Science & Self-improvement

In 1954 Abraham H. Maslow published a book called Motivation and Personality. The world was just emerging of that great conflagration known as World War II; historically, this period was called the Cold War. The views on what man and psychology are were very different from what they are now. Maslow’s book became a landmark of what was later known as the humanistic school of psychology, and some terms he coined like “self-actualization” are now used by everyone. Humanistic psychology was promoted as the Third Force, that is, an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis that were the strongest schools at the moment.

Maslow proposed that man is driven by a hierarchy of needs. From bottom to top, physical, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs conformed a triangle that was supposed to motivate man’s behavior. A person was in condition to attempt the satisfaction of needs at a given level only when he had resolved all his needs at lower levels. For instance, a person could only begin to care about being socially accepted once he had managed to get a shelter. Not everyone was supposed to satisfy all the needs in this scale.

As any pioneer work, Maslow’s proposal has received criticisms that range from its whole conception to minor details. The order, the number, and the universality of his needs have been challenged, as well as the rigorous precedence with which they were to be fulfilled. Other psychologists have claimed that needs should be ordered in another way, that there are missing needs, and that they do not apply to all men in all the world. The idea that a level should be fully completed before ascending to the next has been also in dispute.

Whether or not Maslow’s pyramid is adjusted to reality (and it probably is not), its broad framework served to start a significant movement that was a departure from the orientations that psychology had held up to the moment. This was amply recognized by his colleagues, who elected him as president of the American Psychological Association in 1967. His work as a founder of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, along with Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and others, and at the Esalen Institute in California, allowed him to occupy a position from where to disseminate his theories.

Central to Maslow’s framework was the concept of self-actualization. Although itself controversial, this concept has been an inspiration for many people. Maslow argued that inside each of us there is a potentiality that must be actualized, that is, brought to reality; hence the name “self-actualization.” He defined it as “the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” This can be related with the so-called “acorn theory,” which maintains that everybody is like an acorn that, if and when it grows, can only become an oak tree.

Maslow put self-actualization at the peak of his scale, where only few people could reach. He gave Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others, as examples of self-actualized people. I think that if one takes a close look at the biographies of some of these personalities one could find them actually failing to meet Maslow’s requirements. One must be obliged to conclude that the description that Maslow gives of the self-actualized person is so idealized that even these outstanding people could only fulfill it partially.

Intelligence means different things to different people: being able to think quickly, learning new languages, or mastering a new musical instrument. When a survey in the late 1980s asked two dozen experts to define intelligence, the result was two dozen different definitions. Intellectual ability is a complex phenomenon, influenced by environmental and biological factors during development from child to adult. Some of the questions that researchers try to solve are: What is the nature of intelligence? Can intelligence be increased? Can it be measured?

The main method of studying intelligence has been the psychometric approach. Various intelligence tests are used to obtain the IQ of the person. IQ comes from “intelligence quotient,” which was once obtained by dividing a person’s “mental age” by his actual age. This particular procedure is no longer used, but the term IQ is still commonly utilized to refer to the scores obtained on intelligence tests. These scores are normally converted to a scale where the mean is 100 and standard deviation is 15. Ninety-five percent of the population scores within two standard deviations above and below the mean (70-130).

Can IQs be increased? Some studies have shown that preschoolers exposed for one to two years to environments rich in stimulation had IQ scores higher than their peers who were not exposed to similar environments. These increases were by several IQ points, but were found to be temporary, fading by the time the children had finished elementary school. However, even though measured IQ was not permanently raised, these children tended to perform better in school than a control group.

So, it would appear that some cognitive functions were improved, suggesting that stimulation is a key factor in increasing cognitive performance, whether an increase in measurable IQ is detected or not. It can be thought that continued exposure to enriched environments would prolong this positive effect. Recent studies in neuroscience have shown that, at least in the visual system, neuronal synapses that are presented with high levels of stimulation tend to grow and expand, as opposed to those that receive only background input.

Another study that has received a considerable amount of attention is that of the Mozart effect. Researchers showed that college students that listened to a sonata from Mozart before taking a reasoning test performed better on the test than control students. The effect, however, lasted only for fifteen minutes and seemed to be specific to the piece of music used-there was not a similar effect with Beethoven music, for instance. Also, the results showed to be difficult to replicate.

These results are limited to very specific circumstances and the effects were temporary, but one can make an analogy with those obtained by physical exercise, which are also largely temporary. Various forms of mental exercise may be important in maintaining and potentially improving cognitive function. Solving puzzles, reading, learning new languages, or even a musical instrument may all have positive effects for adults as well as children.

It seems unlikely, based on current knowledge, that measured IQ can be increased permanently, as IQs had shown to be relatively stable after childhood. But other supporting factors of cognitive function may be enhanced, thus optimizing overall mental performance. It’s known that severe malnutrition during a child’s development can have negative effects on intelligence, and the brain requires nutrients to function properly on a daily basis. Physical exercise itself seems to have a positive effect on mental performance. Aerobic exercise appears to increase memory retention and has been shown to improve some types of creative problem solving. Exercise can also help to relieve stress, and stress has been shown to have a negative impact on learning and memory. Other relaxation techniques, such as meditation, are also useful.