EXPLORING THE PATHWAYS TO

POSTCONVENTIONAL PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

A dissertation presented to
the Faculty of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Psychology
by
Angela H. Pfaffenberger

San Francisco, California

January, 2007

© 2007 by Angela H. Pfaffenberger

 Approval of the Dissertation

EXPLORING THE PATHWAYS TO

POSTCONVENTIONAL PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

This dissertation by Angela H. Pfaffenberger has been approved by the committee

members below, who recommend it be accepted by the faculty of Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

Dissertation Committee:

_____________________________________ ___________________
Tom Greeening, Ph.D., Chair Date

_____________________________________ ___________________
Stephen Pritzker, Ph.D. Date

_____________________________________ ___________________
Allan Combs, Ph.D. Date
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Abstract

EXPLORING THE PATHWAYS TO

POSTCONVENTIONAL PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Angela H. Pfaffenberger

Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center

This dissertation focused on optimal development in adulthood, in particular how

such development was conceptualized in the personality theories of Maslow (1954/1970)

and Loevinger (1976). Loevinger’s theory of ego development mapped the entire

developmental spectrum into nine stages and likened the highest stages to

self-actualization. Past research has shown that the majority of adults fail to achieve the

most advanced stages of personality development. This study is concerned with how

exceptional development to the most advanced stages, postconventional ego

development, unfolds, focusing on the nature of such development and its assessment.

Loevinger’s assessment instrument, the Washington University Sentence

Completion Test, was used to find 22 participants, who, on a scale of 1 to 9, all scored at

stage 7 or above. Written narratives and semistructured interviews with the participants

inquired into the developmental pathways, including the participants’ own views about

what constitutes optimal development and about life-changing activities and values. The

transcribed interview materials were analyzed using grounded theory procedures as

delineated by Strauss and Corbin (1990) and holistic narrative analysis (Lieblich,

Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998).

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The findings demonstrate that persons at postconventional stages of development

define development and talk about their growth in significantly different ways than

persons in the conventional tier of development. Postconventional participants evidenced

greater complexity in their narratives. Furthermore, they valued growth, joined discourse

communities, and took an interest in their inner world. Minor elements that distinguished

postconventional participants from those scoring in the conventional range included

giftedness, unconventionality, and cross-cultural exposure. No single factor can be seen

as accounting for advanced ego development; instead, a complex interaction of factors

seems to be required to advance to a stage of development that is not supported by the

dominant cultural norms. The author demonstrates that Loevinger’s instrument with

recent additions by Cook-Greuter (1999) shows limited validity, and an unequivocal

acceptance of this instrument for the assessment of higher development cannot be

supported. The findings are placed in the context of the existing literature, and possible

future directions for the exploration of this subject matter are presented.
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Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to this project and offered me support during the

graduate years. It was a privilege to become immersed in the intellectually stimulating

atmosphere of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center and participate in the

academic discourse communities that are interested in issues of meaning-making and

self-actualization. Specifically, I would like to express my gratitude to Tom Greening,

who encouraged and mentored me throughout the research process and helped me

connect with the intrinsically rewarding aspects of academic exertion. His thoughtful

assistance made this project personally meaningful.

I feel deeply indebted to the participants who gave generously of their time,

energy, and insight. I enjoyed meeting them and understanding their perspectives.

Without their genuine interest in my research, this dissertation could not have been

completed.
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Table of Contents

List of Tables.....................................................................................................................vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1

Statement of Purpose.........................................................................................................10
Definition of Terms............................................................................................................11

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................13

Theories of Development ..................................................................................................13
Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization ................................................................13
Loevinger’s Ego Development Theory .................................................................16
Cook-Greuter’s Contributions to Ego Development Theory ................................19
The Washington University Sentence Completion Test....................................................22
Validity and Reliability..........................................................................................23
Using the SCT for the Assessment of Postconventional Development.................29
How Does Stage Progression Occur?................................................................................37
Social and Personality Aspects Associated with Growth......................................37
Dynamics of Growth..............................................................................................43
Interventions That Promote Development.............................................................47
Conclusions........................................................................................................................53

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................54
Research Questions............................................................................................................54
Epistemology and Strategy................................................................................................54
Design and Data Collection...............................................................................................55
Participants.........................................................................................................................58
Data Analysis.....................................................................................................................61
Trustworthiness..................................................................................................................64
Limitations and Delimitations............................................................................................66

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS...................................................................................................70
Summary............................................................................................................................70
Findings Pertaining to the Demographics of the Participants............................................71
Taking an Empirical Approach to Theories of Development............................................74
Validity of the SCT for the Assessment of Higher Development.....................................77
How do Persons at Higher Development Account for Their Growth?..............................81
Complexity.............................................................................................................82
Interiority...............................................................................................................83
Intention with Commitment...................................................................................89
Miscellaneous Elements.........................................................................................94

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION.............................................................................................98
Taking an Empirical Approach to Theories of Higher Development................................98
Validity of the SCT for the Assessment of Higher Development...................................100
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How do Persons at Higher Development Account for Their Growth?............................103

General Considerations........................................................................................104
Placing the Findings in the Context of the Theoretical Literature.......................109
How Can We Promote Growth?..........................................................................111
New Research Questions and Future Perspectives..............................................115
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................117

REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................120

APPENDIXES.................................................................................................................128
A. Stage Designations ..............................................................................................128
B. Washington University Sentence Completion Test.............................................129
C. Invitation to research Participation......................................................................133
D. List of Listserves and Forums..............................................................................134
E. Demographic Information Sheet..........................................................................138
F. Consent Form.......................................................................................................139
G. Interview Questions.............................................................................................144
H. The Participants...................................................................................................145
I. SCT Worksheet....................................................................................................146
J. A Model of Adult Development Towards Postconventional Ego Stages............147
K. Quantitative Comparison Chart for Major Codes................................................148
L. Statistical Calculation of Interrater Agreement...................................................149
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List of Tables

Table 1: Postconventional Participants’ Ego Stage Scores................................................72

Table 2: Postconventional Participants’ Ages...................................................................72
Table 3: Postconventional Participants’ Levels of Education...........................................72
Table 4: Postconventional Participants’ Nationalities.......................................................72
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Chapter 1: Introduction

The question of what is most worthwhile in adulthood is an old one. Philosophers

and psychologists from antiquity to current times have contributed their ideas. In

contemporary psychology, we can discern five schools of thought that have delineated

values and proposed theories of optimal development. These are (1) the hedonic

adjustment orientation that constitutes the dominant paradigm in contemporary American

psychology, (2) the Asian psychologies, (3) existential psychology, (4) humanistic

psychology, and (5) transpersonal psychology.

Contemporary American psychology has placed emphasis on normalcy,

happiness, and adjustment, a tradition that can be traced back to Sigmund Freud

(1940/1949), who defined health as the ability to love and to work. Positive psychology

(Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), a current trend in the field, focuses on isolated

aspects, the so-called strengths, instead of exploring personality as a whole. The current

most widely disseminated theory of positive adult development is the self-determination

theory of Ryan and Deci (2000, 2001), prominently featured in the Annual Review of

Psychology and the American Psychologist. The authors proposed that humans strive to

fulfill their needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence, and they will experience

well-being and emotional health when these needs are met. “Need fulfillment is thus

viewed as a natural aim of human life that delineates many of the meanings and purposes

underlying human action” (Ryan & Deci, 2001, p. 147).

By emphasizing what is normative in development, mainstream American

psychology delegated the discussion of what is most desirable to the sideline and defined
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itself through its disinterest in the dialogue of what should be considered an optimal

outcome for an adult life.

Much in contrast to that position, the Asian psychologies (Walsh, 2000) place a

great deal of importance on values and on strivings for the best possible development.

Their increasing popularity may in part be due to the contribution they make to a

value-based life orientation. The Asian therapies (Chödrön, 2001), rooted in Oriental

philosophy and worldview, present a sharp contrast to the individualistic, often

self-centered focus of American psychology that values autonomy. Instead of

achievement, the Asian psychologies (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006) prize humility, self-

discipline, being present-centered, and the expression of genuine compassion. A

practitioner is encouraged to study Oriental thought, with an emphasis on the correct

understanding of nonduality, interdependent arising, and emptiness. Through the practice

of meditation and contemplation, the individual can gain a progressively deepening

insight into the deceptive nature of ordinarily perceived reality (Trungpa, 1969). The self-

sense, or ego, is considered to arise from our ongoing internal dialogue and can be

transcended through sustained practice. The goal of a lifetime of mindful exertion is to

gain insight into the illusory nature of the self and understanding how pride and self-

centered interests cause suffering. Ultimately, a person can become able to practice

genuine detachment, mindfulness, and compassion; thus, ego clinging is abandoned,

attachment and aggression are rejected, and a more transcendental awareness is gained

that allows for an uninterrupted meditative awareness free from ego clinging. By

practicing meditation and right livelihood, a person can gain spiritual wisdom.

Considering one’s position in the cosmos, understanding one’s interconnectedness to all

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being, and developing equanimity as a result of such contemplation represent the

pinnacles of adult development. The Asian psychologies, together with the religions and

philosophies they are based on, have found a receptive audience in contemporary

America. This might be due to a growing sense of dissatisfaction for many people with

our ambition-centered culture that suggests that getting what you want, and feeling

satisfied and happy, are the most important aspects of life.

The existential, humanistic, and transpersonal psychologies are closely related

schools of thought within the larger landscape of American psychology. However, their

similarities should not lead us to neglect that they also have significant differences,

especially in regard to what is valued as an optimal outcome in adult development.

Existential psychology emphasizes leading an examined life, being aware of our

inner motives and preoccupations. Yalom (1980) discussed how four existential

dichotomies are significant in our lives: freedom versus destiny, meaning versus

meaninglessness, isolation versus connectedness, and death versus existence. According

to Yalom, each one of these dichotomies needs to be accepted and consistently examined

in order to have excellent mental health in adulthood.

May (1958) argued that we could accept hostility, aggression, and anxiety in our

lives if we accept our limitations and the reality of death itself. Instead of creating an

allegiance to only one side of life—the positive, expansive side—and repressing all

negativity, a fuller, more real and conscious life can be created if we acknowledge both

sides. According to May (1982), human nature is daimonic, containing destructive and

constructive elements. We can consciously strive to integrate destructive impulses, which

results in the expression of creativity. If we deny the existence of aggressive elements in

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human nature, we run the risk of facilitating their inappropriate expression, leading to

violence and evil on an individual and collective scale. The awareness and recognition of

the dichotomy between constructive and destructive elements allows for a greater

actualization of our potential, for the expression of who we truly are. Meaning in life is

created through making conscious choices about how we confront our own finitude and

express our potential. We not only need to become conscious and make choices, but we

also must commit to our values by acting on them.

In May’s (1950/1977) view of psychological dynamics, anxiety has a pivotal

place. Anxiety is tied to creativity, especially the creative act. Psychological health is

closely connected to being able to tolerate the anxiety that arises with the creative act.

Anxiety is also associated with freedom and choosing, because any choice inevitably

denies many other possibilities and futures. Neurotic anxiety is connected to an inability

to decide, to feelings of powerlessness and alienation. Existential anxiety, however, arises

from our awareness of the dynamic tension between freedom and destiny. The increasing

willingness to embrace the paradox, to tolerate the anxiety, to allow it to be present in our

lives is for May (1958) one of the most significant signs of psychological growth and

maturity. May distrusted easy answers; psychological health for him was a complex

process of struggle and integration. Schneider (2004) suggested that the field of

psychology would become more capable of assisting people if it adopted an

understanding of the person as being suspended in a dynamic tension of realizing “dread,

veneration, and wonder, termed awe” (p. xv). Schneider called for a reorientation in the

field of psychology that accepts values and purposes based on the existential orientation.
 5

In contrast to existential psychology, the humanistic and transpersonal

psychologies have placed more emphasis on a stage-wise progression towards growth in

adulthood, beyond ordinary happiness and satisfaction. Maslow (1954/1970) proposed an

elegant theory of motivation and development that has served as a generally accepted

description of advanced development in humanistic psychology. According to Maslow,

people strive to satisfy their needs for survival, safety, belongingness, and esteem. These

needs are arranged in a hierarchical order and decrease in immediacy when a person

comes to expect that the needs are consistently gratified. A failure to experience need

satisfaction fixes attention at the respective level and leads to psychopathology. Maslow

suggested that psychological health is more than being well adjusted and free from

psychopathology. “Certainly it seems more and more clear that what we call ‘normal’ in

psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely

spread that we don’t even notice it ordinarily” (Maslow, 1968, p. 16).

Maslow’s (1954/1970) research was the first systematic, empirical study of

advanced development, and it laid the foundation for all later work. He proposed that

self-actualization is a distinct stage and process towards higher development. Individuals

who achieve self-actualization experience their needs as satisfied and enjoy the process of

growth. They are described as creative, as being dedicated to ideals of social justice, and

as working selflessly towards goals that lie beyond their self-interest.

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Transpersonal psychology, popularized by Wilber (2000, 2006), a leading thinker

in that field, also adheres to a stage model. Wilber integrated elements of the Asian

psychologies into his model. Maslow (1954/1970) was also influenced by Asian thinkers,

such as D. T Suzuki (1960), but Oriental thought did not play as explicit a role in his

theories. Wilber sees ordinary health and self-actualization as a step towards even higher

development that is marked by seeing the constructed nature of the self and moving

systematically beyond the belief in and the boundaries of the self. Wilber’s theory is

based on a Piagetian model of invariant, qualitative stages that are arranged

hierarchically.

According to Wilber (2000), all development falls into three consecutive tiers—

the prepersonal, the personal, and the transpersonal.1 The final stage in the personal

realm is called Vision-logic, and Wilber likened it to Maslow’s self-actualization. Wilber

emphasized advanced cognitive abilities here, such as dialectic thinking and postformal

thought. This stage is followed by the transpersonal stages, called Psychic, Subtle,

Causal, and Non-dual. These stages are similar to advanced stages of development in

Asian psychology, and often meditation is used to achieve them. Individuals become

conscious of how the mind works, and they take an interest in how their perceptions of

the world are influenced by cognitive patterns, by the incessant stream of thoughts itself,

and how language acts as a conditioning agent. Wilber (1986) discussed meditative

stabilization, experiences of bliss and samadhi, and an experiential understanding of the

collective archetypes.

1
A comparison between Wilber’s system and other stage theories is presented in Appendix A.
 7

In his latest publication Wilber (2006) changed his developmental model and

presented the so-called Wilber/Combs matrix. He stated that what he previously

considered as stages of development are really states of mind that can be spontaneously

experienced at any stage of development. He furthermore argued that these states could

become stabilized through consistent training, which he considers to be the focus of the

Asian psychologies. He also presented arguments that individuals may advance with their

spiritual development without necessarily integrating those gains in the area of

personality.

In regard to what constitutes advanced development in the realm of personality,

Wilber (2006) remained vague in his latest publication, mentioning the perspectives of

Spiral Dynamics (Beck & Cowan, 1996) and the work of Cook-Greuter (1999). In short,

Wilber recently retreated from his previously held position that spiritual development

represents a pinnacle in personality development. He currently argues that optimal

development needs to be seen as having balanced development in multiple areas, which

becomes possible through the study and practice of his psycho-philosophy called the

Integral Approach.

Existential psychologists such as May (1982) and Schneider (1987) have for two

decades rejected Wilber’s ideas of transcending ordinary reality and progressing towards

a unitive consciousness without conflict. The existential and transpersonal psychologies

thus represent competing paradigms within humanistic psychology, guided by differing

values and goals. In sum, theories of what optimal development is like abound; however,

few studies have explored the lived experience of growth and investigated how applicable
 8

the above theories are. In part this may be due to the fact that such studies are hard to

design because of the somewhat vague nature of the concept of psychological growth.

The research of Loevinger (1976) has made germinal contributions to

operationalizing the concept of psychological growth. Loevinger was not interested in

higher development, but her theory of ego development nevertheless made important

contributions to the empirical exploration of the subject. Loevinger showed that

personality development exists on a continuum, and what Maslow termed

self-actualization is but the upper end of a developmental spectrum. In the language of

the Neo-Piagetians, such as Loevinger (1976) and Kohlberg (1969), the highest stages of

development are called postconventional development. Loevinger developed a

semi-projective assessment instrument that allows for the measurement of higher

development. This test operationalized the concept of higher development making it more

usable in the research process. Cook-Greuter (1999) refined Loevinger’s instrument and

elaborated a theory of higher development that is based on Wilber’s (2000) ideas. Only a

handful of dissertations, all published within the last 3 years, have used empirical data to

explore postconventional development. Hewlett (2004), using Loevinger’s test and

Cook-Greuter’s additions, was the first researcher who enrolled individuals at higher

stages of development, describing in greater detail their characteristics. Stitz (2004)

researched questions pertaining to postconventional couples and emotional maturity.

Page (2005) worked with issues of spiritual attainment, and Marko (2006) paid attention

to events that precipitate stage change, so-called facilitative agents

In regard to optimal development, some very important research questions remain

unanswered, and they appear to fall into three distinct categories: values and
 9

epistemology, measurement, and the dynamics of growth. The first category is concerned

with the claims of the different theories of what constitutes advanced development. Put

differently, the question is, what actually is a postconventional self? Do we want to

accept the notion that higher development predominantly consists of increased

intrapersonal and cognitive differentiation? What actually is the importance of social

engagement in higher development? And is spiritual development really a natural

progression of optimal personality development, as Wilber (2000) postulated, or is it just

a separate strand of development that is of interest to some people? Are spiritual

practices, such as meditation, actually required for higher development? Some

contemporary researchers, such as Cook-Greuter (1999), have accepted the Wilber

model, but the evidence they provide may be just a form of circular reasoning.

Another interesting issue in advanced development concerns the role of anxiety.

May (1977) suggested that anxiety is normal once we realize existential dilemmas and

the fact that we have to make choices and act on them. Maslow (1954/1970), in contrast,

argued that anxiety diminishes with advanced development and that the self-actualizer

experiences increasing self-acceptance and a sense of being at peace with the world. In

sum, theories of advanced development remain in the tradition of the grand theories of

personality; they are insufficiently researched and could be improved if theoretical

considerations and empirical data could be brought to bear on each other in a meaningful

manner.

Second, the assessment of advanced development has remained fragmented and

problematic. Maslow (1954/1970) contributed to an instrument, the Personal Orientation

Inventory (Shostrom, 1974), but by contemporary standards this instrument is dated, and
 10

the validity studies lack rigor (Weiss, 1986, 1991). In the last few decades, Loevinger’s

instrument, the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Hy & Loevinger,

1996) has been used more widely, but its validity in regard to postconventional

development is not sufficiently established. It is also time consuming and cumbersome to

administer. In short, if we do indeed want to enhance our understanding of higher

development, we cannot neglect the search for a reliable assessment instrument.

Third, there is the issue of how growth actually unfolds. Some theorists, such as

Wilber (2000) and other thinkers in the Gravesian tradition (Beck & Cowan, 1996), have

promoted the idea of disequilibriation. This means an individual grows because an issue

cannot be resolved from within the current frame of reference, and, consequently, a new,

more sophisticated frame of reference is constructed. However, few systematic studies

have been undertaken that inquire how growth actually takes place and what promotes it.

In conclusion, Maslow (1954/1970) clearly demonstrated that advanced

development is rare and at the same time extremely beneficial for the individual and for

society as a whole. In the five decades that have passed since self-actualization theory

was first published, no integrating framework for the empirical exploration of advanced

development has emerged. Few studies have explored why it remains such a rare

occurrence and what could be done to change that. The lack of pertinent research has not

allowed us to come to any conclusions about how such development can be promoted.

Statement of Purpose

Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the three above-discussed

areas of inquiry are interdependent. Our understanding about optimal adulthood cannot

progress in a systematic fashion unless we clarify the conceptualization of higher

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development, unless we know if the assessment instrument we use is valid, and if the

assumptions we make about how such development occurs are supported by empirical

findings. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to make a contribution in all

the above areas and thereby advance the field of optimal adult development through

explorative, open-ended fieldwork.

In light of the fact that past research has shown that individuals have a difficult

time understanding the perspectives of persons at more advanced stages (Loevinger,

1998b), I enrolled participants at higher stages of development, as measured by

Loevinger’s instrument. Using grounded theory and narrative analysis, I attempted to

understand their experiences of the growth process. I addressed the question of what

actually is a postconventional self by inquiring what values and objectives were most

pertinent to the participants. Of central interest are what identities the participants forged

for themselves and what social factors facilitated or inhibited their processes. I was also

interested in finding out more about the role of spiritual practice in optimal development,

specifically if spiritual practice is required to achieve higher development. In order to

align this study with the existing research, I used Loevinger’s instrument and explored

whether it is suitable for this purpose, if it has shortfalls, and how it can be improved. It is

hoped that the understandings gained from this research will provide a more solid

foundation for future studies and, eventually, allow us to understand how such

development could be facilitated for a greater number of adults.

Definition of Terms

Ego development – The term ego development is used strictly as Loevinger (1976)

defined it. According to this conceptualization, the ego is a frame of reference; a way of
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meaning making; a means of integrating cognitive, emotional, and ethical aspects of

personality. According to ego development theory, the ego progresses through successive

stages of increasing emotional maturity and a growing ability to balance more complex

viewpoints.

Neo-Piagetian, Post-Piagetian – Jean Piaget (1977) was one of the founding

theorists of structural developmental stage theory, proposing that development proceeds

in distinct qualitative stages that follow an invariant sequence. Although Piaget only

applied his theory originally to the cognitive development of children, many theorists

who study ideal development have adopted this framework because it allows for the

conceptualization of phenomenon that are not frequently found through empirical

research. Examples include the research of Kohlberg (1969), Fowler (1981), and

Commons and Richards (2003).

Postconventional development – This term was coined by Kohlberg (1969) to

describe the highest stages of moral development that follow conventional, normative

development. The term later came in use in ego development theory. Most authors (Page,

2005; Stitz, 2004) agree that stage 6, Conscientious, is the highest conventional stage,

and stage 7, Individualistic, is the beginning of postconventional development. This study

followed these guidelines.

SCT – This is the acronym of the Washington University Sentence Completion

Test, an instrument that assesses ego development and assigns a numerical stage

progressing from stage 2 to 9. The instrument itself, the stages numbering system, and the

scoring manuals have gone through several editions. In this study, the latest version of the
 13

test and the scoring manual by Hy and Loevinger (1996) was used. The correspondences

with the previous stage system are shown in Appendix A.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

This literature review falls into three sections. First is the review of theories of

higher development, especially Maslow’s (1954/1970) and Loevinger’s (1976). Second is

the review of Loevinger’s assessment instrument and its applicability to higher

development. And third, issues pertaining to how growth occurs are addressed.

Theories of Development
 15

Maslow’s theory of self-actualization. In contemporary psychology, Maslow

(1954/1970) laid the foundation for the study of higher development. Maslow relied on

evolving, multifaceted qualitative methods, predominantly aspects of case study. He

painted a complex picture of self-actualizing persons and offered detailed observations

about their personality characteristics. Maslow described a cognitive shift and noted that

self-actualizers have a more accurate, efficient, and undistorted perception of reality.

They can tolerate ambiguities and paradoxes. Parallel to that, there is an affective shift

that allows for an integration of the drives with an accompanied freedom from

psychological defenses. This leads to a fuller expression of the self, a sense of

authenticity and acceptance of oneself. The concurrent motivational shift places the

emphasis on internal standards and goals, on knowing what is personally right for

oneself, along with an intrinsic enjoyment of processes of growth. Self-actualizers are

creative, spontaneous, and have a consistent freshness of appreciation. Maslow observed

that self-actualizers have deeper, healthier interpersonal relationships than other adults.

