Processes Involved in Adult Ego Development: A Conceptual Framework

Developmental Review 20, 475–513 (2000) doi:10.1006/drev.2000.0508, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Processes Involved in Adult Ego Development: A Conceptual Framework John Manners and Kevin Durkin The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia Ego development has been found to stabilize by early adulthood among the majority of the population, at a stage which is well below the maximum potential. The modal stage of stabilization is one which involves rudimentary self-awareness and incipient conceptual complexity. The reasons for this early stabilization below the maximum potential are not fully understood. In this article, a conceptual framework is formulated to explain the processes involved in ego-stage transition in adulthood. The formulation is based on Loevinger’s theoretical reflections on adult ego-stage transition and the associated research, the intervention programs designed to promote adult ego development, the theory and research in relation to moral-stage development in adulthood, and the theory and research in relation to general personality change in adulthood. In the resulting framework, it is proposed that ego-stage transition in adulthood represents an accommodative response to specific types of life experiences and that the degree of exposure to such life experiences, as well as the perception of and response to the life experience, is influenced by specific psychological characteristics. Specific research hypotheses follow from the proposed framework, and these are outlined with suggestions for empirical tests.  2000 Academic Press

INTRODUCTION One of the intriguing findings that emerges from the research into ego development in adulthood is that only a minority of adults progress to the advanced stages of ego development. Early studies had indicated that the majority of adults stabilize by early adulthood at or below the ego stage labeled by Loevinger as the Self-Aware stage, which involves rudimentary self- and interpersonal awareness and incipient conceptual complexity (Holt, 1980; Loevinger, Cohn, Bonneville, Redmore, Streich, & Sargent, 1985; McCrae & Costa, 1980; Redmore, 1983; Redmore & Loevinger, 1979).1 Address correspondence and reprint requests to John Manners or Kevin Durkin, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6907, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. 1 Loevinger’s recently updated naming and numeration system for each of the nine ego stages is employed in this article (Hy & Loevinger, 1998). The stages may be briefly summarized as follows: Presocial and Symbiotic (stage E1)—exclusive focus on gratification of immediate needs; strong attachment to mother, and differentiating her from the rest of the environment, but not her-/himself from mother; preverbal, hence inaccessible to assessment 475 0273-2297/00 $35.00 Copyright  2000 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

476

MANNERS AND DURKIN

Cohn’s (1998) recent meta-analysis of 92 studies of ego development, involving over 12,000 participants, demonstrated that these earlier findings were consistently replicated across a wide range of samples. A similar stabilization below the maximum potential level has been observed in other areas of adult development. In cognitive development, not all adults complete formal operations (Kuhn, Langer, Kohlberg, & Haan, 1977), and only a small minority attains postformal operations (Basseches, 1984; Kramer & Woodruff, 1986). In moral development, only a small minority attains the advanced stage of Principled moral reasoning by midlife (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983; Walker, 1986). The reasons for this stabilization below the maximum potential level of ego development are not clearly understood. Loevinger’s comments from more than 20 years ago are still applicable: the question of why apparently normal people stabilize in their ego level far below the hypothetical maximum level, as contrasted with the tendency to approach the maximum in cognitive level, has been insufficiently researched or even discussed. (Loevinger, 1976, p. 311)

The ego stage that is attained by early adulthood may be interpreted as indicative of the capacity level of the person and as suggesting that further

via the sentence-completion method. Impulsive (stage E2)—demanding, impulsive, conceptually confused; concerned with bodily feelings, especially sexual and aggressive; no sense of psychological causation; dependent, good and bad seen in terms of how it affects the self; dichotomous, i.e., good/bad, nice/mean. Self-Protective (stage E3)—wary, complaining, exploitive, hedonistic; preoccupied with staying out of trouble, not getting caught; learning about rules and self-control, externalizing blame. Conformist (stage E4)—conventional, moralistic, sentimental, rule-bound, stereotyped, need for belonging, superficial niceness; behavior of self and others seen in terms of externals; feelings only understood at banal level; conceptually simple, ‘‘black and white’’ thinking. Self-Aware (stage E5)—increased, although still limited, self-awareness and appreciation of multiple possibilities in situations; self-critical; emerging rudimentary awareness of inner feelings of self and others; banal level reflections on life issues such as God, death, relationships, health. Conscientious (stage E6)—self-evaluated standards; reflective, responsible, empathic; long-term goals and ideals; true conceptual complexity displayed and perceived, can see the broader perspective and can discern patterns; principled morality; rich and differentiated inner life; mutuality in relationships; self-critical, values achievement. Individualistic (stage E7)—heightened sense of individuality; concern about emotional dependence; tolerant of self and others; incipient awareness of inner conflicts and personal paradoxes; without a sense of resolution or integration; values relationships over achievement; vivid and unique way of expressing self. Autonomous (stage E8)—capacity to face and cope with inner conflicts; high tolerance for ambiguity and can see conflict as an expression of the multifaceted nature of people and life in general; respectful of the autonomy of the self and others; relationships seen as interdependent rather than as dependent/independent; concerned with self-actualization; recognizes the systemic nature of relationships; cherishes individuality and uniqueness; vivid expression of feelings. Integrated (stage E9)—wise, broadly empathic, full sense of identity; able to reconcile inner conflicts and integrate paradoxes; similar to Maslow’s (1954, 1955, 1962) ‘‘self-actualized’’ person. Adapted from Hy and Loevinger (1998), Loevinger (1976, 1987), Loevinger, Hy, Le Xuan, and associates (1989), Loevinger and Wessler (1970), and Loevinger, Wessler, and Redmore (1970).

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

477

development is not possible. However, it is clear from the research findings that further ego stage development is possible in adulthood (Alexander, Davies, Dixon, Dillbeck, Druker, Oetzel, Muehlman, & Orme-Johnson, 1990; Bursik, 1990; Helson & Roberts, 1994; MacPhail, 1989). Alternatively, it may be suggested that the level at which the majority of the population stabilizes represents the most optimally adaptive level of functioning. However, this suggestion is not consistent with the adaptive advantages involved in functioning at advanced ego stages that have been demonstrated in a number of respects. For example, higher ego development functioning has been found to be associated with better preventive health self-care among elderly adults (Gast, 1984; Michaelson, 1985); with higher levels of support and understanding of children’s communication among mothers (Biekle, 1979; Dayton, 1981); with strength of the relationship, closeness, clarity of communication, responsibility taking, and empathy among couples (Zilbermann, 1984); with greater competence and more effective and collaborative decision making among managers (Bushe & Gibbs, 1990; Givens, 1985; Merron, 1986); with significantly lower symptom severity among psychiatric patients (Noam, 1998; Noam & Dill, 1991); and with significantly higher client satisfaction among psychotherapists (Callanan, 1986). Clearly then, further ego development is possible in adulthood, and development beyond the modal stage provides some adaptive advantages. But, what is not clear is whether further development beyond the modal stage is possible and what the specific processes are that may lead to such development. There has been little theoretical discussion or empirical research directly concerned with the processes involved in adult ego-stage transition (Cohn, 1998; Loevinger, 1994). The absence of a coherent theoretical account of stage transition processes has been one of the criticisms of Loevinger’s theory of ego development (Broughton & Zahaykevich, 1988). The present article is concerned with the formulation of a conceptual framework to understand the ego-stage transition processes in adulthood and thus explain the above findings. In order to do this, published and unpublished studies from four areas were brought together and reviewed in detail for their relevance for understanding the stage transition process. The four areas are Loevinger’s theoretical reflections on adult ego-stage transition and the related research, the findings from the intervention programs designed to promote adult ego development, the theory and research in relation to moral stage development in adulthood, and the theory and research in relation to general personality change in adulthood. LOEVINGER’S THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS ON ADULT EGO-STAGE TRANSITION Scattered through Loevinger’s writings are some broad theoretical principles regarding adult ego-stage transition, such as the application of a Piagetian equilibration model to the process of stage transition and suggestions of factors that may influence stage transition (1973, 1976, 1983, 1993).

478

MANNERS AND DURKIN

The Equilibration Model Loevinger’s conception of the stage development of the ego is clearly indebted to Piagetian stage theory, with ego stages conceptualized as equilibrated structures which follow an invariant hierarchical sequence (Loevinger, 1976, 1987).2 Within this theory, stage transition is said to occur as an adaptive response to the ongoing interaction between the person and the environment. When adults are confronted with information that does not fit their existing schema for the self or the surrounding world, it precipitates what has been variously termed dissonance, cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium (Murray, 1983). In seeking to adapt to the environment, the individual is driven to restore equilibrium either by assimilating the new information into the existing schema or by adjusting the existing schema to accommodate the new information. In constructive developmental terms, assimilation results in stage stability, whereas accommodation results in stage transition (Block, 1982; Furth, 1981; Loevinger, 1976; Piaget, 1970, 1977; Snarey, Kohlberg, & Noam, 1983). This equilibration model of ego-stage transition has been implicitly accepted within the limited research into adult ego development that is reviewed below, although it has not been the subject of direct investigation. For example, Bursik (1990) viewed divorce as a potentially disequilibrating experience in her investigation of the effect of divorce on adult ego development, while in a longitudinal study Helson and Roberts (1994) refer to certain chosen life paths as more likely to promote ego development because they are ‘‘accommodatively challenging.’’ Block (1982) and Appley (1990) have also discussed the role of equilibration in human personality development, but in a broader context than Piagetian stage theory. Their discussion is in the context of personality change and motivation and does not specifically address ego development. Their comments are reviewed here, as they represent the only detailed explication of the role of equilibration within personality development, they have clear relevance for ego development, and Block’s (1982) discussion has become incorporated into ego development research (e.g., Bursik, 1990; Helson & Roberts, 1994). Block (1982) addressed the Piagetian understanding of equilibration, but with a view to a reformulation and application to personality 2 It is recognized that there has been some debate regarding whether Loevinger’s theory properly fits within the cognitive-developmental approach. Loevinger places her theory within this framework (Loevinger, 1987), and Labouvie-Vief and Diehl (1998) have suggested that the theory is more aligned with cognitive- than with affective-developmental systems. Others have questioned whether ego development theory fits with the assumptions and methods of the cognitive-developmental approach, particularly in terms of the content of the ego stages and the quasistructural nature of the stages (Blasi, 1998; Broughton & Zahaykevich, 1988; Snarey, Kohlberg, & Noam, 1983). The relevant point for the present discussion is that Loevinger places her theory within this framework, and the distinctions raised by these authors do not affect the discussion that follows.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

