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.”

Revising Maslow: My model places social connection at the hub, as fundamental to achieving all human needs, from sex and safety to esteem

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, as many may know, doesn’t reflect the depth of thought and understanding of a remarkable thinker and scholar. I have no doubt but that Maslow himself would be somewhere between astonished and appalled at the way his theories have been simplified, recast, reinterpreted and applied over the years. My personal favorite is the Hierarchy of Hats, but I have seen it altered to frame approaches to everything from interaction design to education and management styles.

It is not surprising that powerful ideas go, in contemporary terms, viral. As we often talk about in social technologies, the content producer doesn’t control the message — and this is true whether it’s a brand or a philosophy, Coke or Maslow.

The functional definition of brands and theories comes from the meaning the receivers make of the information they get and the experiences and context surrounding them. This is an additive process, with meaning the product of distinct bits and pieces from different things accumulated over time. There is an increasing amount of interest and attention around the idea of ‘transmedia storytelling’ these days because of our increased awareness of converging and permeable media technology boundaries, but humans have always been transmedia storytellers. Stories are the brain’s native language, giving us the ability to store the things we ‘know’ in ways that make sense by creating multi-sensory connections through our neural networks. A vast array of theorists from Mead and Vygotsky to Beck and Bandura, support what we all intuitively know: experience changes our understanding of the world, which is saying that what we experience changes the stories we tell to others and ourselves.

We get information over time, additively, from multiple sources, what we might now call ‘transmedia’, and process it based on the stories we already hold. As Mr. Denning as so brilliantly shown in his work, stories are fundamental to not just what we do, but who we are as individuals, organizations, and countries. This is a long way of saying that Maslow’s work has become a story, a significant cultural reference for many who have never and will never read his work.

The ability of Maslow’s ideas to by synthesized into a visual representation using the archetypal symbol of a pyramid has also played an important role is their dissemination and adoption because we are contributing our own understanding of symbols and visual and semantic metaphors that amplifies (and possibly distorts) the meaning. We live in a media-rich world where multi-sensory communication is the rule not the exception. It is rare to see an article about Maslow’s theory without a pyramid. The labels and number of levels sometimes vary, but our fundamental and immediate understanding of the pyramid structure is like Maslow on broadband. We get it and immediately look for ways to apply it to our own worldview. If it were not so clear, far fewer people would know of it and employ it, but without that shorthand, more might have actually read his work.

My primary point in “What Maslow Missed,” which Mr. Denning spoke to, is the widespread assumption represented by the pyramid, that human connection is NOT a primary drive and instinct, but one we worry about after we’ve found the cave, slain the wooley mammoth, or paid the heating bill. While this is not something I would attribute to Maslow himself, is it one that can be effectively addressed by tapping a well-known mental model such as the Hierarchy of Needs has become.

People seem to be surprised by the rapidity with which social tools, like Facebook or Pinterest, are adopted and they become preoccupied with and anxious about the tools themselves. In the process, they miss the import of the psychological shifts that come from not just the ability to connect and act effectively on the environment, but in knowing and believing that we can. There are significant implications in this fundamental shift for everything from the obvious, such as marketing and branding, to how we view organizational processes, such as management and education, as Mr. Denning discusses in the context of his concept of Radical Management.

I used Maslow’s hierarchy as a convenient point of reference to argue that the drivers of social connection are intimately interwoven into our basic survival, rather than an upward climb from food and shelter. So while it does a disservice to a scholar’s understanding of Maslow, I hope that it provides a glimpse into a new way of thinking about the ways that our core assumptions — our stories of who we are and how we fit into the world — shift with the empowerment of technology and the implications for communicating, engaging, and individual and society-wide expectations.

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Cross-posted on Psychology Today

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 intended to be a hoax, just a compelling performance. Nevertheless, nobody likes being a victim of deceit and the flurry of Twitter hoaxes surrounding celebrity deaths is starting to wear thin. This isn’t, of course, the first time that Twitter has been the vehicle for misinformation. Twitter has many benefits: it is a lifeline during crises, a direct line between celebrities and fans, and an open platform for sharing ideas. Twitter also makes it easy to pass along fiction as fact.