Because their emotional needs are satisfied, they are capable of more honesty, greater

playfulness, and less psychological defensiveness. They respect the autonomy and

individuality of others and express genuine empathy. Maslow observed that

self-actualizers have Gemeinschaftsgefühl, usually translated as social interest; which

means they have compassion and empathy for all people regardless of social and ethnic

considerations and they are motivated to help the human race. They are resistant to

enculturation, meaning they maintain an inner detachment from the norms and

conventions of their culture and social group. Self-actualizers are problem focused and
 16

have a distinct sense of having a calling in life, a goal that is beyond their own personal

gain, and towards which they work tirelessly.

It is evident that Maslow (1954/1970) admired the people he studied and held

them out as exemplars. Two important issues about Maslow’s research deserve

consideration. First, Maslow emphasized that self-actualization depends on the

realization and expression of one’s potential and gifts, but none of his participants were

just ordinary persons. Examining his research in detail, we are left to wonder if he

intentionally tried to find those who were almost perfect, or if he was blind to their

shortfalls. It opens up the question if individuals who do not have postgraduate degrees

and great success in life can indeed achieve advanced development.

Second, many assumptions Maslow (1957/1970) made were confirmed through

his research, and this may constitute a form of circular reasoning where the evidence is

based on apriori assumptions. For example, Maslow placed a great deal of emphasis on

achievement and autonomy, and then found that self-actualizers are independent of the

judgment of others and resistant to enculturation. However, it remained unexamined why

autonomy is considered to be a sign of maturity. Critical theory, as expressed, for

example, in the form of feminist psychology, has pointed out that the conceptualization

of the separate self contains unexamined value judgments. Gilligan’s (1982) well-known

critique of Kohlberg’s (1969) theory of moral development, which questioned Kohlberg’s

implicit assumption that justice is developmentally more advanced than care, is a

pertinent example. Hanley and Abell (2002) applied this conceptualization to Maslow’s

teachings and criticized them for accepting implicit cultural values, such as autonomy,

and for neglecting aspects of relatedness and social responsibility as ends in themselves.
 17

This means Maslow (1971) clearly postulated normative values, and especially in the

latter part of his life was concerned with the social applications of his personality theory.

However, an explicit discussion of a value-based theory of advanced personality

development has remained fragmented.

Self-actualization theory afforded Maslow prominence and allowed him to

become a leading psychologist. However, his theories only partially succeeded in

encouraging future research. Maslow’s (1954/1970) theory of needs and motivation,

which is explicated in every introductory psychology textbook today, has become

supported by a fair amount of research, most of it occurring in the decades immediately

following the original publication. In contrast, self-actualization theory itself has not

received a lot of attention from researchers. This may be due to various reasons,

including a general orientation of American psychology in the second half of the

20th century that de-emphasized personality and placed a pronounced focus on cognitive

processes. Most researchers want to undertake projects that are quantitative, fundable,

and short term. Exploring a rare and highly complex phenomenon in the area of

personality theory is less likely to happen. It is clear, however, from Maslow’s writings

that he had a strong orientation towards rigorous academic exploration and that he had

hoped that future researchers would explore issues related to self-actualization.

Loevinger’s ego development theory. The ego development theory of Loevinger

(1976) expressed a conceptualization of personality and of stages of development that is

consistent with Maslow’s (1954/1970) theory of self-actualization. Loevinger and

Maslow both discussed a highly complex system of personality processes. Keeping with

a Neo-Piagetian approach, Loevinger delineated ego development as a sequence of

 18

qualitative stages of growth that follow an invariant sequence. She defined an ego stage

as a frame of reference or a filter that individuals use to interpret life experiences. The

ego is seen as an integrating function consisting of character development; impulse

control; and cognitive style, such as perspective-taking. Ego processes also include

interpersonal maturity and conscious preoccupations. Stage progression is consistent

throughout the developmental years, culminating at the end of formal education. For most

adults, ego stage appears to remain stable throughout adulthood, but some persons

apparently progress to higher stages during their adult years. Hy and Loevinger (1996)

pointed out that ego development cannot be seen as an indicator of social adjustment, nor

does it suggest mental health and subjective well-being.

Two aspects of ego development theory are of importance for an inquiry into

higher development. First, instead of focusing on stable traits, Loevinger’s (1976) stage

model emphasizes a dynamic approach to studying personality, allowing for an

understanding of maturational processes. Second, Loevinger developed a projective

assessment instrument, the Sentence Completion Test (SCT), that translates qualitative

observations into quantitative data. This test laid an important foundation for empirical

research in personality theory and has spawned hundreds of studies about adulthood.

Loevinger conceptualized nine stages of progressive maturation. An overview of

the stages is given in Appendix A. We can describe the first three—Symbiotic, Impulsive

and Self-protective— as preconventional. They indicate normal development in

childhood but often present maladaptive strategies in adulthood and may be associated

with psychopathologies, such as low impulse control and exploitative interpersonal

tendencies. Individuals at this level fail to understand another’s points of view; they are
 19

devoid of compassion and lead lives that are narrowly focused on their own personal gain

and advantage. Miller and Cook-Greuter (1994) suggested that about 10% of the adult

population function at this level.

The following three stages are termed conventional; they describe about 80% of

all adults in our culture. The fourth stage, Conformist, describes individuals who are

identified with the values and norms of the social group to which they belong. They strive

to express this through their appearance and behavior. They are concerned about their

reputation and possible disapproval by the group. In the eyes of the Conformist, good is

what the group approves of. There is strong emphasis on outer, material aspects of life. A

rigid, black-and-white worldview in regard to what is acceptable in terms of gender roles

and opinions predominates. Loevinger emphasized that members of unconventional,

marginal groups, such as cults or the hippies, often expect specific behaviors, and their

members are frequently assessed at the Conformist stage.

The fifth level, Self-aware, is the modal stage for the majority of adults in our

culture (Cohn, 1998). At the Self-aware level, adults gain more independence in terms of

their ability to reflect about group norms; there is a growing awareness of one’s inner life.

At this stage, a person can consider different possibilities and alternatives as well as

exceptions to the rules. Conceptualization and affect, however, remain undifferentiated

and within established categories. The sixth stage, Conscientious, presents a significant

step towards further internalization and differentiation. Individuals now have established

personal standards and values. Social responsibilities are deemed important, as are

education, achievements, and long-term goals. The Conscientious person strives to

understand personal differences. In short, the outer direction of the Conformist stage has
 20

now been fully replaced by an internal orientation that encompasses self-chosen values

and standards that the person strives to live up to. Persons who complete graduate

education and are prompted to contemplate ethical issues frequently attain this stage.

The next stage, Individualistic, is the first of the postconventional stages and

presents the transition to higher development. Only about 10% of adults achieve the

postconventional stages of development. To grow beyond the Conscientious stage,

individuals must become more tolerant of themselves and others. They need to shift their

attention from behaviors and achievements towards more internal aspects, such as

motivation. At the Individualistic stage, what is good is determined by how good a fit it is

for a person in terms of their psychological needs and personal strivings. The

self-established standards of the previous stage become more sophisticated and flexible.

Persons at the Individualistic stage become aware of contradictions, such as their need for

autonomy versus their need for emotional connection.

At the eighth, the Autonomous stage, people accept that conflict is part of the

human condition. They tolerate contradictions and ambiguities well and demonstrate

increasing cognitive complexity. The Autonomous person respects the individuality of

others and values close personal relationships. Self-fulfillment and self-expression gain

increasing importance in a person’s life. High social ideals of justice are maintained.

Loevinger (1976) also mentioned the Integrated stage but pointed out that she found it

hard to arrive at a definitive description because the sample pool of observable subjects at

this stage was too small.

Cook-Greuter’s contributions to ego development theory. Loevinger’s (1976)

theory of development was amended in regard to the highest stages by Cook-Greuter

 21

(1999), who pointed out repeatedly that Loevinger remained vague in regard to defining

the higher stages. A linguist by training, Cook-Greuter evaluated over 14,000 SCTs and

placed emphasis on the cognitive shift that takes place at the Autonomous level. She

described it as embracing systemic and dialectical modes of reasoning (Basseches, 1984);

individuals can hold multiple viewpoints and become interested in how knowledge is

arrived at. They are aware of subjectivity in the construction of reality and accept

interpretation as the basis of meaning making. Cook-Greuter proposed two

Postautonomous stages to replace Loevinger’s final stage 9, Integrated, and suggested

that a mere 1% of the population reach this level of development. The first

Postautonomous stage, Construct-aware, is stage 9 of the Cook-Greuter system. At this

stage of development, individuals become conscious of how language shapes the

perception of reality and at the same time constricts what can be experienced. They

progress to an understanding that their egos are actually constructed from and maintained

through the ongoing internal dialogue. At the following stage, the Unitive stage,

numbered 10 in the Cook-Greuter system, individuals sustain an ongoing openness to

experience that is fluid and without any struggle. They are now able to make use of

transpersonal experiences free from ego clinging.

Cook-Greuter’s (1999) research neglects important aspects of ego development

theory, such as the unitary nature of the ego. The ego, as conceptualized by Loevinger

(1976), represents the integration of motivational, emotional, social, and cognitive

aspects of personality. Cook-Greuter, however, has given primacy to cognition. She

writes, “Since I have chosen the ‘perspectives on the self’ as the element that develops, it

appears that the cognitive aspect drives the others in my approach” (p. 39).
 22

Recent research however, suggested that cognition and self-integration are

separate lines of development. Researchers who have advanced this perspective include

Skoe and Lippe (2002) and Rogers (2002). The former authors convincingly argued that

ego development is linked to the ability to “organize and make sense of experience in

terms of personal significance” (Skoe & Lippe, 2002, p. 491), whereas cognition is more

related to an abstract relationship to an issue, such as social justice. Rogers (2002)

reported aspects of a comprehensive longitudinal study by Mentkowski, Rogers, and

Doherty (2000) that focused on assessing domains of development over a 15-year time

span. The authors, using factor analysis, found that “cognition” and “integration of self in

context” showed up as distinct factors that remained stable throughout the study period.

The SCT consistently loaded onto the second factor. The authors also identified a third

factor, which is multifactorial and difficult to define. They termed it a “performance

factor” and showed that it related to such characteristics as empathy. This finding may

offer an explanation for the counter-intuitive evidence that SCT scores do not correlate

with counselor effectiveness (Borders, 1998). Further exploration of this third factor

offers an exiting opportunity for future research because it obviously points to

dimensions of personality that are not included in ego development theory.

Cook-Greuter’s (1999) research concurs with dominant forces in contemporary

psychology. We are clearly seeing a great deal of emphasis on cognitive processes in all

areas of psychology, especially in the field of personality and social psychology. We can

therefore say that Cook-Greuter’s work is very much aligned with the zeitgeist. However,

this approach may be reductionistic. We cannot consider all social processes as being

situated inside the individual’s head or we lose sight of important aspects of what the
 23

“whole person” is. Questions of how persons understand their responsibility, how they

see their role in a larger social context and express their generativity (Erikson, 1978),

remain unaddressed. Cook-Greuter’s theory places primacy not only on cognition but

also on development of the self in an overly individualistic sense. In addition to theories

of cognitive complexity, she relied on theories of advanced development that are rooted

in transpersonal and Asian psychology, such as those promulgated by Alexander, Heaton,

and Chandler (1994) and Wilber (1986). Those theories advance the idea that recognizing

the constructed nature of the ego and the socially agreed upon reality is “higher.”

However, the insight into the constructed nature of the self and the internal witnessing

process are signs of cognitive abilities that may not be accompanied by advances in the

social domains of personality.

According to Maslow (1954/1970), self-actualizers were committed to a project

that was beyond their self-interest, and they worked towards it tirelessly. They also saw

themselves as planetary citizens, they resisted enculturation, and held democratic ideals.

In Maslow’s theory, those aspects were as important as peak experiences. Maslow and

Loevinger share an emphasis on the integration of different domains of personality. This

focus on the complexity of the whole personality seems to be lacking from

Cook-Greuter’s theory, which presents a narrower focus on intraindividual, cognitive

processes.

Contrary to Kohlberg (1969) and Maslow (1954/1970), who established

normative values for what is considered higher in their theories of development, such as

showing concern for an increasingly larger social context, Loevinger’s (1976) theory is

not normative in the same manner. The question of what actually constitutes a
 24

postconventional self, apart from greater psychological sophistication, is not sufficiently

clarified. This opens up the question if ego development theory offers a conceptually

sound basis for exploring postconventional personality development.

Kohlberg (1969) proposed that postconventional development requires a

movement from self-interest to a concern with larger, societal issues. This understanding

of the self-system appears to be consistent with ego development theory because it places

emphasis on “self in context” (Rogers, 2002, p. 328). Rogers used this understanding of

the postconventional self when he talked about establishing an identity that is committed

to ethical, generative concerns.

Such ideals are part of a person’s self-definition, without which the person would
not be who he or she is . . . self-defining ideals may also be the kind of moral
ideals that are defined by a broadened concern for society or the structure of
interpersonal morality. But it is a general feature of ethical ideals that they require
commitment from the self. (p. 333)

The Washington University Sentence Completion Test

Loevinger (1998a) earned a Ph.D. in psychometrics and later became interested in

parenting behaviors and psychoanalytic personality theory. Ego development theory and

the SCT evolved simultaneously, meaning the theory itself was entirely data driven. In a

lot of respects, the SCT is unlike any other instrument available; it measures the normal

range of personality functioning expressed as a developmental variable. The test

translates qualitative data into quantitative developmental categories, thereby allowing

for a clear operationalization and assessment of any developmental stage. Loevinger has

spent several decades refining the psychometric accuracy of the test and has extensively

reported on the procedures used (Loevinger, 1998b).

 25

The SCT consists of 36 sentence stems. Examples are “Raising a family” and

“When a child will not join in group activities.” The complete test is shown in

Appendix B. Test takers are asked to complete the sentence stems. In accordance with the

projective hypothesis, it is assumed that participants project their own thoughts and frame

of reference onto the completions. A trained rater, using a match-based manual, scores

each individual item. Attempts at having the SCT scored by a computer have failed

(Loevinger, 1998b). The manual has gone through several revisions, with the latest

edition being published in 1996 (Hy & Loevinger, 1996). The final ego stage score,

called the Total Protocol Rating (TPR), is based on an algorithm, the so-called ogive

rules.

Validity and reliability. The available literature that criticizes or supports the

construct of ego development theory and its measurement is extensive. A bibliography is

available at http://www.psychologie.leidenuniv.nl/ontw/personality-development/

This chapter will only highlight some of the most important and recent findings.

The face validity of the instrument is demonstrated by the sheer fact that it has been used

in over 300 research studies. These research studies include such diverse topics as

parenting behaviors, managerial effectiveness, and effects of meditation on recidivism

rates.

Compared to structured tests, the psychometric properties of projective

instruments are hard to assess, which is further compounded by the fact that the SCT does

not intend to predict behavior, measure social adjustment, or evaluate psychopathology.

Instead, it is designed to assess a soft construct, the maturity of personality expressed as a

developmental variable. Structural-development theories aim to describe an underlying

 26

concept that is unique and can be difficult to define. Loevinger (1976), as well as

Kohlberg (1969), struggled with the fact that a development stage is not clearly expressed

in any particular behavior. However, Loevinger (1998b) cogently argued that correlation

with real-life data is important because a test that does not correlate with anything may be

of limited value.

Loevinger (1998b) cited good evidence for the sequentiality of the stages as

demonstrated through longitudinal data. SCT scores in several studies correlated, as

predicted, with interview data and behavioral observations in regard to cognitive

complexity and the understanding of psychological mindedness. Manners and Durkin

(2001), in a comprehensive literature review, summarized studies that investigated the

construct validity of the SCT. They cited four studies comparing the SCT to other

instruments and concluded that those studies supported the construct-related evidence for

the SCT. Studies aimed at assessing the predictive validity of the test remain sparse

(Manners & Durkin, 2001).

Novy and Frances (1992) completed an extensive reliability study of the current

form of the SCT. The reliability for the test is good, and it exceeds that of other

projective instruments. Internal consistency as evaluated by Cronbach’s coefficient

alpha, which establishes the lowest estimate of reliability, is .91. The interrater agreement

of the TPR is .94. The SCT has a total of 36 items. Administering the first and second

half of the test separately, these authors found a coefficient alpha of .84 and .81,

respectively, for each half. The correlation between the two halves was .79. Shorter tests

are usually less reliable than longer tests, meaning they contain more error. The extent of

the error in the correlation between two tests can be estimated and compensated for
 27

through the use of a statistical formula, called correction of attenuation. After applying

this procedure, the correlation between the two halves of the test rose to .96. Novy and

Frances suggested that the two test halves are usable as equivalent forms, although

Loevinger (1998b) emphasized that only the complete 36-item form allows for optimal

results and should therefore be preferred.

One of the recurring issues for projective tests is standardization of test

administration. Loevinger (1998b) specified the number of sentence stems per page

because the available space may signal the test taker how much is expected in terms of

the completion. The SCT is usually administered as a paper-and-pencil measure to a

group with the written instruction of “Complete the following sentences.” Loevinger

(1998b) pointed out that all test results will vary if the instructions change, and this is not

something specific to the SCT. She strongly urged researchers to use the standardized

instructions because that would allow comparison of the results across studies.

Several researchers have experimented with modified instructions (Blumentritt,

Novy, Gaa, & Liberman, 1996; Drewes & Westenberg, 2001; Jurich & Holt, 1987). The

consensus seems to be that modified instructions, such as “Be mature,” or information

about the concept of ego development, allow participants to achieve higher scores, but

the increases remained small and consistent across several studies, usually about one

stage. The fact that significant changes are not achievable attests to the validity of the

theory of epigenetic stage sequencing; individuals cannot understand and intentionally

move to a higher stage. Jurich and Holt (1987) and Blumentritt et al. (1996) attributed the

modest increases to a reduction in the ambiguity of the stimulus. Under conditions of

more specific instructional sets, participants became more engaged and achieved their
 28

higher scores through better motivation when taking this test. Drewes and Westenberg

(2001) added that a person cannot be seen as being at a fixed stage. Instead, individuals

express a developmental range, with a functional level that is evidenced under

standardized instruction conditions and an optimal level that is evidenced by more

specific instructions. In any given test protocol, a person usually gives responses at a

variety of levels. The SCT assumes that if a high enough answer is given often enough,

this is the modal level of functioning for that person.

A more recent issue regarding standardized administration concerns

computer-based testing. If the test is sent to research participants as an email attachment,

the administration is no longer standardized. As a Word document, the test taker can

change the spaces provided for the answers, and we do not know for sure if the test was

actually taken by that person, and in one session. Only one unpublished study

(W. Johnson, personal communication, December 1, 2004) investigated the issue of

computer administration. The results showed that in computer-based testing situations

subjects had a significantly higher word count but ego levels remained unchanged.

Issues concerning the discriminant and convergent validity of the SCT have

probably received the most attention recently. Discriminant or divergent evidence is

concerned with the uniqueness of a test and its concept from other psychological

constructs. Convergent validity is evidenced by high correlations with other factors or

test results. Convergent validity or lack of discriminant validity may present a threat to

validity because the test may not be measuring what was intended; it might just measure

an established variable and give it a new name. At the same time, a variable might be

conceptually intertwined with another in a meaningful manner, in which case we want to

 29

see convergent validity. Loevinger (1998a, 1998b) convincingly argued that in

personality testing, correlations are commonly seen, and it may indeed be hard to find out

if this presents a distortion or a meaningful relationship.

Loevinger (1998b) pointed out that the SCT correlates with verbosity, which is

quantitative production, at about .31. This may not be spurious because low ego levels

are often indicated through short, bland responses, such as “Education – boring,” whereas

higher rated stem completions need more words to express complexity. An example

would be ”Education – is more than what you learn in school.” The SCT correlates with

education, socioeconomic status, and complexity of work, which has been shown to hold

true across international samples. This is not surprising because education and social

class relate to aspects such as impulse control, goal orientation, and conscious

preoccupations, which is exactly what the SCT is meant to assess.

A significant amount of discussion has taken place about the discriminant validity

of the SCT regarding intelligence. Lubinski and Humphreys (1997) specifically argued

that personality tests, such as the SCT, add very little to assessments of general aptitude

and intelligence. Numerous studies have investigated the discriminant validity of the SCT

in regard to intelligence. Cohn and Westenberg (2004) identified 42 such studies and

performed a meta-analysis. These authors showed the correlation between the SCT and

intelligence tests to be .31 across studies. Consequently, they argued that the discriminant

validity is good. Loevinger (1998b) herself argued that almost all tests show some

correlation with intelligence because it is indeed an aspect of personality function and

influences professional aspirations and other aspects of development.

 30

Cohn and Westenberg (2004) also discussed the incremental validity, which

addresses the question of whether a test allows for useful inferences that we could not

arrive at without it. The authors controlled for intelligence and identified 16 studies that

addressed this question. They concluded that the incremental validity varied significantly

among different variables being assessed. Ninety-four percent of the studies reported

significant relations between criterion variables and the SCT after controlling for

intelligence. Based on their research, they rejected the claim by Lubinski and Humphreys

(1997) that the SCT does not add anything significant to our understanding of

personality.

Loevinger (1998b) addressed other threats to validity as well. First, there is the

size of the sample. Although the original sample was based on only a few hundred

completed tests, a few years later Loevinger and her associates made an effort to get in

touch with all researchers who had used the test and requested the copies of the tests that

they had scored. This led to a sample size of well over a thousand tests. Second, there is

the question of how representative the sample is. Loevinger emphasized repeatedly that

the test is not based on a normative sample representing the whole population, because

her project team never had the resources to undertake a project that would allow for

randomized sampling. Because many different researchers contributed, diverse social

groups were represented. Although the original sample was strongly weighted towards

women, later efforts compensated for this, and special efforts were made to review the

test items and the scoring manual with that concern in mind. Third, there is the issue of

whether the sample presents a limited range. Loevinger emphasized that she made a

special effort to include the research of psychologists who had participants presenting the
 31

extremes at either end of the developmental spectrum, because the general population

does indeed fall into the middle range. She therefore included data from Harvard

graduates at midlife as well as the prison population. In conclusion, we can say that

Loevinger, with the help of other researchers, accumulated impressive evidence for the

validity and reliability of the SCT.

Using the SCT for the assessment of postconventional development. Loevinger

noted that postconventional protocols are rare in the general population, which makes it

difficult to study those participants as a group. In the current test manual (Hy &

Loevinger, 1996) the directions for scoring protocols at the upper stages remain

rudimentary. Participants at those stages of development often exhibit creativity and

unconventional interests, which makes it hard to design pertinent matches. Especially the

difference between stage 8, Autonomous, and stage 9, Integrated, is not well explicated in

the current manual. At the Autonomous stage, individuals demonstrate cognitive and

emotional flexibility, they can see multiple viewpoints, and they are concerned with

realizing their potential. They readily acknowledge internal conflict. According to

Loevinger, the Integrated stage is a more nuanced presentation of the Autonomous stage.

Because of the difficulties involved in differentiating the highest stages, she suggested

that they could be combined. In most samples, less than 5% of the participants score at

the final two stages. Loevinger (1998b) cautioned that we need to be careful when

extrapolating from the general sample to those individuals who were underrepresented,

such as individuals at the upper end of development.

