This is a follow on from a post about Graves’ research methodology and part of a series of posts about Clare Graves’ values psychology and Spiral Dynamics.

While Graves’ research methodology was avant guard given the general standard for psychology in the 1950’s it was not without it’s problems.

His blinding was good, but not perfect. The people who were trying to categorise the values conceptions did not know who had written them. Ideally Graves would not have been a go between for the conceptions and they would have been dropped off anonymously at a point that the reviewers could pick them up without Graves intervening, but this is a minor point.

He did, to an extent, fall into the trap that nearly all psychologists of his age did; he tried to extrapolate a grand unified theory out of his data. As a result there are several aspects of his overall theory that are not backed up by strong evidence.

• His theory that there is a fundamental difference between the ’subsistence’ levels and the ‘being’ levels, and that the gap from FS to GT is larger than in gaps between previous systems. I will cover this in more depth when I explain the GT system.
• The HU conception is very poorly represented, Graves acknowledged this¹, but it is important to remember that this system is essentially just speculation. He apparently only had two examples of HU conceptions developing out of GT and no one else has seen them. It is equally likely that these two conceptions were examples of people descending to FS.²
• AN and BO are also poorly represented and come almost exclusively from library research, the extent of this research is left undefined.

By demonstrating to his students that he would not bias their grades as a result of the conceptions they submitted and instead graded them on internal consistency, he will have biased peoples conceptions towards constancy when human values may not be consistent. Also, once the conceptions had been evaluated he concentrated on those conceptions that were consistent and does not seem to have explored the inconsistent ones. I will speculate on some of the ramifications of this at a later date.

The population from which his samples came was not very representative. They were biased towards young white middle class males.³

Once he identified the various value conceptions, he grouped them together to investigate how groups of people with the same conception worked together and how they organised, but he did not investigate how mixed groups operated, this is unfortunate as this information would have been much more useful for application in real world situations. He also only explored how small groups operate and did not investigate what would happen as these groups scaled up.

Graves asked his subjects to describe their ideal values. There is difference between the values we wish we could live by and those that we do live by. I intend to explore the ramifications of this at a later date.

He did not peruse any longitudinal studies beyond a year. This might throw up new data that contradicts some of his findings.

In addition to his methodology there are further valid criticisms of his research, including:

His raw data has been lost (As his health was deteriorating, he decided to throw it out to make room for harnesses from the barn).⁴. This is a great shame and perhaps one of the most important issues in bringing his work to the notice of a wider range of people.

No major peer review has been conducted to date ⁵. The various Spiral Dynamics organisations continue to do their own research, but other than a few minor papers and a book aimed at the business world⁶ their data remains proprietary and unpublished.

His work is out of date, in particular his understanding of biopsychology and evolutionary psychology often does not reflect modern findings. I intend to explore some of the new potential that these fields bring to Graves’ findings at a later date.

I have further criticisms of his work that are specific to his interpretation and findings, I will leave these until I have explored the necessary issues.

With all these issues with his research, why do I spend so much time blogging about it? For several reasons.

Firstly it is very hard, if not impossible to conduct perfect research into psychology and I think that Graves did the best that he could with the means that he had available to him. His methods were superb for his time.

Secondly, while not perfect, I find that applying his findings to real world situations a very useful tool. I am particularly interested in tools that help to explain the global geopolitical environmental and economic situation and Graves’ research provides the best model I have found to date. It can be used to draw relationships between many of the diverse aspects of society that interact to create the problems that we are facing, such as climate change, and suggest potential solutions to them.

Third, I want to encourage discussion on the subject and encourage people to look into it. I particularly want to encourage further research into the subject.

Fourth, I want to compare and contrast Graves’ research with the various Spiral Dynamics interpretations to highlight the differences.

Fifth, I am building a framework onto which I hope to explore new research in areas that overlap with Graves’ to see which parts of his theory stand up, and which need to be adapted.

Understanding how our values have evolved, why they have done so, and where they might be going is to me a fascinating subject. The practical implications that such knowledge can bring in designing new systems that can cope with the stresses that we are placing on society and the ecosystem is invaluable.

Note to self: Add links to this post as I write about specific examples.

Notes:
1. Clare W. Graves. 2005. The Never Ending Quest. ECLET Publishing p viii
2. Chirstopher Cowan explained this on the SD1 and SD2 training course.
3. The Spiral Dynamics groups claim to have addressed this, I will examine this claim when I review Spiral Dynamics.
4. Clare W. Graves. 2005. The Never Ending Quest. ECLET Publishing p v
3. As far as I am aware.
6. Which I will review at a later date

Tags: Clare Graves, criticism, research methodology, Spiral Dynamics

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