479

development, while Appley (1990) discussed the equilibration model within the context of motivation theory, without any reference to Piagetian stage theory. For Block (1982), the concepts of equilibration, assimilation and accommodation as described by Piaget (1970, 1977) can be applied to personality development, but not without a recognition of the significant differences between cognitive and personality development. Block (1982) argues that personality development is distinct from cognitive development as studied by Piaget in two important ways. First, the personality system develops in relation to an interpersonal world that is active, reactive, unpredictable, and emotionally involving, whereas Piaget’s analysis has been predominantly concerned with cognitive development in relation to the more predictable spatiotemporal world. Second, personality schemas are more than cognitive structural stages, but are principles of adaptation to the complex interpersonal world that include assumptions, orientations, expectations, attitudes, and scripts. These differences mean that, while the principles that assist in understanding cognitive development have relevance for personality development, they require some reformulation to be adequate in understanding personality development. Block’s reformulation of the principles relate to the nature of motivation in disequilibration and to the process of assimilation and accommodation. In terms of disequilibration and motivation, rather than Piaget’s view that disequilibration is intrinsically motivating, equilibration is regarded by Block as serving the biologically adaptive function of enabling a sustained understanding of the surrounding world. When the organism experiences situations that interrupt this understanding of the world, the disequilibration is clearly detrimental to effective adaptation, resulting in a dysphoric arousal that functions as a motivation to identify and pursue some form of behavior that reduces the dysphoria. Two forms of behavior that serve this purpose are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation of the new information into existing organizational schemas is seen as the first adaptive approach, as it involves less disruption than accommodation. When assimilation is not effective, the new information may be accommodated by the construction of new schemas that are equilibrating. The accommodation process may involve deconstruction of old schemas, which can lead to intensification and prolongation of the existing dysphoric arousal until the new schemas have been developed and equilibrium restored. While Block views assimilation as the first adaptive option, he also discusses the possibility that personal and social factors may result in individual differences in a preference and/or a readiness for one or the other as the adaptive response to disequilibration. A preference for assimilation would be manifested in avoiding exposure to discrepant information, or selective inattention or denial when exposed to it, and would result in a greater degree of personality stability. A preference for accommodation would consist of a preference for novel experiences and quickly changing

480

MANNERS AND DURKIN

meaning schemas that do not accommodate the new information, with the result of personality inconstancy. The most adaptive approach, according to Block, would be the flexibility to choose when to shift from assimilation to accommodation according to the demands of the situation, an ability that he termed ‘‘ego resilience.’’ Block’s reformulation of the Piagetian concepts of assimilation and accommodation clearly has relevance for Loevinger’s (1976) view of ego-stage transition as representing an accommodative response to disequilibrating life experiences. However, the reformulation does not provide any additional clarification of the reasons for the majority of the population stabilizing in early adulthood at or below the Self-Aware ego stage and leaves some important questions unanswered. Interpreting the findings in relation to adult egostage development using Block’s reformulation, early stabilization at or below the Self-Aware ego stage must be sufficiently adaptive for most adults; equilibration at that stage is able to be maintained adequately through the process of assimilation, and such an assimilative response and consequent ego stage stabilization may be indicative of ego resilience. But, in what sense is it adaptive when there are the advantages associated with higher ego stages, such as those described above, and the greater capacity for conceptual complexity and emotional regulation that is characteristic of the advanced ego stages, which would appear to have survival value within the biological evolutionary framework averred by Block? And how are people able to maintain equilibration using assimilation when there is a high probability of exposure at various times in adult life to a range of complex issues, problems, decisions, and dilemmas that would require considerable denial or distortion of the situation to assimilate within ego stages at or below the Self-Aware and where accommodation might reasonably be regarded as the more adaptively efficient response? Appley’s (1990) fundamental premise is similar to that of Block (1982), namely that the human organism is motivated to pursue and maintain homeostasis, and to respond to internal or external threats to homeostasis by a range of adaptive responses which restore or maintain equilibrium. For Appley (1990), disequilibration is the instigation to cognitive, emotional, or behavioral action to restore homeostasis. This may, but not necessarily, involve some form of personality change. The frequency, extent, and nature of the situations that give rise to disequilibrium will be partly due to psychological and social factors, as will the perception and response to the situations. Appley (1990) does not refer to structural stage development, but his approach does have relevance for adult ego development and provides some clarification of the reasons for the stage at which adults stabilize. Applying Appley’s approach, equilibration represents the fundamental motivating factor in human development, while the ego stage at which people stabilize is a function of the interaction of individual psychological and social differ-

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

481

ences that influences the degree of exposure to, the perception of, and the response to, disequilibrating life experiences. Factors Impacting on Ego-Stage Transition In her primary monograph on ego development, Loevinger (1976) discussed a range of factors that may impact on ego-stage transition in adulthood, but only two receive her clear endorsement: life experiences and cognitive development. Even with these two factors, their role in adult stage transition is not fully articulated. This article describes Loevinger’s theorizing and attempt to articulate more fully the role of the two factors in stage transition and then reviews the empirical research that has been conducted in relation to each factor. Life Experiences and Adult Ego Development Based on the equilibration model, Loevinger (1976) explains the stage of ego-stage attainment in adulthood as due partly to the role of life experiences as a pacer for ego development. For example, a young woman may have stabilized at the Self-Protective ego stage because her social milieu is violent and competitive and thus not providing any challenge to the existing schema. If the woman moved to a different milieu, where she experienced cooperative and respectful relationships, dissonance would be likely to be experienced in relation to her existing ego stage, which may be resolved either by assimilation or accommodation. Cohn (1998) has discussed this as relevant factor in explaining the greater amount of ego development during adolescence than in adulthood. Adolescents are exposed to a greater number and range of life experiences, through school and family, that challenge their existing ego structure. Adults can exercise more choice than adolescents in the types of life experiences to which they are exposed and hence are more likely to choose experiences that confirm their existing ego structure (Durkin, 1995; Lerner & Galambos, 1998). While this may explain the greater degree of stage development in adolescence, it does not mean that adults can ensure no exposure to challenging experiences. The majority of adults are likely at some time in their life to be exposed either voluntarily or involuntarily to the potentially challenging experiences of job promotion, childbirth, relocation, bereavement, retrenchment, or divorce. The question then emerges of which types of experiences are more likely to precipitate ego development? A number of studies have been concerned with the effect of different types of life experience on ego development: higher education, life transitions, and life path. These studies are reviewed according to the different types of experience. Higher education. The effect of higher education in general, as well as specific types of education, has been the subject of a number of studies, with varying results. Adams and Fitch (1983) investigated whether the dialectical

482

MANNERS AND DURKIN

tension created by university departments that emphasized scholarship and critical thought would precipitate ego-stage transition. In a sample of 148 male and female students, they found that the type of department did not predict ego-stage change after 1 year. No information was provided regarding whether there was a significant effect of university attendance regardless of department type. A similar study was conducted by Loevinger and others (Loevinger et al., 1985) where a comparison was made between the effects of a liberal arts and an engineering campus on ego development. They found that only males at the engineering campus gained to a significant degree in ego stage between their first and last year at university, while the women at the liberal arts campus regressed to a significant degree. This finding is confounded by the differing ego stages at entrance to university, with the mean ego stage of the male engineering students being one full stage lower than that of the female liberal arts students (Self-Aware compared to Conscientious). Other factors appear to mediate the effect of higher education on ego development. For example, Billington (1989) found in a sample of 60 matureaged doctoral students that departmental type influenced the degree of egostage transition in response to the higher training. Self-directed departmental type resulted in a significant increase in ego stage from entrance to graduation, whereas traditional departmental type did not. Solbach (1991) challenged the view that the experience of formal education itself can precipitate ego development. In comparing young and mature aged university students on ego stage, life experience, and level of formal education, Solbach found that age and life experience accounted for a significant amount of the variance in ego development, but level of formal education did not. These equivocal findings highlight some of the misunderstandings about the ego-stage transition process. A primary misunderstanding appears to be the assumption that higher education itself would represent a disequilibrating experience for the ego structure. The subjective perception and meaning of higher education is likely to influence the degree of disequilibration involved in the experience rather the experience itself. For example, higher education may be perceived by some students (and by their teachers) as primarily a cognitive process, concerned with the accumulation of knowledge. When seen in this way, higher education is unlikely to be disequilibrating for ego structures, which are concerned with emotional and interpersonal, as well as cognitive, issues and with integrating them into an understanding of the self and the social world. Higher study also has different meanings for people, according to their background, age, and life experiences, and these differences will influence the degree of disequilibration precipitated by the higher study. For example, for the mature-aged student, the knowledge acquired at university may be placed against a background of a wider range of life experience than that of the young student. This creates more potential for the new knowledge to be challenging and disequilibrating for the existing

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

483

self-system. This difference between young and mature-aged students would be familiar to anyone who has taught both groups: it is more often the matureaged student who asks probing questions about the meaning and implications of what is being taught, while the young student questions whether the subject matter is examinable. These differences in the subjective perception of higher education may partly explain the above findings of Billington (1989). In comparison with traditional types of department, self-directed types of department may promote greater self reflection on the personal implications of the education experience, resulting in greater disequilibrium in relation to existing ego structures. Life transitions. Divorce is a particularly stressful life transition for many people, and it can represent a threat to the person’s self- and interpersonal schema (Chiriboga & Catron, 1991). The effect of divorce as a potentially disequilibrating experience on ego development among women was investigated by Bursik (1990). A longitudinal design was employed, involving 104 women who had been separated for approximately 5 months at first testing and who were then retested 1 year later. The degree of disequilibrium experienced in response to the divorce was interpreted by Bursik from the extent of adjustment difficulties at first testing, while effective adaptation to the divorce experience was interpreted from the extent of adjustment at posttest. Adjustment was assessed from the perspective of self-esteem, life satisfaction, mood disturbance, stress symptoms, and physical health. Bursik identified four groups of women, characterized by four trajectories of adaptation over the time period. These were an increase from a low to a high level of adjustment, remaining at a low level of adjustment, remaining at a high level of adjustment, or a decrease from a high to a low level of adjustment. Those women who increased from a low to a high level of adjustment showed a significant increase in mean ego level over the time period. No significant change in ego level was shown among those women who remained at the same level of adjustment over the period. A significant decrease in mean ego level was shown by those women who decreased from a high to a low level of adjustment. These findings indicate that this type of life experience, if it is experienced as disequilibrating, has the potential to precipitate either ego-stage progression or regression, depending on the degree of adjustment to the divorce experience. That is, for stage transition to occur, the experience must be sufficiently disequilibrating, and the person must be able to adapt effectively to the experience. (Clearly, this does not mean that disequilibrium necessarily involves adjustment difficulties. Other potentially disequilibrating life experiences, such as job promotion, may not precipitate such adjustment difficulties as those assessed by Bursik.) Bursik’s findings also lend support to the comments made above in relation to ego development and higher study that for stage transition to occur, the disequilibration needs to include the emotional and interpersonal aspects of the ego structure.

