of all attempts to
map the development of the human psyche. Those who get to grips with Graves' work
tend to become decidedly passionate about it - such is the power of the model! His
work is critical and fundamental to Psychology and the other behavioural sciences
and is at the core of Integrated SocioPsychology.
Graves was an associate professor at Union when he began his remarkable project in
1952. (He became a full professor in 1956.) At the time Graves recognised the frustration
of his students when trying to make sense of the differing theories of personality
development and human nature he had taught them - often expressed in terms such as:
"Okay, professor. Now we know Maslow and Rogers and Skinner and lots of others. Which
theory is right?"
So it was he resolved to carry out his own research project, starting completely
from scratch - ie: he didn't use any existing theory as a starting point. Effectively
Graves started without a hypothesis and with only the broadest of aims!
In 1984, just
over 30 years later, Graves gave his last major presentation (to the World Future
Society) on what he had come to call the 'Emergent Cyclical Double-Helix Model of
Adult Bio-Pyscho-Social Behaviour'.
The
Methodology - an Insight
Graves began by getting his students to write down their
conceptions of the psychological health of biologically-mature human beings. He did
this on an annual basis and then had the data collated, assessed and categorised
by independent panels of judges.
He tested students in groups categorised according to the independent judges, using
a variety of then-standard psychological assessments for measures including:-
He also worked on specific problem-solving exercises with the categorised groups.
He conducted biophysiological tests with light and sound on the categorised groups
(Graves, 1971) and tested their galvanic skin response (electrical conductivity of
the skin) (Graves, 1971/2002). He even injected some of them with hormones to see
what effect this would have on their thinking and behaviour in terms of his model.
(Graves, 1978/2005)
Some of Graves' methods would be regarded as rather dubious when set against the
heavy emphasis on ethics by today's Psychology academics. He did not tell his students
what his intentions were but allowed them to think the various tests and exercises
were part of their standard curriculum. He also observed them through 2-way mirrors
and secretly tape-recorded them.
In trying to make sense of the immense amount of data he was collecting, Graves initially
tried to map it against Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1956), with which
he had been much impressed. Besides Maslow, he also conversed regularly with O J
Harvey and David E Hunt (of Harvey, Schroeder & Hunt) - Hunt had been one of his
students at Union - and Jack Calhoun, among others.
As news of his work and the conclusions he was drawing began to spread in the 1960s
and 1970s, Graves received invitations to work in industrial situations, educational
institutions and with prison populations which enabled him to collect data from new
and quite different population groups.
Unfortunately Graves appears to have entertained some short-sighted C-P (RED) in
his own thinking as he threw out a large amount of the original test materials, retaining
only the collated results. This has created difficulties in replicating and validating
Graves' project - already daunting due to its 30-year length and the sheer amount
of data he collected.
The
Results - an Insight
Early on Graves and his judges identified two basic values-oriented
systems and 2 sub-systems of each system:-
Graves identified what he later termed the G-T (YELLOW) level with the characteristics
of Self-Actualisation, as described by Humanistic psychologists such as Maslow -
especially - and Carl Rogers (1959). (Rogers also used the term 'Full Function' for
this level.)
In 1959 Graves found for the first time a very small number of his students identifying
a level clearly beyond G-T as a superior conception of the psychologically-healthy
human being: Deny/Sacrifice Self to existential realities (H-U).
This led to some theoretical debate with Maslow. How much Maslow and Graves communicated
and how much they influenced each other is a matter of some conjecture. However,
Graves is known to have sympathised with Maslow at a mid-1950s American Psychological
Association conference when Maslow was brutally barracked and rubbished by a legion
of Behaviourists; and in May 1965, when Maslow was ill, he stood in for him and presented
his paper in New York City. Shortly before his death in 1970 Maslow finally acknowledged
'Transcendence' as a way of thinking beyond basic Self-Actualisation. The more knowledgeable
students of Maslow tend to place Transcendence as the highest level in the Hierarchy,
though Maslow died before he could formally revise its structure himself.
A difference between Graves and Maslow that was not resolved, however, was that of
the 'ultimate state'. Maslow saw the stages of development as forming a pyramid,
with Self-Actualisation - later, succeeded by Transcendence) - forming the apex.
Graves, on the other hand, came to believe in the brain-mind's ability to ever expand
its repertoire of coping mechanisms by creating new thinking systems as circumstances
demanded. This is illustrated in Spiral Dynamics by both the nomination of the hypothetical
level I-V (CORAL) beyond H-U (TURQUOISE) and the Spiral 'balloon' graphic - the latter
showing how the succeeding mindsets are greater in complexity, thus forming an ever-expanding
spiral. (However, there is yet to be any scientifically-reliable evidence of anyone
thinking in a way beyond H-U.)