Radio is often described as the most amenable medium to perpetrate hoaxes because it has such broad coverage (we listen to it everywhere in the background) and because the lack of visuals means we use our imaginations more. We might make a similar argument about Twitter, since it has the same portability and lack of visual images; in fact the terseness of the 140 characters leaves much more to be decoded by our agile and creative brains.

Hoaxes are a form of deceit or lying, which is, whether we like to admit it or not, common human behavior. Research has shown that children as young as toddlers can understand the value of deceit strategies in interpersonal interactions. We might describe deceit on a socially-constructed value continuum from hyperboles and socially acceptable (aka “white lies”) at one “mostly OK” end to deception and manipulation that causes serious harm at the other.

If information is a source of power and connections are a source of social capital, then a hoax is a manipulation of social power. The costs are significant in terms of lost trust and credibility. In Twitter hoaxes, particularly those about celebrity deaths, the perpetrators are counting upon fans’ emotional attachment to the celebrities to generate an immediate reaction and override a more measured response of healthy skepticism. While a hoax may strike some as funny, and there are undoubtedly some instances of funny ones that we might commonly refer to as ‘practical jokes,’ most hoaxes are designed to promote the psychological or commercial interests of the perpetrator at the expense of the victims. (Remember the boy in the weather balloon ‘crisis’ orchestrated by parents who wanted a reality show?)

Media hoaxes get ‘legs’ because people are biologically wired to attend to unusual or dangerous things in the social environment, thus something like an announcement of the death of an icon has significance to our subconscious brain. It tells us that the world as we know it has changed. It is particularly disturbing when it is someone young because it calls our own mortality into question, beyond whatever cultural or emotional loss we might feel for the person who died.

People also, however, really resent being tricked. (There is even evidence that the impact of researchers who have ‘tricked’ subjects to measure various things is not as benign as they intended.) The fable “the boy who cried wolf” is apropos because if hoaxes are continued, they quickly lose their novelty and raise suspicions and questions of credibility. While the hoax initiators may feel clever and important and relish the reaction to their hoax moving across networks, they are also naive if they believe they will not ultimately be found out or pay the price in some way.

The human being is a social creature and we all need social interaction, feedback and validation of our worth. An emotionally mature person, however, does not do that at the expense of others’ emotional or physical well being. Another negative impact of the Twitter death hoax ‘fad,’ is that the hoaxes take away from the experience of real loss and real events of sorrow. Tweets of ‘Madonna RIP’ occurred during Whitney Houston’s funeral. Disrespect for people we value creates ill will beyond what we feel by being tricked. Behaviors deemed socially unacceptable become fair game for intervention and retribution. In the case of radio and the illustration of the widespread impact of things like “War of the Worlds” broadcast, the FCC enacted a rule against the broadcast of hoaxes that have the potential for public harm aimed at licensees and permittees of broadcast media. In this age of audience content creation, however, the perpetration of hoaxes is also dangerous because it provides fodder for government intervention and regulation at an entirely different level.

Unfortunately for Twitter, part of the fallout is that these celebrity death hoaxes diminish the perception of Tweets as authentic sources of late-breaking information. People will now have to triangulate information from other sources for confirmation. This, while perhaps a bit detrimental to Twitter, is a good thing. Sometimes, obnoxious and thoughtless behaviors serve a positive function. In this case, the hoaxes remind us how easily false information can spread and that it is our responsibility to check it out.

Cross-posted on Psychology Today Positively Media

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Photo source:  http://ibnlive.in.com/news/really-inspiring-person-twitter-and-the-rip-bug/231519-3.html

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, however, might note that she labeled the ‘private’ post “To My Parents” and then was surprised when they saw it.)  The angry dad’s response launched the issue into cyberspace, a new-media version of digital war: he published a rebuttal on a YouTube video that culminated with him shooting the daughter’s laptop with his 45.

Many are discussing some of the questions raised by the incident, such as:  Is this good parenting, is the daughter’s behavior atypical for a teen, or even, is the dad’s behavior indicative of the frustration parents feel trying to navigate the challenges of the digital age?  I have thoughts on all those things (see below) but the most critical point here is that the daughter doesn’t understand the new world of social media.

The daughter may be a digital native, but she does not understand that the Internet has it’s own rules no matter how many boxes you check on your privacy settings.  It is permanent, it is searchable, and it is public.  The daughter thought the post was blocked from her parents.  Under some circumstances it probably was.  But the daughter didn’t think it through because she doesn’t get it. She is a media user but not technologically literate in the way she needs to be for the 21^st century.