484

MANNERS AND DURKIN

The findings from McAdams’ (1985) use of a life-story approach to identity, where identity is the life story, have some relevance for this review of the effect of life transitions on ego development. The life stories of 50 midlife men and women were collected from semistructured interviews and questionnaires. The stories were scored for a range of characteristics, including what McAdams termed ‘‘nuclear episodes.’’ Nuclear episodes represent critical life events or experiences in the life story and frequently demonstrate how the person perceives that she/he has either remained the same person over time (‘‘continuity episodes’’) or has been transformed (‘‘turning-point episodes’’) (McAdams, 1985). McAdams found that those who were at or above the Conscientious stage of ego development reported a significantly greater number of turning-point episodes in their life story than did those below that ego stage. These findings are difficult to interpret as they are a retrospective and subjective report of life events, and the significant relationship between ego stage and the reports of turning points does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship or, if there is one, the direction of the causality. One possibility is that those at the higher ego stages may have experienced a greater number of turning-point episodes, and/or been more aware of them, and so developed more than those at the lower ego stages. Alternatively, as the higher ego stages are characterized by greater self-awareness and conceptual complexity, the retrospective perception of the life story may reflect this in a greater recognition of the changes that have occurred. Or again, both reporting of turning point episodes and advanced ego stage may be due to a third factor such as a personality disposition that is oriented toward growth and change (Ryff, 1985). While all three alternatives are plausible and all may be valid, the findings remain consistent with Loevinger’s (1976) theorizing about the role of life experiences in ego development. Life path. In a longitudinal study, Helson and Roberts (1994) investigated factors affecting ego development in adulthood. For 81 women, they had access to California Psychological Inventory (CPI) personality profiles at the ages of 21, 43, and 52 years and WUSCT scores taken at age 43 years. Using Loevinger’s (1976) theorizing about the importance of the environment as an influence on ego development, together with Block’s (1982) conceptualization of personality development in terms of assimilation and accommodation, they hypothesised that ego development would be predicted by specific cognitive, personality, and environmental factors that were regarded as conducive to ‘‘accommodative structure building’’ (Helson & Roberts, 1994, p. 912). The specific cognitive variable was verbal aptitude, the personality variables were flexibility and psychological mindedness, and the environmental factor was labeled ‘‘life stimulation,’’ which was a composite of factors that represented the level of accommodative challenge in the chosen life path. For example, a life path that was defined as low in accommodative challenge was a career without family commitments or conventional homemaking; a life path defined as high on accommodative challenge included a

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

485

disrupted life project such as a divorce or career loss or success in an upwardly mobile career (at a time when there were limited equal opportunities for women). Using a path analysis, Helson and Roberts found that verbal aptitude, psychological mindedness, and level of stimulation in the women’s life path contributed directly to higher ego development at midlife. Unfortunately, as the WUSCT was not administered at the initial assessment, the initial ego level of the participants is not known. This means that the extent of stage development among those at or above the Self-Aware ego stage in adolescence is not known. Cognitive Stage and Ego Development Loevinger (1976) clearly differentiates ego from cognitive development, while recognizing an interrelationship between the two domains.3 Stage of cognitive development is regarded as providing the extent of the range of ‘‘possibilities’’ for ego development (Loevinger, 1976, p. 45), but these ‘‘possibilities,’’ and their role in ego-stage transition, are not specified. The possibilities appear to be that development to the advanced ego stages is only possible when the person has the necessary cognitive reasoning capacity. In terms of the ego transition process, this may mean that the cognitive stage sets limits on the level of complexity that a person perceives and seeks in the environment, which has relevance for the equilibration model of egostage transition. A person would not seek experiences that are too complex to be assimilated within her/his existing cognitive schema, and events may not be perceived as disequilibrating because the person’s stage of cognitive development prevents recognition of the complexity of the event. For example, an understanding of paradox is involved in the ego stages at and above the Conscientious ego stage of development, and so the cognitive capacity to perceive paradoxes within the self and the social world would be necessary for transition to these advanced stages. This cognitive capacity only creates the possibility for advanced ego stages, as ego development cannot be reduced to cognitive processes alone, and other factors also influence whether 3 Loevinger’s (1976) view of the relationship between cognitive and ego development differs from Kohlberg’s (1969, 1981) view with respect to cognitive and moral development. For Kohlberg, the particular stages of moral reasoning are clearly grounded in specific Piagetian cognitive stages, with particular cognitive stages regarded as a necessary but not sufficient condition for transition to each moral stage. Loevinger is more concerned to highlight the difference between ego and cognitive development. While cognitive stage may provide the possibilities for ego development, the ego as the framework of meaning cannot be reduced to a cognitive process. For example, the desire for individuality and autonomy that is characteristic of the advanced ego stages is made possible by the capacity for formal operational reasoning, but the cognitive stage cannot explain how or why the ego develops into these particular characteristics, nor why some people with formal operational capacity do not develop to these advanced ego stages. In addition, Piagetian cognitive stages pertain to natural phenomena, in the logicomathematical domain, whereas ego stages pertain to interpersonal phenomena, in the socioemotional domain.

486

MANNERS AND DURKIN

the particular paradox is actually perceived and whether adjustments are made in the existing ego structure to accommodate the new information. To illustrate, a middle-aged man at the Self-Aware ego stage may be confronted with paradox in relation to the mixture of contradictory thoughts and feelings associated with the loss of a loved one. While he may have the cognitive capacity to perceive and understand contradiction, he may be unwilling to recognize it in this context and prefer only to acknowledge certain thoughts and feelings and deny or repress any that are in contradiction with those that are acknowledged. The result for this man would be stage stability rather than the possible transition to the Conscientious ego stage. There has been little research conducted into the relationship between ego and cognitive stage. The majority of the research has been concerned with cognitive complexity rather than with structural stages (e.g., Luzzi, 1984; Sullivan, McCullough, & Stager, 1970), and those studies that investigate cognitive stages have focused primarily on ego development and postformal operations in adulthood (e.g., Blanchard-Fields, 1986; Commons, Armon, Richards, & Schrader, 1989). Two unpublished studies have investigated ego development and Piagetian formal operations (Leiper, 1982; Meikle, 1982), with varying results. Leiper (1982), in a sample of male college students, found a significant correlation between ego development and performance on two Piagetian formal operations tasks, combinations and correlations. Meikle (1982) investigated whether, in a sample of introductory psychology students, formal thinking and a nondefensive attitude was necessary for mature ego development. Assessing formal operational thought with traditional Piagetian tasks as well as tasks with interpersonal content, he found that the relationship between cognitive and ego stage varied according to defensiveness and degree of intrapsychic conflict. When there was high intrapsychic conflict, advanced ego stage was significantly related to a combination of formal operations and defensiveness. With low conflict, advanced ego stage was significantly related to a combination of preformal operations and nondefensiveness. These results support Loevinger’s (1976) view that cognitive development as measured by Piagetian tasks cannot be isolated from other variables as a precondition for adult ego development. With respect to postformal reasoning, studies that have employed Piagetian types of assessment tasks have found low, nonsignificant correlations between cognitive and ego development (Commons et al., 1989; King, Kitchener, Wood, & Davison, 1989). This replicated the finding by BlanchardFields (1986) in a sample representing both sexes and a wide age range, using two Piagetian type tasks: correlational reasoning and isolation of variables. However, in the same study, when cognitive level was assessed in terms of the socioemotional rather than the Piagetian logicomathematical domain, a highly significant relationship was found between cognitive and ego stage. This involved the application of a scoring system based on Perry’s (1970) and Kitchener and King’s (1981) levels of postformal reasoning to three

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

487

hypothetical social dilemmas which varied in emotional saliency. Other studies using Perry’s (1970) system for assessing postformal cognitive level (Farrell, 1974; Wertheimer, 1980) have also found a significant correlation between cognitive and ego stage among college students. An important conclusion from these diverse findings is that studies employing Piagetian types of measures of cognitive development in the logicomathematical domain (Commons et al., 1989; King et al., 1989; Leiper, 1982; Meikle, 1982) have resulted in varying findings, while those employing measures of cognitive functioning in the socioemotional domain (Blanchard-Fields, 1986; Farrell, 1974; Wertheimer, 1980) have consistently found a significant relationship between ego and cognitive level. This is not surprising in view of the nature of the ego as a complex construct, encompassing cognitive processes as they are applied in the socioemotional domain. Several sentence stems in the WUSCT are of an interpersonal nature (such as, ‘‘being with other people . . .’’) and of an emotional nature (such as ‘‘I feel sorry . . .’’), which suggests that there would be more likelihood of construct overlap between ego development and cognitive development in the socioemotional than in the logicomathematical domain. Also, the research findings indicate that some distinction needs to be made between cognitive reasoning in each of the two domains, with cognitive capacity in the logicomathematical domain not necessarily generalizing to the socioemotional domain (Blanchard-Fields, 1986; Broughton, 1980; Labouvie-Vief, 1982). Summary With respect to the processes involved in adult ego development, the conclusion that may be drawn from these theoretical reflections and empirical studies is that an equilibration model (Appley, 1990; Block, 1982; Loevinger, 1976) provides a broad framework for understanding the stage transition process. Within that framework, life experiences that are accommodatively challenging (Helson and Roberts, 1994) within the emotional and interpersonal domain have the potential to precipitate ego-stage development. However, the extent of exposure to these life experiences, and the way in which they are perceived and responded to, will be influenced by psychological factors. These psychological factors include verbal aptitude, psychological mindedness, defence mechanisms, and cognitive development as it is applied within the socioemotional domain. For transition beyond the Self-Aware ego stage, cognitive development beyond formal operations is necessary. Some of the specific details in this process have not been investigated. These include the nature and experience of the equilibration process, the specific types of life experiences that may be sufficient to precipitate egostage change, whether this varies according to the particular ego stage, and the way in which psychological factors interact with the life experiences to influence stage transition.

488

MANNERS AND DURKIN

INTERVENTION PROGRAMS TO PROMOTE ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT It may be expected that intervention studies concerned with promoting ego development in adulthood would provide some clarification of the processes involved in adult ego development. Unfortunately, this expectation is fulfilled to only a limited extent. Methodological problems with a number of the studies limit the validity and hence the relevance of their findings, while a lack of conceptual clarity in a number of the remaining studies limits the degree of elucidation they provide regarding the principles involved in adult ego-stage transition. Notwithstanding these limitations, the studies do provide some clarification regarding the possibility of ongoing ego development in adulthood, and the forms of intervention employed in the studies provide some indication of the types of experiences that may precipitate such development. Table 1 provides a summary overview of the studies: the sample size and characteristics, the intervention approach, the duration of the intervention, the design characteristics, the pretest ego stage, the effect of the intervention, and comments on aspects of the study. Ongoing Ego Development in Adulthood The intervention studies provide clarification with respect to two fundamental questions regarding adult ego-stage transition. These are whether egostage stability is a necessary characteristic of adulthood and whether stabilization at the modal stage of the population, the Self-Aware stage, represents the highest possible stage for adults at that stage. As can be seen from Table 1, a number of studies have demonstrated that ego development need not stabilize in adulthood. Ten of the 16 studies succeeded in promoting ego development (Alexander et al., 1990; Hartke, 1980; Henek, 1980; Hurt, 1990; Kwasnick, 1982; MacPhail, 1989; Maslin, 1980; Mattie, 1979; Oja, 1978; White, 1985). Of the six studies where it was specified that the sample consisted of some adults at the Self-Aware pretest ego stage, four were able to promote further ego-stage development (Alexander et al., 1990; Hartke, 1980; Maslin, 1980; White, 1985). Two of these studies need to be excluded from consideration (Hartke, 1980; Maslin, 1980), as important methodological problems with each of them raise questions regarding the validity of the findings.4 4 Hartke’s (1980) findings are anomalous in view of the short duration of the intervention (two consecutive weekends), which would not be sufficient time for the occurrence of developmental change (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983; Lawrence, 1980; Loevinger, 1976; Snyder & Feldman, 1984; Walker & Taylor, 1991). In Maslin’s (1980) study, it is difficult to determine whether the finding of a significant increase in ego scores was due to the intervention or to the test instructions, as the pretest instructions were the standard, neutral, instructions, ‘‘Please complete the following sentences,’’ while the posttest instructions were for the participants to give their most mature responses. Instructions such as those given at posttest have been found to result in higher ego-stage responses than when the standard instructions are given (Blumentritt, Novy, Gaa, & Liberman, 1996; Jurich & Holt, 1987).