Cook-Greuter’s (1999) research focused on making the SCT more useful for

assessing the postconventional tier of development. She followed in Loevinger’s

 32

footsteps since she not only added to the theory of postconventional personality

development but also designed new scoring categories for the SCT. Thus, her research

appears to be equally pragmatic and data driven. Cook-Greuter’s work was based entirely

on reevaluating existing SCT protocols; she enrolled no participants. However, she was

able to establish categories for the ego stages she suggested and train raters to recognize

them. Currently, Cook-Greuter works as a management consultant, and her work is

predominantly applied in business settings.

As discussed above, Cook-Greuter (1999) placed excessive emphasis on cognitive

processes and neglected other aspects of personality development. Consequently, it

appears questionable whether her conceptualization of the ego is consistent with

Loevinger’s (1976) theory and Maslow’s notion of self-actualization. This concern of

Cook-Greuter’s work is also expressed by Hy:

In Jane’s [Loevinger] mind—as much as I can understand—Suzanne

[Cook-Greuter] misses the main point. We should focus on the Ego construct, not
on a related construct, no matter how highly correlated. Let’s say you can use
intelligence or grammar or sentence structure to predict ego’s development, but
that would not help us understand ego development. (L. Hy, personal
communication, December 3, 2004)

It appears that Cook-Greuter is not measuring ego development but advanced

cognitive development instead. In that case, her research cannot be seen as establishing

validity for a measurement of advanced development in the area of personality.

In the manner in which Cook-Greuter currently uses the SCT, she not only

conceptualized the construct of ego development differently, but she also changed how

sentence completions are scored, the scoring algorithm, and the instructions given to test

takers, and she recommends the use of stems that are not part of the standardized Form

81 (S. Cook-Greuter, personal communication, November 28, 2004). In short,

 33

Cook-Greuter developed her own system for assessing ego development. No systematic

study has explored if Cook-Greuter’s TPR scores correlate with standard SCT scores that

are based on the manual (Hy & Loevinger, 1996). However, Cook-Greuter’s influence on

the field has grown because no other researcher has worked specifically in the area of

refining the SCT for higher development, and alternate instruments for the assessment of

advanced development have not emerged.

An important approach to test validation is the criterion or known group

approach. A group of participants that has been evaluated as having the predicted

characteristics is compared to a control group that is known to lack those aspects. No

such study involving the SCT for higher development has been completed. However, five

studies have used subjects at higher development and also collected additional forms of

data to verify the developmental level. I have attempted to synthesize the results of those

projects through detailed study of the research reports and through communication with

the authors. Although this way of seeking validation for the test has shortcomings, it

nevertheless offers some preliminary insights for future researchers.

One significant study (Sutton & Swenson, 1983) attempted to validate the SCT

through interview data based on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The authors

assigned developmental stages to verbal TAT materials based on theoretical concepts

from the SCT scoring manual. They assembled a sample spanning all developmental

stages and compared the SCT stage scores with stage scores based on the TAT data. The

authors concluded that their study supported the concurrent validity of the SCT for the

preconventional and conventional stages of development. However, for the

postconventional tier of development, the SCT assigned ego level scores that were
 34

consistently too low. This study had a number of weaknesses, such as a small number of

postconventional individuals and low interrater agreement for the highest stages. The

researcher who conducted the interviews gave consistently higher ratings compared to the

second researcher, who saw the written materials only. Nevertheless, if we were to

assume that this study had valid findings, we would have to conclude that within the total

group of postconventional individuals, the SCT identifies only a subgroup, and we do not

know what distinguishes the postconventional individuals who are high scoring on the

SCT from those who are not scoring in the postconventional tier on the test.

Consequently, we need to be careful if we want to use the SCT as a screening instrument

for research studies involving postconventional individuals.

Within the last few years, four qualitative dissertations (Hewlett, 2004; Marko,

2006; Page, 2005; Stitz, 2004) used the SCT to find participants at postconventional

stages of development. All studies collected interview data from the participants in

addition to administering the SCT. The dissertations enrolled a combined sample pool of

about 64 participants, who can be seen as a known group or criterion group at higher

development. Consequently, they constitute a valuable source for examining the external

validity of the SCT for higher development. The aggregated data are powerful because

the conclusions of the authors appear to converge around some important points. The

principle findings from those studies suggest that the SCT is usable for the assessment of

higher development, but some cautionary notes have to be taken into consideration.

The most detailed analysis of SCT validation with interview data was offered by

Hewlett (2004). He interviewed 25 individuals who Cook-Greuter had identified with her

SCT scoring system as being either at stage 8, Autonomous, or Cook-Greuter’s

 35

Construct-aware or Unitive stages. Hewlett and Cook-Greuter both scored the SCTs and

achieved an interrater agreement of 88%. An additional 8% of all protocols could not be

rated. This level of interrater agreement concurs with the findings from Cook-Greuter’s

dissertation and Loevinger’s (1998b) observations based on protocols from all levels of

development.

Hewlett (2004) rated the interview materials without prior knowledge of the SCT

scores. SCT scores concurred with interviews after the data analysis coding 56% of the

time, with the number of cases where the SCT score was higher or lower than the

interview materials being almost equal. Scoring at stage 8, Autonomous, was a

requirement for participation in his research. None of the participants who scored at the

postconventional level to enter the study were reclassified as being in the conventional

tier of development after the interviews. These findings do not necessarily disprove the

conclusions of Sutton and Swenson (1983). If Sutton and Swenson were correct in

observing that the SCT tends to assign scores that are too low, participants who were

indeed at the postconventional stage of development but received low scores on the SCT

would have been excluded from this study beforehand.

Stitz (2004) used SCTs and interview materials from 10 conventional participants

and 10 postconventional participants, the latter being at stage 7, Individualistic, or higher.

Forty percent of her postconventional participants evidenced noticeable differences

between SCT scores and interview materials, making a definitive stage determination

difficult. Page (2005), who interviewed Caucasian renunciates from three different

religious traditions, used purposeful and convenient sampling. She did not employ the

SCT to screen participants for inclusion but made an ego stage score determination of
 36

conventional versus postconventional development an important aspect of her data

analysis. In verbal communications (March 19, 2006), she confirmed she found

discrepancies between SCT scores and interview data, but all participants remained

within the respective tier of development. Marko (2006) noted discrepancies between the

SCT and the interview data in about 10% of his sample. He stated,

The levels are really ranges. So in your dissertation study a low I-4/5 [E-7,
Individualistic] could interview as a 4 [E-6, Conscientious] and you would get a
non-match.  This finding, to me, does not prove that the SCT was wrong, it
simply highlights the fact that we are looking at a continuum. (P. Marko, personal
communication, March 16, 2006)

In sum, these studies allow for the conclusion that the SCT appears to be valid for

sorting participants into the postconventional or conventional tier of development, but in

regard to the exact ego stage, an error margin of about 50% may need to be taken into

consideration. It is important to keep Marko’s suggestion in mind that participants do not

necessarily fit neatly into exact development categories; they may evidence behavior and

verbal productions from several stages under different circumstances and in regard to

different aspects of human functioning. Hewlett (2004) concluded,

The coding pattern suggests that human development is a complex affair.

Development characteristics don’t begin and end within a specific developmental
stage. Some characteristics/codes (e.g., present-centered awareness) reveal
themselves at one stage and appeared to solidify over subsequent stages. While
other characteristics appear to be a preoccupation at one stage and then gradually
move out of awareness at the next stage of development (e.g., growth,
development and learning). (p. 99)

Beside the SCT, several other instruments for the assessment of optimal

development have been published. Maslow encouraged and contributed to the

development of the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) (Shostrom, 1974; Knapp,

1976/1990), which was widely used following its publication in the 1970s. The
 37

psychometric properties, especially the validity of the POI, have remained controversial

(Whitson & Olczal, 1991). Critics noted that it is predominantly based on theory and face

validity and the scales do not show good distinction when factor analysis is used (Weiss,

1986, 1991). In the last few decades, the POI and its revised version, the Personal

Orientation Dimensions, have not been used widely. The POI has spawned a number of

shorter instruments, such as the Short Instrument of Self-Actualization (Jones & Crandall,

1986); the Brief Index of Self-Actualization (Sumerlin & Bunderick, 1996); and the

Measurement for the Actualization of Potential (Lefancois, Leclerc, Dube, Herbert, &

Gaulin, 1997). These tests show similar psychometric properties. None have been

validated with a criterion group approach. A correlation study did not show a statistically

significant correlation between one of the POI scales, Inner-directedness, and the SCT

(Novy & Frances, 1992). However, no attempts have been made to establish convergence

of the SCT and the complete POI.

One of the disadvantages of the SCT is that it is time consuming and expensive to

score it. It takes about 20 to 40 minutes to score a single protocol; professional fees for

scoring range from $30 to over $100 for a single test. A structured test would clearly

offer many advantages, and attempting to develop such a test could potentially prove a

fruitful effort. It would be necessary to establish a postconventional criterion group based

on interview materials and then find test items that distinguish between that group and a

control group that is matched for demographic attributes. Having such an instrument

available would certainly facilitate research in optimal adult development because it

would make it easier to find participants, especially larger groups. This would allow for

statistical research designs and quantitative data analysis.

 38

In sum, currently no well-validated instrument for the assessment of higher

development is available, nor does it appear likely that such an instrument can be created

any time soon. This opens up the question of how studies of advanced personality

development can be undertaken at this time. Using the SCT in spite of its limitations

appears as the best choice right now because over time this will allow accumulation of

more information about its strengths and weaknesses.

However, ideally, a researcher may want to consider not relying exclusively on

test scores as a criterion for participant selection in a study because qualified participants

might be excluded, and, in a form of circular reasoning, we may draw conclusions from a

small yet high-scoring group that is not representative of all persons at higher stages of

development. These considerations are influenced by the research of Colby and Damon

(1992). They studied a group of people who demonstrated exceptional moral commitment

in their lives and concluded that the formation of a “moral identity,” a deeply internalized

commitment, facilitated the expression of moral behavior. When they administered

Kohlberg’s instrument of moral development, the Moral Judgment Interview (Colby &

Kohlberg, 1987), the researchers found, much to their surprise, that the so-called “moral

exemplars” did not necessarily reason at Kohlberg’s highest level. Consequently, Colby

(2002) cogently argued that moral thought and moral action present separate lines of

development that offer differential contributions to our society. Colby and Damon added

significantly to our understanding of moral development through innovative theoretical

discussions, exactly because they did not start with the instrument and did not use it as a

criterion for inclusion in the study. Similarly, it appears possible that some individuals

live lives where they actualize their potential and show all aspects that Maslow
 39

(1954/1970) described, yet they may not be high scoring on a verbal projective test.

Interesting and creative findings await us in the area of postconventional personality

development if we are ready to think outside of the box and design innovative studies.

How Does Stage Progression Occur?

This section examines the theoretical literature in regard to how stage progression

occurs, especially development to the postconventional tier. Three separate issues need to

be addressed here. First, certain social aspects and personality traits seem to be associated

with achieving higher stages of development, and these will be discussed in greater

detail. Second, a slightly separate issue pertains to the psychological dynamics of

intrapersonal growth. Third, specific interventions have shown to promote ego

development.

Social and personality aspects associated with growth. A number of research

projects have looked into personality aspects that are associated with ego stage scores.

The studies were mostly correlative, and this precludes the possibility of making

assumptions about the directionality of the effect. Most of the projects are statistical in

nature and average across all ego stages. However, we do not know if progression to the

postconventional tier occurs in a linear fashion. The three tiers of development may not

exist on a continuum. In light of the fact that postconventional participants are rare, we

have to be careful to extrapolate from the general sample to those participants who are

consistently underrepresented. This means we do not know how the variable-centered

statistical research applies to the most advanced stages of development.

 40

Persons in the preconventional tier can be seen as insufficiently socialized, and

they tend to externalize problems (Krettenauer, Ullrich, Hofmann, & Edelstein, 2003).

They grow by understanding rewards and punishment and by keeping in mind the

importance of social agreements and rules. The conventional tier presents well-adjusted

individuals who work towards goals they deem desirable. The postconventional tier is

marked by less acceptance of normative values and decreased orientation towards

achievement. Thus, the tiers do not present a linear continuum in personal development.

Research that averages across all stages and has few individuals in the third tier may offer

only limited insight into postconventional development.

Newman, Tellegen, and Bouchard (1998) inquired into the influence of genetic

and environmental influences on ego development in adulthood by correlating the ego

stage scores of the SCT for monozygotic and dizygotic twins who were reared apart.

They found that monozygotic twins showed about twice as much correlation (.50) in their

SCT scores as dizygotic twins (.22). After a sophisticated statistical analysis, the authors

concluded that about 50% of the variance in ego level is due to heritability, and about is

30% due to environmental influences, with 20% accounting for a significant error margin

due to the small sample size and subjective aspects involved in scoring the SCT.

The same authors also reported a correlation of .47 between the ego stage score

and the WAIS Full Scale IQ, but the performance scale barely reached statistical

significance at .37. Loevinger (1998b) herself noted that the correlation between IQ and

ego stage may be an artifact of her methodology, and she emphasized that she does not

think that average IQ prevents adults from reaching higher levels of ego development. It

is interesting to note that she found Harvard-educated physicians who at midlife scored at
 41

the Conformist level, stage 4, and she met retarded children at stage 5, Self-aware

(Loevinger, 1998a).

Manners and Durkin (2001) pointed out that the logico-mathematical domain of

learning is independent of the socioemotional domain of learning. The authors cited

research that showed a correlation exists between the latter and ego development.

Vaillant and McCullough (1987) noted a negative correlation between the nonverbal SAT

scores and ego stage at midlife. Loevinger et al. (1985) and Alexander et al. (1994) noted

that students at liberal arts colleges started and finished college at higher stages than

students at engineering schools. Cook-Greuter (1999) observed that in her sample of

Postautonomous individuals, graduate students were significantly overrepresented, but

she also noted that there is no way of knowing if these students rose to advanced levels

because of the demanding environment, which allows for the possibility that they may

settle at a lower level once they leave the challenging and supportive environment of

graduate school.

Across the board, it has been noted that level of education showed a significant

correlation with ego level. Loevinger (1976) suggested that Piagetian cognitive stages

may act as pacers for ego development, but Manners and Durkin (2001) pointed out that

research has shown only a low or nonsignificant correlation between the two aspects of

development, suggesting that Loevinger’s assumption was inaccurate. It is possible,

however, that postformal cognitive development is necessary for the most advanced

stages of ego development.

Manners and Durkin (2001) argued, based on cross-cultural studies involving

members of a Kibbutz in Israel, that the longstanding assumption that ego stage correlates
 42

with socioeconomic status (SES) is questionable, because the Israeli sample supported

the conclusion that ego stage actually corresponds to complexity of work. Nevertheless, it

appears that within our culture, SES is often an expression of complexity of work and,

therefore, is positively correlated with ego development.

Vaillant and McCullough (1987) published an interesting longitudinal study that

involved about 100 male Harvard students who were selected by their professors for

excellence and promise in the 1940s. The authors collected extensive data over several

decades and administered the SCT at age 55. One aspect of particular interest in this

study is the high percentage of men who scored at the Autonomous and Integrated stages,

a full 10%, one of the highest samples ever found. Among the men who at age 55 were

listed in Who’s Who, a full 29% attained Loevinger’s final two stages. As Vaillant and

McCullough pointed out, the latter has to be considered a tentative result because the

sample size was small (N = 21). This study suggested that exceptional high levels of

achievement are related to ego development, and it throws a confirming light on

Maslow’s observations. Although Maslow (1954/1970 wrote that self-actualization is

possible for everyone, because it is primarily linked to knowing what is right for oneself

and to fulfilling one’s potential, his sample of self-actualizers included a disproportionate

number of high achievers, such as Ruth Benedict and Thomas Jefferson. Regrettably, we

cannot draw conclusions about the causality that may exist between higher ego stage and

achievement.

In summary, the currently available research suggests that IQ, SES, level of

formal education, and achievement seem to interact with ego stage. The nature of these
 43

interactions appears complex and awaits further exploration. We also do not know how

these findings apply specifically to the postconventional tier of development.

Several researchers have explored how the dynamic conceptualization of ego

development relates to the more stable notion of personality proposed by trait theories.

McCrae and Costa (1980) reported findings from a cross-sectional study indicating that

the traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion are unrelated to ego development. Neuroticism

is associated with such personality aspects as self-consciousness, anxiety, and

vulnerability to stress. Extraversion describes characteristics such as assertiveness,

engagement in activity, and seeking excitement. The trait of Openness, however, was

positively correlated with ego stage. It describes attributes associated with curiosity and a

willingness to take in new experiences. According to McCrae and Costa, this trait is

strongly associated with genetic disposition, but such a conclusion is debatable. A recent

study (Kurtz & Tiegreen, 2005) confirmed those results and added that the trait of

Agreeableness, which is associated with interpersonal warmth, was also positively

correlated. The authors point out that the combination of high-Openness and high-

Agreeableness describes a personality type of “having a progressive orientation towards

societal change and a basic faith in human nature” (p. 316), suggesting that especially this

combination is meaningfully related to the conceptualization of ego development theory.

Westenberg and Block (1993) demonstrated that ego-resilience, a stable

personality trait, which is understood as the ability to modify one’s behavior to the

demands of the situation, is positively related to ego stage. The authors concluded that

certain personality differences that remain stable over time are coherently connected with

the concept of developmental maturity. This finding was supported by a longitudinal

 44

study by Krettenauer et al. (2003), who pointed out that ego resilience is especially

correlated with the attainment of ego levels beyond stage 5, Self-aware. Higher levels of

ego development do not necessarily mean that people have an optimal development

during the course of their adulthood; they may have achieved the higher ego stage at the

end of the educational process in young adulthood. Westenberg and Block correctly

pointed out that only a longitudinal approach to the study of personality will help us

understand developmental dynamics and individual differences in greater detail.

Helson and Srivastava (2001) and Josselson (1996) explored the possibility that

personality types coexist with development in adulthood. These theorists have proposed

that the identity statuses that Marcia (1994) described, based on Erikson’s (1978) work,

function as stable approaches or pathways that are chosen to maintain an emotional

equilibrium and to pursue specific goals. Marcia established four categories: (1) Identity

achievement describes those individuals who have a distinct sense of themselves and who

are committed to social roles and ideologies; (2) Moratoriums are persons who are

actively engaged in the process of weighing choices and finding out what is appropriate

for them; (3) Foreclosure describes people who have made commitments based on

convention or societal expectations without exploring their personal preferences; and

(4) individuals who are unable to make any commitments and do not engage in an active

exploration are called Diffuse.

Helson and Srivastava (2001) concluded that Identity Achievers score highest in

regard to professional achievement, generativity, and mental health. Foreclosures, whom

they call the Conservers, score highest in regard to social adjustment and ego control.

Identity Diffusion was associated with low scores on all measures. Interestingly, the
 45

Moratoriums, whom they called the Seekers, scored noticeably higher on the SCT than

any other group. These participants were marked by liberal attitudes; an interest in

novelty; amplification of negative and positive emotional processes; and an active,

ongoing exploration of what is a good fit for oneself. The authors argued that ego

development theory, and the accompanying emphasis on intrapsychic differentiation and

cognitive complexity, is but one conceptualization of what is desirable in adulthood.

Alternate formulations may instead focus on the harmonious interaction of the individual

with the environment and consider adjustment, professional achievement, and freedom

from psychological problems as the hallmark of personality maturity.

In conclusion, a certain type of person appears to be more likely to progress in

development. Individuals who achieve higher ego stages are likely to have higher

intelligence, SES, and education. They are resilient, flexible, and more liberal. They show

an inclination towards self-exploration, curiosity, and experimentation, and they value

novelty.

Dynamics of growth. Loevinger (1976) speculated that individuals grow when

they are exposed to interpersonal environments that are more complex than they are.

Block (1982) delineated a model of development that suggested when people are

presented with new situations, they first resort to assimilation to fit the new information

into their existing frame of reference. Only when this fails will they use accommodation

to restructure their self-concept and their relationship with the world. This restructuring

could be seen as a means of gaining greater complexity and may therefore facilitate

growth. This is, of course, an application of Piaget’s (1977) model of cognitive

development to the domain of personality. Block argued that adulthood offers people
 46

stable niches that rarely demand a restructuring of worldviews, which may be the reason

why changes in ego stage are not the rule after formal education has been completed.

Many theorists have supported similar, challenge-based models of developmental change,

including Beck and Cowan (1996), Wilber (2000), and Kegan (1994).

In regard to cognitive complexity and perspective taking, Commons, Krause,

Fayer, and Meaney (1993) argued that the workplace atmosphere, consisting of

contingencies of reinforcements and punishments, guides cognitive development and

places a ceiling on the stage that is attainable in a given context. Commons et al.

assumed, but did not demonstrate, that classical conditioning remains effective when

higher stages have been achieved. Although this is an interesting theory worthy of further

exploration, it remains unclear if the dynamics that guide the development of cognitive

development are similar to those that guide personality development.

Kegan (1994) argued that if the environment demands that an individual functions

at a lower or at a higher level than where the person is developmentally established,

discomfort arises and often leads to the avoidance of such situations. This means

individuals may change their workplace instead of their developmental stage. An area of

possible future research is whether we can assign a stage to a social situation, such as a

workplace. The interaction between the stage of the social situation and that of the

individual in the situation would be interesting to explore.

King (2001) reported that experiencing challenging events by itself does not seem

to encourage ego development. The author worked with research participants who lived

through significant difficulties in life, such as having a child with Down syndrome or

experiencing divorce after 20 years of marriage. King coded stories of difficult events for
 47

signs of accommodation and administered the SCT. She found that accommodation was

not related to the experience of difficulty, per se, but to seeing it as challenging one’s

worldview and to consciously struggling with the event. Accommodation was positively

related to ego stages scores. King proposed that people are motivated by a desire to

experience positive states of well-being and cognitively restructure a negative event into

one that contributes to their growth. This research allows for the conclusion that cognitive

abilities and psychological structures interact with life circumstances, and the nature of

this interaction is relevant to whether growth occurs.

Vaillant and McCullough’s research (1987) showed that within their male sample,

the highest scorers on the SCT also had the most visits to mental health professionals, but

they did not exhibit signs of emotional problems. Use of psychotherapy was tied

particularly to the postconventional stages of development. Men at the Autonomous or

Integrated stages were four times more likely to have seen a mental health professional

for 10 or more visits than men at lower stages of development. However, we cannot draw

any conclusions about the causality of the factors. The aforementioned study by King

(2001) allows for the possibility that therapy may promote development, exactly because

the conscious engagement in life problems seems to be what facilitates growth, and

therapy often promotes this kind of process.

Helson, Mitchell, and Hart (1985) undertook a longitudinal study starting in 1958.

They enrolled 140 women who were seniors in a women’s college and participated in

data collection involving interviews and tests. At 42 years of age, 90 of the women were

assessed with the SCT and interviewed again. Seven of them scored at the Autonomous

stage. Helson et al.’s study paid particular attention to the life paths of the women who
 48

had reached the postconventional tier. The authors, using a qualitative, person-centered

approach, made observations in regard to what distinguishes these women from the rest

of the sample. Within the whole sample, only a very small minority of women were not

attracted to the traditional gender role of the homemaker in their 20s. Within the group of

women who reached the postconventional stage, however, a significant number had

serious career aspirations at that age. It is nevertheless important to note that this was not

a prerequisite for higher development. Homemakers and women who were dedicated to

their families and their careers also reached advanced stages of development. The

Autonomous women were more likely to remain unmarried until their 40s and to not have

children. The authors noted that these women had more obstacles in their pre-college

years, and showed an inclination towards either artistic interests or male-gender interests

during their adolescence. Following their college years, they were marked by highly

unusual life paths. Two of them entered into fields that were traditionally considered off

limits to women, such as the foreign service; another two women lived communally.

