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Theo Winter works as client services manager, writer, and researcher for TTI Success Insights Australia, a leading provider of assessment-based talent management solutions. He is among the youngest in the world to have received accreditation in the TTI Success Insights suite of assessments, and has worked with hundreds of HR, L&D, and OD professionals and business consultants seeking to bolster the emotional intelligence, engagement and performance of managers and their teams. Theo is passionate about positive psychology, neuroscience, intelligence, science education, creativity, and personal development literature. He has written more than 200 articles on topics such as leadership, recruitment, talent management, performance management, employee engagement, psychometric testing, career development, emotional intelligence, psychology, and human behavior. Connect with Theo on LinkedIn— all invitations accepted.

Theo Winter

Theo Winter discusses the origins and process of practicing mindfulness and meditation in business setting, and provides a research review. The scientific studies and business reports singled out focus almost exclusively on mindfulness—rather than me

Evidence for Mindfulness: A Research Summary for the Corporate Sceptic

Part 1 of a blog series by Vincent Miholic examines what the research says about learning styles.

Is Appealing to Learning Styles Malpractice?

 In the field of neuroscience, there are a number of "neuromyths" — a term that is now being used to describe misconceptions and inaccuracies about brain functioning. These are myths that pervade popular culture, education and business, including many L&D departments. According to research, there is no more widely believed and yet "thoroughly debunked" neuromyth than learning styles. While learning styles is an umbrella term that can refer to a number of different categorization models, the most well-known is VAK: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (seeing, hearing, doing). It is important to note that people who believe they may have a particular learning style—what's known as "study preferences"—is not being disputed. There are many people who believe in the idea that they are, for example, "visual learners" or "auditory learners." What is in dispute, however, is the idea that having educators match the delivery of content to learners' stated preferences will improve learning. The Meshing Hypothesis This central point of contention is what's known as the meshing (or matching) hypothesis. As noted in “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” the myth of learning styles is the myth that matching for preference necessarily leads to better performance. "Most critically, the reality of these preferences does not demonstrate that assessing a student’s learning style would be helpful in providing effective instruction for that student. That is, a particular student’s having a particular preference does not, by itself, imply that optimal instruction for the student would need to take this preference into account. In brief, the existence of study preferences would not by itself suggest that buying and administering learning-styles tests would be a sensible use of educators’ limited time and money," write authors Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork. The problem for proponents of learning styles is precisely that there is no credible scientific evidence to support this hypothesis, having now been reviewed and tested rigorously by several independent sets of researchers. For example, a 2012 survey of teachers in the United Kingdom and Netherlands (242 primary and secondary school) revealed that the learning styles meshing hypothesis was the #1 neuromyth, believed by 93 percent and 96 percent respectively. Another study of 938 teachers in five countries, conducted by Paul Howard-Jones in 2014 of 938 teachers, placed the figure at 96 percent. Yet, the widespread acceptance of this teaching paradigm is in sharp contrast to the research that has been published in scientific journals and the growing campaign that is trying to raise awareness about these findings. 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (2009), Great Myths of the Brain (2014), and Urban Myths about Learning and Education (2015) are just three recent books that tackle the issue. Meanwhile, an array of scientific and mainstream articles have been written to set the record straight, including authors, scientists, and journalists from the likes of Psychology Today, Popular Science, Scientific American, Washington Post, Wired, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, The Guardian, Slate, and BBC radio.  Even The Onion offers its own satirical take on the issue with the article, “Parents Of Nasal Learners Demand Odor-Based Curriculum.” The OECD established the “Learning Sciences and Brain Research" project in 1999 as the authoritative resource dedicated to education on the subject of neuroscience and highlighting misinformation, which targets neuromyths such as learning styles. The exact origin and spread of learning styles is beyond the scope of this post; however it is often associated with Howard Gardner's influential theory of multiple intelligences, who notes that people frequently credit him with inventing the term and some even believe the two concepts are the same thing. Gardner, keen to relieve the "pain" and "distraction" this misinterpretation has caused him, wrote a piece featured in the Washington Post, “Howard Gardner: 'Multiple Intelligences’ Are Not ‘Learning Styles,'” in which he explains, “If people want to talk about ‘an impulsive style’ or ‘a visual learner,’ that’s their prerogative. But they should recognize that these labels may be unhelpful, at best, and ill-conceived at worst." Complexity and Evidence While there has been a long list of researchers who have raised questions about the existence, identification, application and commercial exploitation of learning styles in education from a variety of different angles, there are two major reviews in particular that are often cited in the research literature. The first is the 2004 review, "A Critical Analysis of Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: A Systematic and Critical Review," by Coffield, Moseley, Hall, and Ecclestone. Commissioned by The Learning and Skills Research Centre, the four prominent cognitive psychologists identified 71 models of learning styles, with 13 categorized as "major models" from 3,800 papers. According to the review, "The enormous size of these literatures presents very particular problems for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers who are not specialists in this field. It is extremely unlikely that any of these groups will ever read the original papers and so they are dependent on reviews like this one, which have to discard the weakest papers, to summarize the large numbers of high-quality research papers, to simplify complex statistical arguments and to impose some order on a field which is marked by debate and constructive critique as well as by disunity, dissension, and conceptual confusion. The principal tasks for the reviewers are to maintain academic rigor throughout the processes of selection, condensation, simplification and interpretation, while also writing in a style accessible to a broad audience. In these respects, the field of learning styles is similar to many other areas in the social sciences where both the measurement problems and the implications for practice are complex." In the 2004 review, the 13 major instruments were analyzed and matched against four "minimal criteria" (internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity), with "only three of the 13 models—those of Allinson and Hayes, Apter, and Vermunt—could be said to have come close to meeting these criteria." The researchers go on to say that "some of the best known and widely used instruments have such serious weaknesses (e.g., low reliability, poor validity and negligible impact on pedagogy) that we recommend that their use in research and in practice should be discontinued." Despite the lack of scientific rigor by most publishers of learning styles inventories, the uptake and popularity of testing (particularly in the United States and United Kingdom) is widespread and attributed to several reasons, including very small-scale research efforts conducted by test publishers (rather than independent researchers) that initially appeared to support the hypothesis. This is addressed by the 2004 review: "It is important to note that the field of learning styles research as a whole is characterized by a very large number of small-scale applications of particular models to small samples of students in specific contexts. This has proved especially problematic for our review of evidence of the impact of learning styles on teaching and learning, since there are very few robust studies which offer, for example, reliable and valid evidence and clear implications for practice based on empirical findings." This point is further emphasized by cognitive psychologist Josh Cuevas: "The strongest empirical studies published on the topic since 2009 have shown a consistent trend—they have found no effect of learning styles or the matching hypothesis (Allcock & Hulme, 2010; Choi, Lee, & Kang, 2009; Kappe, Boekholt, den Rooyen, & Van der Flier, 2009; Kozub, 2010; Martin, 2010; Sankey, Birch, & Gardiner, 2011; Zacharis, 2011). Two experimental studies did claim to find that elusive interaction effect, but one of those tested different behavioral outcomes rather than academic learning (Mahdjoubi & Akplotsyi, 2012) and the other used such a small sample size (N=39) and only a single 15-minute treatment (Hsieh, Jang, Hwang, & Chen, 2011) so the results would need to be replicated if we are to trust their credibility, particularly in light of so many other contradictory findings." Probably the most often-cited and devastating critique of learning styles was the 2008 review by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork. They concluded: "Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis. “We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." Indeed, learning itself is an incredibly complex activity. What’s more, there isn't room here to sufficiently summarize all the research on learning and pedagogy or, in a similar fashion, what neuroscience tells us about how the brain processes information and how we might improve the quality of learning interventions based on these most recent findings. But we can recommend a good book: John Hattie's Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (2013), in which he aptly sums up the current position on the issue of learning styles: "There is no recognized evidence suggesting that knowing or diagnosing learning styles will help you to teach your students any better than not knowing their learning style."Editor’s Note: This post is reprinted from the DTS International Blog.

L&D Neuromyth: Learning Styles (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic)