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

489

The findings from the remaining seven studies provide clear indication that ongoing ego development is possible among adults, with two of the studies demonstrating that such ongoing development can involve development beyond the modal level of the general population. The Types of Experiences That Precipitate Ego Development The form of the interventions that succeeded in promoting ego development might be expected to provide information on the types of experiences that are more likely to promote ego development. While this is difficult to ascertain from some of the studies because of their lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of the intervention, discernible patterns emerge from the remaining studies in relation to structural and nonstructural aspects of experiences that precipitate stage change. Structural aspects of life experiences. Few of the studies have incorporated Loevinger’s (1976) theorizing about the role of the equilibration model in structural stage change in ego development. Only 7 of the 16 studies construed the intervention in terms of an equilibration model of stage transition (Hurt, 1990; MacPhail, 1989; Maslin, 1980; Mattei, 1979; Oja, 1979; Rogers, 1993; Soong, 1986). However, the relevance of the equilibration model is supported by the fact that of these 7 studies, only one failed to precipitate a significant increase in ego development (Rogers, 1993), in contrast to the studies that did not construe the intervention in terms of an equilibration model of stage transition, where 6 of the 9 studies failed to promote significant change. While the equilibration model was recognized in seven of the studies, this was not necessarily reflected in specifically structuring the intervention in relation to the participants’ existing ego level. To ensure that the intervention is a structurally disequilibrating experience, the ego level of the intervention needs to be structured to be higher than that of the participants. This principle is clearly recognized within the moral development intervention research (Arbuthnot, 1984; Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975; Lawrence, 1980; Turiel, 1966), but it is recognized in only two of the ego development intervention studies (Maslin, 1980; Soong, 1986). This does not mean that the other interventions were not at a higher level than that of the participants, but that it was not specifically structured to be so, and the extent to which it was at a higher level and affected the response to the intervention is not known. Nonstructural aspects of life experiences. Some important nonstructural aspects of the life experiences that may precipitate ego development emerge from the intervention studies. In three of the studies, the intervention consisted of the Deliberate Psychological Education approach (Kwasnick, 1982; Oja, 1978; Rogers, 1993) or a related approach (Mattie, 1979). All but one of these studies (Rogers, 1993) succeeded in promoting ego development, which suggests that the elements of the Deliberate Psychological Education programs may provide some indications of the properties of life experiences

116 female trainee nurses

White (1985)

1 year

Duration

86 males and females

194 female undergrad- Women’s studies uates course

Henek (1980)

College reentry seminar est training

Nursing training and work experience

Moral dilemmas, indepth discussion, counseling for perspective-taking

Conformist, SelfAware

Pretest WUSCT level

Not specified

Stages 3/4 (41%), 4 (35%), 4/5 (14%)

Pre-, post-, follow-up testing; no control group Not specified Control group

2 ⫻ 2 days

Self-Aware (44%), Conscientious (40%)

Self-Protective, Conformist

Not specified

No control group

3 treatment groups 2 control groups

3 treatment condiNot specified tions: lecture, role play, practice, feedback; lecture, role play, practice; lecture only

2 treatment groups 1 wait control group 4 comparison groups

Design

Not specified No control group

2 years

7 months

Empathy training 11 weeks using lecture, role play, practice, feedback

Transcendental Meditation

Intervention

Hartke (1980)

24 women

27 male prison inmates

MacPhail (1989)

Unpublished Green (1984)

71 trainee teachers

90 male prison inmates

Sample

Hurt (1990)

Published Alexander et al. (1990)

Author

TABLE 1 Overview of Ego Development Intervention Studies

Significant change at posttest and followup Significant change

No significant change

Significant change in treatment groups, not in other groups. One full stage change for most of treatment group Significantly more change in first treatment group than in control group. 36% of first treatment group developed 1 stage Significant change in treatment groups, not controls. 36% of treatment groups developed one stage No significant mean change; 32% of Self-Aware and 6% of Conscientious

Posttest change

490 MANNERS AND DURKIN

Steagall (1990)

Soong (1986)

Rogers (1993)

Reese (1985)

Oja (1978)

Mattei (1979)

Maslin (1980)

36 trainee counselors

1 year

No control group

Autogenic training

3 months

13 weeks

1 semester

5 Months

3 Months

1 experimental group; 1 nonequivalent control group 1 experimental group, 1 comparison group, 1 control group; Pre-, post-, follow-up testing 2 experimental groups, 2 control groups

No control group

1 Experimental group 2 Comparison groups

Not specified 3 Experimental groups (role plays at 0, 1, and 2 stages above existing stage), 1 control group 1 Semester 1 Experimental group 1 Control group

Deliberate Psychologi- Not specified 3 experimental cal Education to (‘‘brief’’) groups, 1 contrast stimulate role takgroup, 1 control ing, interpersonal group responsibility, and cognitive conflict

Counseling training

Role plays involving exposure to concepts characteristic of ego stages that varied in relation to pretest stage 23 Female college Theoretical and expestudents riential curriculum to promote trust, self awareness, and disequilibrium 85 Teachers Deliberate Psychological Education program Student helpers in Involvement in prison project tutoring and companionship in prison project 14 female engineering Deliberate Psychologistudents cal Education program 38 college students Discussion group

82 Female student nurses

Hunsberger (1980) Postgraduate counseling students Kwasnick (1982) 141 college students

Majority at 3/4 and 4

Not specified (?3)

Below norm for other students

Not specified

Not specified

3, 3/4, 4

3/4 and 4

Not specified

Not specified

No significant change

Significant change at posttest, decline at follow-up

No significant change

No significant change

Significant change; no increase for stage 4

Significant change only for stage 3

Significant change only for low pretest ego levels; no significant difference between experimental and control groups Significantly more increase for 3/4 pretest stage, and with role plays 2 stages above pretest level

No significant change

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

491

492

MANNERS AND DURKIN

that precipitate ego development (Helson, Mitchell, & Moane, 1984; Hultsch & Plemons, 1980; Neugarten, 1968; Whitbourne, 1985). The Deliberate Psychological Education programs (Erickson, 1990; Sprinthall, 1994) were specifically designed to promote psychological development in high-school students. The program content and format were related to ego and moral development theory and consequently combined theoretical input with experiential components such as empathy training and emotional awareness. It may be concluded from this that for life experiences to precipitate ego development in adulthood they need to be cognitively and emotionally engaging and of an interpersonal nature. Additional aspects emerge from three other studies which succeeded in promoting ego development (Henek, 1980; MacPhail, 1989; White, 1985). All three studies designed the intervention to be personally salient for the specific group of participants. For Henek (1980) this involved a women’s study course for a group of female undergraduates; for MacPhail (1989) it involved discussion of moral dilemmas concerning criminal and prison behaviors for a group of male prisoners; while for White (1985) it involved training in responsibility, cooperation, and autonomy in the context of a nursing training program for female trainee nurses. This suggests that the personal salience of the experience may be important for ego stage transition. Summary The conclusions that may be drawn from the intervention studies with respect to the processes involved in adult ego-stage transition are that ongoing ego development is possible in adulthood, including development beyond the Self-Aware ego stage. The properties of life experiences that are most likely to precipitate stage change, as represented by the intervention format, are those that are disequilibrating, cognitively and emotionally engaging, of an interpersonal nature, and personally salient. THEORY AND RESEARCH REGARDING MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN ADULTHOOD The research into moral stage development in adulthood is likely to be relevant for understanding the transition processes in adult ego development, particularly in the light of the theoretical parallels between ego and moral development (Lee & Snarey, 1988; Loevinger, 1986) and the established correlation between the two areas (Gfellner, 1986a, 1986b). The theory and research regarding adult moral stage transition are briefly reviewed for potential applications to adult ego development. Kohlberg has grounded his theory of justice structures in a Piagetian framework, and as a consequence he also adopts the Piagetian equilibration model of stage transition (Kohlberg, 1969; Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983; Piaget, 1977). Within this model, both stage of cognitive development

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

493

and life experiences are regarded as influencing adult moral development. Specifically, moral stage transition is viewed as an accommodative response to emotional and personal life experiences that involve responsibility and moral decision making, with cognitive stage serving as a pacer for moral stage (Kohlberg, 1973; Walker, 1986). The role of each of these two mediating variables is discussed in turn. Cognitive development is described as a pacer for moral development, based on the explicit theoretical assumption of structural parallels between the two domains (Kohlberg, 1969, 1973). Specific cognitive stages are hypothesised to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for transition to corresponding moral stages; a hypothesis that has been supported by a number of studies (Colby, 1973; Keasey, 1975; Kuhn et al., 1977; Tomlinson-Keasey & Keasey, 1974; Walker, 1980, 1986). With respect to adult development, completion of formal operations was found to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for transition to the adult stage of Principled moral reasoning (Colby, 1973; Walker, 1980, 1986). Kuhn et al. (1977) concluded their investigation into the relationship between logical and moral stages by saying that ‘‘logical operations appear to act as a ‘pacing’ mechanism in moral development, such that moral development never exceeds certain limits imposed by the individual’s level of logical operations. Thus, principled moral judgement never emerges in the absence of formal operational logical structures’’ (Kuhn et al., 1977, p. 178). The life experiences that are hypothesized to precipitate moral stage transition are not of a kind that simply represent new situations to which the existing moral logic can be dispassionately applied (Kohlberg, 1973). Rather, they are situations that are personally involving, that require recognition of the needs and rights of others, and that may elicit reflection on ideal rather than social standards of morality. An example of such an experience would be an unwanted pregnancy for an unmarried young couple, where a decision needs to be made about the future of the child and the relationship between the two parents. Walker (1986) investigated the role of both life experiences and cognitive development in adult moral development in a sample of 62 men and women who represented a wide range of ages and educational levels. The life experiences that were investigated were of the kind that Kohlberg hypothesized would be likely to promote moral development. They were joint decision making in the household, education, occupational type, and participation in groups. Cognitive development was assessed using an adaptation of the Piagetian isolation-of-variables task (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Kuhn & Ho, 1977). The findings supported the hypothesized role of life experiences and cognitive development, with life experiences being the better predictor of moral development. Gender differences were found in the type of experiences predicting moral development, which may reflect the differing personal

494

MANNERS AND DURKIN

salience of the experiences. Education alone predicted male moral development, while education plus involvement in domestic decision making predicted female moral development. While much of the research into psychological factors in adult moral development has focused on cognitive development because of the strong relationship between the two areas, defensive style has also been identified as influencing adult moral stage transition. Defensive style has been identified as significantly related to maturity of moral development in four studies that have each approached the issue in a different way. Haan (1977) differentiates between coping and defending as adaptive processes. Coping is an adaptive process that enables the person to cope with personally threatening experiences in a way that is reality oriented and freely chosen; whereas defending is an adaptive process that is reality distorting, concerned predominantly with relief of the anxiety induced by the threatening experience, and constitutes an involuntary response. Using this distinction, Haan (1978) found partial support for a significant relationship between coping processes and mature moral development among adolescents and mature adults. Lonky, Kaus, and Roodin (1984) based their study of coping processes and adult moral development on Gibbs’ (1979) reformulation of Kohlberg’s theory. Gibbs argued that the moral stages at and above the Principled stage did not meet the criteria for a true stage model and constituted existential stages that only emerge when the person has successfully addressed core human needs, such as those described by Fromm (1941, 1955). Lonky et al. (1984), using Fromm’s (1955) description of existential human needs and the positive and abortive ways that adults cope with them, devised a questionnaire to assess the extent to which adults used affirmative or abortive ways of coping with these needs in response to loss. They hypothesized that a positive coping style would be related to the existential moral stages and the abortive style with the standard stages. In a group of 30 women who had experienced a major loss or separation, their hypothesis was supported. Clearly, as cross-sectional studies, the findings from this study and that of Haan (1978) cannot necessarily be interpreted to suggest that positive coping leads to mature moral development. However, the results from a longitudinal study indicate that this interpretation is appropriate. Using Haan’s (1977) measure of coping, Hart and Chmiel (1992) found in a sample of 44 males that coping processes in adolescence predicted the maturity of Kohlbergian moral reasoning 10 to 20 years later. Summary The findings from the adult moral development research both lend support to some of the previous conclusions and add additional specific information. Within the framework of an equilibration model, the life experiences that precipitate stage development are not only personally involving, as with the previous conclusions, but also require recognition of the needs and feelings