The dad is, in fact, more tech-savvy than the daughter.  He is an IT guy.  Whether he was repairing her computer or snooping, it doesn’t matter.  Dad saw the post.  And then mom saw it.  And then dad posted it on YouTube and it has gone viral sharing it with over 22 million and counting of the rest of us.  However aggrieved we might be over the implications of such teenage posturing or gun-wheeling parents, I worry more about  her critical lack of understanding of social media and the presumption of privacy.  Nothing is guaranteed private.  The parents may be frustrated by the behavior of her daughter, but I am concerned for kids who aren’t equipped to be digital citizens.

I often quote my grandmother’s sage advice: “never talk in an elevator because you never know who’s listening.”  The whole world is our elevator now.

Social media has created new ways of communicating.  This colorful episode speaks to the need to educate both kids and parents about the way the social media works and the ramifications if you get it wrong.  I’m a big fan of the Internet and public access.  There are lots of benefits to things being public; I believe more benefits than costs.  (A great read on this is Jeff Jarvis’ book Public Parts).  But you have to know the rules of the game.  We don’t hand our kids the car keys without learning about both how to operate the car and the rules of the road.  If we don’t teach our kids about the structure of the Internet, social technologies, and the implications of things hanging around forever, it’s the same as handing them car keys and expecting them to teach themselves how to drive on the freeway.

I’m not in favor of solutions that block access or artifically control the environment.  That’s like holding a balloon underwater.  It will pop up, but you’re never quite sure where.  I’m in favor of arming digital natives and immigrants alike with critical thinking and media and technology training.  Just because kids can easily use technology doesn’t mean they understand the wider ramifications of networked systems.  New tools creates new and often better ways of doing things.  But we also have to recognize that these are powerful tools have tremendous potential as long as you don’t shoot yourself in the foot (or the laptop.)

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Other questions raised by the gun-toting Dad’s solution to his daughter’s ill-conceived Facebook post:

• Is this good parenting?  

No.  Dad’s behavior was no different than his daughter’s or perhaps even a bit worse since his intent was to embarrass the daughter and the daughter’s, most likely, was to show off and look tough for her friends.  Parents are supposed to behave better than their teenagers, not worse.  The notoriety, however, that the Dad’s video received (22 million hits on YouTube and counting) indicates that it has clearly struck a cord somewhere in the abyss of navigating the new media environment combined with the challenges of dealing with and/or being a teenager.  Having raised five kids, I totally get that.  He did, however, blow a good ‘teaching moment.’

• Is the daughter’s behavior atypical for a teen? 

No. Adolescence is the time, developmentally, when teens begin to emancipate emotionally from their primary family unit, carving out an adult identity, and beginning their own life.  It is a bumpy process fraught with emotional ups and downs given the biology of maturing bodies and brains that manifests in what we might think of as disrespectful, selfish, or foolish behaviors.  Recent shows that adolescent brains don’t mature until early adulthood, which contributes to their lack of judgment (by ‘adult’ standards) and impulse control.  This lack of judgment actually helps them to tolerate the level of risk to do what they need to do:  leave the nest. This doesn’t excuse bad behavior, or address issues of ‘entitlement’ but it suggests that what dad perceives as bad behavior is probably not al that uncommon among teen discourse.

• Is the dad’s behavior indicative of the frustration parents feel trying to navigate the challenges of the digital age? 

No.  It’s indicative of frustration, so be sure, but Facebook and the digital age aren’t any more to blame for this than the dad’s 45 revolver.

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Previously posted on PsychologyToday Positively Media 

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 important thing, however, isn’t whether they are using Facebook or MySpace.  It is that these 96% are actively engaging in the online creation, distribution, and sharing of information and media.

The ability to do these things through technology is an enormous change; the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.  It has significantly changed our every aspect of our daily lives at home, work, school, and play and has subtle but profound psychological implications at all levels of society.

Lectures and Cocktail Parties

Consider the difference between a lecture and a cocktail party.  The old communications model —the mass communication, broadcast model — was like the lecture.

• A lecture is unidirectional and linear.
• Only one person gets to talk at a time
• You are supposed to stay in your chair and be quiet
• The lights are on the stage
• There is one message for everyone
• They aren’t very social, but you might get to meet the guy in the chair next to you
• Someone besides you decides when it’s over
• At the end, you’re supposed to feel grateful and applaud.

