Maslow himself, in the months before his death in 1970, began to have profound doubts about the movement he had influenced. He had been carrying out tests on those with high scores of self-esteem. What he discovered was that they ‘were more apt to come late to appointments with the experimenter, to be less respectful, more casual, more forward, more condescending’, and various other antisocial behaviours. Carl Rogers, the American psychologist known for his practice of ‘unconditional positive regard’,3 another strand of the self-esteem movement, also had second thoughts, seeing how it
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