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

495

of others and elicit reflection on aspects of stage development reasoning at a level higher than the existing stage. In terms of the psychological factors that mediate the effect of the life experiences, the moral development studies provide corroboration of the role of stage of cognitive development as well as more detail on the types of defence mechanisms that influence stage development. Defensive styles that do not involve distortion of the disequilibrating experiences [or Haan’s (1977) ‘‘coping’’] are more likely to lead to stage development in adulthood. THEORY AND RESEARCH REGARDING GENERAL PERSONALITY CHANGE IN ADULTHOOD There has been extensive theoretical and empirical debate over the question of whether personality remains stable or undergoes some changes through adulthood (Heatherington & Weinberger, 1994). For some psychologists, the conclusion is that personality remains the same throughout adulthood (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980, 1993), while for others, varying degrees of change are possible (e.g., Baumeister, 1994; Helson & Stewart, 1994; Kramer, 1989; Roberts, 1997). These differing conclusions appear to be a function of different definitions of the term ‘‘personality’’ and different models of human behavior (Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Heatherington & Nichols, 1994a; Johnson, Germer, Efran, & Overton, 1988; Kramer, 1993; Pervin, 1994). A reasonable conclusion from the diverse literature is that some aspects of personality can and do change during adulthood. Of interest for this article are the factors that have been identified that influence the extent and type of personality change that occurs and the relevance of these factors to ego stage development in adulthood. The research into personality change in adulthood has investigated change in various aspects of personality: personality traits as measured by inventories such as the CPI and Q-sort (Block, 1971; Helson & Wink, 1992); identity (Whitbourne, 1989); personal growth as manifested in generativity, complexity, integrity, and interiority at mid- to later life (Ryff & Dunn, 1985); values (Ryff, 1982; Ryff & Baltes, 1976); Ericksonian intimacy and generativity (Ryff & Migdal, 1984); behaviors (Prochaska, Velicer, Guadagnolli, Rossi, & DiClemente, 1991); and general characteristics (Heatherington & Nichols, 1994b). The primary factor that has been found to influence these aspects of personality change is the range and types of life experiences, which in turn, are reciprocally related to existing personality characteristics (Brim & Ryff, 1980; Danish, Smyer, & Nowak, 1982; Helson, 1993a; Magnusson, 1988; Whitbourne, 1989). Life Experiences The role of life events within lifespan developmental psychology has been discussed extensively (Brim & Ryff, 1980; Danish, Smyer, & Nowak, 1982). In terms of their effect on personality change in adulthood, it has been em-

496

MANNERS AND DURKIN

phasized that it is the properties of the life events, rather than the events per se, that are relevant for personal change (Helson et al., 1984; Hultsch & Plemons, 1980; Neugarten, 1968; Whitbourne, 1985). These properties include the cultural age appropriateness of the event (e.g., parenthood at 15 years of age compared to 25 years of age), the probability of occurrence (e.g., job promotion compared to quadriplegia as a result of a motor vehicle accident), the cultural appropriateness (e.g., women in the paid workforce in the 1950s compared to the 2000s), and the controllability (e.g., sudden serious illness compared to planned retirement). Variability in these properties of life events influences the subjective perception of the event and the range of skills involved in coping with the event (Whitbourne, 1985), which in turn influences the degree of personality change precipitated by the life event. For example, the culturally acceptable and usually age-appropriate life event of higher education has been found to result in some change in personality style (Winter, McClelland, & Stewart, 1981) and in identity status (McAdams & Fitch, 1983), but not in ego development (Billington, 1989; Loevinger et al., 1985; McAdams & Fitch, 1983; Solbach, 1991). In contrast, the probable although unexpected, relatively culturally acceptable, but highly threatening life event of divorce (Chiriboga & Catron, 1991) has been found to result in change in personality characteristics (Helson et al., 1984) as well as in ego development (Bursik, 1990). Particular life experiences appear to elicit particular personality characteristics, although this varies according to the properties of the experiences. For example, in the area of work, Kohn and Schooler (1973, 1978) have suggested that the complexity of the task has a significant psychological impact. Using both cross-sectional (Kohn & Schooler, 1973) and longitudinal (Kohn & Schooler, 1978) data on men in the workplace, Kohn and Schooler found support for their hypothesis, with the substantive complexity of the work being associated with increases in intellectual flexibility over a 10-year period. Among women in the workplace, Roberts (1997) found that both amount of participation and level of attainment in paid work had an impact on personality. In a longitudinal study, personality change was assessed over two age periods, 21–27 years, and 27–43 years. Work experience was not associated with personality change, as measured by the CPI, in the younger age period. However, in the second age period, participation in the work place was associated with an increase in interpersonal assurance, while higher levels of attainment were associated with an increase in both interpersonal assurance and self control and responsibility. Further, Howard and Bray (1988), in a 20-year longitudinal study of 266 male managers, found over the period an increase in autonomy and feelings of hostility, and a decline in ambition, need for friendship, and need for understanding of others. The results were interpreted in terms of the adaptation to the competitive and demanding climate of managerial roles. These findings clearly demonstrate that personality continues to develop well into midlife and that aspects

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

497

of the life experience of work play an important role in the type and extent of personality change. Stewart and Vandewater (1993; Vandewater & Stewart, 1995) compared the psychological effect at midlife of women pursuing either the then- (that is, the 1960s) socially accepted ‘‘social clock’’ of marriage and family or the less socially accepted option of a career.5 It was found that women who had followed the social clock were characterized at midlife by introversion, interpersonal warmth and connectedness, and had earlier development of Ericksonian generativity concerns. In contrast, women who pursued a career were characterized at midlife by assertiveness and extraversion and were still dealing with Ericksonian identity rather than generativity concerns. The findings from the Mills Longitudinal study of women provide a wealth of information about personality change from early to middle adulthood and the role of life experiences in these changes (Helson, 1993b; Helson et al., 1984; Helson & Moane, 1987; Helson & Picano, 1990; Roberts, 1997; Wink & Helson, 1993). In this research project, women were studied in their late teens in 1958 and 1960, in their mid-20s in 1963 and 1964, their early 40s in 1981, and in their early 50s in 1989. A sample of these studies is briefly discussed to illustrate the effect of life experiences on personality change in adulthood. Helson et al. (1984) investigated the effect on personality of two different problems in adherence to the social clock. Adherence or departure from the social clock with regard to marriage was hypothesized to have repercussions for subsequent personality change. In this cohort, divorce represented a departure, although not necessarily a voluntary one, from the social clock. Helson et al. found that women who had departed from the social clock by divorcing before their mid-30s showed an increase in impulse control and psychological mindedness from when they were in their early 20s to when they were in their mid-40s, while those who had adhered to the social clock in remaining within their marriage, but were frustrated and unsatisfied within it, showed a decline over the same period in the majority of the personality characteristics of the CPI: confidence, participation, poise, sociability, social presence, empathy, well-being, and intellectual efficiency. Wink and Helson (1993) demonstrated that, among women from this age cohort, the changing role for women during the period of study was also an important factor in personality change over the 25 years from early to middle adulthood. While women with high levels of attainment in paid work increased more in forcefulness and independence than other women, increases were shown by most women, regardless of work status, in competence, selfconfidence, and independence. Helson and Picano (1990) investigated whether adherence to the traditional role that was undergoing change during the period of study had a deleterious effect on women’s well-being. The 5 For a description of the concept of the ‘‘social clock’’ and of the social clock research project, see Helson et al. (1984), Helson and McCabe (1994), and Neugarten (1968).

498

MANNERS AND DURKIN

results indicated that those women who had adhered to the traditional role into their early 40s experienced a significant decline in well-being and a significant increase in self-control, but did not change in effective functioning. Those who had not adhered to this role experienced no significant change in well-being, effective functioning, or self-control, but increased significantly in independence and assertion. Negative life events, such as divorce, appear to be more likely to precipitate change than positive events, but according to how they are perceived. Ryff and Dunn (1985) found that personal growth was best predicted by the experience of stressful life events which were interpreted positively rather than negatively and were perceived as being at the right time in the person’s life. Heatherington and Nichols (1994b) found, in a phenomenological study of adults’ reports of successful and unsuccessful personal change attempts, that those who successfully changed were significantly more likely to report the change as a response to a threatening focal event (such as a threat to physical or mental health) and as associated with a significantly greater degree of extreme negative emotion or suffering which subsequently changed to a positive emotion. The process by which life events precipitate personality change has been theoretically detailed in essentially similar ways by Block (1982) and Whitbourne (1989). Block’s reformulation of Piaget’s equilibration model has already been described above. Whitbourne (1989) also applies the Piagetian equilibration model in her focus on the development of identity in adulthood. Identity is defined broadly as ‘‘the integration of the physical characteristics, abilities, motives, goals, attitudes, values, and social roles that the individual attributes over time as belonging to the self’’ (Whitbourne, 1989, p. 179). For Whitbourne (1989), adult identity, stability, and change occur according to whether the person assimilates or accommodates information from life experiences that is divergent from existing self-perceptions in relation to any of the aspects of identity. Specifically planned identity changes, such as choosing to change one’s goals or roles, are not overlooked, but life experiences are more likely to be the precipitant for change, even with planned identity changes. The life experiences may be self-initiated, such as a job change that provides a greater degree of personal challenge or moving to live away from urban pressures. Alternatively, they may be externally imposed at a personal or social level, such as sudden illness, retrenchment, disasters, or social movements (e.g., feminism, gay rights, economic rationalism). Unwanted life experiences require more adaptation than self-initiated experiences (Whitbourne, 1985). Personality Factors Existing personality characteristics and life events interact in complex ways to result in personality change and stability (Caspi, 1987, 1993; Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Caspi (1993) has delineated two ways in which personal-

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

499

ity factors interact with life experiences that has relevance for understanding personality change in adulthood. The first is proactive interaction, where personality factors influence the range and type of life events that are experienced, and in turn, those that are experienced influence personality characteristics. The second is reactive interaction, where personality factors influence the perception of and response to the life events, and this perception and response, in turn, influences personality characteristics. Proactive interaction between personality factors and life events. In terms of proactive interaction, extensive longitudinal research projects into personality development, such as those which have followed women who attended university in the 1950s and 1960s (Hulbert & Schuster, 1993), have demonstrated that personality characteristics at adolescence and early adulthood influence the types of life experiences in later adulthood, which in turn influence personality changes in middle adulthood. For example, in the Mills longitudinal study of women who attended university in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Helson et al. (1984) found that women who chose to adhere to the social clock in a nontraditional manner by pursuing a career following the birth of their children showed different personality characteristics in their university years than those who chose the traditional path of not pursuing a career. Those who chose the nontraditional path were higher on dominance, self-acceptance and capacity for status, and many of them expressed a need for more challenges and excitement. Also, the women who departed from the social clock project by divorcing before their mid-30s were more concerned with autonomy and assertion of individual needs and less concerned with conventional values. The personality trait of openness to experience (Costa & McCrae, 1978, 1980; McCrae & Costa, 1985) may be expected to proactively interact with life experiences to result in personality change. Openness to experience involves a willingness to seek out and take in different facets of emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic experiences together with a need for variety in different areas of life. The exposure to such a diversity of life experiences would increase the probability of personality change. Some equivocal support for this hypothesis may be found in the research into the relationship between openness to experience and life experiences (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Headey & Wearing, 1989; McCrae, 1993; Whitbourne, 1985). In their large study of adult males, Costa and McCrae (1980) found that openness to experience was significantly related to the occurrence of major life events over the previous 10 years, such as moving house, becoming separated or divorced, and work changes. This represented a retrospective approach, and the finding was not replicated using a predictive approach with a sample of males and females (Whitbourne, 1985). Whitbourne (1985) conducted a 12-month longitudinal study of the effect among 57 males and females of openness to experience and identity flexibility on voluntary life changes over the following 12 months. The life changes included self-initi-