Now, we live in a globally networked world.   We are connected many-to-many.  We have left the lecture hall and gone to a cocktail party.

• A cocktail party is full of conversations.
• They are noisy and full of energy.
• Everyone talks at once
• They are dynamic and social.  You move around the room, talk to new people and meet ones you haven’t met before
• The lights shine on everyone equally
• You get to choose when and what to eat or drink and who to talk with
• You can decide when it’s over for you and
• When you leave, the host thanks you for coming.

Most of the people who are thinking about college today have grown up in the cocktail party model.

This doesn’t mean they are foolish and frivolous or drink too much.  It doesn’t mean they have short attention spans or are ‘addicted’ to social media.  It means they have grown up with the assumption of their ability to have 24/7 connectivity and on-demand access to information and people.

Individual Expectations and Beliefs

We all have basic beliefs about how the world works and our place in it that are formed from our day-to-day experiences.   Since the introduction of public access to the Internet in the mid 1990s, technology has significantly changed those day-to-day experiences compared to 15 years ago.   This is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.  Technology has literally rewired the world and the way we think.

How many of you wondered what would happen when you flip on a light switch?  Are you surprised or do you marvel at the light coming on?  Let’s face it.  You would only be surprised, and possibly frustrated, if the lights didn’t come on.

Young people today take connectivity, interaction, and participation for granted in the same way most people view electricity.  Whether young people actually use the specific tools or not, they have expectations about where information exists.  For example, they expect breaking news to be found on Twitter.  They expect gossipy news and photos to be on Facebook.  They expect instant response to text messages.  They expect to phones to take pictures.

Gone are the days of ‘a single function device.’  All of us, but young people in particular, expect life to be media rich, full of images and sounds, not just text.  This makes sense cognitively because multimedia delivery is the most effective way to share information, increase attention, and retention.

Young people also expect information to flow from one media to another.  The distinction between online and offline is no longer relevant.  They are just different forms of connecting along the continuum of life experience.

Social technologies — and there are many kinds beyond social networks, such as blogs, microblogs, wikis, file sharing like YouTube and Flickstr, tagging, forums — have fundamental characteristics that change people’s expectations about how the world works.   Earlier sessions talked about meeting the expectations of foreign students in terms of academic, social and career support.  But it’s not just foreign students you have to satisfy.  Students everywhere have a whole new set of expectations, thanks to a networked and mobile communications landscape.

Today’s Prospective Student

Think about your prospective student—let’s call her Mary.  It does matter if she’s 18 or 28.  She can access all kinds of information without going to the library or opening a file folder, she can connect to others in her social circle without moving her feet, she can seek out professional colleagues or job opportunities without changing out of flip-flops.  If Mary’s lost, she can figure out where she is, without having to ask for directions.  She can take a break and play games with her brother two time zones away. She can take pictures and videos and share the latest music with friends in any number of ways.  Mary can keep conversations going with Mom and Dad, her best friends, monitor global news, post a blog, comment on a Tweet, check in at a local vendor, pay bills, buy shoes, donate money to the Japan Relief Fund, and set up a date for the weekend.

Mary can have relevant information from every domain in her life delivered to her on demand instantaneously any time of the day; she can stay connected to the people and things that matter to her, and effectively interact with her world.

In other words: technology gives Mary a Results-Only Living Environment in her backpack.  Every contact, every social connection, every bit of interaction provides reinforcement for her assumptions that when she acts, the world responds.

If you go back to the lecture and the cocktail party analogy, the balance of power is shifting from the sender to the receiver.  There is unprecedented access, choice and reach.  Social technologies fundamentally shift individual beliefs about what a person can or can’t do.  This doesn’t mean that technology has erased all socioeconomic differences or equalized all access, but it has taken the entire data set and moved it to a difference place on the curve of individual agency.  THIS is the new normal.  From Egypt to Occupy Wall Street, people have a new sense of agency and a belief in their right to speak up.  Social technologies are teaching people how to be self-motivated learners, increasing empathy, social capital, and self-efficacy.

You’re Communicators.  So What Are Rules for the New Normal?

The new normal is about network systems.  Networks are about relationships.  Nothing is just one way.  Networks are continually changing, reciprocal environments.  Don’t be fooled by that fact that technology is involved.  It is a vehicle not the goal.