Concurring with Vaillant and McCullough’s (1987) findings, Helson et al. (1985)

noticed that the Autonomous women were significantly more likely to have participated

in significant amounts of psychotherapy. The qualitative interview data from this study

allowed for the conclusion that these women did grow in ego development during

adulthood. Several of them gave interviews in their 20s that suggested that they were at

stage 4, Conformist. What distinguished the Autonomous women was a sense of clarity

about what they wanted in life and great faithfulness to their goals. They were resourceful

and willing to acknowledge conflicts in their relationships as well as in the discrepancy

between who they sought to be and who they were. The women actively engaged in
 49

efforts to resolve these conflicts and mature as persons. The authors of this study, which

is one of very few that studied the lives of persons at the postconventional level in greater

depth, concluded that there is no clear path to higher development that is suitable for all

or most women. The diversity in regard to the personalities, the challenges encountered,

and the goals pursued were striking.

In short, although theories about how development occurs abound, empirical

research is sparse, and it has not pointed us in a consistent direction. It appears that

growth to higher ego stages is promoted when individuals experience challenges and

actively struggle with them, when they turn inward and strive towards congruence with

who they are and what they see as their goals.

Interventions that promote development. Several interesting studies have

investigated the effects of particular interventions aimed at promoting ego development.

Commons (M. Commons, personal communication, August 4, 2004) argued that

interventions would be most successful at the lower levels of development. He attributed

this to the fact that environmental factors contribute to growth, and at the lower levels of

development individuals have not had an opportunity to maximize their developmental

potential. Very few studies have been able to demonstrate that interventions are effective

at higher ego stages.

White (1985) demonstrated that a professional nursing training program

facilitated the progression from stage 4, Conformist, to stage 5, Self-aware, but the

training did not help students who entered the program above the Conformist stage with

further development. Surprisingly, Loevinger et al. (1985) and Alexander et al. (1994)

observed that some students regressed in ego stage during their college years. Both
 50

studies attributed this to the fact that those students were initially high scoring and might

have been exposed to regressive curriculums.

Manners and Durkin (2000) developed a model of how and why ego stage

changes. Drawing on different conceptualizations of change processes in adulthood, they

proposed that stage transition takes place in response to a challenging event that is (1) of

an interpersonal nature, (2) disequilibrating, (3) personally salient, and (4) emotionally

engaging. They pointed out that psychotherapy may be associated with higher ego stages

because it is often sought after a challenging event that requires an adaptation for which

the individual needs new resources. Manners and Durkin also pointed to certain

psychological structures, such as a defensive coping style, as being stabilizing to ego

stage because the individual will deny information that is unsettling and requires a

restructuring of personality.

Based on this theory Manners, Durkin, and Nesdale (2004) developed an

intervention with the purpose of promoting ego development. Their training program was

based on the assumption that the intervention should require learning that is above the

current level of functioning to be effective. They recruited participants from a graduate

school business mailing list and from a church group, and assigned them randomly to the

intervention or to a waitlist control group. The intervention consisted of 10 weekly

90-minute meetings that included presentations, personal interactions, and discussion

about communication processes. The program, which was intended to be disequilibrating,

personally salient, emotionally engaging, and of an interpersonal nature, was structured to

promote development beyond stage 5, Self-aware, meaning it included aspects of

functioning at stage 6, Conscientious, and stage 7, Individualistic. The SCT was

 51

administered at the start of the intervention, at the time of program completion, and

4 months after completion. Twenty-five participants were at or below stage 5, Self-aware,

at pretest, and 20 of them progressed one full stage. The majority maintained the gain at

the 4-month follow-up. Neither the control group nor the individuals at higher ego stage

showed any significant change.

This research study is significant in several regards. Ten weeks is a relatively

short time; the gains made are substantial compared to other studies. This study attests to

the fact that stage progression is a complex process; it is reasonable to assume that the

intervention was so successful because it took several different aspects of the change

process into account when designing the intervention. What appears to help a person

progress to a higher stage seems to be stage-specific, an aspect few researchers have

taken into consideration. A limitation of the study is the short time follow-up of only

120 days.

Other researchers (Kitchener, King, Lynch, Fischer, & Wood, 1993) have shown

that practice effects are pronounced but temporary in regard to the level at which an

individual is able to function. The research of Kitchener et al. applied to a domain other

than personality and may therefore not be transferable. We do not know if the

participants of Manners et al. (2004) were able to maintain their gains for longer periods

of time. The senior author of the intervention study declined requests for more detailed

information about the intervention, which makes replication impossible and also

constitutes a violation of standard accepted ethics principles in research. This is the only

available intervention study that used a true experimental design involving a control

group, random assignment, and pre- and postintervention test assessment.

 52

Torbert (1994, 2004) designed the so-called action inquiry approach and claims

that it facilitates ego development and improves leadership in business settings. Action

inquiry fosters an understanding of the interplay between one’s attention and other

factors, such as empirical data, one’s own behaviors, and the feelings and thoughts of

others. Action inquiry relies on conceptualizations and applications of post-formal

thought and increased inner awareness. Torbert argued that post-formal cognitive

development may facilitate progression to the highest stages of ego development,

although a connection between cognitive maturity and ego stage has not been

demonstrated for the lower stages.

In regard to an innovative MBA program, Torbert’s (1994) findings were

impressive. First, he found that once the school redesigned its program to emphasize

managerial competence with an emphasis on action inquiry, it attracted different students.

Whereas prior to reconstruction only 2.5% of the students scored at graduation at stage 7,

Individualistic, or higher, after the reconstruction a full 25% were at that level of

development when they entered. Ten percent of all students showed a full stage

progression beyond stage 6, Conscientious, by the end of the 20-month program. These

findings indicate that growth to postconventional stages can be facilitated through

educational programs that are specifically designed to do so. Regrettably, most higher

education currently fails to explicitly embrace such goals. In his most recent book,

Torbert (2004) offered exercises and suggestions to readers that he felt were helpful for

achieving higher stages of development. His ideas point to exciting future possibilities for

research in ego development. The assumption that higher ego stage is associated with

increased managerial effectiveness appears to be popular in business settings. However,

 53

research that has systematically explored this aspect and proven that point remains to be

published.

Charles Alexander undertook the most extensive research in regard to

interventions that facilitate ego development. Alexander was a Harvard-trained

psychologist who was affiliated with the spiritual group of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This

group is well known for the promotion of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and founded a

university in Iowa, the Maharishi International University (MIU), that incorporates TM

into its educational curriculum. The school teaches and researches the so-called vedic

psychology, a transpersonal approach based on Hindu philosophy that describes higher

stages of consciousness. In accordance with vedic psychology, Alexander et al. (1994)

proposed that ego development is halted due to the accumulation of stress in the nervous

system as well as to lack of exposure to appropriate growth technologies. They suggested

that TM is such a growth-inducing technology because its practice is associated with

profound relaxation and a shift to deeper levels of the mind, which facilitates

transpersonal experiences.

In a naturalistic, longitudinal study (Alexander et al., 1994), students at MIU,

students at an engineering school, and students at a liberal arts school were tested at

school entry and again 10 years later with the SCT. The MIU sample showed a

significant gain in ego development at posttest, whereas the liberal arts college, whose

students scored almost identical to MIU students at college entry, actually decreased in

ego stage. The engineering school students tested lowest at school entry and maintained

their low scores unchanged throughout the 10-year period. At posttest, 53% of the MIU

sample scored above stage 6, Conscientious, and 38% scored at stage 8, Autonomous, or
 54

stage 9, Integrated. These are some of the highest percentages for postconventional

participants ever found in a sample. The weakness of this study was the lack of random

assignment; therefore, it could not account for other variables, such as the possibility that

a different kind of student might seek out MIU instead of a mainstream school.

Page (2005) undertook a study of renunciates from three different religious

traditions. She found 44% of her sample to be postconventional, vastly exceeding

samples in the general population. Although the sample size was very small (N = 22),

this is an interesting finding. It allows for the conclusions that spiritual practice itself may

promote ego development, or that individuals at higher stages are inclined towards

spiritual practices and commitments.

In light of the fact that higher ego stages are described by Loevinger (1976) as

displaying an inner orientation, by increasing awareness of interpersonal complexity and

a willingness to acknowledge inner conflict, it is not surprising that advanced stages are

associated with activities that promote introspection and an increased differentiation of

one’s inner life. The awareness of inner states appears to be an effective ingredient in the

interventions, similar to education, psychotherapy, spiritual practice, and action inquiry.

Conclusions

To sum up the literature review, Loevinger’s (1976) theory of ego development

and its associated instrument, the SCT, have provided a context for the exploration of

higher development in adulthood that most researchers in the field have accepted.

Extensive research demonstrated that higher SCT scores are associated with a number of

stable personality aspects, such as more formal education, complexity at work, valuing of

novelty, and ego resilience. Consequently, some people appear to be more likely to
 55

progress to higher ego stages than others. The existing literature suggests that

development to higher stages appears to be driven by an inner orientation and a

willingness to construct a new frame of reference when difficulties arise.

Although questions about ego development theory and the associated instrument

that merit further exploration persist, the advantages of relying on a well-established

theory and test are significant. The generated research can be fitted into an existing

context, and findings from several studies can be seen as converging aspects of evidence

within an area of research. The use of this instrument places this study within an ongoing

process of inquiry. At the same time, the weaknesses and shortfalls of ego development

theory cannot be overlooked or denied, and I strive to explore them in my research.

 56

Chapter 3: Methodology

Research Questions

Based on the foregoing discussion, the following research questions were

proposed:

1. From the subjective perspective of the individual, what events, processes,

factors, and activities were growth promoting?

2. What role does spiritual practice play in the way persons reach higher stages

of development?

3. Are Loevinger’s (1976) and Cook-Greuter’s (1999) theories and instruments

adequate for understanding and measuring higher development, or can

additions be developed?

Epistemology and Strategy

This research study is exploratory in nature. I explored the perspectives of persons

at higher stages, but I am also interested in developing a theory of how development to

higher stages unfolds and what facilitates this kind of development. In light of the fact

that a subjective and a more objective perspective of growth was sought, I decided to

converge a postpositivist and a postmodern, hermeneutic epistemology in the approach to

data analysis within an overall qualitative design. Qualitative data in the form of

interviews or written narratives were collected and subjected to two different forms of

analysis: grounded theory and narrative analysis. The inductive approach of grounded

theory (Charmaz, 2000; Corbin & Strauss, 1990; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Henwood &

Pidgeon, 2003; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) is rooted in the postpositivist tradition of

contemporary sociology. I also completed a narrative content analysis (Chase, 2005), a

 57

recently popularized method in personality research. Qualitative research is appropriate

when the available amount of information about a field remains limited, when hypotheses

have not readily emerged yet, when we aim to understand a more subjective interpretative

position, and if the participant sample remains small (Creswell, 2003). All the above

conditions were met for this study.

Design and Data Collection

The study enrolled participants who had achieved advanced levels of personality

development and inquired into their perspectives about growth experiences. In light of

the fact that an ego stage constitutes a way of meaning-making and interpreting the social

world, it makes intuitive sense that persons at lower stages cannot realistically know how

persons advance to postconventional stages.

After receiving the IRB clearance from Saybrook, I approached some potential

participants I knew personally, but most participants were recruited over the Internet. I

posted invitations (Appendix C) on Internet-based discussion groups and listserves.

Appendix D is the list of discussion groups that were used. In the final stages of the

project, opportunities for snowballing opened up, and a few participants were referred by

others.

Data collection, with interruptions, lasted about 18 months. During that time I had

contact with about 130 potential participants. After people indicated that they wanted to

participate, I sent them the pertinent papers as email attachments. Completing the SCT

(Appendix B), a demographic form (Appendix E), and a consent to participate in research

form (Appendix F) was considered the first round of data collection. A total of 84 persons

completed this step.

 58

The second round of data collection was focused on interviews and narratives.

This step was guided by Kvale’s (1996) writing. I invited about 30 persons who were at

or near the postconventional tier of development to contribute narratives or interviews.

Although the majority of invited persons agreed to participate further, there was some

attrition at this point. A few participants were eliminated later because the materials

submitted were too short to be useful. Three participants were asked to contribute a

narrative and participate in an interview. The intention was to see if narratives and

interviews offer different kinds of data, which was disconfirmed.

About half of the interviews were done in person, with the other half done over

the phone. Prior to the interviews, I sent participants a reminder and also sent them the

questions I expected to ask (Appendix G). At the beginning of the interviews, I reminded

the participants that I was audiotaping, and I explained to the interviewee that I wish to

understand how people grow and that I would like to hear about events, activities, and

occurrences in their lives that they thought were particularly meaningful and growth

promoting. I specifically mentioned that the interviews were open ended and that the

participants could talk about anything they thought to be relevant. Towards the end of the

interview, I explored specific issues; sometimes I asked about obstacles, spiritual

practices, or peak experiences. I completed the interviews by asking if there was anything

else that the participants wanted to add and encouraged them to get in touch with me if

anything else came to mind later. Every interview lasted between 30 and 90 minutes.

In-person interviews tended to last longer than phone interviews.

Once the interview or narrative was completed, I sent the audiotapes out to be

transcribed. Following their return, I listened to every tape and verified the transcription.
 59

I assigned a code name to every participant. I found qualitative dissertation narratives

often hard to read, and using only a number or an initial seems to reduce the sense of

dealing with a whole person. The code names used are meant to denote gender.

Following the transcription, I undertook initial steps of data analysis immediately, but I

also later reanalyzed the transcripts repeatedly. Data collection and data analysis occurred

concurrently.

Few design changes were made after the initial months. In the last 3 months of the

project, however, I decided to rely more on phone interviews because it allowed me to

interact with more persons who were not readily willing to write a narrative and who

were not within geographical proximity. The recent emergence of low-cost,

web-activated international calling facilitated this decision. As I was already writing the

dissertation, I realized that none of my data made a sufficient contribution to the research

question of what optimal development actually is like. I decided to add a small final

round of data collection. I reapproached several participants who had scored at stage 8,

Autonomous, or higher, and asked them to give me their view of what constitutes a

mature person and what they consider to be the optimal outcome of adult development.

Once I had arrived at what I considered definitive findings, I conducted member

checks. A brief report was sent to most of the postconventional participants who had

completed interviews or narratives. They were invited to give feedback and comment on

the findings. I also opened a Yahoo chat room and invited all postconventional

participants to join if they were interested in meeting each other or if they wanted to

discuss the research. No specific discrepancies in regard to the data analysis emerged at

that time.
 60

Participants

Individuals who occupy the postconventional tier of development are difficult to

find because they represent a small minority of persons within the population.

Consequently, purposeful and convenient sampling was used. At the end of the project, I

also relied on snowballing.

I used convenient sampling to a very small degree at the beginning of the project

among my friends and acquaintances. Two postconventional individuals joined the

project in this way. Then, I posted invitations on the Internet, which led to the recruitment

of 17 postconventional participants over a period of 20 months. As the project was

winding down, I received recommendations from participants about other potentially

high-stage individuals. Three persons eventually enrolled in this way.

Response bias to the Internet invitations was very pronounced. The overwhelming

majority of individuals who contacted me and showed an interest in the project were

Caucasians living in the United States between the ages of 50 and 70, with men

outnumbering women slightly. However, I had contact with approximately 100 persons

from 12 different countries. A majority of the respondents can be described as belonging

to alternative spiritual groups. This appears, in part, to be a recruitment bias that is due to

my own membership in one of America’s largest Buddhist communities. However, even

respondents who answered invitations on lists that discuss existentialism or corporate

management seemed to gravitate towards alternative beliefs and lifestyles. The absence

of members from the mainstream religious denominations was striking. Although I made

specific efforts to invite young people by, for example, posting to Internet groups for

Peace Corps Volunteers and using the website MySpace, few young people responded.
 61

Although no exact statistical analysis was conducted because the specific age groups

were too small, persons of any age group seemed to be roughly equally likely to score in

the postconventional tier. The group of all respondents had a mean age of 49.1 years

(SD = 13.9, range 20 to 80); the postconventional participants had a mean age of 48.3

years (SD = 13.5, range 25 to 74). This offers further evidence for the observation that

age does not seem to be related to the attainment of postconventional stages of

development.

After I had received the SCTs and consent forms, I extended invitations for

further participation to all persons scoring at stage 7, Individualistic, or higher. The

principal goal was to hear the perspectives of persons who had actually reached the

highest stages of development. I also invited a few participants who scored in the

conventional tier. The intention was to see if clear differences between conventional and

postconventional participants could be discerned in the interviews and also to investigate

if some persons who did not score at the postconventional tier on the test presented

high-end perspectives in the interview. A total of 28 participants contributed narratives or

interviews, 22 postconventional and 6 conventional scoring persons.

Ego stage scores were assigned as follows. First, I scored the SCTs myself,

relying on Hy and Loevinger’s (1996) manual. I had self-trained extensively over a

period of 2 years, using the suggested exercises in the manual, and obtained satisfactory

interrater agreement scores with the sample tests from the manual. After the narratives or

interviews were complete, the SCTs were sent to a scorer who had trained with

Cook-Greuter, Dane Hewlett. The reasons for using Hewlett’s services instead of

Cook-Greuter’s were financial. I compared his scores and my scores on a case-by-case

 62

basis and in certain instances on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I also took the interviews

and narrative materials into consideration to assign a stage, and in a few cases I sent the

SCT protocol to a third rater, Cook-Greuter. Some participants had previously taken the

test with Cook-Greuter, and she reported their scores to me. A total of 22 participants

received a postconventional designation, and 6 participants had a conventional rating. For

the purposes of this project, I weighted interviews more strongly than the test. In the

group of the postconventional participants, 10 were women and 12 were men.

Specific efforts were made to enroll participants who were members of ethnic

minority groups, such as posting to an Internet group of African American graduates of

Ivy League schools. Three members of ethnic minority groups completed the paperwork;

none scored at or near the postconventional tier. There were no discernable differences

between the postconventional participants from the United States and those from Europe,

Canada, and Australia. Although I did not specifically inquire into sexual preferences, I

am under the impression that all participants were heterosexual. Only one of them

mentioned disability, such as attention deficit disorder. Considering the age range and the

nationalities, this study shows greater diversity than any previous research project that

studied postconventional individuals.

With a few exceptions, the participants did not seem to understand that the SCT is

used to assign a developmental stage. Usually they thought I was interested in the

information they provided there. I avoided discussion of that issue, and few participants

asked about it directly. In conclusion, I want to remark that meeting the participants was

the most enjoyable and rewarding aspect of the dissertation research; I felt that I had the

privilege of meeting truly remarkable people.

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Data Analysis

The second round of data collection produced about 800 pages of double-spaced

text that provided the principal data for analysis. Data analysis was designed as an

orderly process with distinct steps. However, as is common in many qualitative projects,

participant recruitment, data collection, and data analysis occurred concurrently but also

in three waves corresponding to three different IRB clearances, starting in fall of 2004

and completed in summer of 2006. The data analysis was guided by Miles and Huberman

(1994), Strauss and Corbin (1990), and Lieblich et al. (1998) and consisted of six distinct

steps.

First, after the interviews I filled out an encounter form. However, I noticed that

the form needed to be changed constantly, and after a while I just made notes following

the interview of what specifically stood out and what questions arose. I combined those

notes with the memos I later wrote during data analysis. In the case of narratives, I

immediately tried to determine if there were issues that needed to be clarified further, and

in a few instances I asked participants to elaborate further. As time passed between my

first contact with the participant and later requests, it became less likely that the

participant responded. The purpose of this step was to document the sense of interacting

with the person instead of focusing exclusively on the verbal productions after they were

transcribed.

Second, following this initial step, I read the interview or narrative materials with

the intention of rating for an ego stage. The purpose of this step was to see if

discrepancies between the interview materials and the SCT scores emerged. This step

was meant to specifically address the research question of whether the test can be
 64

validated through other materials and if the test assigns stage designations that are too

low. In order to rate the materials, I relied on the guidelines and codes suggested by

Cook-Greuter (1999), Hewlett (2004), Hy and Loevinger (1996), and Marko (2006).

Third, I performed the steps that are classically done in grounded theory, such as

assigning substantive or open codes, which are the initial conceptual categories; followed

by theoretical or axial codes, which connect the open codes and present a higher level of

abstraction (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). As the next step, selective coding, I attempted to

move towards a core category, a more abstract, higher order concept that subsumes all or

most of the lower level codes and allows for an integrating theory of how higher

development is achieved. I used coding sheets for a while based on categories that

emerged from the theoretical literature and the initial interviews. However, I seemed to

discover less and just sorted into preconceived categories, so consequently I gave them

up again. Memos were the standard means of recording and organizing my thoughts on

an ongoing basis.

Fourth, after completing the above steps, I read the materials from all the

postconventional participants in one sitting, and all the materials from the conventional

participants in another sitting in order to see if any distinct differences emerged.

Although it was extremely demanding to read uninterruptedly for days, this was one of

the most enlightening aspects of the analysis. Clear differences became apparent. At this

time, I worked primarily with memos, and the theoretical codes readily emerged.

The fifth step was based on the two pilot projects I had completed earlier.

Somehow the above steps felt incomplete, and Marko (personal communication,

March 10, 2006) advised me to pay close attention to my intuition and how I felt I should
 65

proceed as the project unfolded. I sensed that I met these very remarkable people but then

I fractured the data in the grounded theory analysis, and it just did not seem to do justice

to the materials and the people. In light of the fact that higher development is a rare and

unique event, I wanted to portray the person and not just present a list of aspects and

characteristics the participants shared. My thoughts kept going back to research by

McAdams (1993, 1996), who argued that the life story creates the identity, and that if we

want to understand the person, we need to study the life story. After reading extensively

about narrative research (Chase, 2005; Josselson, Lieblich, & McAdams, 2003;

McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich, 2001), the approach of Lieblich et al. (1998) called

“holistic content perspective” seemed most appropriate. In this approach, the attention is

not on any element or structural aspect but rather on the whole story. The interpreter asks:

What kind of story is this? What kind of person creates this type of story? What kind of

identity is created? There is no technique; instead, an effort is made to just let the story

speak for itself. I decided to take this approach and write a page or two about each

participant.

Sixth, towards the end of the project, I looked over the materials to determine if I

had sufficient data to address all research questions and found that the question

concerning what is mature, what is desirable, was insufficiently addressed. I decided that

instead of basing the discussion on theoretical sources, I could see what participants at

higher stages have to offer. Consequently, I recontacted most of the participants who had

scored at stage 8, Autonomous, or above and asked for their view of what is mature,

optimal, and desirable in adult development. I analyzed these materials separately as an

addendum to the project.

 66

Much data analysis was also completely informally. I would just spend hours,

days, and whole weekends going over the transcripts and listening to the tapes. As

Strauss and Corbin (1990) pointed out, a particularly rewarding strategy was approaching

the data without intention and just listening to the tapes. The findings emerged from the

data, but they did so slowly on their own time. I had the advantage of not working at a

regular job and had almost unlimited time at my disposal.

Trustworthiness

After all steps were complete, I contemplated issues of validity, and I took several

steps to increase the trustworthiness of my findings. First, I wrote up a preliminary report

and forwarded it to some of the postconventional participants and solicited their

comments. This step, a so-called “member check,” is common in qualitative analysis and

replaces statistical procedures of reliability.