500

MANNERS AND DURKIN

ated psychological changes such as altering the self-perception and making self-initiated changes in family or work situation. Involuntary changes, such as illness, dismissal from work, or involuntary marital separation, were not included. Using this definition, education, but not openness to experience, was predictive of life change. Whitbourne (1985) interpreted this difference from Costa and McCrae’s (1980) finding as possibly due to a smaller sample size and to Costa and McCrae not including education in their analysis. Education may be the more powerful predictor of life changes as a result of the greater opportunities for life changes that is provided by higher levels of education. A larger sample size was employed in the study by Headey and Wearing (1989) of subjective well-being as a function of personality traits and life events. In a sample of 649 Australian females and males, they found that the number of life events experienced was a function of both age and personality traits. With respect to the personality trait of openness to experience, scores for younger adults on the subdimension of openness to feelings were correlated significantly with the number of favorable and adverse life experiences. This pattern did not hold for older adults, who experienced fewer events of either a favorable or adverse nature. Headey and Wearing’s (1989) study was similar to that of Costa and McCrae (1980) in employing a retrospective approach to assessing life events and in combining voluntary and involuntary life events, but different from both of the other studies in assessing only one subdimension of openness to experience, openness to feelings. Finally, McCrae (1993) investigated whether a high level of openness to experience in adulthood, as it involves both a seeking out of new life experiences and a deeper degree of processing of the experiences, may predict changes in other personality traits. Analysis of test–retest consistency in Neuroticism and Extraversion over a 6-year period, and Agreeableness and Conscientiousness over a 3-year period, showed no evidence of the moderating effect of openness to experience. These findings do not necessarily suggest that openness does not moderate changes in other aspects of personality. For example, as McCrae (1993) suggested, openness may influence changes in other aspects such as attitudes, identity status, or relationships. As ego development represents a substantially different approach to personality than the five-factor trait approach (Loevinger, 1993, 1994; McAdams, 1992; Costa & McCrae, 1980, 1993), with only openness to experience being found to have a significant correlation with ego development (McCrae & Costa, 1980), it remains unclear whether openness may moderate changes in ego stage. Clearly, the conflicting findings from these three studies indicate the need for further investigation with a large sample of males and females, using the full openness to experience score as a predictor of subsequent life changes. However, as two of the three studies involved large samples and found a significant relationship between openness to experience and life events, there

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

501

does appear to be some tentative support for the way in which personality characteristics may influence the degree of exposure to disequilibrating life experiences and hence the probability of personality change. Reactive interaction between personality factors and life events. In terms of reactive interaction, there has been a limited amount of theorizing and research regarding the way in which personality factors may influence the perception of and response to life events, which in turn influences personality change. Block (1982) theorized that personality factors may influence the preference for either assimilation or accommodation as a response to disequilibrating life events, resulting either in personality stability or change, but this has not been the subject of empirical investigation. Baumeister (1994) discussed the role of attribution in the perception of, and response to, life experiences. Attributional processes and selective attention enable people to maintain stable self-perceptions, relationship patterns, and belief systems. This means that information that is discrepant from the existing perception of the self, the other, or the belief system is explained in such a way as to not challenge the existing perception. For example, a self-perception as a caring and patient person may be maintained despite feelings of resentment toward a loved one by attributing the feelings to the self ‘‘just being stupid,’’ while attributing a partner’s irritable behavior to temporary stress rather than to a character trait enables the preservation of the perception of the partner as caring and thoughtful as well as the harmony of the relationship. This stability is threatened when these attribution processes can no longer be maintained and there occurs what Baumeister (1994) termed a ‘‘crystallization of discontent.’’ The crystallization represents the forming of associative links between all the pieces of discrepant information, rendering it difficult to continue with the existing perception of the self, the relationship, or the belief system. For example, the irritable behavior of a partner or the erratic behavior of a religious leader comes to be seen as part of a pattern in their behavior. This crystallization of discontent results in the need to reevaluate the existing perception, which may be resolved in different ways, including changes in personality, relationships, and belief systems. For example, the crystallization of discontent in relation to the self-perception as patient and caring may result in a recognition of the normality of contradictory emotions, the complexity of interpersonal relationships, and hence development to the Conscientious stage of ego development. Within this understanding of the change process, it may be difficult to identify a specific life experience that precipitates personality change, as the experience may represent the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Some empirical support for Baumeister’s (1994) thesis is found in the research by Heatherington and Nichols (1994b), described above. Successful change attempts were found to be significantly more likely than unsuccessful attempts to have occurred in response to experiences that represented crystallization of discontent.

502

MANNERS AND DURKIN

The study by Heatherington and Nichols (1994b) also provides some further insight into the psychological factors that may reactively interact with life events. Those who successfully changed were found to be significantly more likely to report greater control over their behavior and over the ability to change. This suggests that varying degrees of perceived self efficacy or internal locus of control may influence whether personality change or stability occurs as a response to life events. Some personality characteristics in early adulthood have been found to influence subsequent personality change, without any explicit link between the characteristics and life experiences, but appear to enable the person to be more flexible and open to changes. For example, Helson and McCabe (1994) found that ego-identity status at midlife influenced the degree of successful life changes, with women classified as Achieved or in Moratorium found to make more successful life changes than did women classified as Foreclosed or Diffuse. This finding was interpreted in terms of the women who were Achieved or in Moratorium being more flexible in their self-definition and so more open to change. Also, planfulness in adolescence has been found to predict stability in adulthood (Block, 1971; Clausen, 1993), which may be indicative of a careful and cautious approach to change. Summary The theory and research into personality change in adulthood provides further clarification of the equilibration model as outlined by Block (1982) and Appley (1990) as well as additional information regarding the types of life experiences and psychological factors that may influence ego-stage transition. Stability of ego structures may be maintained not only by assimilation (Block, 1982; Whitbourne, 1989), but also by attribution processes and selective attention that result in the disequilibrating information not impacting on the existing structure (Baumeister, 1994). The properties of life experiences are the determining factor in personality change, and the properties that have been found to have the most effect on change are the degree of personal salience, emotional engagement, and accommodative challenge and the perceived degree of stress or threat in the experience. Psychological factors interact with life experiences by influencing the types of experiences that the person is exposed to (proactive interaction) and the way in which the experience is perceived and responded to (reactive interaction). Personality characteristics that involve the pursuit of challenges, openness to new experiences, and self-acceptance have been found to influence the types of life experiences; the factors that influence the perception of, and the response to, the experience appear to be a sense of self-efficacy and internal locus of control, a self-system that is flexible and open to change, and whether the experience represents the crystallization of a number of previous, related experiences.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

503

CONCLUSIONS REGARDING THE PROCESSES INVOLVED IN ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT: A PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND CONSEQUENT RESEARCH HYPOTHESES On the basis of the review of these four areas of theory and research, some conclusions may now be drawn regarding a proposed conceptual framework to explain the processes involved in adult ego-stage transition. The conclusions, together with testable research hypotheses that follow from them, are outlined below. 1. Stage stability is not an inherent characteristic of adult ego development, and ongoing ego development is possible in adulthood. It follows that naturalistic, clinical, and experimental studies should be able to detect transitions among adults under certain circumstances. Longitudinal studies (such as those of Bursik, 1990; and Loevinger et al., 1985) and experimental studies (such as those of Alexander et al., 1990; and MacPhail, 1989) have indeed confirmed that adults can undergo ego-stage development. 2. Ego-stage transition represents an accommodative response to particular types of self-initiated or externally prompted life experiences. These types of experiences are those that are disequilibrating in relation to existing ego structures, personally salient, emotionally engaging, and of an interpersonal nature and represent emotional challenges that are amenable to positive interpretation. Specifying these types of experience provides a basis for experimental interventions. For example, a program may be designed to be disequilibrating by being structured at a higher ego stage than that of the participants. Evidence from moral developmental research suggests that the optimal strategy is one in which the intervention is structured to be one level higher than the participant’s current status (Turiel, 1966), though this remains to be tested in the context of ego development. Any such program would need to also incorporate the nonstructural characteristics specified above. It would be predicted from this proposed conceptual framework that programs would be more likely to precipitate ego-stage transition when they incorporate these characteristics. It is also predicted that real-life experiences with the above characteristics can lead to ego-stage transition for some people. Hence, field studies based on identifying relevant circumstances have the potential to be rich sources of information on ego-stage development. Invaluable research paradigms for such investigations are provided by the studies discussed above regarding the effect of particular types of life experiences on personality change (for example, Kohn & Schooler, 1973, 1978; Roberts, 1997; Ryff & Dunn, 1985; Wink & Helson, 1993) and on moral development (for example, Walker, 1986). Clinical developmentalists should also be aware of the effect on their clients of exposure to experiences with the above characteristics. Clients who

504

MANNERS AND DURKIN

are undergoing such experiences may be consequently in the process of egostage transition. Further, the process of psychotherapy itself may represent such an experience for the client, with resultant ego-stage transition (Rogers, 1961; Teyber, 1997). 3. Individual differences influence the degree of exposure to potentially disequilibrating life experiences. Research discussed above indicates that certain psychological characteristics incline people to seek out such experiences and to feel confident of their ability to respond to them. These include self-acceptance, the desire for challenge, and openness to new experiences. A substantial body of longitudinal research already demonstrates that personality factors mediate life experiences by affecting the likelihood that an individual will seek, invite, or avoid particular types of events (Helson et al., 1984; Hulbert & Schuster, 1993). Helson and Roberts’ (1994) longitudinal study, discussed above, shows the relevance of this consideration to ego development. Future research could usefully investigate whether the specific psychological characteristics identified here influence the degree of subsequent exposure to what Helson and Roberts term ‘‘accommodatively challenging life experiences.’’ 4. Individual differences influence whether particular life experiences are perceived as disequilibrating and, if they are, whether the disequilibrium is resolved by assimilation or accommodation. Personality attributes influence not only the likelihood of exposure to potentially disequilibrating life experiences but also how they are interpreted and which manner of response is enacted. Whether the life experience is perceived as disequilibrating will be influenced by the degree to which the person has the cognitive capacity to grasp the level of complexity in the experience, by the tendency to employ a reality-oriented rather than realitydistorting defensive style, and by the perception of the relationship between this experience and others (for example, does he or she perceive it as a crystallization of discontent in relation to similar previous experiences? Is it perceived as part of a meaningful pattern or as a random event?). If the experience is perceived as disequilibrating, then personality factors will influence whether the person responds with accommodation or assimilation. Accommodation is a more likely response among individuals who have a high degree of openness to experience, nondistortive adaptive processes, internal locus of control, and a sense of personal mastery and self-efficacy. Assimilation is a more likely response among those who are lower on these characteristics. The hypothesized effects of these specific psychological characteristics on the perception of and response to life experiences are important issues in understanding the variability in stage of ego development among adults. They are amenable to empirical investigation in longitudinal and experimental designs in field or laboratory settings. For example, longitudinal evidence of the effect of divorce on ego-stage transition, already established by Bursik