• Relationships are about authenticity and real human contact.  78% of people trust peer recommendations; but only 14% trust advertisements directly from an organization
• In a networked world, access is easy.  It’s hard to hide things.  The new normal is an expectation of honesty and transparency because it’s easy to find out who’s not telling the truth
• You don’t control your message; if you’re lucky you can contribute to it by active participation
• In a world where anyone can talk to anyone, the new normal is much less tolerant of hierarchies that block access and information, or operate based on condescension or exclusion.
• In a world where the cost of publishing your opinion is zero, the new normal is participation.  People expect to be able to have an opinion; they expect to contribute; they expect to be heard; AND they expect acknowledgement.
• In a digital world, the new normal redefines time and space.  Responses need to be immediate, whether it’s email, callbacks, text message or shipping.
• Technology and on-demand capabilities means we pull information to ourselves based on need, we do not wait for it to be given out.  The new normal is an expectation being able to access and interact with our information and the environment.
• It’s not about the tools — it’s about goals.  Media choice is based on the best tool we can get for the job.

Against this broader backdrop, there are some very real differences in access and use.  According to researchers, the digital divide is lessening not because of more broadband access or home computers, but because of increased adoption of mobile technologies.  For example, teens from lower income families are twice as likely to use a cell phone to access the Internet.   The divide will be more about technological literacy than access.

Social technologies have given people unprecedented control over their lives.  We act and, because we are linked in real time, we see the actions others take and we can interact with them.  Individual actions inspire group actions; groups inspire individuals.

The most exciting thing is that we are training new generations to believe they can act; to believe that an individual can make a difference.  It changes everyone’s expectations about their ability— and their responsibility—to contribute.

What Does This Mean For Colleges And Universities?

Colleges and universities have to communicate value in the context of the larger world — one of global competition, rising education costs, and a challenging job market.

How we communicate has changed, both in form and function.  Social technologies have not only created a new host of tools, but a new set of expectations on the part of the potential students.

The biggest challenge is getting over the old model; the image of your organization as the ‘lecturer.’  I’ve got a news for you — you can go on talking in a lecture hall but your market has figured out they don’t have to sit and listen.

• The good news is that social technologies mean you can get a lot of bang for your buck.
• The bad news is that your strategy and goals are more important than ever because

10 Guidelines for the Social Media Environment

1. You have to find out where the students ARE, to be able to reach them
2. Communication has to be fluid and consistent across multiple devices and platforms, from text messaging and YouTube to legacy media and face to face.  Think transmedia
3. You have to plan for collaboration and participation
4. You have to prepare contingency plans for problems
5. Go where the prospective students are and LISTEN FIRST to find out what they think need, not what you think they need
6. Information has to be human, honest, and transparent
7. Interactions and responses must be timely
8. Attention is a scarce resource and information is plentiful.  Deliver value is by synthesizing information and facilitating decisions
9. The process of recruiting and admissions must allow personalization and participation (beyond sending in the application or emailing an admission’s officer questions)
10. Ask your audience for solutions to your problems

Implications for Higher Education

First, as buckets of data will attest, the fundamentals that are drive opportunity, from higher compensation and employment to recognition, are always about who add value to society.  When jobs are scarce, we lose track of the fact that they are scarcer the less skills and education you have.

More than any time in history, we live in a knowledge society.  Technology is ubiquitous, from simple iPhone apps to complex biomedical and engineering tools.  Success in the 21st century requires a new literacy.   It requires the ability to apply judgment and critical thinking to see what technology allows us to do.   It’s not about finding.  It’s about thinking, synthesizing and innovating and converting that to action.

Colleges and universities aren’t immune to the changing environment outside the Ivy Covered Halls.  Think about the difference between lecture halls and conversations, not just for how you communicate what your institution can offer or what college can offer, but in HOW you educate.

Effective education needs to be follow the same rules:  collaborative, participatory, challenging, responsive, inclusive, respectful, be interesting and have value for the 21st Century.

The education offered must be relevant to the goals of the prospective student.  The ability to control the environment, to participate means that the prospective student isn’t going to take your word for it that what you offer is valuable.  You have to make it valuable and prove it.

The social media environment has the potential to create self-motivated learners in a responsive environment that believe they can change the world.