In order to increase the validity of the findings, I also performed a negative case

analysis, meaning I paid increased attention to nonconforming data. It bothered me a long

time that four of the SCT scores were discrepant from the interview data, and I examined

the interviews again and again but came to the same conclusions: In four cases there was

just no fit. However, over time, I began to see the larger picture. The validity and

reliability of an instrument is never 100%, there is always some error, and projective

instruments usually have more error than structured personality tests. Having a nonmatch

of about 15% can be due to many reasons, but the most likely is just the overall validity

or lack thereof of a projective test.

I also specifically reanalyzed interview and narrative data that did not fit or stood

out in any way. Common sense dictates that no matter how small or large a sample, it is
 67

not realistic to expect that all data fit. I specifically saw three cases as particular and

outstanding. Liam, #531, the youngest participant, has no college degree and also has one

of the highest SCT scores. Mark, #516, has a difference of two stages between the SCT

score and the narrative interview score and shared particularly deep spiritual experiences.

Roger, #350, also has a two-stage difference between SCT and interview. I revisited

those interviews in an effort to make sure no materials were overlooked.

A threat to validity emerged from the small number of participants as well as from

the purposeful sampling. Somewhere around the 12th interview I felt that I was reaching

data saturation and not discovering much new data. However, I was concerned that I was

rushing towards premature closure and actually proceeded to enroll a total of 28

participants who submitted narratives or interviews. I feel that the validity of the findings

has been increased due to the amount of data collection that represents the high end for a

qualitative study. Although I initially was not planning on using controls, having

participants who were not in the postconventional stage of development was extremely

useful; it made the contrast between the two clearer and helped me see details.

Some participants did not fall within the most common demographical

parameters. The most representative postconventional participant was a middle-aged

consultant, self-employed, with an advanced degree, who participates in a nonmainstream

spiritual practice. In contrast, I considered minority participants those who were under the

age of 30, had no college degrees, and were not associating with any alternative spiritual

groups. I made specific efforts to collect additional data from them by conducting

interviews instead of just soliciting a narrative. When possible, I met them in person. My

findings remained robust.

 68

At all times I was striving to meet and exceed the evolving guidelines for

qualitative research (Elliott, Fischer, & Rennie. 1999). I have given thought about how

the validity of the findings could be increased through additional research efforts in the

future: (1) I could simply increase the participant pool and collect additional data. (2) I

could have my findings and the original data audited by a knowledgeable colleague. (3) I

could triangulate with a quantitative analysis. For example, I could quantify units of

speech that present inner awareness and correlate the number with ego stage. (4) I could

bring the sample pool to about 100 and use a survey instrument to see if differences

emerge between conventional and postconventional participants. (5) I could follow up

this exploratory stage by collecting more uniform data, such as longer narratives where

standardized instructions are given in writing to the participants.

Limitations and Delimitations

The limitations of the study are related to: (1) qualitative research and small

samples, (2) the design used, (3) the sampling procedure, (4) instrumentation, and (5) my

personality and subjectivity.

Qualitative research usually engages a small number of participants, which limits

generalizations that can be made to the population at large. The odds of a chance finding

are significant. For example, in this project, the youngest participant, Liam, # 531,

obtained one of the highest SCT scores, yet he does not have a college degree. I do not

believe that this is anything but a highly unlikely coincidence. In the interpretation of the

findings I took care to stay with specific conclusions and place them in the context of

comparable research studies.

 69

The research strategy and design of the study are based on the assumption that

individuals have insight into what helps them grow, which may not necessarily be the

case. However, no claims are made that this inquiry is exhaustive and covers all aspects

of growth. This study is exploratory and the design was chosen in part because few other

alternatives were feasible; the number of available postconventional participants

remained too small to consider a quantitative evaluation based on questionnaires.

Limitations are created by the sampling procedure. Although I enrolled

participants from three continents and eight nationalities, most or all participants belong

to the mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture. Persons with more social advantages and

advanced educational degrees seem to be overrepresented. As Baumeister (1986) has

pointed out, the autonomous self that experiences a need for fulfillment and

self-realization is a product of only some cultures. However, it appears that even in the

mainstream culture the social context does not promote higher development. The

dominant cultural narrative places emphasis on seeking happiness and suggests that

happiness is obtained through getting what one wants. Understanding how the

participants departed from the dominant values and moved towards a growth orientation

that differentiated them from most people in our culture was an interesting aspect of the

inquiry.

Limitations are also imposed by the instrumentation. To compensate for the

limitations of the SCT for the assessment of higher development, I made specific efforts

to not rely solely on the SCT but also included at least a few participants who were lower

scoring to see if their interviews and narratives revealed indications of higher

development. As mentioned earlier, the SCT does not measure adjustment, mental health,
 70

or subjective well-being. I paid specific attention to how those aspects interact with the

ego stage scores.

Finally, there are those limitations that are imposed by myself, my personal

interests, and where my attention focused during the interviews and data analysis. For the

last 20 years, I have been a member of the Shambhala Buddhist community, one of

America’s largest, controversial, and most prominent Buddhist organizations for

Caucasians. A significant number of participants (N = 4) replied to my online

participation request because they knew me personally. Buddhists are consequently

overrepresented in the sample, and because they tend to live in Colorado, they were more

likely to be interviewed than other participants. I was initially concerned that I might

adopt an overly positive attitude toward community members. The only person this was

an issue with was Roger, #350, who was extremely personable and likeable. He received

low scores for the SCT from Hewlett and Cook-Greuter, and I kept wondering if I rated

the interview too high because of personal biases. However, as time passed and I reread

the interview, I became more confident of my evaluation. In regard to other participants

who were personally known to me, I did not struggle with that issue. Two conventional

participants are long-term friends. Loevinger (1976) pointed out that people tend to

overestimate their own ego score and the scores of members of their in-group. I found her

observation to be accurate. The consistent low scores of psychologists and Buddhist

practitioners surprised me, but I found that their interviews supported those scores. Later,

I noted that some of the participants offered me the same beliefs, for example, that highly

evolved persons get involved with the Integral Institute. Over time, I also noted that I

developed a more critical attitude towards testing; the SCT score does not reflect entirely
 71

who and what the person is. Persons scoring in the mid range, around the population

averages, can have satisfying, meaningful lives, and be highly generative.

 72

Chapter 4: Results

Using multiple research questions and methodologies has lead to highly complex

findings. After a brief summary, I first present findings pertaining to the demographics of

the participants. Following that, the findings for each research question will be presented

separately. I will start with the most overarching question concerning theories of adult

development. Next, I will present results from the data analysis concerning the validity of

the SCT. And, finally, I will address the principal question—how persons view their own

growth and what factors facilitate growth to postconventional development. This section

has four subsections, (1) complexity, (2) inner orientation, (3) intention with

commitment, and (4) miscellaneous elements.

Summary

After I had enrolled the participants, I asked them to provide narratives or

interviews about their growth experiences. The recorded and transcribed data were

analyzed using grounded theory and holistic narrative analysis. The results demonstrate

that postconventional participants tell growth stories that are clearly different from those

of conventionally scoring participants. The stories of all postconventional participants

were highly complex, which suggests a high level of cognitive-emotional integration with

well-differentiated perspectives. Growth is seen as an interior process that is guided by an

inner awareness of what is right for oneself. Intention to grow and consistent commitment

to act on that intention, such as joining a growth-oriented discourse community and

maintaining a discipline that increases inner awareness, were pronounced themes. The

findings support the conclusion that for most persons who are at a higher developmental

level spiritual practice is an important aspect of enhancing their inner awareness.

 73

However, it does not emerge as a necessary element for advanced development,

according to this study. Minor elements, meaning those that were not as universally true

but still robust in the data analysis, include giftedness, unconventionality, and cross-

cultural exposure. A graphic display of the findings is offered in Appendix J.

The views of the postconventional participants of what constitutes advanced

development support Hy and Loevinger’s (1996) discussion of postconventional

development. However, this conceptualization of what is optimal in adulthood is

considerably narrower than Maslow’s (1954/1970) because it is almost exclusively

focused on inner differentiation. The findings in regard to the SCT support the theoretical

discussion, meaning the SCT shows some validity, but an unequivocal acceptance of this

instrument for the assessment of higher development cannot be supported.

Findings Pertaining to the Demographics of the Participants

From a sample pool of approximately 100 contacts, who had responded to

invitations and subsequently completed the SCT, I invited all respondents who were

scoring in the postconventional tier and asked for their participation. This resulted in the

enrollment of 22 postconventional participants. The tables below show the distributions

of the stages, the age groups, the levels of formal education achieved, and the

nationalities.
 74

Table 1

Postconventional Participants’ Ego Stage Scores

7/ 8/ 9/ 10/
Individualistic Autonomous Construct-aware Unitive

Number of
Participants 5 13 3 1

Table 2

Postconventional Participants’ Ages

20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79

Number of
participants 2 5 5 4 5 1

Table 3

Postconventional Participants’ Levels of Education

Less than BA BA MA/MS Ph.D.

Number of
participants 5 3 10 4

Table 4

Postconventional Participants’ Nationalities

U.S./Canada Europe Australia

Number of
participants 15 6 1
 75

I also enrolled 6 conventionally scoring participants who were well matched

demographically to the postconventional group. Special attention was paid to selecting

individuals who were middle aged, with a trend towards more advanced degrees in the

people professions, and self-employment. Half of the control group members were

Buddhists with over 10 years of meditation practice. Several of them were interested in or

involved with Integral Theory (Wilber, 2000). The intention was to form a control group

that differed in terms of the SCT score but not in regard to other aspects.

Considering that 82 SCTs were scored, the percentage of persons scoring as

postconventional participants, 26%, appears to be high. However, we have to consider

that people without computer access were not invited, which might skew the results.

Appendix H gives an overview of the postconventional participants and their

demographic data, including nationalities, career choices, and religious orientations.

Among the postconventional participants, both genders were presented in roughly

equal numbers. Individuals with college degrees, especially psychologists and

management-related professionals, were disproportionately overrepresented, as were

Buddhists and persons interested in Integral Theory. A superficial interpretation of the

participant characteristics may create the impression that persons who are Buddhists,

psychologists, or those interested in Integral Theory are more likely to be at a

postconventional stage of development. However, I specifically want to point out that this

conclusion is not supported. Instead, we can conclude that those groups are significantly

more likely to respond to research invitations on the Internet. The overwhelming majority

of respondents from those groups were in the conventional tier of development.

 76

Because college education emerged as a pronounced factor that appeared to

predict or be required to achieve higher development, I paid specific attention to the 5

postconventional participants without college degrees. Three of them participated in

interviews. The most striking factor was that they all reached a comfortable middle-class

standard of living and were socially hardly distinguishable from the participants with

degrees. Liam, #531, age 25, is an undergraduate hoping to eventually earn a Ph.D. in

psychology. Jackie, #602, age 27, a full-time mother who grew up without college

aspirations, stated that she intends to seek a degree once her time is freed up. Kyle, #505,

age 42, used to be self-employed and currently works in the real estate sector. He was the

only one of the postconventional participants who voiced dissatisfaction with his career

and stated that he would like to think about earning a degree later. Aidan, #533, age 50,

appeared satisfied owning a nursery but expressed that he felt uncertain about his

earnings. Andrew, #539, age 60, had been in a long-term marriage with a woman who

was independently wealthy, and he did not need to work for a living most of his life. He

had spent many years living in meditation centers and had later also worked in sales and

managerial positions. He talked about entering a year-long meditation retreat in the near

future. In short, response bias led to a sample that is all Caucasian with participants who

are members of the dominant middle-class culture. However, the participants present a

good spread in terms of the age range, the diverse nationalities, and the widely differing

levels of formal education.

Taking an Empirical Approach to Theories of Higher Development

This section of the research project emerged directly from an inability on my part

to work out satisfactory answers about what constitutes optimal development from the
 77

theoretical literature. Over time, as I was scoring SCTs, I eventually concluded that most

individuals working in academia do not appear to be any more mature than the rest of the

population, meaning the available theories of development may be promulgated by

persons who are not very developed themselves. Consequently, late in the project I

contacted the postconventional participants and asked specifically what they thought was

an optimal adulthood. How would they recognize a person who is mature and

self-actualized? I did a separate data analysis for this section to specifically address this

issue.

In regard to what is desirable in development, eight out of ten (80%) of the

respondents placed emphasis on inner differentiation and on being psychologically

minded. The views of the participants were strongly shaped by their respective ego stage.

At stage 7, Individualistic, the three responders all expressed ideas about optimal

development that were less differentiated. There was pronounced emphasis on rejecting

conventional values, on inner-directedness, and on the individual needs of the person.

Mia, #502, a Buddhist who works as an accountant in Colorado said,

It could be different for different people on the path, I don’t know, I mean,
everybody is kind of in a different place, but it’s not the same for everyone;
everybody’s path is completely individual. . . . We have been pretty dependent on
the culture, the structures of culture until then; you know the definitions of
culture. And after you bought your third set of dishes, and you realize that you are
not going to be happy that way, you start to feel dissatisfied, or maybe sooner, and
you see that, and you don’t know how to make your life really meaningful or
satisfying. . . . So, that is the kind of growth that I am talking about, going beyond
your boundaries and taking a bigger view, but it requires being willing to then live
without the support of those structures that you needed to feel safe before. . . .
What I think is mature and what an average person thinks is mature, it might be
very different. I think maturity is being willing to hang out without much ground;
to hang out in space without much protection and security.
 78

Mia’s account was representative of what stage 7 participants expressed. Few, if

any, aspects apart from an inner differentiation and awareness emerged. However, there

was a general acceptance that achievement and adjustment are insufficient for maturity

and meaning-making. At stage 8, the five responders all expressed more complexity and

placed significant emphasis on inner development, with some elements of behavioral

manifestations. Jackie, #602, a 27-year-old full-time mother, wrote,

An optimal adulthood (which no one usually comes close to and certainly isn’t the
“norm”) would be to enter adulthood equipped with the awareness to seek out
internal goals and the knowledge, growth and maturity to express internal drives
and embrace life’s flow in order to accomplish as many goals as you feel driven
to do so. This would mean having a positive outlook and the belief that intention
will create the reality you believe possible. That person would be open to others’
ideas and always seeking understanding. Not easily angered or given to the rise
and fall of emotions but instead being in a place of maturity that allows
observation of the internal reactions and intentional choices of external reactions. 
They would still look human and fail but would always get back up and try again, 
never giving up on the spirit of humanity in others or themselves.

Jackie’s description expressed the views of stage 8 participants. For three stage 8

responders, higher development was seen as rare or almost impossible to achieve at that

stage, and many aspects need to be taken into consideration. Scott, #629, age 60, a

management consultant and the only stage 10 participant, offered the most complex

discussion. Among other aspects he stressed the ability to be aware of oneself in the

moment, to reflect on one’s emotions as they happen, and to not feel attached to one’s

perspective.

It’s [maturity/higher development] not an easy thing to know. What I look for is a
certain kind of sophistication and how people listen and understand and respond.
And I look for, also, a kind of emotional resilience in it where they can both feel
things and let them go, where things affect them, but don’t . . . so they’re not
disassociated, but they’re totally present, they feel things in the moment, but they
don’t hang on to them. Another way I know is when people hold things lightly,
where they’re willing to say what they believe, and what they mean, and they’re
also persuadable in terms of being able to alter whatever frameworks they’re
 79

using, in response to what’s going on immediately. So they demonstrate for you a

willingness to learn. And that takes, what I believe a sort of diminished
identification or ego. There’s a kind of ego equation, you know . . . I am my ideas,
or I am what I can do or I am . . . they don’t seem to have that. They just . . . they
hold all that very lightly. They’re not interested in whether you are approving of
them or disapproving of them. It’s not like they don’t care about that, but they’re
more interested in your response than if they are wounded or healed by it.

Seven of the postconventional participants (33%) commented during the course of

the interview about their own inner processes in the moment. One participant also

addressed it in the narrative. This seemed to be representative of the higher stages of

postconventional development and appears to reflect what Scott is discussing here, not

seeing the inner process as being separate from the lived experience of the moment.

Validity of the SCT for the Assessment of Higher Development

The purpose of this part of the study was to add to an ongoing exploration of

whether the SCT, in particular with the additions of Cook-Greuter (1999), is valid and

reliable for the assessment for postconventional development. I scored the SCT protocols

of the participants based on the Hy and Loevinger (1996) manual. I had previously over a

period of almost 2 years completed all the training exercises in the manual and achieved

satisfactory ratings on the sample tests provided. After I determined that a participant’s

test protocol was at or near the postconventional tier, I asked the participant for an

interview or narrative. Then, I scored the narratives or interview materials for an ego

stage. After this was complete, I forwarded the SCT to the second rater, Dane Hewlett.

Hewlett (1999) had received formal training from Cook-Greuter and reported an

interrater agreement of 80% with Cook-Greuter. In order to make the resulting data

workable, I created a worksheet (Appendix I) and filled it out for every participant. The

intention was to take my SCT scores, Hewlett’s scores, and the narrative or interviews
 80

score into consideration when assigning an ego stage score. I was particularly interested

in two separate questions. First, I wanted to see if the Cook-Greuter system produced

different results than the Hy and Loevinger (1996) manual and, if so, which one was

supported by the interviews. Second, I wanted to explore if Sutton and Swenson’s (1983)

conclusion that the SCT assigns scores that are consistently too low at the higher end of

development was accurate. To achieve this step of the research process, I tried to find

participants who had SCT scores at the high end of conventional tier and then showed

postconventional views in the interview.

The results were complex. Half of all participants submitted easy-to-score

protocols and had definitive scores, such as solid 8, Autonomous. In those cases, Hewlett

and I agreed. However, the other half of all protocols were near a boundary, either barely

7, or at the high end of 7. In these cases, Hewlett and I usually arrived at different

conclusions. However, we never disagreed by more than one stage. This seems to be due

to two reasons. First, the scoring rules, which are based on an exponential function

Loevinger (1976) termed the ogive rules, differ in the two systems. According to the

Cook-Greuter (1999) system, more answers at the higher stage are needed to receive the

higher stage score. For several participants, I assigned higher stages because they met

that stage requirement with the number of answers given in the Hy and Loevinger system

(1996), but Hewlett assigned lower scores because they did not meet the criteria in the

Cook-Greuter system. Sometimes, Hewlett and I scored a single stem differently, and that

changed the score.

Without exception, I assigned higher stages than Hewlett, which may be due to

differing emphasis in the scoring systems. For example, offering more elements within
 81

any given sentence can lead to a higher rating in the Hy and Loevinger (1996) system,

but Cook-Greuter (1999) places more emphasis on content. Attempting to use the

interview materials to confirm the SCT scores did not work well; often, participants could

not be designated as clearly either one or the other stage. Frequently, some elements of

the higher stage were present but the overall interview did not entirely justify that

designation. My conclusion is that individuals may be transitioning, or they may use

meaning-making strategies from more than one stage, and in that case a stage assignment

is difficult. The Cook-Greuter system will assign a lower stage, and the Hy and

Loevinger system will assign a higher stage. There was no exception to this observation.

Second, there is the question if the SCT assigns scores that are too low compared

to interviews, as Sutton and Swenson (1983) suggested. I had admitted 8 participants who

had received SCT scores in the conventional tier (#220, #350, #375, #500, #502, #512,

#520, and #524). They were chosen out of the total pool of almost 100 respondents

because their demographics matched those of the postconventional participants. These

participants were older, had advanced degrees in the people professions, and about half of

them were Buddhist or members of alternative spiritual groups. Five of the eight (62.5%)

gave interviews that were clearly conventional. There was attention on outer, behavioral

change prompted by circumstances, on overcoming adversity; a limited number of ideas

or subjects were brought up. However, three participants (#350, #500, and #502) showed

postconventional themes. Some of these participants were highly introspective, the

growth was intentioned, and there was a distinct quality of lived experience that was

openly shared. However, the breadth of subjects, the complexity of worldview evidenced

by the other postconventional participants, was not present. These 3 participants

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meditated. My interpretation is that meditation can give an inner focus that may set the

stage for a progression to postconventional development; however, meditation may not

facilitate the integration of this inner awareness with other aspects of their personality

development. It is also possible that these participants were actively transitioning.

An additional observation is that one participant, Ken, #529, received a distinctly

conventional score for the narrative but obtained a stage 7 score on the SCT. No other

research project enrolling postconventional participants had described a case of that

nature. This led me to conclude that such cases are rare; however, they do exist.

My findings from a small sample do not support the observations of Sutton and

Swenson (1983). Instead, I would phrase the conclusion this way: The majority of

persons (62.5%) who receive SCT scores in the conventional tier are found to express

that level of development in an interview. However, a person can produce a stage 6

protocol and show distinct elements of postconventional awareness. This appears to be

more likely when meditation is practiced and may correspond to what Hewlett calls

unbalanced development or actively transitioning.

Two participants were particularly hard to fit into any stage category. Hewlett

assigned Mark, #516, a 49-year-old manager from Belgian, a score of stage 7, but both

the narrative and interview exhibited distinct stage 9 elements. The SCT was very hard to

score, which was in part due to the fact that Mark is not fluent in English. When I sent the

unscored SCT to Cook-Greuter, she independently duplicated Hewlett’s score. She also

remarked on the difficulty in scoring and noted that the protocol seems to bespeak

“undigested transpersonal episodes.” In the phone interview, Mark came across as a

person with unusual depth. He described genuine, powerful meditation experiences that
 83

he struggled to share and integrate into his life. The interview was varied and

unconventional, and had a distinct postconventional feel to it. The second person was

Roger, #350, who received SCT scores of 6 but gave a distinctly 8 interview. I conducted

a very long interview and weight it as more significant than the SCT, assigning a final

score of 8. Hewlett, in his own dissertation, discussed that about 10% of the SCTs of

postconventional participants were barely scorable. It appears that this study has a similar

incidence of SCTs that are not useful for drawing conclusions about the person.

How Do Persons at Higher Development Account for Their Growth?

After I had completed about three interviews, I started the data analysis, initially

using line-by-line coding and then progressing towards additional steps as described in

the previous chapter. The principal research question was to find out how persons at

higher stages of development report achieving their growth.

Persons at postconventional stages of development define development and talk

about their growth in significantly different ways from persons in the conventional tier of

development. A number of different aspects distinguished reliably between

postconventional and conventional participants’ narrations of growth stories. Three major

aspects emerged: complexity of narrative, interiority, and intention with commitment.

Minor elements, meaning those that were not as universally true but still robust in the

data analysis, include giftedness, unconventionality, and cross-cultural exposure. Below,

each one of these aspects is discussed in detail, and the way they interrelate is considered.

A schematic presentation of this model of higher development is offered in Appendix J.

Appendix K gives a summary of the percentage of participants who contributed to each

code.
 84

Complexity. The most noticeable aspect in the narratives and interview materials

is that as ego stage increases, the complexity of the story increases. This complexity of

the story appears to be linked to the complexity of psychoemotional integration. All

conventionally scoring participants told stories that had significantly fewer elements, and

the aspects included showed less variety. For example, one conventional participant

focused in the interview almost exclusively on his struggle with maintaining sobriety and

the positive changes that resulted from that. In contrast, all the postconventional

participants told complex stories that integrated many different elements. For example,

Liam, #531, age 25, a stage 9 participant, talked about joining a men’s group where he

learned about group processes, about growing up without formal schooling in an artists’

commune in California, and about living on a farm in New Zealand where he connected

with the land and acquired skills in farming. In addition to the complexity of the narrative

itself, all postconventional participants expressed their views in significantly more

complex ways; any given theme was seen as having multiple aspects that needed to be

taken into consideration. Within the postconventional tier of development, complexity

increased with every stage. Scott, #629, the only stage 10 participant, gave the most

complex and differentiated account of growth.