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

505

(1990), could be extended in new research by focusing on the individual differences proposed here to mediate the effects of the experience on stage transition. Intervention programs, designed to promote ego-stage development, could be evaluated with reference to the characteristics of the participants: certain characteristics, specified above, should predict readiness to change. To conclude, Loevinger’s (1994, p. 4) comment that ‘‘There is no generally accepted theory of what accounts for progress in ego development’’ highlighted critical theoretical and empirical gaps in the literature on adult ego development. We have argued in this article that recent work puts us in a better position to address the gaps. There is increasing evidence that progress in ego development does occur through adult life, yet there is also evidence that many adults stabilize by early adulthood. We have proposed that, to understand the processes involved in stage transition and stability, researchers need to attend to the precipitating experiences and the ways in which people perceive and respond to the experiences. We have suggested that individual differences will affect the kinds of experiences encountered and the kinds of strategies deployed in interpreting and adjusting to them. We have outlined specific empirical questions and predictions that arise from the framework offered here and noted that research paradigms that have already proved very productive in the study of adult development could readily be extended to enrich our understanding of the processes of ego-stage transition. Empirical investigation of these questions and predictions provides an exciting opportunity to further our understanding of personality development through the life span. REFERENCES Adams, G. R., & Fitch, S. A. (1983). Psychological environments of university departments: Effects on college students’ identity status and ego stage development. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1266–1275. Alexander, C. N., Davies, J. L., Dixon, C. A., Dillbeck, M. C., Druker, S. M., Oetzel, R. M., Muehlman, J. M., & Orme-Johnson, D. W. (1990). Growth of higher stages of consciousness: Maharishi’s Vedic psychology of human development. In A. Alexander, R. M. Oetzel, & J. M. Muehlman (Eds.), Higher stages of human development: Adult growth beyond formal operations. New York: Oxford University Press. Altman, I., & Rogoff, B. (1987). World views in psychology: Trait, interactional, organismic, and transactional perspectives. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Wiley. Appley, M. H. (1990). Motivation, equilibration, and stress. In R. Dienstbier (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation: Vol. 38. Perspectives on motivation. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Arbuthnot, J. (1984). Moral reasoning development programs in prison: Cognitive developmental and critical reasoning approaches. Journal of Moral Education, 13, 112–123. Basseches, M. (1984). Dialectical thinking and adult development. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Baumeister, R. F. (1994). The crystallization of discontent in the process of major life changes.

506

MANNERS AND DURKIN

In T. F. Heatherington & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Biekle, P. A. W. (1979). The relationship of maternal ego development to parenting behavior and attitudes. Dissertation Abstracts International, 40, 4519B. Billington, D. D. (1989). Ego development and continuing education: The effects of intellectual stimulation, motivation, gender, time, and traditional versus self-directed learning programs. Dissertation Abstracts International, 49, 1665A. Blanchard-Fields, F. (1986). Reasoning on social dilemmas varying on emotional saliency: An adult developmental perspective. Psychology and Aging, 1, 325–333. Blasi, A. (1998). Loevinger’s theory of ego development and its relationship to the cognitivedevelopmental approach. In P. M. Westenberg, A. Blasi, & L. D. Cohn (Eds.), Personality development: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical investigations of Loevinger’s conception of ego development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Blatt, M., & Kohlberg, L. (1975). The effects of classroom moral discussion upon children’s level of moral judgement. Journal of Moral Education, 4, 129–161. Block, J. (1971). Studying lives through time. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft Books. Block, J. (1982). Assimilation, accommodation, and the dynamics of personality development. Child Development, 53, 281–295. Blumentritt, T., Novy, D. M., Gaa, J. P., & Liberman, D. (1996). Effects of maximum performance instructions on the Sentence Completion Test of ego development. Journal of Personality Assessment, 51, 79–89. Brim, O. G., & Ryff, C. D. (1980). On the properties of life events. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press. Broughton, J. M. (1980). Genetic metaphysics: The developmental psychology of mind-body concepts. In R. Rieber (Ed.), Body and mind. New York: Academic Press. Broughton, J., & Zahaykevich, M. K. (1988). Ego and ideology: A critical review of Loevinger’s theory. In D. K. Lapsley & F. Clark Powers (Eds.), Self, ego and identity: Integrative approaches. New York: Springer-Verlag. Bursik, K. (1991). Adaptation to divorce and ego development in adult women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 300–306. Bushe, G. R., & Gibbs, B. W. (1990). Predicting organization development consulting competence from the Myers–Briggs type indicator and stage of ego development. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 26, 337–357. Callanan, R. A. E. (1986). Moral reasoning and ego development as factors in counselling. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47, 2455A. Campbell, D. T., & Stanley, J. C. (1963). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally. Caspi, A. (1987). Personality in the life course. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1203–1213. Caspi, A. (1993). Why maladaptive behaviors persist: Sources of continuity and change across the life course. In D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. Tomlinson-Keasey, & K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: Personality and development. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Chiriboga, D. A., & Catron, L. S. (1991). Divorce stress and adaptation. In D. A. Chiriboga, L. S. Catron, et al. (Eds.), Divorce: Crisis, challenge or relief. New York: New York Univ. Press. Clausen, J. A. (1993). American lives: Looking back at the children of the great depression. New York: Free Press.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

507

Colby, A. (1973). Logical operational limitations on the development of moral judgement. Dissertation Abstracts International, 34, 2331B. Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgement. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 48, 1. Commons, M. L., Armon, C., Richards, F. A., & Schrader, D. E. (1989). A multi-domain study of adult development. In M. L. Commons et al. (Eds.), Adult development: Vol. 1. Comparisons and applications of developmental models. New York: Praeger. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1978). Objective Personality Assessment. In M. Storadt, I. E. Siegler, & M. F. Elias (Eds.), The clinical psychology of aging. New York: Plenum. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1980). Still stable after all these years: Personality as a key to some issues in adulthood and old age. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1993). Ego development and trait models of personality. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 20–23. Danish, S. J., Smyer, M. A., & Nowak, C. A. (1980). Developmental intervention: enhancing life-event processes. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press. Dayton, L. S. (1981). The relationship between ego development of mothers and their emotional, social and cognitive support of their children. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 2127B. deVries, B., & Walker, L. J. (1986). Moral reasoning and attitudes toward capital punishment. Developmental Psychology, 22, 509–513. Durkin, K. (1995). Developmental social psychology: From infancy to old age. Oxford: Blackwell. Erickson, V. L. (1990). Deliberate Psychological Education for women: A curriculum followup study. In V. L. Erickson & J. M. Whitely (Eds.), Developmental counselling and teaching. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Farrell, G. E. P. (1974). The relation of ego development to intellectual and ethical development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 35, 4648–4649B. Fromm, E. (1941). The sane society. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Fromm, E. (1955). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Furth, H. G. (1981). Piaget and knowledge (2nd ed.). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Gast, H. L. (1984). The relationship between stages of ego development and developmental stages of health self care operations. Dissertation Abstracts International, 44, 3039B. Gfellner, R. (1986a). Ego development and moral development in relation to age and grade level during adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 15, 147–163. Gfellner, R. (1986b). Changes in ego and moral development in adolescents: A longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescence, 9, 281–302. Gibbs, J. C. (1979). Kohlberg’s moral stage theory: A Piagetian revision. Human Development, 22, 89–112. Givens, A. (1985). An examination of the relationship between ego development and managerial competencies. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 688–689B. Green, E. G. (1984). A study to determine the value of a seminar designed to facilitate adult development and learning through prior learning assessment. Dissertation Abstracts International, 45, 1267–1268A. Haan, N. (1977). Coping and defending: Processes of self-environment organization. New York: Academic Press.

508

MANNERS AND DURKIN

Haan, N. (1978). Two moralities in action contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 255–270. Hart, D., & Chmiel, S. (1992). Influence of defense mechanisms on moral judgement development: A longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 28, 722–730. Hartke, J. M. (1980). Ego development, cognitive style, and the EST standard training. Dissertation Abstracts International, 41, 353B. Headey, B., & Wearing, A. (1989). Personality, life events, and subjective well-being: Toward a dynamic equilibrium model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 731– 739. Heatherington, T. F., & Nichols, P. A. (1994a). Conceptual issues in assessing whether personality can change. In T. F. Heatherington & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Heatherington, T. F., & Nichols, P. A. (1994b). Personal accounts of successful versus failed attempts at life change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 664–675. Heatherington, T. F., & Weinberger, J. L. (Eds.) (1994). Can personality change? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Helson, R. (1993a). Comparing longitudinal studies of adult development: Toward a paradigm of tension between stability and change. In D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. TomlinsonKeasey, & K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: Personality and development. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Helson, R. (1993b). The Mills classes of 1958 and 1960: College in the fifties, young adulthood in the sixties. In D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. Tomlinson-Keasey, & K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying lives through time: Personality and development. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Helson, R., & McCabe, L. (1994). The social clock project in middle age. In B. F. Turner & L. E. Troll (Eds.), Women growing older: Psychological perspectives. London: Sage. Helson, R., & Picano, J. (1990). Is the traditional role bad for women? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 311–320. Helson, R., & Roberts, B. W. (1994). Ego development and personality change in adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 911–920. Helson, R., & Stewart, A. (1994). Personality change in adulthood. In T. F. Heatherington & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Helson, R., & Wink, P. (1987). Two conceptions of maturity examined in the findings of a longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 531–541. Henek, T. (1980). The impact of women’s study courses on female ego development and attitudes toward women. Dissertation Abstracts International, 41, 2357B. Holt, R. R. (1980). Loevinger’s measure of ego development: Reliability and national norms for male and female short forms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 909– 920. Howard, A., & Bray, D. (1988). Managerial lives in transition: Advancing age and changing times. New York: Guilford. Hulbert, K. D., & Schuster, D. T. (Eds.) (1993). Women’s lives through time: Educated women of the twentieth century. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Hultsch, D. R., & Plemons, J. K. (1979). Life events and life span development. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press. Hunsberger, P. H. (1980). The relationship of ego development to counsellor training and counsellor effectiveness. Dissertation Abstracts International, 41, 1918B.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

509

Hurt, B. L. (1990). Psychological Education for teacher-education students: A cognitive-developmental curriculum. In V. L. Erickson & J. M. Whitely (Eds.), Developmental counselling and teaching. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Hy, L. X., & Loevinger, J. (1998). Measuring ego development (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. New York: Basic Books. Johnson, J. A., Germer, C. K., Efran, J. S., & Overton, W. F. (1988). Personality as the basis for theoretical predilections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 824–835. Jurich, J., & Holt, R. (1987). Effects of modified instructions on the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Journal of Personality Assessment, 51, 186–193. Keasey, C. B. (1975). Implicators of cognitive development for moral reasoning. In D. J. DePalma & J. M. Foley (Eds.), Moral development: Current theory and research. New York: Wiley. King, P. M., Kitchener, K. S., Wood, P. K., & Davison, M. L. (1989). Relationships across developmental lines: A longitudinal study of intellectual, moral and ego development. In M. L. Commons, J. D. Sinott, F. A. Richards, & C. Armon (Eds.), Adult development: Vol. 1. Comparisons and applications of developmental models. New York: Praeger. Kitchener, K. S., & King, P. M. (1981). Reflective judgement: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2, 89–116. Kohlberg, L. (1969). A cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization. Chicago: Rand McNally. Kohlberg, L. (1973). Continuities in childhood and adult moral development revisited. In P. B. Baltes & K. W. Schaie (Eds.), Life-span developmental psychology: Personality and socialization. New York: Academic Press. Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1983). Moral stages: A current formulation and a response to critics. Basel: Karger. Kohn, M. (1977). Class and conformity: A study in values. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Kohn, M. (1980). Job complexity and adult personality. In N. Smelser & E. H. Erickson (Eds.), Themes of love and work in adulthood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Kohn, M., & Schooler, C. (1973). Occupational experience and psychological functioning: An assessment of reciprocal effects. American Sociological Review, 38, 97–118. Kohn, M., & Schooler, C. (1978). The reciprocal effects of the substantive complexity of work and intellectual flexibility: A longitudinal assessment. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 24–52. Kramer, D. A. (1989). Development of an awareness of contradiction across the lifespan and the question of post formal operations. In M. L. Commons, J. D. Sinott, F. A. Richards, & C. Armon (Eds.), Adult development: Vol. 1. Comparisons and applications of developmental models. New York: Praeger. Kramer, D. A. (1993). The ‘‘tale’’ of the elephant; or, construction of theories about personality and the life course. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 291–295. Kramer, D. A., & Woodruff, D. S. (1986). Relativistic and dialectical thought in three adult age groups. Human Development, 29, 280–290. Kuhn, D., & Ho, V. (1977). The development of schemes for recognizing additive and alternative effects in a ‘natural experiment’ context. Developmental Psychology, 13, 515–516. Kuhn, D., Langer, J., Kohlberg, L., & Haan, N. (1977). The development of formal operations in logical and moral development. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 95, 97–188.

