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Revising Maslow’s Hierarchy for a Socially-Connected World

April 21, 2012 By 3 Comments
Revising Maslow for a socially connected world

In my November 2011 Psychology Today post “What Maslow Misses,” I argued that Maslow’s popular Hierarchy of Needs pyramid undervalues the role of social connection in human basic survival needs and, therefore, as a driver of behavior. Recently, storytelling and management guru and Forbes contributor Steve Denning picked up this idea in the context of how management can better meet the psychological needs of employees by focusing on social connection in a recent article: "What Maslow Missed." In response to Denning’s column, Maslow scholar and executive coach Don Blohowiak objected to the simplification and misrepresentation of Maslow’s work. I very much appreciate Mr. Denning’s attention to my revision of Maslow and furthering the discussion I started. And I want to take the responsibility for any misrepresentation of Maslow’s hierarchy in “Maslow Rewired” relative to Maslow's published works. I was speaking to the common heuristic of Maslow’s work, which, … [Read more...]

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Media Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist or Media Personality?

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I get lots of questions about media psychology, such as ‘What is media psychology?’ and ‘What does a media psychologist do?’ A big stumbling block is the common understanding of a media psychologist as a psychologist who appears in the media. That's the wrong answer. Here is a recent question: Dear Dr. Rutledge, I am conducting research in media psychology and stumbled upon this dissertation and I am more confused than anything. A recent dissertation defines a "media psychologist" as a psychologist that conducts a session with a patient on air. She compares what a psychologist does in private with a patient with what Dr. Phil does on air in front of a live TV audience. I conducted a phone survey where I contacted clinical psychologists in NYC randomly and asked how they felt about Dr. Phil and everyone said that they had a low opinion of Dr. Phil. However according to dissertation's thesis, psychologists rating were supportive of the "media psychologist"... Can you … [Read more...]

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Does ‘No Such Thing As Bad Publicity’ Apply To Psychologists?

March 26, 2012 By 2 Comments
2012-03-17-therapy-on-tv

The ethical questions surrounding psychologists who appear in the mass media are emotionally-loaded and subject to much debate.  But we also have to realize that there really is no such thing as just 'mass' media anymore in the traditional sense of uni-directional broadcast one-to-many media.  The information flows are much more fluid and networked which has had a profound effect on society as a whole and individual behaviors, beliefs and expectations.  It's impossible to isolate broadcast media within the broad spectrum of media channels, including Internet and social technologies, because the boundaries are coming down.  New channels have web pages and stories show up on Twitter.  Blogs and social media can fuel news channels as well. Whatever the media channel, bad publicity is pretty clearly bad for all professionals, but no publicity or presence can be bad, too, when people use the Internet to check the legitimacy of services and information and can’t find you. Here are … [Read more...]

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‘Pointless humor’ Isn’t Pointless: It Rewires & Inspires Us

March 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
cat dangling

As I told Carrie Cummings from OMMA (interview excerpted below),  I so rarely get asked questions about the positive side of social media or the Internet, it was a joy to talk about the benefits of humor.  Even the act of smiling has powerful impact on how you feel and the way you interact with others.  (For a wonderful discussion of this, check out Ron Gutman's charming ebook from his TED talk Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act ).  We often underestimate the importance and power of our ability to self-soothe and the impact of our mood on others.  So getting to talk about happiness, made me happy.  Hopefully that will be contagious and it will make you happy, too.  At the very least, I hope you spend 5 minutes looking at LOLcats on sites like http://icanhascheezburger.com/, wallowing in cuteness at http://cuteoverload.com/ or reading the hilarious things that autocorrect can do to text messages at http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/.  If you have a site you … [Read more...]

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#RIP Twitter Celebrity Death Hoaxes

March 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
rip-twitter

Twitter has been teeming with celebrity death hoaxes; the #RIP hashtag has been attached to Tweets about the untimely demise of celebrities from Chris Brown and Cher to Mr. Bean. We often take information for granted because it is plentiful. Plentiful is not the same thing as accurate. On the Internet, information is uncurated and unvetted. It can provide late breaking, important, and poignant information. It can also give us junk and lies. Our ability to be responsible digital citizens relies on our ability to make judgments about the quality of the information we see and to be thoughtful about where we seek information. Parents of tweens and teens can use these hoaxes as a teaching moment to talk about how easily false information can spread, not just about celebrities but anyone. Twitter makes lots of things easier, including hoaxes. Hoaxes aren't new. We often think of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast as the standard-bearer for media hoaxes, although that wasn't … [Read more...]