Most L&D practitioners have a general familiarity with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But I wanted to dig deeper into the model to determine whether it truly has sufficient validity to still be considered useful in today’s business environment.In particular, I was interested in understanding why there are so many different images of the hierarchy that have proliferated in textbooks and on websites. What image did Maslow use originally? What parts of his theory have been reviewed and tested empirically? Is the hierarchy just another popular but fundamentally flawed myth? These were the questions I set out to answer. Myth #1: Maslow Represented His Hierarchy in the Shape of a Pyramid In reality, Maslow never conveyed his theory using the image of a pyramid, and it’s difficult to say whether Maslow would have approved of any current visual representations of his theory. Some Maslow scholars believe the pyramid shape is a serious perversion of the theory through gross simplification and, if Maslow had selected a visual, it would have appeared much more dynamic than a fixed, linear structure. I’m not so sure, though. The original paper introducing Maslow’s framework is called A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), which was later republished in his book Motivation and Personality (1954, 1970) with fairly minor adjustments. I’ve read both versions, and his use of the word “hierarchy” in both documents seems to naturally imply a pyramid structure. As you start to examine Maslow’s words more closely, it’s clear that many reversals and exceptions can occur—it’s not strictly fixed. However, Maslow always held that there was a basic, relatively orderly, five-step structure of needs that applied to most people in the general population, with each lower-level need exerting a slightly stronger influence over the next highest need in the sequence. Myth #2: Each Need Must Be 100% Fulfilled Before Moving onto the Next This interpretation of the theory is a major simplification; it’s a little more complicated than that. Maslow wrote: “So far, our theoretical discussion may have given the impression that these five sets of needs are somehow in a step-wise, all-or-none relationships to each other. We have spoken in such terms as the following: ‘If one need is satisfied, then another emerges.’ This statement might give the false impression that a need must be satisfied 100 percent before the next need emerges. In actual fact, most members of our society, who are normal, are partially satisfied in all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time. “A more realistic description of the hierarchy would be in terms of decreasing percentages of satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy of prepotency. For instance, if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of illustration, it is as if the average citizen is satisfied perhaps 85 percent in his physiological needs, 70 percent in his safety needs, 50 percent in his love needs, 40 percent in his self-esteem needs, and 10 percent in his self-actualization needs.” Myth #3: The Sequence of the 5 Basic Needs Applies to EVERYONE Far from being inflexible in his thinking, Maslow was very aware of the tendency for individual discrepancies to be present within the human population. Motivation is highly personal. What matters to one person might mean nothing to the next. As many theorists involved in the study of human motivation continue to discover, any attempt to make broad generalizations can be very precarious and this was a point Maslow was especially quick to concede.According to Maslow, “We have spoken so far as if this hierarchy was a fixed order but actually it is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied. It is true that most of the people with whom we have worked have seemed to have these basic needs in about the order that has been indicated. However, there have been a number of exceptions.” In total, Maslow listed seven exceptions that deviated from the typical hierarchy structure. For example, he observed that for some people, the need for self-esteem was swapped for the need for love. This was considered to be the most common reversal in the hierarchy. Maslow also noticed people who had become so acclimated to unemployment that their needs for achievement and personal growth seemed to gradually fade away, effectively removing the top two levels of the hierarchy. Similarly, there were people who had been “starved for love” in early childhood, resulting in a numbing of the desire for friendship and social connection—the path to the antisocial or “psychotic personality,” as Maslow called it. However, the exception to the hierarchy structure that both fascinated and puzzled Maslow more than any other was the “creative artist.” These were people in whom the need to self-actualize appeared to take precedence over all other needs. For the painter, musician or writer, he would enter a trance-like state and become so immersed in his craft that he would disregard the need for food, water and even sleep—becoming, quite literally, the “starving artist.”Myth #4: Maslow Later Revised the Hierarchy to include “Self-Transcendence” as the Highest Need After “Self-Actualization”This issue is actually quite complicated and somewhat controversial, so I’ll do my best to summarize it. To start, Maslow never formally amended his theory of five basic needs. All pyramid images that you see on Google with more than five levels are interpretations and inferences made by