The Quiet Ego: Motives for Self-Other Balance and Growth in Relation to Well-Being

The quiet ego is a way of construing the self that transcends egotism, not by neglecting the self but rather by facilitating a balance of concerns for the self and others as well as by facilitating the growth of the self and others. This study examines whether the Quiet Ego Scale (QES—Wayment et al. in J Happiness Stud 16:999–1033, 2015) correlates significantly with measures that specifically reflect balance and growth in terms of value orientations and motivation, and whether these values and motives can help explain the relation between QES and well-being. We randomly split our sample of 1117 college students into five groups (Ns ranged from 213 to 231) and examined the correlations between QES and measures of values and motives (Ego and Ecosystem Goals—Crocker and Canevello in J Personal Soc Psychol 98:1009–1024, 2008; Growth Motivation Index (GMI)—Bauer et al. in J Happiness Stud 16:185–210, 2015; Universal Values—Schwartz et al. in J Personal Soc Psychol 103:663–668, 2012). As predicted, QES was strongly related to compassionate goal motives, experiential and reflection GMI subscales, and weakly and negatively related to self-image goals. QES was most strongly and consistently correlated with values of universalism, benevolence, and self-direction that reflecting a balance of self- and other-concern. QES was positively (but somewhat inconsistently) correlated with stimulation, achievement, power, security, and tradition, and with hedonism, albeit weakly. QES was unrelated to conformity. A regression analysis found growth and balance motives significantly accounted for much of the shared variance between QES and well-being. Our results underscore the centrality of growth and balance values to the quiet ego construct.     

Quiet Ego and Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness

Journal of Happiness Studies - The quiet ego refers to a self-identity that is balanced and growth-oriented in its stance toward the self and others. As a relatively new construct, its validity has...     

Doing and Being: Mindfulness,Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners

We examined the relationship between meditation experience, psychological mindfulness, quiet ego characteristics, and self-reported physical health in a diverse sample of adults with a range of Buddhist experience (N = 117) gathered from a web-based survey administered to Buddhist practitioners around the world between August 1, 2007 and January 31, 2008. Practicing meditation on a regular basis and greater experience with Buddhism was related to higher psychological mindfulness scores. Psychological mindfulness was correlated with a latent variable called “quiet ego characteristics” that reflected measures based on Bauer and Wayment’s (Transcending self-interest: psychological explorations of the quiet ego. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 7–19, 2008) conceptual and multidimensional definition of a “quiet ego”: wisdom, altruism, sense of interdependence with all living things, need for structure (reversed), anger/verbal aggression (reversed), and negative affectivity (reversed). In turn, quiet ego characteristics were positively related to self-reported health. Our findings provide continuing support for the key role psychological mindfulness may play in psychological and physical well-being.     

Quiet Eye Training Improves Small Arms Maritime Marksmanship

Quiet eye training—teaching task-specific gaze control—has been consistently shown to optimize the acquisition of motor skills. The present study aimed to examine the potential benefits of a quiet eye training intervention in a simulated maritime marksmanship task that involved shooting fast approaching moving targets with a decommissioned general-purpose machine gun. Twenty participants were randomly assigned to a quiet eye trained (QET) or technical trained (TT) group and completed 2 baseline, 20 training, and 2 retention trials on the moving-target task. Compared to their TT counterparts, the QET group displayed more effective gaze control (longer quiet eye durations and greater target locking) and more accurate performance (smaller radial error of both the initial shot and average of all shots) at retention. These findings highlight the potential for quiet eye training to be used to support the training of marksmanship skills in military settings.     

Ego development in perspective: Structural stage,functional phase,and cultural age-period models

Ego development is emerging as one of the more important areas of research in developmental psychology. This paper presents a structural stage approach to ego development and distinguishes it from two other models of ego development, which are termed functional phases and cultural ages. Two subtypes are also delineated within the structural stage approach—a monodomain and a multisubdomain—and the latter is argued for. These concepts are then illustrated through an analysis of four prominent ego development theories—those of Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, and Erik Erikson. The important similarities and critical differences of the theories are clarified, which enables the authors to present a summary integration.     

Ego Impairment and Ego Adaptation in Schizophrenia

Recent clinical theory and evidence from research converge in describing schizophrenia as a pattern of cognitive defect. In this article the defect was described as an impairment in those psychological processes that integrate and organize mental functioning into a holistic pattern at a given moment, give it continuity over time, and inter-relate the unified complex to external phenomena. Psychological test material (the Rorschachs of two people) was examined to elicit cognitive or perceptual patterns in contradistinction to analyses of conflicts, defenses, or interpersonal vectors. This structural emphasis brings into perspective the fluctuation of mental organization in schizophrenics and relates the fluctuation to degree of impairment, degree of strain imposed by the environment, and capacity for adaptive compensation.     

Ego Constriction

The terms ego constriction, ego inhibition, and ego restriction have not been clearly differentiated in their usage in the literature. In this paper a rationale for "ego constriction" as an entity distinct from both ego inhibition and ego restriction is given, despite its clear similarities to each. In a person with an ego inhibition, the ego inhibits a part of its own functioning because a particular function is linked to an unacceptable impulse. It is an internalized conflict. The person with an ego restriction, in contrast, avoids psychological pain triggered from an area in the outside world by restricting activity in that area. Like each of these problems but different, a person with an ego constriction first externalizes an internalized conflict associated with important functions or activities. Then, only through a series of particular obligatory steps can the person "overcome" the ego constriction--albeit temporarily. It is noted in this paper that the function of the specified obligatory steps is structurally parallel to the rigid obligatory behavior necessary for genital gratification in the perversions. As the recognition of this distinction arose in the course of an analysis of a mental health professional, something of the necessarily shared nature of analytic work is noticeable, shining through as the background for the work of this paper.     