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Whitney Houston: Celebrate Now, Look for Answers Later

February 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Whitney Houston: Celebrating Talent

The loss of someone as young and accomplished as Whitney Houston always gives us pause, no matter what the circumstances.  We can see fans, friends, and family try to come to terms with Whitney Houston's death in the mass media coverage and across the Internet in a cascade of Tweets and emotional tributes. We also see the debate on how to handle Houston's very public struggles with drugs and destructive behaviors.  Some have suggested that Houston's fans would be angry if the media focused on the negative side of her life instead of the positives of her remarkable career and the uniqueness of her talent.  Others argue that by glossing over things like prescription drug abuse that we are ignoring serious problems in the entertainment industry and perhaps across society as a whole. Frankly, the fans have every right be mad to see the focus shift to Houston's personal problems instead of her public contributions.  To dredge up all her difficulties at this juncture is … [Read more...]

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Shooting Your Kid’s Laptop Is No Solution to Media Literacy

February 16, 2012 By 1 Comment
Dad Shoots Laptop over Daughter's Facebook Post

The North Carolina dad who shot his daughter's laptop in a YouTube video shows the critical need to teach media literacy to our kids.  You may see the dad as a hero or an idiot, the daughter as a victim or an entitled brat, but she is also ignorant of the implications of socially-networked publishing.  The dad may get villainized by the local PTA or visited by social services, but the real downside is for the daughter and millions like her who don't understand that a careless post could cost them a host of potential choices, such as career or school opportunities. In case you missed the story:  A dad got really angry after reading a post on his daughter's Facebook page. (See ABC.news' "Fed-Up North Carolina Father Shoots Daughter's Laptop")  In a post she believed was blocked to her parents, the daughter expressed, rather colorfully and disrespectfully in that special way that teens have, discontent with the burdens she felt she carried at home.  (The Freudians among us, … [Read more...]

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SOPA and PIPA: Whose rights are we protecting?

January 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Wikipedia anti-SOPA page

The NY Times article (In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old) by Jonathan Weisman on the proposed anti-piracy legislation in Congress  highlights the conflict between old and new business models. The battle of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills signals the changing times.  It suggests that public understanding of media use is shifting.  It highlights the reallocation of  political heft, dollars and lobby power from the old to new economy.  It also shows the power of the new communications model of many-to-many.  When people are connected across networks, rather than isolated in buckets, word travels fast.   Weisman quotes John Feehery, a former House Republican leadership aide, as saying: “... the Internet world, the social media world especially, can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before.”(p.2) It also shows how fast politicians' ideologies move when they fear losing votes. In my mind, the article leaves … [Read more...]

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Communicating the Value of a College Education

January 13, 2012 By 5 Comments
Conversation

The following are the notes from my presentation as part of a panel on “Communicating in the New Normal” at the College Board 2012 Colloquium held in Newport Beach, CA January 7-9.  I was part of very august company: moderator Phillip Ballinger, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment and Director of Undergraduate Admissions at University of Washington at University of Washington, Marie Groark, Executive Director of the Get Schooled Foundation, and Millree Williams, Executive Director for Public Affairs Strategy at the University of Maryland. The New Normal: The Changing Communications Landscape The need to explore new models was the emerging theme of the Colloquium.   I’d like to take us up to 20,000 feet for a minute and talk about the new model of communications and the media landscape that is the new normal. How many of you use Facebook personally? Compare this 30% to this number: 96% of your target audience, people aged 18 to 35, is on social networks.  The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Education, Emerging Technologies, Psychology, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , ,

Dangerous Method: Engaging but Not Satisfying

December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Spielrein and Jung

The film, A Dangerous Method, is an ambitious effort to portray the complex and tumultuous evolution of the relationships and theories among the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, his protégé Carl Jung, and the patient-turned-psychoanalyst, Sabina Spielrein.  The movie is beautiful and engaging but not very satisfying.  But then, it is based on the untidiness of real life, and titans of western thought though they were, Freud and Jung were still human beings.  The film is well worth seeing, but be prepared to come out thinking 'huh, interesting' rather than 'wow!'  Dangerous Method succeeds as a largely nonjudgmental chronicle of impassioned people and big ideas that unfold over time.  In taking this long and very human view, however, it sacrifices emotional force, and leaves mostly ambivalence.  It's greatest moment is the glimpse of Carl Jung through the eyes of Spielrein as someone wanting to look beyond the dark side of the psyche into human potential. Few figures … [Read more...]

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