other people based on Maslow’s work. With that said, however, there is strong evidence that Maslow, in his later writings (particularly in his journal entries) viewed “self-transcendence” as a further step that was separate and distinct from “self-actualization.”For more on this myth, see Rediscovering the Later Version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Self-Transcendence and Opportunities for Theory, Research, and Unification by Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, who notes, “… it is clear that Maslow meant to \[revise the theory\], which settles the question of his theory’s content, although not its validity.”Myth #5: Maslow Later Revised the Hierarchy to Include “Aesthetic Needs” and “Cognitive Needs”Although Maslow did briefly examine these elements in his writings, he was somewhat uncertain as to the precise role they played. Consequently, he kept them separate from the five basic needs. It’s not necessarily wrong to use a seven-level or eight-level pyramid that includes these elements, but be aware that Maslow was rather tentative about them if you plan to use an extended version.Myth #6: The Hierarchy Is Supported by Strong Empirical ResearchThis myth is a really important point to bear in mind. The truth is that Maslow’s theory was based on his own personal observations and his biographical analysis of individuals who he considered to be “self-actualized.” The theory was not based on any credible empirical research. In Maslow’s defense, he never promoted his theory as if it were a fact. In addition, the whole point of putting forward his theory was to stimulate research in the area of human motivation, which had received little to no attention at the time.Since Maslow’s death, research has found there to be partial to little or no evidence for the validity of the five-need hierarchy. One of the most frequently cited reviews comes from Wahba and Bridgewell (1976), who reviewed studies based on Maslow’s theory and stated: “The literature review shows that Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory has received little clear or consistent support from the available research findings. Some of Maslow’s propositions are totally rejected, while others receive mixed and questionable support at best.”The authors also noted that the theory “is almost nontestable” because Maslow did not provide clear, standard definitions of each need construct, but mainly because it is very difficult to measure the relative satisfaction of needs and the precise extent to which a need must be satisfied before the next emerges, or even what a need is (whether it was psychological and/or physiological). These issues pose a significant challenge for future researchers.Likewise, in a well-publicized study from 2011, researchers from the University of Illinois examined the association between need fulfillment and subjective well-being (SWB) across 123 countries, finding that many of the needs Maslow described appeared to be universal, but the order in which these needs are met had little impact on people's satisfaction with life. In other words, higher-level needs like autonomy, social support, and feeling respected were still important despite the fact that lower-level needs were not being fulfilled.Final WordDespite its lack of empirical support, I do not see the hierarchy as a myth or a relic that should be thrown away. It certainly has flaws that are relevant when considered from a strictly academic perspective. As such, it should be very clear to any group who encounter the model that just because it is well-known, it should not be treated as fact. That said, the general configuration of the framework is not entirely unsupported by research. The five basic needs are considered to be universally valid, but it’s the linear succession (one need being prepotent over the next) that is considered the main problem.People are often drawn to Maslow’s hierarchy because it is simple, orderly, neat, well-defined, and—for many people—it appears to make intuitive sense based on their own personal life experiences. The theory behind the popular pyramid image, however, is much richer, more nuanced, and more complex than what many people may realize.Ultimately, like any business model, tool, or framework, the practical value of Maslow’s hierarchy may well be determined by how well it is explained and facilitated in the training room. I’ve seen otherwise practical, fun, rigorously validated models brutalized by bad facilitators, and boring or nonsensical information made to look spectacular by first-class facilitators. The process is not always a reflection on the strength of the content, and vice versa.Bottom line: Models should be used as a platform or stepping stone for innovation, creativity, growth and adapting new solutions—not to narrow people’s world-view and lock them into a fixed way of seeing things. My recommendation to practitioners is that they should know the model, but also know its limitations. Very often, it is the understanding of where a certain model or theory goes wrong that the most valuable learning takes place. I have never come across any model that is widely used in business that is free of serious criticisms or limitations.Maslow’s hierarchy is just one mental model among many that can be useful to progress thinking forward, and as the statistician George E. P. Box once famously said, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”I still have use for Maslow. How about you? Share your thoughts in the Comments below.