Ego Development during the Transition from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study

Although Loevinger's (1976) ego development theory represents a milestone approach to life-span personality development, little is known about ego development during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, including the average gain in group means, whether individuals maintain their relative position to each other, and age-related changes in within-cohort variability. These issues are examined using the ongoing Block and Block Longitudinal Study. Across a 9-year interval—from age 14 to age 23—the findings indicate that: (a) the average person gains approximately 1.5 ego development steps, (b) within-cohort variability in ego development increases with age, (c) ego level at ages 14 and 23 is moderately related, (d) large individual differences exist in the timing and extent of ego development, and (e) the magnitude of change is smallest for individuals who have already reached the Self-aware level as adolescents. The findings suggest that the Self-aware level represents a developmental “hurdle” during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Possible explanations are explored in terms of pacers for ego development.     

Ego Functions and Ego Development: Defense Mechanisms and Intelligence as Predictors of Ego Level

This study considers the contribution of two ego functions--intelligence and defense mechanisms--to ego developmental level. Two independent assessments of ego level were related to IQ and defense mechanism use in a sample of 89 young adults. Whereas IQ and defense were themselves found to be unrelated, both variables predicted ego level: The relation with IQ was linear, whereas the relation with defense was curvilinear. In addition, the relation between defense and ego level varied as a function of IQ level. At low levels of IQ, stronger use of Denial and Projection was associated with higher ego levels. At high IQ levels, strong use of Denial was associated with lower ego levels, whereas moderate use of Projection was associated with higher ego levels.     

Anselm's Quiet Radicalism

It is characteristic of Anselm to adopt the formulations of his authorities while giving them meanings of his own, hiding conceptual disagreement by means of verbal echoes. Anselm's considerable originality sometimes goes unnoticed because readers see the standard Augustinian language and miss the fact that Anselm uses it to state un-Augustinian views. One striking instance of Anselm's quiet radicalism is his understanding of free choice and the fall. He seems to uphold standard Augustinian privation theory when he affirms that injustice is merely an absence of justice where justice should be; he seems also to be committed to the standard Augustinian view that everything that has being is created by God. A closer examination, however, shows that Anselm clearly has qualms about whether privation theory can do all of the work to which Augustine had tried to put it; and Anselm actually affirms that every free choice has being and yet is not created by God. I begin by showing that Anselm regards unjust acts as being ontologically on a par with just acts. Injustice itself is nothing, a privation; but an unjust volition is something, and indeed no less something than a just volition. Moreover, creatures have their volitions solely from themselves, not from God. So Anselm must deny that God is the creator of everything that has being: free choices have being, and creatures are the sole causes of those choices. Anselm explicitly draws this radical conclusion, but he does so quietly, without fanfare, taking care to provide ways in which he can still say all the traditional things but mean something radical.     

Ego depletion increases risk-taking

We investigated how the availability of self-control resources affects risk-taking inclinations and behaviors. We proposed that risk-taking often occurs from suboptimal decision processes and heuristic information processing (e.g., when a smoker suppresses or neglects information about the health risks of smoking). Research revealed that depleted self-regulation resources are associated with reduced intellectual performance and reduced abilities to regulate spontaneous and automatic responses (e.g., control aggressive responses in the face of frustration). The present studies transferred these ideas to the area of risk-taking. We propose that risk-taking is increased when individuals find themselves in a state of reduced cognitive self-control resources (ego-depletion). Four studies supported these ideas. In Study 1, ego-depleted participants reported higher levels of sensation seeking than non-depleted participants. In Study 2, ego-depleted participants showed higher levels of risk-tolerance in critical road traffic situations than non-depleted participants. In Study 3, we ruled out two alternative explanations for these results: neither cognitive load nor feelings of anger mediated the effect of ego-depletion on risk-taking. Finally, Study 4 clarified the underlying psychological process: ego-depleted participants feel more cognitively exhausted than non-depleted participants and thus are more willing to take risks. Discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Ego development in college

Using the Sentence Completion Test for ego development, we studied several cohorts of students between 1971 and 1979 at a technological institute (Tech) and between 1974 and 1979 at a predominantly liberal arts university (MU). Ego level tended to rise slightly except among women at MU, for whom there was a slight but consistent loss. This particular finding challenges one assumption of a widely accepted version of Piagetian theory: that stage development is irreversible. Women tended to enter MU slightly ahead of men in ego level, but left at the same level. Contrary to expectation, men and women appeared to gain more at Tech than at MU; the difference was significant only for women.     

Ego depletion improves insight

Initial acts of self-control can reduce effort and performance on subsequent tasks – a phenomenon known as ego depletion. Ego depletion is thought to undermine the capacity or willingness to engage executive control, an important determinant of success for many tasks. We examined whether ego depletion improves performance on a task that favours less executive control: insight problem solving. In two experiments, participants completed an ego-depletion manipulation or a non-depleting control condition followed by an insight problem-solving task (i.e., matchstick arithmetic). Participants in the depleting condition demonstrated greater insight problem-solving accuracy than those in the non-depleting control condition. Priming theories of willpower did not impact these results. Although ego depletion is widely regarded as a “state of impairment”, attendant decreases in executive control may foster insightful thinking.