The finding about the complexity was the most robust in the study and was indeed

one of the lead indicators that discriminated reliably between conventional and

postconventional participants. It is furthermore strengthened by its analogy to the SCT

itself. High-scoring protocols show a wide variety of interests and concerns in their

sentence completions, whereas lower protocols often tend to cluster around a few themes,

such as rejection of gender stereotypes. Higher development appears to be linked to a

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willingness to fully participate in a wide variety of activities, the ability to see those

activities and events as beneficial opportunities for growth, and an ability to make finely

shaded differentiations in one’s experience. Postconventional participants exhibited a

willingness to accept complexity and the often-accompanying ambiguity in their lives.

Fiona, #532, a 39-year-old lawyer from Britain, concluded her written narrative as

follows:

I went through a period where I adopted values, they became my own and then
later I realized the limitations of values (and especially values statements) and
now prefer to talk about what makes sense for me. I don’t have many answers
anymore—the world is such a complex place. I seem to be increasingly thin
skinned and often filled with great sadness. Compassion for others is often what
makes most sense.

Roger, #350, a 56-year-old executive in a large American Buddhist organization,

said,

Something I learned very, very early on was some way of being comfortable with
not fully understanding what’s going on . . . and in some way I could comment
that this is one of the most important things a person could learn, because if you
just think of my situation now, I am endlessly going from one situation of not
knowing exactly what is going on to another . . . it produces a certain level . . .
there is some anxiety level about it. . . So, I can be thrown into situations, I am
thrown into situations where I have no idea what’s going on, and, . . . well, we
just work together and see what we can do.

Interiority. In addition to complexity of the growth story, the main element that

reliably distinguished between conventional and postconventional participants was

interiority. The narratives of all postconventional participants were distinguished through

introspection and inner awareness. Inner orientation was expressed in vivid descriptions

of lived experience. Three different aspects will be discussed separately: (1) the need to

attune to what is right for oneself and express that consistently in one’s life, (2) the way
 86

external obstacles are approached, (3) and the tendency to increase inner awareness

through specific practices.

The majority of postconventional participants (14 of 22, 63%) talked about

exploring what is right for themselves and living a life where they express that

consistently. This inner congruence between who one is and what the environment

demands was deemed more important than material gains or other conventional

achievements. Liz, #511, a 37-year-old graduate student from Britain, wrote,

The next experience that shaped me was a voice that told me to return to study—
quite specifically nutrition and psychology. I was on the cusp between sleep and
consciousness. The voice could have been a dream, an inner suggestion.
Whatever it was it brought me out in goose-bumps and I followed it. I completed
a postgraduate diploma in psychology, and I’m now in my final year of an MSc. I
work as a coach and counselor. The significance of this event was the conviction
that I had to do something new, to move forward in my life. It is also significant
in that I am doing something that I really enjoy, can make sense of my past, and
help others to move forward and make the most of their lives.

The postconventional participants differed in regard to how much difficulty this

search entailed for them. Fifty percent expressed that the search entailed difficulties.

Mark, #516, a 49-year old management professional from Belgium, wrote, “But the

whole time I had to fight inside myself with the fact that I don’t want to loose [sic]

myself and the fact that the world asked adaptation.” However, the other 50% did not

express a sense of struggle in regard to finding what is right for them. Roger, #350, age

56, who spent most of his life working for Amnesty International, stressed that his life

path consisted of following his inner sense of direction. He felt that by acting on his

subtle sense of knowing, he was able to accomplish his goals, to make a significant

contribution to others in need, and his own psychological development could unfold

simultaneously. In the stories of postconventional participants, existential themes often

 87

surfaced, such as understanding that one’s life is finite and that the person needs to make

a choice in order to create meaning. In the interview, Roger said,

The absence, it sounds a bit pretentious, but the absence of doubt, in my view, is
not necessarily accompanied by a sense of knowing. . . When I say there is no
doubt, and you say, well, with certainty, well, I didn’t say I was certain . . . it’s
like having some kind of inner impulse that moves you along in some kind of
direction. I am not smart enough to articulate, what that was or what that is, but it
seems to be about being open, it has something to do with being open to
situations, and then there is this amazing coherence of these things that have like
summoned you. . . . Well, first of all, crudely expressed, there was this sense of
wanting to be of use, then, like what do you do. . . .What is the most useful thing
to do with your life, which is, after all, an incredibly short thing? I was definitely
drawn, like emotionally, intellectually, to know the situation of these people who
were in prison because of their beliefs. . . . The situation or the reality that
Amnesty deals with was so compelling to me and the challenge of, the impulse to
meet that challenge, was so strong; again, I would see this more like magnetism.
What was dealt with day in and day out was what kept me there.

The majority (63%) of postconventional participants conveyed directly or

indirectly that they felt that meaning in life arose from the fact that they explored who

they were and the nature of their contributions. The stories of all conventional

participants showed an absence of themes in regard to finding one’s inner self and

attempting to express that consistently. All conventional participants described growth as

resulting from the fact that certain demands were made on them in life, and they

responded to those demands.

A somewhat separate aspect is how the participants talked about external

difficulties in their lives. Stories that had no mention of external difficulty were rare (only

one participant in the entire sample of 28, 3.5%), underscoring the importance of

obstacles in the perceived growth paths of individuals. However, a significant difference

between the groups was that all conventional participants described almost all their

growth as prompted by obstacles, whereas all the postconventional participants showed

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more diversity, and often minor incidents could lead to introspection and self-knowledge.

Many postconventional participants (14 of 22, 63%) described specific growth episodes

that had no element of external difficulty but instead they talked about choosing to stay

with an inner sense of unclarity or discomfort. Andrew, #539, age 62, recounted this story

of first meeting his spiritual teacher:

I felt insulted by him. He said something insulting about hippies and, and being a
hippie, I was offended. During the question and answer part of the talk, I asked
him a question about that, hoping that he would realize that he had insulted me
and so would apologize or something. He insulted me further. Eventually he left,
and so did everyone else. I had been insulted and felt that this was a washout, but
there was something in my mind that just wouldn’t let this go. I kept working on
it at odd moments and wondered what had bothered me about my take on his talk.
Something wasn’t adding up. After two months, I realized what it was: He wasn’t
pretending to be some holy man that was trying to snooker me into any group of
his. He was simply being who he was, and I could take it or leave it.

It seems remarkable that Andrew remembered not only the incident but also his

own internal process 30 years after it occurred. This is an indication of how vivid and

important their inner lives are to the postconventional participants. Stories that represent

this kind of choice to engage an inner felt sense of discomfort and work with it until some

clarity arises were entirely absent from the narratives of conventional participants. It

appears from the data analysis that exactly this willingness and ability to take an interest

in one’s inner process and to sustain this inquiry is what actually increases a person’s

complexity and leads to a better integration of the self.

When external difficulties arise, all conventional participants conceptualize and

describe the growth as a change in behavior, whereas postconventional participants place

greater emphasis on their growing inner awareness. An example is how one conventional

participant described her decision to leave an abusive relationship and become more

self-sufficient. In contrast, postconventional participants saw growth as a change in

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perspective, in self-identity, or in increased awareness. Several postconventional

participants also mentioned being prompted by difficulties with their intimate

relationships, but they discussed and placed emphasis for growth on the required

introspection, on a needed ability to embrace new views, on tolerating greater ambiguity,

on becoming more willing to experiment with previously unfamiliar values and emotions.

It appears that personal growth is closely linked to an ability to remain focused on one’s

inner experience and to sustain this inner awareness even when the innermost values and

assumptions are questioned. Jackie, #602, a 27-year-old stay-at-home mother without a

college degree said,

It feels like the practice that led up to it was really just being willing to ask
questions that I don’t find other people ask a lot and to be able to question
yourself, question, literally like the basis of all of your thinking and question like,
well, why do I react this way . . . why do I think this way . . . why do I feel this
way . . . and then retrospectively, looking back . . . and kind of making the
connections to understand at what point those concepts were embedded in me . . .
so that . . . I then kind of felt that I had a grip on the process and was able to kind
of look above, or stand above and look down on myself objectively, somehow.

The final element in regard to external difficulties is that postconventional

participants appear to have fewer difficulties in life. None of the conventional

participants described lives that had few or no difficulty. However, several

postconventional participants described lives with significant privileges where difficulties

were minor or only temporary. This is a difficult finding to interpret. One possibility is

that postconventional individuals actually have easier lives, therefore need fulfillment is

easier, and consequently, as Maslow (1954/1970) suggested, they are more likely to

move upward in the need pyramid. An alternate conclusion is that they have more

resilience; consequently, obstacles are not perceived as being as severe. This means we

may observe a stable personality trait instead of an outward circumstance. Westenberg

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and Block (1993) argued that resilience shows a correlation to ego stage. This may mean

that because of their increased resilience, postconventional participants had the subjective

experience of having easier lives. This might be an attentional device used by the

postconventional participants. When asked, towards the end of the interview, specifically

about difficulties, a few postconventional participants volunteered additional information

that they had not brought up until prompted, including becoming a crime victim, losing a

member of one’s immediate family, or needing to support a parent financially before age

25. It appears that postconventional participants can experience significant amounts of

difficulty without having their attention stuck there. An incidental finding is that among

the difficulties recounted, severe trauma was largely but not entirely absent. The most

commonly discussed external difficulty was impending or actual divorce. Fifty percent of

the conventional as well as the postconventional participants mentioned it.

In regard to inner awareness, an additional aspect that emerged and that was

representative of only stage 8, Autonomous, and higher was an emphasis on how inner

awareness alone is not sufficient; it also needs to be expressed in one’s beingness,

integrated in one’s conduct and behavior, and embodied in ones presence. Scott, #629, a

60-year-old management consultant said,

. . . but where it really shows up is when you go to work. I’m very interested in
how you integrate that consciousness into your work life, because there are so
many people who don’t. You know, they have some kind of meditative
experience, and they use it as a kind of soothing mechanism or method of stress
reduction. When you do that it doesn’t really integrate very well . . . you just say,
I have this nice environment where I can still my mind, and then I can always go
there when things get tough. The question is, how can you have those qualities
available to you when things are tough and you are in the middle of it?

In sum, postconventional participants have well-differentiated inner lives. They

explore what is right for themselves and strive to express that in their lives. When
 91

obstacles arise, they maintain an inner focus and interpret the obstacle as a means of

increasing their awareness and insight. However, growth was frequently also attributed to

aspects that were not related to external obstacles. As ego stage increases, individuals

seem to place more emphasis on how the awareness is brought to bear on their daily

lives. An additional finding is that postconventional participants often increase their inner

awareness through persistent practices. This is discussed in the following section.

Intention with commitment. A consistent theme throughout the postconventional

narratives was the expressed valuing of growth, the desire and intention to grow, and the

commitment to act on this desire to grow through efforts that often involved persistence,

discomfort, and exertion (67.5% of postconventional participants versus 18% of

conventional group). The intentionality has several aspects that usually occurred in

combination, and it appears to be one of the key aspects of understanding higher

development. Postconventional participants value growth and seek it intentionally; to this

end they (1) join a community of likeminded individuals, which is termed here a

discourse community; (2) adopt a consistent theory of growth; and (3) engage in specific

practices that enhance their inner awareness and carry them out often consistently for

many decades.

The community itself appears to fulfill several powerful functions. The dominant

culture currently does not value growth and does not maintain or encourage a dialogue

about growth. Many postconventional participants talked about difficulties finding

likeminded people and being uninterested in party talk. Joining a discourse community

offers a shared value system, as well as opportunity for dialogue and cognitive learning
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about growth, in addition to emotional support and social engagement. Kyle, #505, a

42-year-old banking professional from Washington State, said,

I’m not sure if that makes sense or not, but it’s probably kind of an extension of
the conflict that I had growing up with my family, my natural disposition. In other
words, it was very superficial, and I had a yearning for something a little bit more
authentic, which was an impossibility in that social setting. That’s always been
like that, up until the last ten years . . . that’s been a challenge. I do feel I’m with
likeminded people when I’m in a group that studies Integral Theory or is familiar
with . . . psychology, philosophy, the great ideas . . . the classics, the . . . bigger
conceptual issues. I have a difficult time with the day-to-day small talk . . . that
stuff.

It was most striking that the majority of postconventional participants (12 of 22,

54%) had well-thought-out theories about how and why growth occurs, and this question

was clearly not something they started to contemplate during or in preparation for the

interview. None of the conventional participants offered coherent, well-thought-out

theories of growth. Almost all postconventional participants (18 of 22, 81%) talked about

having read specific books about growth, and their self-knowledge was often well

balanced with theoretical perspectives.

A pointed finding that emerged was that very literal adherence to a specific

growth philosophy and practice was typical for stage 7 participants (3 of 5 stage 7

participants, 60%), meaning the early stages of postconventional development, and it was

not at all to be found among the most advnced participants. Although at stage 8 and

higher participants still talked about their studies and practices within certain schools of

thought, their views were more differentiated, and there was no unequivocal endorsement

of any given view.

Joining and participating in a growth community appears to be instrumental in

progressing from conventional to postconventional development, but rigid,

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unquestionable adherence appears to act as an obstacle to further development. It was

most striking that several but not all stage 7 participants (3 of 5 stage 7 participants, 60%)

held their discourse community to be superior and saw those views as the only correct

ones, such as “growth means understanding egolessness” and “unless you meditate and

understand egolessness you have not really progressed in development.” A participant

who was on the cusp of the postconventional tier phrased his narrative entirely in the

language of their discourse community. Ken, #529, a 51-year-old consultant from Britain

who received a stage 7 score on the SCT but was the only participant to receive a lower

score for the narrative than the SCT, wrote,

In terms of Spiral Dynamics, although I do Self-Actualise [sic] into YELLOW at

times, I tend very much to be motivated from the RED and BLUE zones. My
PURPLE is fairly damaged. Rightly or wrongly, I attribute the core of this
insecurity to my parents rowing in front of me frequently and with great bile when
I was young. (I can remember—I think!—from around 5 years of age.) On one
occasion, I saw my father hit my mother with a motorcycle gauntlet. I was raised
in a patriarchal household—my father being something of a Zealot (red/BLUE).
As I began my lifelong love affair with the music of Jefferson Airplane during my
teens and was influenced by their politics—my touch of GREEN!—this led to
some seriously different worldviews between my father and I.

In contrast, at higher stages, stage 8 and above, postconventional participants

talked about specific schools of thought as just ingredients in the growth process. For

example, Kyle, #505, a stage 8 participant, talked about important insights while reading

Ken Wilber’s books, but he also discussed practicing TM and benefits he derived from

psychotherapy when his marriage faltered.

Although intention to grow and acting on that growth was present in all

postconventional narratives, a few postconventional participants placed low emphasis on

joining a discourse community, or talked about it in the past tense, or mentioned several

communities they had belonged to over a period of time. However, even those
 94

participants who were not members of communities, such as Aidan, #533, a 50-year-old

farmer from Kansas, acknowledged the benefit of communicating with those who are

likeminded. In light of the fact that the discourse community emerged as a powerful

finding early on, the conventional participants were selected based on the criteria of

having a community membership. In the final stages of the data analysis, the participants

who had not mentioned a discourse community were contacted and asked about it. This

has to be taken into consideration when reporting that all participants mentioned a

community.

The most commonly mentioned discourse communities were Buddhism, the

Diamond Heart School, and the Integral Approach. Although this finding was brought

about in part by the sampling techniques, in contemporary America these seem to be the

most highly visible and popular growth communities, which seem to be actively

promoted through their well-known books and web sites. Persons interested in growth

and seeking a community probably are just most likely to stumble into these

communities.

Many postconventional participants (19 of 22, 85.5%) described attempts to

increase their inner awareness through specific practices and activities. Meditation was

the most frequently mentioned activity in this regard (11 of 22, 50%), followed by

psychotherapy (10 of 22, 45%), coaching (2 of 22, 9%), and the practice of martial arts

(2 of 22, 9%). A significant number of participants emphasized the importance of

intentionally seeking to gain more insight about themselves and learning to understand

the constructed nature of the self (15 of 22, 67.5%). Mia, #502, an accountant with

several decades of meditation experience, said,

 95

The main tool for growth that I ever encountered was meditation, and that is
because it does allow you to see beyond your own version of events, it does allow
you to begin to see a bigger picture. . . . It’s uncomfortable; it’s not what we want
to do. It’s not where you would normally go and after you go there you realize
what a relief that you could do that; that you could go beyond your own
constraints. You don’t see them as constraints when you’re talking about your
safety level or your comfort level . . . but being willing to face our fears and go up
to them, taste them, feel them and keep going, we actually encounter a bigger
world. So then, if you get into the habit of living that way or seeing the world that
way, you’re always going to be challenged to not just cover your ass, to not just
play security minded games, but to actually always challenge anything that starts
to calcify, . . . so it makes for a kind of a lonely existence in the sense of always
recognizing that you can’t fortify yourself . . . you can’t make your self safe even
with what you have learned; because then that just becomes another constraint.
So, the evolution of your being, through mediation and through working with
meditation instructors or other people on that path, is one that promotes a lot of
growth but not a lot of comfort or safety.

Several participants (5 of 22, 22.5%) addressed the difficulty and perseverance

involved in maintaining a spiritual practice that is growth promoting. Andrew, #539,

age 62, a published poet, observed the following about his long-term involvement with

the Buddhist community:

As I looked at people who came into our center through the years, I think I began
to see a pattern: The ones who came back had to overlook or somehow work with
their feelings of discomfort because they were serious enough about their journey,
and were also far enough along in their journey to not be put off by their feelings,
which is the self-selective thingie. Perhaps they didn’t put it in those terms, but
that is my thinking. . . . Sometimes, people just want to find something that
works, or something that will end the suffering, and discover a whole world of
joy. But they have to be willing to go beyond their initial shock and pain as they
discover that ego isn't getting fed. If they can’t deal with the insult to ego, then
even if they look for “growth” and value it, they will at best only find proficiency,
or a little relief. So it’s not enough to want growth, you also have to be willing to
make a choice that appears counter-intuitive yet is entirely intuitive. Dharma
self-selects those who can make that choice.

Although participants had often devoted a great deal of energy to their paths and

endured sacrifices, they voiced appreciation for their own experiences and clearly derived

meaning from it. Meditation was a strong theme in many interviews (11 of 22, 50%),
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even among those participants who had contacted me in response to invitations on

management listserves. However, it was not a universal theme.

To sum up, postconventional participants expressed a great deal of intention about

their growth and described a plethora of activities that they engaged in to achieve that

growth. The most widely shared themes were the joining of a discourse community of

persons with similar interests, becoming informed about the growth process, and carrying

out practices that are believed to be growth enhancing.

Miscellaneous elements. In addition to the three main aspects of complexity, inner

awareness, and intentionality, several aspects emerged in the data analysis. Subject matter

by itself was not a good indicator of ego stage and did not differentiate reliably between

conventional and postconventional participants. The most frequently mentioned theme

without prompting was the participants’ intimate relationships, with emphasis on the

benefits of close engagement and threatened dissolution of the relationship being equally

likely to be discussed. Conventional and postconventional participants were roughly

equally likely to mention their relationships. Although themes were not a good indicator

of higher development, some exceptions emerged, including giftedness,

unconventionality, and cross-cultural experiences, with the latter two often interwoven.

Idiosyncratic aspects that emerged in the interviews will be discussed last in this section.

A significant number of participants (67.5% of postconventional participants

versus 18% of conventional group) mentioned early academic interests and significant

achievements in academia, such as awards, as well as Mensa memberships. The group of

conventional participants is rather small and the evidence in the data has to interpreted

with caution. However, statements about early intellectual interests were unusually
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frequent among the postconventional participants. It is noticeable, however, that among

the stage 8 and higher participants, almost a third have no college degree. Upon closer

examination, this finding does not present a contradiction. For the most part, these

participants showed an orientation towards education and were planning to obtain

degrees in the future. Liam, #531, age 25, is a current student and aspires to obtain a

Ph.D. Jackie, #602, currently a full-time mother, stated that she had scored exceptionally

high on IQ tests and intended to seek a college education once her kids are a bit more

independent. Considering the predominance of signs of giftedness, it was a surprise that

only two (9%) of the postconventional participants—Liz, #511, and Andrew, #539—

mentioned creative interests or any aspect of the creative process contributing to their

growth.

Regardless of educational attainment, postconventional participants showed a

tendency towards self-employment (67.5%). They appeared motivated and took their

livelihood seriously. They often stated that the disadvantages of self-employment, such as

lack of benefits and less security, were outpaced by the prospect of being one’s own boss

and not needing to accommodate someone else’s idiosyncrasies. Although management

professionals were over-represented among the postconventional participants, not a single

one of them maintains a regular position in a corporation. Five of them (22.5%)

mentioned that the importance of appropriate livelihood needs to be balanced with other

aspects in life, such as attending retreats and spending time with their families.

The mentioning of traveling or working abroad and of reflecting on the

constructed nature of consensual social reality were prominent. Furthermore, it appears

that postconventional participants had unusually rich and often unconventional lives (11
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of 22, 50%). Unconventional choices were often tied to cross-cultural experiences. The

participants viewed their diverse experiences in terms of how they provided growth for

them. Examples abound. Scott, #629, a stage 10 participant, talked about living in an

ashram with an Indian teacher for 12 years. Upon the encouragement of his spiritual

teacher, he entered into an arranged marriage with a woman he had met only four days

earlier. Thirty-three years later, he was clearly enthusiastic about this relationship,

although he talked about having worked through significant emotional issues in order to

sustain his marriage. Liam, #531, age 25, a stage 9 participant, talked about entering a 90-

day meditation retreat in Myanmar.

I had to wear robes all the time, and so a sense of identifying with the person I
know myself to be was kind of challenged with that, surrounded by people that
looked the same, with the idea of doing the things I was doing, not speaking, and
getting lots of gifts and support from people that are very poor. They would give
their food, we would have to go beg for our food, and they would give us their
food, which they don’t have very much of, so it was an enormous privilege and it
was put in that light, that it was a precious opportunity.

A final element that emerged particularly from the narrative analysis was that

many themes were highly idiosyncratic, meaning they were only mentioned once and did

not fit any category without pushing the boundary of the interpretation. For example,

Roger, #350, talked about a sense of fulfilling his destiny. David, #513, a 60-year-old

professional healer, wrote about experiencing a sense of protection when he assisted

comrades during combat in Vietnam. Liam, #531, mentioned a near death experience in

childhood and also discussed not receiving formal schooling and consequently having

being unable to read and write until he was 10 years old. The diversity of choices, life

paths, and experiences described was striking. In short, it is important to keep in mind

that clear aspects emerged that were common to the growth stories of the
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postconventional participants but at the same time many participants also included

elements that could not be sorted into any category. Postconventional growth emerges

from this study as a highly individual process.

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Chapter 5: Discussion

The discussion section will follow the same sequence as the findings. I will start

with the most overarching question concerning theories of adult development. Next, I

will proceed to the research concerning the SCT and discuss the validity of the test for

postconventional assessment based on my data. The third section concerns the principal

research question, how persons interpret their own psychological growth and account for

it. This section has four subsections: (1) general considerations, including interview

themes that were not talked about and themes that I felt ambiguous about; (2) placing the

findings in the context of the theoretical literature; (3) what my research suggests about

how can we promote growth; (4) new questions that emerged from my study and how

these could be addressed meaningfully in future projects.