510

MANNERS AND DURKIN

Kwasnick, D. T. (1982). The effect of a Deliberate Psychological Education course on ego, moral and empathy development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 3807B. Labouvie-Vief, G. (1982). Dynamic development and mature autonomy. Human Development, 25, 161–191. Labouvie-Vief, G., & Diehl, M. (1998). The role of ego development in the adult self. In P. M. Westenberg, A. Blasi, & L. D. Cohn (Eds.), Personality development: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical investigations of Loevinger’s conception of ego development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Lawrence, J. A. (1980). Moral judgement intervention studies using the Defining Issues Test. Journal of Moral Education, 9, 178–191. Lee, L., & Snarey, J. (1988). The relationship between ego and moral development: A theoretical review and empirical analysis. In D. K. Lapsley & F. Clark Power (Eds.), Self, ego and identity: Integrative approaches. New York: Springer-Verlag. Leiper, R. N. (1982). The relationship of cognitive developmental structures to the formation of ego identity in young men. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 4243–4244B. Lerner, R. M., & Galambos, N. L. (1998). Adolescent development: Challenges, opportunities for research, programs, and policies. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 413–446. Loevinger, J. (1973). Ego development: Syllabus for a course. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, 2, 77–98. Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Loevinger, J. (1983). On ego development and the structure of personality. Developmental Review, 3, 339–350. Loevinger, J. (1986). On Kohlberg’s contribution to ego development. In S. Mogdill & C. Mogdill (Eds.), Kohlberg: Consensus and controversy. Brighton, England: Falmer. Loevinger, J. (1987). Paradigms of personality. New York: Freeman. Loevinger, J. (1993). Measurement of personality: True or false? Psychological Inquiry, 4, 1–16. Loevinger, J. (1994). Has psychology lost its conscience? Journal of Personality Assessment, 62, 2–8. Loevinger, J., Cohn, L. D., Bonneville, L. P., Redmore, C. D., Streich, D. D., & Sargent, M. (1985). Ego development in college. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 947–962. Loevinger, J., & Wessler, R. (1970). Measuring ego development (Vol. 1). San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Loevinger, J., Wessler, R., & Redmore, C. (1970). Measuring ego development (Vol. 2). San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Loevinger, J., & Hy, L. X. et al. (1989). Measuring ego development: Supplementary manual & exercises. Unpublished manuscript, Washington University. Lonky, E., Kaus, C. R., & Roodin, P. A. (1984). Life experience and mode of coping: Relation to moral judgement in adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 20, 1159–1167. Luzzi, J. A. (1984). The role of cognitive complexity in adolescent ego development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 45, 129A. MacPhail, D. D. (1989). The moral education approach in treating adult inmates. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 16, 81–97. Magnusson, D. (1988). Individual development from an interactional perspective: A longitudinal study. In D. Magnusson (Ed.), Paths through life (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Maslin, B. L. (1980). The effect of role playing on change in ego development levels. Dissertation Abstracts International, 40, 5932B.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

511

Mattei, N. M. (1979). Education for ego and sex role development in young women. Dissertation Abstracts International, 40, 2556A. McAdams, D. P. (1985). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. Illinois: Dorsey Press. McCrae, R. R. (1993). Moderated analyses of longitudinal personality stability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 577–585. McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1980). Openness to experience and ego level in Loevinger’s Sentence Completion Test: Dispositional contributions to developmental models of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1179–1190. McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1985). Openness to experience. In R. Hogan & N. H. Jones (Eds.), Perspectives in personality (Vol. 1). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Meikle, D. T. (1982). Formal operations, ego defenses, and mature personality development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 43, 1238B. Merron, K. A. (1986). The relationship between ego development and managerial effectiveness under conditions of high uncertainty. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 3090A. Michaelson, C. B. (1985). An exploratory study of the health belief model and ego development in predicting health related actions in the aged. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 1694B. Murray, F. B. (1983). Equilibration as cognitive conflict. Developmental Review, 3, 54–61. Neugarten, B. L. (1968). Adult personality: Toward a psychology of the life cycle. In B. L. Neugarten (Ed.), Middle age and aging. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Noam, G. G. (1998). Solving the ego development-mental health riddle. In P. M. Westenberg, A. Blasi, & L. D. Cohn (Eds.), Personality development: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical investigations of Loevinger’s conception of ego development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Noam, G. G., & Dill, D. L. (1991). Adult development and symptomatology. Psychiatry, 54, 208–217. Novy, D. M. (1993). An investigation of the progressive sequence of ego development levels. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49, 332–338. Oja, S. N. (1979). A cognitive-structural approach to adult ego, moral, and conceptual development through inservice teacher education. Dissertation Abstracts International, 39, 5356A. Perry, W. G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Pervin, L. A. (1994). Personality stability, personality change, and the question of process. In T. F. Heatherington & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Univ. Press. Piaget, J. (1970). Piaget’s theory. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael’s manual of child psychology (Vol. 1, 3rd ed.). New York: Wiley. Piaget, J. (1977). The development of thought: Equilibration of cognitive structures. London: Basil Blackwell. Prochaska, J. O., Velicer, W. F., Guadagnolli, E., Rossi, J. S., & DiClemente, C. C. (1991). Patterns of change: Dynamic typology applied to smoking cessation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 26, 83–107. Redmore, C. (1983). Ego development in the college years: Two longitudinal studies. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 12, 301–306.

512

MANNERS AND DURKIN

Redmore, C., & Loevinger, J. (1979). Ego development in adolescence: Longitudinal studies. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 8, 1–20. Redmore, C., & Waldman, K. (1975). Reliability of a sentence completion measure of ego development. Journal of Personality Assessment, 39, 236–242. Roberts, B. W. (1997). Plaster or plasticity: Are work experiences associated with personality change in women? Journal of Personality, 65, 205–232. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rogers, J. M. (1993). A program of Deliberate Psychological Education for undergraduate females in engineering through role taking. Dissertation Abstracts International, 54, 1682A. Ryff, C. D. (1982). Self perceived personality change in adulthood and aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 108–115. Ryff, C. D. (1985). Adult personality development and the motivation for personal growth. In D. A. Kleiber & M. L. Maehr (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement: Vol. 4. Motivation in adulthood. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Ryff, C. D., & Baltes, P. B. (1976). Value transitions and adult development in women: The instrumentality-terminality sequence hypothesis. Developmental Psychology, 12, 567– 568. Ryff, C. D., & Dunn, D. D. (1985). A life-span developmental approach to the study of stressful events. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 6, 113–127. Ryff, C. D., & Migdal, S. (1984). Intimacy and generativity: Self perceived transitions. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 9, 470–481. Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype-environment correlations. Child Development, 54, 424–435. Snarey, J., Kohlberg, L., & Noam, G. G. (1983). Ego development in perspective: Structural stage, functional phase, and cultural age period. Developmental Review, 3, 303–338. Snarey, J., & Lydens, L. (1990). Worker equality and adult development: The kibbutz as a developmental model. Psychology and Aging, 5, 86–93. Snyder, S. S., & Feldman, D. H. (1984). Phases of transition in cognitive development: Evidence from the domain of spatial representation. Child Development, 55, 981–989. Solbach, R. A. (1991). The effects of education and life experience on ego development in adult women. Dissertation Abstracts International, 52, 856A. Soong, W. L. (1986). Differential effects of two interventions for promoting ego development in late adolescence. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47, 88A. Sprinthall, N. A. (1994). Counselling and social role taking: Promoting moral and ego development. In J. R. Rest & D. Narvaez (Eds.), Moral development in the professions: Psychology and applied ethics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Steagall, V. A. (1990). The effect of Autogenic Training on practicum students and the relationships of ego development, locus of control, and counselling effectiveness. Dissertation Abstracts International, 50, 3486–3487A. Stewart, A. J., & Vandewater, E. A. (1993). The Radcliffe class of 1964: Career and family social clock projects in a traditional cohort. In K. D. Hulbert & D. T. Schuster (Eds.), Women’s lives through time: Educated women of the twentieth century. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Sullivan, E. V., McCullough, G., & Stager, M. (1970). A developmental study of the relationship between conceptual, ego, and moral development. Child Development, 41, 399–411. Teyber, E. (1997). Interpersonal process in psychotherapy (3rd ed.). Chicago: The Dorsey Press.

ADULT EGO DEVELOPMENT

513

Tomlinson-Keasey, C., & Keasey, C. B. (1974). The mediating role of cognitive development in moral judgement. Child Development, 45, 291–298. Turiel, E. (1966). An experimental test of the sequentiality of developmental stages in the child’s moral judgements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 611–618. Vandewater, E. A., & Stewart, A. J. (1995). Changes in women’s career commitments and personality development. In M. E. Lachman & J. B. James (Eds.), Multiple paths of midlife development. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Walker, L. J. (1980). Cognitive and perspective-taking prerequisites for moral development. Child Development, 51, 131–139. Walker, L. J. (1986). Experiential and cognitive sources of moral development in adulthood. Human Development, 29, 113–124. Walker, L. J., & Taylor, J. H. (1991). Stage transition in moral reasoning: A longitudinal study of developmental process. Developmental Psychology, 27, 330–337. Weiss, D. S., Zilberg, W. J., & Genevro, J. L. (1989). Psychometric properties of Loevinger’s Sentence Completion Test in an adult psychiatric outpatient sample. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53, 478–486. Wertheimer, L. C. (1980). Relations among developmental dimensions in Jane Loevinger’s model of ego development. Dissertation Abstracts International, 41, 2362B. Westenberg, P. M., Blasi, A., & Cohn, L. D. (Eds.) (1998). Personality development: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical investigations of Loevinger’s conception of ego development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Whitbourne, S. K. (1985). The psychological construction of the life span. In J. E. Birren & K. W. Schaie (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of aging. New York: Van Nostrand– Reinhold. Whitbourne, S. K. (1989). Adult development (2nd ed.). New York: Praeger. White, M. S. (1985). Ego development in adult women. Journal of Personality, 53, 561–574. Wink, P., & Helson, R. (1993). Personality change in women and their partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 597–605. Winter, D., McClelland, D. C., & Stewart, A. J. (1981). A new case for the liberal arts. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. Zilbermann, K. L. (1984). Ego development and patterns of family interaction. Dissertation Abstracts International, 45, 1929B. Received: November 20, 1998; revised: June 3, 1999