In the early 1960s Graves identified an Express-Self level less complex than D-Q:
Express Self impulsively at any cost (C-P). Graves correlated this with the arrival
of significant numbers of students from blue collar/working class backgrounds at
Union due to changes in the funding and admission regimes. (It was the identifiication
of this level which led David Hunt 1966) - (terming it 'Type Sub-1' - to break from
colleagues Harvey & Schroeder who were reluctant to acknowledge a level below 'Type
1' (D-Q).(A Developmental Comparison Map illustrates how the work of other developmental
psychologists and behavioural scientists like Maslow and Harvey, Schroeder & Hunt
(1961) maps to the Gravesian levels.)
By the late 1960s Graves was formulating a model
from his data, drawing on the work of leading anthropologists to sketch in the lower
A-N (BEIGE) and B-O (PURPLE) levels. The basics of his theory were in place by 1970
when he published a paper on it in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Several
key factors had become clear to him by this time:-
- the systems developed in an upward hierarchical manner, cycling between Express Self
and Deny/Sacrifice Self
- in the relationship between the internal coping mechanisms (notated N-Z) and the
Life Conditions (notated A-M) in the Environment, the Deny/Sacrifice Self systems
work to adapt to the Life Conditions while the Express Self systems work to overcome
them
- characteristics of transitions between levels were identifiable
- the B-O to F-S (GREEN) levels in their peak manifestations defended their worldviews
as being 'right' in a rather absolutist sense while G-T tolerated other worldviews
and H-U regarded less complex worldviews as self-deception
Though he admitted he personally couldn't find enough reliable and significant evidence
for it, Graves thought it likely there were relationships between the levels and
intelligence and temperament.
The
Freaky Stuff!!!!
In over 30 years of research Clare W Graves discovered some fairly
startling information about the way the systems he had identified operated:-
- The O system is stimulated by smooth gradations in light and sound - eg: a sunset
- while the P system is stimulated by pulsing light and sound - eg: in a disco
- In terms of hormones, noradrenaline is higher than adrenaline when the P system is
active and adrenaline higher than noradrenaline when Q is active
- The T system has four times the problem-solving capacity of the S system
Graves was
so struck by these discoveries he wrote an article 'Human Nature prepares for a Momentous
Leap' (published in The Futurist, 1974), describing the significant difference in
complexity of thinking engendered by the move from S to T - Fear and compulsion are absent when the T system is activated
- Galvanic skin response varies between systems and increases dramatically when the
U (TURQUOISE) system is activated
"Oh, my God, it becomes so high you can't hardly
get it. I'm talking 2-3-4 standard deviations. This thing has really jumped."
(Graves,
1971/2002, p68) - Graves also said of the eighth level:
"The H-U person can turn off other levels of
consciousness at will. He can go out of this world and go off into other levels of
consciousness and come back at will. Instrumentally you have that..."
(Graves, 1971/2002,
p67)
It seemed to Graves that there was a qualitative difference between the first 6 levels
- of subsistence - and the seventh and eighth - of being. (In this he paralleled
Maslow's distinction between deficiency needs and growth needs.) It also seemed to
Graves that the seventh and eighth levels were far more complex reflections of the
first and second. From this he began to speculate that the systems developed in tiers
of 6, each a more complex reflection of the previous tier. By the early 1980s he
preferred to annotate G-T as A'-N' and H-U as B'O' in accordance with his idea of
repeating tiers. (It needs to be stated that the concept of repeating tiers of 6
seems to have been pure speculation on Graves' part; there is no known evidence for
this.)
The
Graves Legacy
Although severe ill health forced his retirement from Union College
in 1978, Graves continued to carry out research and to make presentations as best
he could. His health problems effectively brought to an end his attempts to write
a book about his work and the theory he had developed from it. ('The Never Ending
Quest', published in 2005, was an invaluable completion of the abandoned manuscript,
using other Gravesian materials.)
Not particularly good at promoting himself in academic circles, Graves had relatively
little material published in psychological journals during his lifetime. (He did
have several pieces published in management/business-oriented periodicals.)
However, by the time of his retirement, Graves' work was being taken very seriously
indeed by a number of small networks across the United States. One particularly important
pocket of support was in Texas where Scott & Susan Myers at Texas Instruments introduced
the concepts to colleagues Charles Hughes & Vincent S Flowers. Hughes & Flowers soon
became the Center for Values Research - but not before Flowers had taken up a position
at North Texas State University where he interested Don Beck & Chris Cowan (who eventually
became the National Values Center) in Graves' work. Together and separately they
championed his ideas both within academia and in applications to industry & commerce
and education.
When Graves died in 1986, Don Beck had already established his own remarkable project
of applying Graves' model to the deteriorating situation in Apartheid South Africa.
Graves and Beck consulted closely during the mission's first few years.
Beck & Cowan, of course, developed Spiral Dynamics from Graves' model.
However, while it is arguably the most powerful development of Graves' work, Spiral
Dynamics is far from being the only 'build' on his work. Web sites related to some
of the other builds are listed below.
In recent years Chris Cowan has worked closely with Bill Lee, the self-described
'Graves Archivist', to recover, preserve and publish original Graves materials -
both online and paperbound.
Graves' model and his theory have yet to be validated to academic standards - although
hundreds - if not thousands! - of Gravesians are actively using the model to make
a difference in the 'real world'.
