The issue I want to look at today is one that lies at the heart of his theory. Graves developed his theory after gathering written descriptions from freshman students about their ‘conception(s) of psychologically mature human behavior’ [4]. He then has a second group of students categorise these conceptions. This on its own is a wonderful idea; rather than try to impose his own order on the conceptions, he had many different groups of students categorise them for him. The categorisations that were developed were markedly similar, although there was some variation.[5]

My criticism is that because the students needed to be graded and in order to incentivise his students to be honest he developed a set of criteria that would be used for grading.[6]

1. Breadth of coverage of human behaviour
2. Concurrence with established psychological fact.
3. The internal consistency of the conception.
4. The applicability of the conception.

I can see issues with several of these criteria but today I am going to concentrate on just the third.

Graves states that 60% of conceptions where considered to be consistent by the judges [7], but by incentivising consistency he may well have inadvertently introduced artificial consistency into the conceptions where there is none, or at least biased the degree of consistency. I can think of reasons for Graves wanting to keep the conceptions consistent. For example, this allowed him to ask his students for an updated conception at the end of the course and use this data to work out how conceptions evolve over time, this is very useful knowledge, but it may be the case that peoples conceptions are rarely consistent.

Further to this. Whilst using students to create the categorisation prevented Graves from artificially creating categories, it did not address the potential problem of biases within human perception of others values. In other words, the conceptions that are identified could be artificial constructions of human perception and language rather than points that are inherently unique.

Several vectors were identified when peoples conceptions evolve that I do not think are effected by this issue. (although further research would be needed to confirm this.)

1. Increased evolution brings an increasing complexity of conception.[8]
2. Increased evolution brings a greater degree of behavioural freedom.[9]

Other issues are, I think, more likely to be effected. For example, that conceptions, when consistent, oscillate from ‘I’ systems, with an internal sense of authority and an external locus of control to ‘we’ systems with an external sense of authority and an internal locus of control. When the conceptions are inconsistent this may no longer be the case. Inconsistent conceptions may not centralise on an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ state in the same place as the consistent conceptions when looking at the complexity of conception or the degree of behavioural freedom.

This brings into doubt the even, ordered nature of the way peoples conceptions evolve. For example, in not looking at the inconsistent conceptions, he may be missing conceptions that are not easily categorisable because they consist of a mix of easily identifiable conceptions. For example, someone might express a mixture of DQ and FS (pairing in Cowan and Todorovic language) with low ER and yet have the behavioural freedom and complexity of conception of someone with a consistent ER conception.

Further study would be needed to confirm this and unfortunately Graves’ many years of raw data has been lost so it would need to be done from scratch. Some longitudinal studies are ideally needed to identify how all peoples conceptions evolve and not just the consistent conceptions. A good starting point would be to identify an up to date methodology for identifying the degree of complexity of the conceptions and the degree of behavioural freedom expressed by people.

Notes

1. I say ‘planning’ because I have about ten ideas for posts for every one I have time to write.

2. The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. pp38-39.

3. We looked at several on Cowan and Tordovics SD1 and SD2 course. In particualar the poor sample that 1950s American colledge students made.

4. The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. pp44-46

5. The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. p47

6. The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. p45

7. The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. pp56, 92

8. cognitive complexity – Graves used a modified version of George Kelly’s REP test. http://www.clarewgraves.com/research_content/CG&OJH/2.html

9. behavioural freedom was measured by the student judges – The Never Ending Quest. Clare W Graves. p114