Taking an Empirical Approach to Theories of Higher Development

When asked what constitutes maturity and optimal development in adulthood, it

appears that postconventional participants emphasize increased inner awareness as an

important aspect. As postconventional stages increase, individuals gain perspective about

the importance of their awareness, and there is greater emphasis on “inner awareness is

not enough” and “how the inner awareness is expressed is important.”

The responses of my participants so closely reflect Loevinger’s (1976) theory of

higher development that I am concerned that there is an aspect of circular reasoning here.

I used an instrument that selects people at higher development when they express inner

differentiation, and when I ask them, “What is higher development for you?”, they say,

“Inner differentiation.” In retrospect, I am no longer sure the way I approached the

question was well thought out. More than anything else I verified ego development
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theory in regard to what Loevinger said about individuals at higher stages of

development.

I want to discuss whether ego development theory presents a useful framework

for exploring optimal development in adulthood and if it is indeed equivalent to

Maslow’s (1954/1970) theory of self-actualization. I was surprised to find that some

themes that were central to Maslow’s theory, such as those concerned with generativity,

with making a contribution to society or having a project that imparts meaning and that

individuals work towards tirelessly, were rare, although not entirely absent in the

interviews, and they were distinctly not progressive with stage. The most pronounced

discussions about those subjects occurred with stage 7 participants. Some of the

participants expressed an interest in societal issues and social justice and defined a life

purpose that included making a contribution, but the majority did not make any mention

of this.

At stage 7, individuals appear to have well-defined ideas of what is right and

desirable. At higher stages, this knowing of what is right becomes contextualized. Fiona,

#532, a stage 8 participant, and a 39-year old lawyer from Britain, wrote, “I would like to

do more, change more, but the opportunity to do so has not come yet, and I am not sure

what I would stand up for any more.” At the postautonomous stages, people perceive a

social project as important from within a specific perspective. The whole idea of what is

desirable starts to become more complex and less definite. When specifically asked about

social awareness and generativity, Chloe, #636, who had a SCT score of 8 but who

interviewed at stage 10, expressed that she feels that having a project that serves others is

a sign of more advanced development, but there is also, in her opinion, a stage beyond
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that which she described as “becoming a clear instrument of being.” This reflects a sense

of stage 10, Unitive, awareness, a perspective that is beyond duality.

My findings suggest that the ego development theories of Loevinger (1976) and

Cook-Greuter (1999) are a significantly narrower concept than self-actualization as

defined by Maslow (1954/1970). Ego development is closely, and in my opinion too

closely, linked to intrapersonal differentiation. The theory and the test seem to adequately

encompass elements of cognitive-emotional integration, interpersonal awareness, and

psychological complexity, but it appears that those elements do not necessarily lead to

broader awareness of and interest in social issues and engagements. Consequently, it

appears that my research lends support to McAdams, Ruetzel, and Foley’s (1986)

quantitative study that concluded that generativity, as assessed by a structured test, and

ego stage scores are not correlated. However, for a postconventional person, generativity

may mean something different than for a person in the conventional tier, and the

instruments used may not be sensitive to that. I assume that in the above-mentioned study

few postconventional participants were included, and the findings probably do not

represent this minority within the population adequately. The whole concept of what

constitutes generativity from a postconventional perspective has not been explored

sufficiently. It appears that from a postconventional perspective, the question of what is

beneficial is no longer clear cut.

Validity of the SCT for the Assessment of Higher Development

I want to emphasize that I scored almost 100 SCTs, and dozens of them came

form Ph.D. psychologists, integrally certified coaches, and consultants, some who had

engaged for many years in consistent spiritual practices. Although my data suggest that
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factors such as education and meditation may promote development, it is an exceptional

result.

Furthermore, my study does not support the conclusion that sorting participants

into neat categories called ego stages is always possible. Some people appear to have a

consistent center of gravity; however, this does not apply to everyone. The idea seems

plausible from a theoretical perspective, but when meeting real people and talking with

them it became apparent that a person may move effortlessly across a spectrum of

development.

It appears from my research that the Hy and Loevinger (1996) system and the

Cook-Greuter (1999) system are overlapping, but they are not equivalent when scoring

protocols at the upper end of development. Loevinger (1998c, p. 9) reported an interrater

agreement for the TPR of .90 for a large sample of protocols from all stages of

development. Regrettably, she does not indicate what statistic was used to calculate it.

Hewlett (2004), in the appendix of his dissertation, provided raw data that suggest that he

and Cook-Greuter achieved an interrater agreement of 86.9% (N = 23) with a Cohen’s

kappa of .79, which is considered excellent. Hewlett and Cook-Greuter both scored the

protocols using the system that Cook-Greuter developed. In contrast, Hewlett and I used

different systems; I relied on the Hy and Loevinger’s (1996), and Hewlett used

Cook-Greuter’s system. We only achieved an interrater agreement of 59% (N = 22) with

a kappa of .43 (see Appendix L for statistical details). This clearly demonstrates that the

two systems are not equivalent, and, consequently, we need to be careful with

conclusions drawn across studies. A postconventional sample that is identified with the

Cook-Greuter system is not identical to a postconventional sample that was found using
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the Hy and Loevinger system. In light of the fact that Cook-Greuter uses more stringent

rules for achieving the postconventional stages, we can assume that a sample that was

identified with her system is developmentally more advanced than a sample using the Hy

and Loevinger system. It is hoped that future researchers report what system they are

using so that their research can be located in the spectrum when a review is written.

I did not complete a systematic data analysis in regard to Cook-Greuter’s (1999)

personality theory about the postautonomous stages. This was the principal research

question of Hewlett’s (2004) dissertation. His conclusion was that those stages could be

discerned in interviews. My informal observations are mostly supportive. It appears to me

that there is a frame of meaning-making that is clearly stage 8, Autonomous, stage 9,

Construct-aware, and stage 10, Unitive, which are the stages Cook-Greuter describes.

Much to my surprise, it was not hard to differentiate among participants at those stages in

the interviews. As Hewlett had also noted, estimates based on the meeting of the person

appear to be reliable; rarely was I surprised by an ego stage score that Hewlett sent me.

The most meaningful way to extend the research about the usefulness of the test

through comparison with interview data would be to increase the sample size. The

existing sample of 22 participants is small, which throws doubts on the validity of the

findings. Bringing the sample to a total of 100 participants would certainly allow for

conclusions that are based on more solid data. However, 100 participants presents a

sample size no researcher has been able to find so far.

Considering what has been stated in the previous section that ego development

theory is really a restrictive concept for the exploration of optimal adult development, we

also need to contemplate additions and alternatives to the SCT if we want to explore
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optimal adulthood in a meaningful manner. Although I initially felt critical about

Cook-Greuter’s current practice to replace sentence stems in the SCT, I now feel that this

is an excellent idea. For example, in the standard test form, one stem reads “A woman

should always.” I do not believe that this facilitates a thoughtful, postconventional

response. It might be better to offer something like “It is a contribution” or “It is

beneficial.”

Developing a structured test would certainly bestow many benefits, including the

possibility of time and cost efficient scoring that would allow random sampling larger

portions of the population. Questions could reflect issues concerned with generativity in

order to broaden the concept of self-actualization and consequently place less emphasis

on intrapsychological and cognitive complexity. However, developing a structured test

and employing a criterion group approach would be an extremely time-consuming effort.

Currently, it appears that mainly Ph.D. students at freestanding training institutes take an

interest in exploring postconventional development in a systematic manner, and the

development of such a test would require resources that are usually out of reach for

students who tend to work under a great deal of time pressure.

How Do Persons at Higher Development Account for Their Growth?

This section has four subsections. First, I present general aspects of discussion,

including interview themes that were not talked about and themes that I felt ambiguous

about. Next, I place the findings in the context of the theoretical literature. Third is a

discussion of what this study suggests about how we can promote growth. And, finally, I

discuss what new questions emerged from my study and how these could be addressed

meaningfully in future projects.

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General considerations. Although themes were not a good indicator of ego stage,

some details emerged that are worth discussing. Most participants (12 of 22, 54%)

mentioned their childhoods; however, no specific childhood themes emerged.

Conventional childhoods, good attachment, and social privilege seem to be mentioned

about as frequently as unstable childhoods, incomplete families, unconventional

parenting, or difficult emotional experiences. Significant trauma was infrequent, and then

it was usually mentioned in the context of how the participant had been able to work

through it later in therapy and gain insight.

Participants who had strong allegiances to specific belief systems made

attributions consistent with that belief system. For example, mentioning the meeting of

the spiritual teacher was predominantly a theme in the narratives of Buddhists. The closer

wedded the participants were to their belief systems, the more likely the mentioning of

consistent elements. A similar theme emerged for persons strongly wedded to Integral

Theory; they tended to sort their narratives along theoretical lines from Wilber’s

philosophy.

Several themes were hard to interpret because of the small participant number. An

example is that two women, almost 20% of the postconventional females, talked about

positive aspects of serving in the armed forces. This came as a surprise because

postconventional individuals tend to reject environments with strong demands for

conformity. Both women mentioned that it offered them an opportunity to develop

leadership qualities. However, it is hard to know if this is a chance finding or if there is a

developmental benefit to military service that would be worth exploring further.

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A theme that was also intensely challenging involved peak experiences. The term

peak experience is used here as an umbrella, including all experiences of nonordinary

awareness and knowing. I was sensitized to the issue because Wilber (2006), Marko

(2006), and Maslow (1954/1970) all point to peak experiences and altered states as being

growth inducing and being a hallmark of higher development. However, in this study, no

clear data interpretation emerged. When just asked about what was growth promoting, the

majority of postconventional participants did not mention peak experiences (17 of 22,

76.5) and none of the conventional participants did. When asked specifically about peak

experiences, all postconventional and all conventional participants readily described them

if prompted. The postconventional participants offered more detailed descriptions and

were more likely to make growth attributions for those experiences. The most frequently

mentioned peak experience was spontaneous, profound meditative stabilization.

For a minority of postconventional participants (3 of 22, 13.5%), this was clearly

an important aspect of their developmental paths. Within the overall group of high-stage

individuals, subgroups may exist, and persons who experience peak experiences as

especially important and growth promoting may form such a subgroup. Wilber (2006)

may belong to that group because he mentioned repeatedly in his writing that higher

states of consciousness promote progression to a higher stage, which appears as an

intuitive hunch on his part rather than based on any empirical evidence. An alternate

interpretation was offered by Chloe, #636, who had a stage 8 SCT score and a stage 10

interview. She felt that peak experiences were specifically important at the beginning of

the growth process, when one first understands that consensual reality is just one version
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of interpreting experience, but they diminish as one gets used to the process of growth

and integrates many different experiences.

In regard to Marko’s (2006) research on facilitative agents, this current study is

not very supportive but also not contradictory. When asked about growth in an

open-ended manner, all postconventional participants talked mainly about processes and

activities, such as parenting, living in a foreign culture, or acquiring a new identity as a

supervisor. The mention of distinct turning-point experiences was rare, and loss of an

immediate family member and meditative stabilization were the only ones mentioned

more than once. However, even in those instances the aforementioned discussion applies.

The participants discussed their inner process, how, over time, the experience opened

them up to emotions that had been denied, how they discovered parts of themselves that

were previously hidden. It was noticeable to me that only one of the postconventional

participants mentioned short-term growth engagements, such as EST or weekends at

Esalen. This underscores the point that growth takes time, patience, and commitment, and

membership in a community supports this long-term commitment.

An extremely challenging aspect of the data analysis was to work out why certain

activities, such as joining a community and maintaining a spiritual discipline, appeared to

result in growth for some individuals but not for others. It appears that no one specific

aspect or growth process in itself is sufficient for attaining postconventional

development. The above-discussed themes—complexity, inner directedness, and

intention with commitment—do not exist independently of each other or in an additive

manner. Rather, it appears that those aspects need to be present and interact with each

other in a beneficial manner. The aspect of choosing membership in a growth community

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clearly interacts with the above-discussed aspect of inner awareness. Within the group of

conventional participants, long-term members of growth communities were interviewed.

These participants had often studied specific philosophies and engaged in ongoing

mediation practices. However, frequently they expressed very little inner awareness.

Apparently, a person can value growth and practice meditation with a community for

many years and not progress to higher stages of development. Other aspects need to also

be present, and most paramount seem to be inner awareness and cognitive complexity

expressed as a well-differentiated attitude towards the community, the practice, and

towards one’s own growth and beliefs.

Another question concerns how postconventional participants sustain a level of

consciousness that is not supported by the dominant cultural discourse, and if they

experience conflict with the norms. As the research study progressed, I came to the

conclusion that this issue was of more interest to me than to my participants. Dissonance

was not a pronounced theme. None of the conventional participants mentioned it unless

prompted, and a significant percentage of postconventionals (17 of 22, 76.5%) did not

mention it either unless prompted. Only a few participants talked about it in more detail,

and usually they were in the initial stages of postconventional awareness, meaning

stage 7. It appears that when persons first depart from conventional awareness and

transition from stage 6 to stage 7, they have this experience of being out of sorts with the

norms, but over time they get used to that feeling and it no longer penetrates into their

conscious awareness. Joining a discourse community seems to help individuals to

normalize the experience of having different perspectives and adhering to beliefs that are

not shared by the larger culture.

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Postconventional individuals do not seem to differ in regard to their relationship

status from the regular population. Some talked about wishing that they had partners but

not being able to create satisfactory relationships right now, others talked about divorces,

while many apparently enjoyed stable relationships. The categories were overlapping,

meaning some individuals talked about a past divorce and a currently stable marriage. A

few participants made no mention of their immediate relationships. This was not an

aspect for which I gave prompts. Only a small minority of postconventional participants

mentioned parenting (4 of 22, 18%), but it appears to be a powerful experience for some

individuals.

Next, I will discuss the research question, what role spiritual development and

practice play in the progression towards postconventional stages of development. Inner

directedness and intention to grow appear to be the predominant aspects. Now, let’s ask a

hypothetical question: “If a person wanted to grow and increase his inner awareness, how

would he go about it?” The answer seems pretty obvious—the person would probably

choose to read some books about growth; enter psychotherapy; or join a discourse

community, such as a meditation group. And that is exactly what the participants said

they did.

In our contemporary culture, there are limited ways and means for intentional

psychological growth available, especially outside of the urban centers in California.

Spiritual communities and the practices they offer present venues that a person may use

to further his or her development. However, we cannot conclude that they are necessary

or superior because we have not compared them to other hypothetical tools. For example,

if an organized group met regularly where people discussed existential philosophy, and
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journaled, and discussed their own experience in regard to existential issues, such as awe

and finitude, based on my data I would conclude that this could be an equally successful

way to grow. However, I know of no such groups. But even in the small Colorado town

where I live, five different Buddhist centers exist and offer meditation instruction usually

for free. In short, at this point in time spiritual communities offer the most readily

available means for people to pursue their interest in growth, and it appears to be the

reason why spiritual practices are mentioned frequently in the narratives of

postconventional participants.

To sum up the discussion, themes do not appear to distinguish reliably between

conventional and postconventional participants. No single factor can be seen as

accounting for advanced ego development. Instead, a complex interaction of factors

seems to be required to advance to a stage of development that is not supported by the

dominant cultural norms. The data most strongly support the conclusion that persons

grow because they value growth, they find those who are likeminded, they take an

interest in their inner world, and they promote this interest intentionally through various

strategies and activities. Within that framework, many events, activities, and idiosyncratic

experiences can contribute to an expansion of consciousness. The most frequently

mentioned occurrences are clearly the ones that people in our culture are most likely to

experience. These include challenging life events, such as the possible disintegration of

an intimate relationship.

Placing the findings in the context of the theoretical literature. In this section, the

emphasis is on how the findings are consistent or inconsistent with the theoretical

literature and what new aspects were found. Loevinger (1976) stated that ego
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development does not correlate with mental health. This seems to hold true for the

postconventional tier of development. Three postconventional participants described

psychiatric hospitalizations, although I did not solicit any information about emotional

problems. However, it was noticeable to me that the postconventional participants were

free from narcissistic tendencies. Many had unusual achievements, but they made no

efforts to get me to admire them. This concurs with the observation of Manners and

Durkin (2001) that defensive ego structures may inhibit development because they may

stabilize existing views.

The theoretical literature mentions a strong correlation between formal education

and ego stage, especially postconventional attainment. It appears that the participants in

this study were considerably more likely to have advanced degrees than the population at

large, but none of them made any growth attributions for the formal schooling they had

received. Several postconventional participants mentioned specific books, and the

occurrence of spontaneous insight when they read a specific book, usually the book of

their spiritual teacher.

However, the idea that college can be growth-promoting retains an intuitive

appeal because it presents a good context to develop cognitive complexity. Sean

Esbjorn-Hargens (personal communication, August 2, 2006), a professor at John F.

Kennedy University in California, stated that he plans a research project where incoming

graduate students take the SCT and are then assessed at the end of the program again.

This promises to be an interesting project. Torbert (1994) had previously described the

benefits of a specific MBA program for ego development and described that a significant

percentage progressed to the postconventional tier. However, the program was highly
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unconventional because it included specific practices to train awareness, which makes it

hard to know which aspect of the education was of benefit.

Vaillant and McCoullough (1987) pointed to exceptional achievement as a

correlate in advanced ego development. My study cannot sufficiently address this point

because I sampled the regular population and exceptionally high achievers were absent

from my sample, and the sample was too small. It appears that my participants for the

most part had careers that were in the category of the ordinary and expected considering

their educational achievements.

Helson et al. (1985) pointed towards unusual life paths for their female

Autonomous participants, and this study supports that observation. Unconventional

choices were a frequently noted aspect in the interviews. Recent research (Kurtz &

Tiegreen, 2005) noted again the correlation of the SCT with the trait of “openness” on the

Five Factor approach. This means a number of studies, including this one, converge in

regard to the observation that seeking novelty, not shying away from the unusual,

experimenting with alternatives, and questioning the status quo seem to be personality

attributes that help people grow. Framed differently, it appears that some people are more

likely to grow than others: those who like exploring what is unconventional. In sum, this

dissertation is mostly confirming of the sparse previous research in the area of

postconventional development and has elaborated significant new aspects.

How can we promote growth? Manners et al. (2004) discussed a specific training

program, which helped to promote development from stage 4 and 5 to stage 6. They

emphasized aspects such as personal salience and emotional engagement as aspects of

their program. The Conscientious stage that their training program was aimed at
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achieving is consistent with the dominant narrative of our culture, especially among

highly trained professionals. Progressing to this stage does not take a quantum leap; it

requires a bit more complex, abstract thinking, and an orientation away from rules and

towards long-term goals. In most careers, stepping up to stage 6, Conscientious, is likely

associated with consistent rewards. However, the postconventional stages seem to require

an active examination of conventional norms, of what is deemed desirable, and choices

that do not meet with much social approval and encouragement. Therefore, we can say

that the postconventional stages are qualitatively distinct from the conventional stages,

and it seems questionable to assume that interventions that promote growth within the

conventional tier will also produce results in regard to the highest stages.

However, I like the idea of Manners et al. (2004) that each stage appears to be a

specific learning challenge, and holding out a specific stage expectation may be the factor

that makes stage training successful. If I were to design a training program for

postconventional development based on my findings, I would emphasize the following

aspects: (1) exploring what is personally right, how this can be expressed in outer reality,

and what prevents the person from committing to that; (2) ongoing inner exploration

through such practices as journaling, meditation, or something similar; (3) increasing

cognitive complexity through the study of such issues as social construction, critical

theory, understanding the concepts of paradigms and their effects in a culture; and

(4) encouraging activities that are new, such as going abroad and volunteering in a

project.

Although I cannot point to this based on my findings, I am strongly under the

impression that several other aspects are relevant. I would explain the stages of growth;
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somehow I think having a map may make it easier to navigate the territory. Participants

who were associated with the Integral Institute mentioned this aspect, and it is consistent

with Wilber’s (2006) theory. I am arriving at this conclusion myself by having reflected

about what helped me personally. I would also encourage people to reflect on their own

growth experiences. This is based on the informal observation that several participants

stated that the interviews were very helpful. I am also under the impression that people

need to find what is right for themselves in terms of their own developmental path.

I am fascinated with the idea of social induction. Borders (1998) discussed the

idea that a social situation may express a specific ego stage, and Commons et al. (1993)

suggested that reinforcements at the workplace may stabilize specific stages of cognitive

complexity. Very little research about stages of social situations has been published. It is

my observation that stable social situations, such as a spiritual community or a

workplace, have an agreed-upon level of complexity. Individuals in leadership positions

appear to be instrumental in defining that stage. This appears to happen through

sanctioning aspects of the dialogue. For example, a supervisor may discredit complexity

and reward black-and-white answers. Another example is an attitude that affirms that

right answers exist, that the leadership supplies them, and that no further exploration

needs to take place. Within the overall context, smaller groups may have discussions that

are either less or more complex, but the dominant level seems to define the parameters. I

noticed that individuals who are more sophisticated than the dominant social level

gravitate towards dissatisfaction. Actually, several of my participants mentioned that they

chose self-employment because they felt impatient with the neurotic, small-minded

attitudes of their superiors. This may offer an explanation why self-employment appears
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to be the choice of most postconventional participants, a finding that also emerged from

Hewlett’s (2004) research.

Although the social context and the discourse communities the participants

mentioned were oriented towards valuing of growth and presented alternatives to the

dominant cultural discourse, this does not mean that the discourse was at a

postconventional level. I noticed that postconventional discourse is extremely rare,

regardless of whether you join a Buddhist meditation center, an Integral online group, or

a professional discussion in a counseling center or a graduate school. One of the obvious

reasons is that it is easier, even if it may be uncomfortable, for people to function on a

lower level, but it is usually impossible for them to function at a higher level, unless it is

within their zone of proximate development. Persons at lower stages tend to form the

majority of discussants and dominate the discourse, which seems to encourage higher

functioning persons to become less interested in joining. Hewlett (2004) mentioned that

his research strongly suggests that loneliness can be an issue that people at higher stages

of development struggle with.

This begets the question of what would be a postconventional level of dialogue.

Based on my research, I suggest that it is an interaction that facilitates internal

exploration and is based on the assumption that it is of value that individuals need to find

what is right for themselves. It is also a form of dialogue that values questions more than

answers and that encourages tolerating the discomfort of not having ready-made answers.

In a postconventional discourse, many perspectives need to be taken into consideration.

Linear, logical knowledge would be considered only one way of knowing.

 117

I think a group with a postconventional level of discourse could be an extremely

powerful growth environment. However, few efforts have been made to intentionally

facilitate it. Torbert (2004), with the action inquiry approach, seems to have some of the

successful ingredients for postconventional training. His work places emphases on

increasing inner awareness, self-reflection, and increased cognitive complexity. He also

offers training in a group setting that may facilitate the experience of a discourse

community.

New research questions and future perspectives. Opportunities for new directions

for research abound, and just a few will be mentioned. It appears that Hewlett (2004),

Marko (2006), and I share an intuitive sense that persons may have different ways to

develop. Hewlett is interested in Myers Briggs personality types, Marko intends to

explore the enneagram types, and I am interested in differences between individuals who

choose spiritual practice and those who do not. An additional aspect of interest for me is

the perception of generativity and the forms of social engagement at advanced levels of

development. If we want eventually to become able to assist people to progress to higher

stages of development, such insight would be invaluable.