Maslow’s Hierarchy: Separating Fact From Fiction

Winter 2010 | Volume 39, Number 4: Innovations in Government Oversight, Stewardship and Accountability The winter 2010 issue is built around five articles that explore innovations in government oversight, stewardship and accountability:The feature article by Richard Wenning and **Damian**Betebenner demonstrates how datavisualization technology is helping to improve educational accountabilityin Colorado.Check out two recent podcasts with Damian Betebenner and technologists fromUniversal Mind. Deborah A. Milks, a former US Peace Corps Volunteer now serving as an instructor with the GraduateSchool, takes us to theSouth Pacific and shares how local officials are improving oversight and accountabilityone island government at a time. Brian Green of Learning Tree International irons out linkages between budgets, performance and accountability with a caseillustration of how the US Department of Veterans Affairs is improvingperformance and building the business acumen of acquisition professionals. Michael Lennon and Gary Berg-Cross provide atemplate for achieving a high-performing, more open-style governance approach.My podcast interview with Michael Lennon, in which he elaborates on thisarticle and foreshadows the US Department of Energy’s citizen engagement effortsaimed at DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR WASTE, will be published to our site early next week. Lastly, Jack Malgeri adds athought-provoking piece on how organizational foresight and stewardship havedramatically improved accessibility of our national treasures overseen by theNational Park Service. We also peer into the changing public sector workplace - people, budgets, technology, and learning - with articles about leadership in the U.S. Army, strategic budgeting for local government equipment, and how IT managers need to prepare for new demands. Your subscription to The Public Manager gives you online access to these full articles from our Winter 2010 issue and 39 years of archived issues.

Recapping the Winter 2010 Issue

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