Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Updated: 18 November 2020

The Comparison Map provides an at-a-glance reference for comparing and contrasting other key developmental theories with the Gravesian approach. (Click on the graphic for an enlarged view of the map on its own. Click back in your browser to return to this page.)

Notes:-
Where developmentalists have matched their models to those of other developmentalists, they do not always agree completely with each other’s matches. There is, therefore, a small degree of my personal interpretation in the chart above. Differences between the work of Clare W Graves, Abraham Maslow, Jane Loevinger/Susanne Cook-Greuter and Lawrence Kohlberg are dealt with in vMEMES and/or 3 Stage Theories of Development. Comparisons between the work of Graves and Theodore Adorno et al (1950) are covered in Adorno’s types of prejudiced persons.

The map uses the colour scheme Don Beck & Chris Cowan (1996) applied in their Spiral Dynamics ‘build’ of Graves’ work.

Other differences are  outlined briefly below.

• Gerald Heard’s (1963) Ecological (or Leptoid Man) incorporates elements of integrated and advanced spiritual thinking which could be argued as being 2nd Tier.
• O J Harvey, David E Hunt & H M Schroeder (1961) identified 4 developmental types in their hierarchy. Hunt (1966) separated out to some degree from Harvey and Schroeder when he came across empirical evidence of a level of thinking less complex than Type 1 – which he termed Sub-Type 1 and which he and Graves eventually mapped to C-P (RED).
• Max Weber (1922), it is important to note, was describing observable behaviour as distinct from an underlying motivational cause of behaviour.
  Traditional Action appears to include elements of BEIGE survival-level behaviour.
• William Moulton Marston (1928) had no hierarchical order to his behavioural types which were a mixture of temperamental traits and motivational factors (vMEMES).

The researchers shown in this chart are the ones whose work is more significant and influential and which most closely resembles the sequences found in the Gravesian approach. The map is based to a significant degree on the work of Bill Lee, the ‘Graves Archivist’. To view Bill’s expanded and more detailed pages comparing the Gravesian levels with the work of other developmental psychologists, including ones not represented here, please visit the Graves web site: www.clarewgraves.com. Bill’s comparisons are themselves based on Graves’s (1978/2005) matches.