Another question concerns the longitudinal stability of postconventional

development. It appears entirely possible that a significant percentage of the population

experiences episodes of postconventional functioning, but we cannot see that because we

usually only test once and then conclude if this is a conventional or postconventional

participant. Studies that demonstrated the longitudinal stability of ego stages usually

involved a high percentage of conventional participants, and we do not know if these

findings apply to a postconventional sample. Temporary postconventional functioning

 118

would most likely take place when challenges and complexity increase, such as during a

divorce, a new work position with greater demands, or during time spend abroad. It is

possible that individuals function at the advanced level temporarily but then settle back

into a more comfortable conventional tier because no environmental supports are

available. It would be interesting to explore why some persons maintain their advanced

stage long term and others do not.

My own interest is also in how generative activities interact with personality

development; I wish I had placed more emphasis in the data collection on that subject.

For example, I wonder if postconventional participants have a different understanding of

what generativity actually is, and how they feel it is relevant to them. Maslow

(1954/1970) suggested that self-actualizers have a project beyond their personal gain that

they work towards tirelessly. It seems easy to assume that they are dedicated because of

their advanced development, but it is also possible that the challenges of the project

promote their development. The exploration of generative understanding and expression

in higher development appears as an extremely promising and rewarding project.

The difference between the postconventional stages was insufficiently explored in

this study due to the problem of finding participants at postautonomous stages. It appears

that all other researchers encountered this issue, and a joint project carried out by a group

of researchers would probably be the only way that appears feasible to obtain a large

sample. Similar considerations apply for a quantitative exploration. In order to

realistically find effect sizes in a statistical evaluation, involving a questionnaire or

similar instrument, we would need a group significantly larger than any single researcher

has found. However, this type of project could attract interest from mainstream
 119

psychologists and the positive psychology community. This, in turn, could facilitate

projects that need funding or a researcher with a position that supports research-oriented

interests. It appears as no coincidence that most projects in higher development do not

involve persons who have an academic appointment. Currently, management

professionals interested in business theories carry out the most sustained projects

informally, and their interests are usually focused on increasing managerial effectiveness.

Because my interest is in generativity and the role of spiritual practice, I feel only

partially interested in those efforts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say something about my own process during the research

efforts. My learning about the SCT and ego development theory evolved slowly over a

period of about 5 years. In the process, I understood a lot of the details, but I did not take

the test. By the time I saw the complete test and was able to administer it to myself, I

knew too much about the scoring. In short, I did not take the test, and I do not know what

score I would have received. At times, this seemed regrettable. However, much has been

said about a person’s presumed inability to understand perspectives that are more

advanced than their own. I do not fully support that conclusion. Or, stated more clearly, I

think it only applies to perspectives that are dramatically higher than our own. I think

most persons at stage 4 cannot understand stage 7; however, a stage 7 person can usually

understand a stage 8 perspective. I also believe that this ability can be enhanced through

training in ego stage theory. I believe that my own ego stage was not an obstacle for me

to conduct this research.

 120

Observing my own internal process and evaluating it in terms of ego stage theory

was a valuable learning tool. One of my key observations about myself is that I do indeed

function along a spectrum. In the final year of the research process, I encountered severe

stressors, including unemployment and an inability to find work. I found, as Maslow

(1954/1970) predicted, that, under stress, when need satisfaction became harder, that I

returned to more simplified ways of meaning-making. I found that I valued ordinary

aspects, such as having a paying job, and that became more important than finding what

is ultimately right for myself and committing to that. This injected new, unexpected

aspects into the research process. For example, my intuitive sense now is that an ego

stage may not be as stable as we would like to believe, especially when we go though

major life changes. I have doubts about the research that supports the stability of stages

across time. None of this research has been done with postconventional participants. I

intuitively sense that a postconventional ego stage may be less stable because it is not

supported by the general culture, and under pressure many individuals may become more

inclined to accept normative beliefs and return to the conventional tier.

Although none of my participants mentioned formal education, I personally found

postgraduate education a powerful tool, especially in regard to acquiring cognitive

complexity and tolerating ambiguity. For sustained periods of time, I looked forward to

finishing this project and reentering the more predictable work world. However, now I

also sense that I will miss this project. I came to graduate school to stretch myself to my

intellectual limits and to be challenged, and I received what I asked for. I can sense that I

will miss this project and later remember it fondly.

 121

I also believe that exposure to persons at higher stages is a very valuable

opportunity. My understanding of higher stages was enhanced in the research process

through dialogue with high-end participants. At all times, I respected the participants’

knowledge and insight. Indeed, meeting the postconventional participants and listening to

their stories was the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of this project. I have a

profound sense of appreciation and gratitude for their contributions of time, energy, and

insight. Without their genuine interest in my research, this project could not have been

completed.
 122

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Appendix A
Stage Designations

Tier of
Development Wilber Hy & Loevinger Loevinger Cook-Greuter
(Wilber) (1986, 2000) (1996) (1976) (1999)

Phantasmic-
Impulsive E2 2 Impulsive Impulsive
Preconventional emotional
(W: Prepersonal)
Rep-mind Self-protective E3  Self-protective Self-protective

3 Rule-oriented Rule-oriented
Rule/role Conformist E4
Conventional 3 Conformist Conformist
(W: Personal)
Formal- Self-aware E5 3/4 Self-aware Self-conscious
reflexive Conscientious E6 4 Conscientious Conscientious

Individualistic E7 4/5 Individualistic Individualistic

Vision-logic

Autonomous E8 5 Autonomous Autonomous

Postconventional Psychic (Integrated) E9 6 Integrated Construct-

(W: Transpersonal) aware/
Subtle Ego-aware

Causal

Non-Dual Unitive
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Appendix B
Washington University Sentence Completion Test

Complete the following sentences.

1. When a child will not join in group activities

2. Raising a family

3. When I am criticized

4. A man’s job

5. Being with other people

6. The thing I like about myself is

7. My mother and I

8. What gets me in trouble is

9. Education

10. When people are helpless

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11. Women are lucky because

12. A good father

13. A girl has the right to

14. When they talked about sex, I

15. A wife should

16. I feel sorry

17. A man feels good when

18. Rules are

19. Crime and delinquency could be halted

20. Men are lucky because

21. I just can’t stand people who

22. At times she worried about

 133

23. I am

24. A woman feels good when

25. My main problem is

26. A husband has the right to

27. The worst thing about being a woman

28. A good mother

29. When I am with a man

30. Sometimes she wished that

31. My father

32. If I can’t get what I want

33. Usually she felt that sex

34. For a woman a career is

 134

35. My conscience bothers me if

36. A woman should always

 135

Appendix C
Invitation to Research Participation

I am searching for volunteers to participate in a research study exploring how individuals

grow and achieve rewarding, meaningful adulthoods. This research is part of my
dissertation in psychology at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.
If you are interested, please contact me at angela.pf@xxxxxxx.net

Participation in this research will include completing a short written assignment, and
possibly an interview, or a written personal statement. The interview will focus on how
you became the person you are today. Not all who take the test will be contacted to be
interviewed. This project is approved by the IRB of Saybrook Graduate School. Data
collection will conform to the description and intention provided in the application and
consent form that I will send you when you indicate your interest.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Angela Pfaffenberger

Angela.pf@xxxxxxx.net
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Appendix D
List of Listserves and Forums

(The numbers denote members in groups as known. It gives an estimate of the

number of people who received the invitation.)

1. Mensa Website.
I contacted the following chapter, which forwarded to their members.
Boulder
Denver
Pueblo/Colorado Springs

2. Spiral_Dynamics_Integral@yahoogroups.com 16 members

3. spiraldynamics@yahoogroups.com 491

4. SDunaligned@yahoogroups.com 116

5. integralcoaching@yahoogroups.com 153

6. integral_lod

7. integral_beyond@yahoogroups.com

8. Londonintegralcircle@yahoogroups.com

9. esalen-lodge@yahoogroups.com 253

This group is about Esalen

10. KenWilber@yahoogroups.com 685

11. KenWilber2@yahoogroups.com 280

12. Transpersonal_Psychology@yahoogroups.com 584

13. existlist@yahoogroups.com 1,117

14. theexistentialsociety@yahoogroups.com 393

The above 2 groups are discussing existentialism

15. SSconnection@yahoogroups.com 545

16. What_the_Bleep_the_Movie@yahoogroups.com 258

 137

The above 2 groups discuss the movie “What the Bleep…”

17. politicsandspiritnetwork@yahoogroups.com 240

18. perennialwisdom@yahoogroups.com 56

19. TMnews@yahoogroups.com 778

20. Fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com 1,013

21. Maharishi_Mahesh_yogi@yahoogroups.com

The last 3 groups are associated with Transcendental Meditation.

22. epitemology@yahoogroups.com 285

23. Listserve for advanced students of Shambhala

International. This is an in-house restricted list, and I
don’t know the number of participants. I have access
because I am an advanced student of the organization.

24. I also joined the forums at the Integral Institute. They

have a large number of forums for their members. I
posted on two forums: “Interplay” and “Embodied
Practice. ” I also contacted the Integral Institute and
asked them to send my invitation/request to their mailing
list, but I never heard back.)

25. I posted on a listserve called “flickr”

It’s a fashionable site for young people.

26. http://forums.shambhala.com/
These are online discussion groups hosted by Shambhala
Publications, which is not officially associated with
Shambhala International. I posted on the following two
forums: “Ken Wilber: Open Discussion” “General
Discussion on Buddhism”

27. The Noetic Café. This site is connected to The Institute of

Noetic Sciences. There are a large number of forums. I
posted on “Peer Help”

28. abrahammaslowdiscussionforum@yahoogroups.com 92

29. philosophyofpsychology@yahoogroups.com 455

 138

30. essence@yahoogroups.com 121

This site is associated with the Diamond Heart School

31. INTENT@yahoogroups.com 320

32. Sustainedaction@yahoogroups.com 176

The last 2 sites are connected with the teachings of Carlos

Castaneda

33. Skepticshumanists@yahoogroups.com 70

34. Human_ism@yahoogroups.com 508

35. Real WorldAtheism@yahoogroups.com 826

36. Constructivism@yahoogroups.com 312

37. group-and-team-coaching@yahoogroups.com 103

38. existlist@yahoogroups.com 854

39. philosophyofpsychology@yahoogroups.com 455

40. WaldenList@yahoogroups.com 216

41. OurPalNietsche@yahoogroups.com 564

42. EmersonsPhilosophy@yahoogroups.com 162

43. OnlineNihilism@yahoogroups.com

44. Critical_Theory@yahoogroups.com 45

45. MatthewSheppard@yahoogroups.com 3,140

46. gay_theology@yahoogroups.com 429

47. Soulforce@yahoogroups.com 471

The last 3 are for gay people

48. Peacecorps2@yahoogroups.com 3190

49. islam_peace-and-understanding@yahoogroups.com 7349

 139

50. BahaiFaith@yahoogroups.com 828

51. ProgressiveTalk@yahoogroups.com 566

52. Solidarity@yahoogroups.com 5910

53. Social_Justice_bfuu@yahoogroups.com 203

54. Native_American_Friends@yahoogroups.com 84

55. simpleliving@yahoogroups.com 1,028

56. UnitarianUniversalist@yahoogroups.com 330

57. UnitarianUniversalistSingles@yahoogroups.com 297

58. Quaker@yahoogroups.com 247

59. Convervative_Principles_and_Action@yahoogroups.com 814

60. Republicans_of_America_Unite@yahoogroups.com 54

61. MySpace
This is the supposedly the largest, most visited Internet site
with hundreds or thousand of lists and forums. I posted on
3 of them.
 140

Appendix E
Demographic Information Sheet

Today’s Date _________________

Name ______________________ Age___________ Gender________

What is the best way to contact you?

E-mail_________________________________________
Phone_________________________________________
Mailing address:_________________________________
_________________________________

Nationality____________________ Place of birth__________________

Where do you currently live?___________________________________

Ethnicity___________________________________________________

Do you practice any religion? _____________Which one? ___________

Do you consider yourself spiritual but not religious? ________________

Highest level of educational achievement_________________________

Current professional activity____________________________________

In what field? _______________________________________________

How did you hear about this research project? _____________________

Do you have any previous familiarity with this test?_________________

 141

Appendix F
Consent Form

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH

Return of this consent form via e-mail reply to sender constitutes your
informed consent to participate in this research, that you have
read and understand the contents of this consent form.

Purpose:

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of higher development in

adulthood. This project is being conducted by Angela Pfaffenberger who is a graduate
student of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center as part of her graduate study
program.

Principal Researcher:

Angela H Pfaffenberger
Phone: (xxx) xxx-xxxx
E-mail: angelapf@xxxxxxx.net

Procedures:

Participation in this study involves two sequential steps. First, participants are asked to
fill out the Washington University Sentence Completion Test and to fill out the general
information sheet. This is expected to take about 30 minutes. The Washington University
Sentence Completion Test contains 36 items; each item constitutes a sentence stem that
you are asked to complete in any way you want. There are no right or wrong answers.
The general information sheet asks about your demographic data, such as age and
professional activities. This information is intended to assist the researcher to find a
diverse group of participants.

Some of the participants will then be invited for an in-person interview of about 60 to 90
minutes of length. Others may be asked for a written statement. Whether you receive an
invitation depends on a number of different factors, such as how many people volunteer
for participation and where you are located. The researcher will also attempt to assemble
a group that is diverse in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and other factors. The
interview/narrative statement will ask you about your developmental path, such as
significant events that changed you. The interview will be tape-recorded.
 142

Possible Risks and Safeguards:

Return of this consent form via e-mail reply to sender constitutes your informed
consent to participate in this research, that you have read and understand the
contents of this consent form.

The personal risks to you are minimal. This study is designed to minimize as much as
possible any potential physical, psychological, and social risks to you. Although very
unlikely, there are always risks in research, which you are entitled to know in advance of
giving your consent, as well as the safeguards to be taken by those who conduct the
project to minimize the risks.

I understand that:

1. Although my identity shall be known to the principal researcher, all identifying

information shall be removed at the time of transcription of the tape recordings.
The tape recording, which will not contain my second name, may be given to the
academic instructor of Angela Pfaffenberger.

2. The test answer sheets, with all identifying information removed, may be given to a
second person to score.

3. This consent form will be kept separate from the data I provide, in a safety deposit
box for 5 years, known only to the principal researcher, after which it too will be
destroyed.

4. The data collected in its raw and transcribed forms are to be kept anonymous,
stored in a locked container accessible only to the principal researcher for 5 years,
after which it shall be destroyed.

5. Transcribed data in the form of computer disks containing anonymous sentence

completion test answers and out-of-context quotes will be kept indefinitely for
future research.

6. The principal researcher may enlist the services of a medical transcription service
or a second scorer for the test. Those persons will not be given any identifying
information about you and will be instructed to keep all information confidential.

7. All the information I give will be kept confidential to the extent permitted by law.
The information obtained from me will be examined in terms of group findings,
and will be reported anonymously.

8. There is to be no individual feedback regarding my test scores or the interpretations

of my responses. Only general findings will be presented in a Summary Report, of
which I am entitled a copy, and my individual responses are to remain anonymous.
 143

9. All personal information I provide associated with my identity will not be released
to any other party without my explicit written permission.

10. If quotes of my responses are used in the research report for the dissertation as well
as any and all future publications of these quotations, my identity shall remain
anonymous, and at most make use of a fictitious name.

11. I have the right to refuse to answer any question asked of me.

12. I have the right to refuse at any time to engage in any procedure requested of me.

13. I have the right to withdraw from participation at any time for any reason without
stating my reason.

14. I have the right to participate without prejudice on the part of the principal
researcher.

15. It is possible but unlikely that the procedures may bring to my mind thoughts of an
emotional nature, which may upset me. In the unlikely event that I should become
upset or experience emotional distress from my participation, the principal
researcher present shall be available to me. They shall make every effort to
minimize such an occurrence. However, should an upset occur and become
sufficiently serious to warrant professional attention, as a condition of my
participation in this study, I understand that a licensed professional will be made
available to me. If I do not have such a person, the principal researcher will refer
me and reasonable costs up to the first two visits will be paid by the principal
researcher.

16. By my consent, I understand I am required to notify the principal researcher at the

time of any serious emotional upset that may cause me to seek therapy and
compensation for this upset.

17. I will receive a copy of this signed consent form for my records.

Regarding any concern and serious upset, you may contact the principal researcher at
(xxx) xxx-xxxx. You may also contact the Research Supervisor of the project,
xxxxxxxxxx, Ph.D., at xxxxxxxx@saybrook.edu. Should you have any concerns
regarding the conduct and procedures of this research project that are not addressed to
your satisfaction by the principal researcher and her research supervisor, you may report
and discuss them with xxxxxxxxx, the Chair of the Saybrook Institutional Review Board
at (xxx) xxx-xxxx.
 144

Benefits:

I understand that my participation in this study may have possible and potential benefits.

1. I may obtain a greater personal awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the

process of adult development.

2. Through future communications and possible applications of the findings of the

research, indirectly my participation may bring future benefits to others. A better
understanding of optimal development in adulthood may eventually pave the way
for interventions and educational processes that will assist individuals to have
better adulthoods.

3. My participation may enable the principal researcher and others working in the
topic area to make a contribution to psychological knowledge and self-actualization
theory in particular.

Summary Report:

Upon conclusion of this study, a summary report of the general findings will become
available. If you would like a copy of the report, please provide the address to which you
would like it sent (your e-mail or postal address):

_________________________________________________
[---E-mail or Postal address---]

________________________________________________
[---City, country, zip--- ]
 145

Consent of Principal Investigator:

I have explained the above procedures and conditions to this study, and provided an
opportunity for the research participant to ask questions and have attempted to provide
satisfactory answers to all questions that have been asked in the course of this
explanation.

Angela Pfaffenberger 5/26/2005

____________________________________________________________
Electronic Signature Date

Angela Pfaffenberger
________________________________________________
Print name

Consent of the Participant:

If you have any questions of the principal researcher at this point, please take this
opportunity to have them answered before granting your consent. If you are ready to
provide your consent, read the statement below, then sign, and print your name and date
on the line below.

I have read the above information, have had an opportunity to ask questions about any
and all aspects of this study, and give my voluntary consent to participate.

__________________________________________________________________
Electronic Signature Date

_________________________________________________
Print name
 146

Appendix G
Interview Questions

I am interested in how people grow and create meaning in their lives. I am interested in
finding out how you became the person you are today.

What kinds of experiences shaped you? Why was this important?

What ideas and values are especially important to you?

What was/is most worthwhile? The most meaningful?

What goals do you hope to achieve? Where would you like your life to go?

Are there any specific events that stand out as turning points?

What activities were particularly growth promoting in your life?

 147

Appendix H
The Participants

Name # G Age Residence Profession Religion Edu I/N SCT Int Date
Postconventional Participants
1 Roger 350 M 56 NS,Can Management Tib Bud BA I 8 11_04
2 Ronald 500 M 74 BC,Can Engineer/Ret None/SBNR* BA N 7 10_05
3 Grace 501 F 58 Austral Management Tib Bud MA N 8 11_05
4 Mia 502 F 55 CO, US Accountant Tib Bud MA I 7 12_05
5 Kyle 505 M 42 WA, US Realtor SBNR HS I 8 6_06
6 Liz 511 F 37 Britain Psychologist None/SBNR MS N 8 12_05
7 David 513 M 60 HI, US Healing/Writ Baha'i PhD N 8 12_05
8 Mark 516 M 49 Belgium Management SBNR BA I/N 9 7_06
9 Wendy 522 F 69 CA, US Self/Consultant Unity MPH I 7 1_06
10 Macy 523 F 62 Netherl Consultant Buddhism PhD N 8 11_05
11 Liam 531 M 25 CA,US Student/Psy SBNR HS I 9 1_06
12 Fiona 532 F 39 Britain Lawyer None/SBNR MA N 8 11_05
13 Aidan 533 M 50 KS, US Self/Horti None/SBNR HS I/N 8 7_06
14 Allison 536 F 40 Germ Student/Psy None/SBNR MA N 7 11_05
15 Marissa 538 F 46 Germ Homemaker None/SBNR MA I 8 6_06
16 Andrew 539 M 62 VT, US Management Tib Bud HS N 7 12_05
17 Jackie 602 F 27 OH, US None yet SBNR/Chris HS I 8 7_06
18 Matthew 618 M 39 OH, US Self/Coach None/SBNR MA I 8 9_04
19 Scott 629 M 60 CA, US Self/Coach Taoism PhD I 10 7_06
20 Chloe 636 F 47 GA, US Self/Consultant None/SBNR MA I 8 8_06
21 Ben 637 M 33 VT, US Student/Consultant Buddhism MA I 9 7_06
22 Sam 639 M 33 CA, US Professor Buddhism PhD I 9 8_06
Conventional Participants
1 Kelly 220 F 45 CO, US Exercise Instructor Tib Bud HS I 5 11_04
2 Anthony 375 M 67 CO, US Account/Sales Tib Bud MBA I 6 12_04
3 Doris 512 F 45 MO, US Student/Psy Pagan MA I 5 1_06
4 Jeremy 520 M 80 Britain Psychologist Pagan PhD N 6 11_05
5 Gabriel 524 M 68 CO, US Therap/Milit/Ret Catholic MA I/N 6 4_06
6 Ken 529 M 51 Britain Consultant SBNR MA N 6 11_05

*SBNR- Spiritual But Not Religious

 148

Appendix I
SCT Worksheet

Participant #

Dane Hewlett, SCT score:

Angela, SCT score:

Difference comment:

Interview/narrative score:

Difference comment:

Final comment:
 149

Appendix J
A Model of Adult Development Towards Postconventional Ego Stages

Achievement of Postconventional Ego Development

Complexity Interiority
 Growth attributed to
diverse factors  Finding what is right for
 Many perspectives oneself
considered  Inner focus when obstacles
 Accepting ambiguity arise
 Intepreting many events in  Maintaining and expressing
a meaningful manner as awareness in daily life

Miscellaneous Intention with

 Giftedness Commitment
 Unconventionality
 Cross-cultural exposure  Making growth a priority
 Joining a discourse
community
 Engage in the growth
promoting activity
 150

Appendix K
Quantitative Comparison Chart for Major Codes

% (#) % (#)
 
Postconventional Conventional

High Complexity 100 (22) 0 (0)

Inner Awareness/Orientation 63 (14) 18 (1)

Finding What is Personally Right 63 (14) 0 (0)

Growth not Exclusively Due to Obstacles 63 (14) 0 (0)

Intention to Grow 67.5 (15) 18 (1)

Expresses Consistent Theory of Growth 54 (12) 0 (0)

Use of Specific Growth Practices 85.5 (19) 18 (1)

NOTE: In the postconventional group, 1 participant constitutes 4.5%; in the conventional

group, 1 participant constitutes 18%.
 151

Appendix L
Statistical Calculation of Interrater Agreement

Calculation for Raw Data from Hewlett (2004)

Sample Size = 23
Kappa 0.7959
ASE 0.1105
95% Lower Conf Limit 0.5793
95% Upper Conf Limit 1.0000

Test of H0: Kappa = 0

ASE under H0 0.1518

Z 5.2442
One-sided Pr > Z <.0001
Two-sided Pr > |Z| <.0001

Postconventional Participants from Current Study

Sample Size = 22
Kappa 0.4327
ASE 0.1337
95% Lower Conf Limit 0.1706
95% Upper Conf Limit 0.6947

Test of H0: Kappa = 0

ASE under H0 0.1193

Z 3.6258
One-sided Pr > Z 0.0001
Two-sided Pr > |Z| 0.0003