Gender-related personality traits and ego development: Differential patterns for men and women

Two studies were designed to test the hypothesis that enhanced ego level affords the capacity to express those gender-related traits stereotypical for the opposite sex. In Study 1, 209 white male and female college students completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire and the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test, a semiprojective measure of ego development. Analyses revealed that for women, instrumentality was related to ego development; for men, expressiveness was associated with ego level. Study 2 further tested this hypothesis using a more heterogeneous sample and several alternative measures of gender-related traits, including the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Nontraditional gender role traits and ideals (masculinity for females, femininity for males) were associated with higher levels of ego development. Implications of the findings for ego development theory are discussed.     

Adaptation to divorce and ego development in adult women

The purpose of this study was to assess how the experience of stressful life changes might provide an opportunity for ego development in adulthood. The sample included 104 women in the early stage of the separation and divorce process; 91% of the sample was recontacted after 1 year had elapsed. Longitudinal analyses of the adaptation process supported the hypothesis that marital separation and divorce might be a disequilibrating life change, but one that might foster ego development. Those women who experienced this life change as disequilibrating but who made a successful adaptation by Time 2 showed a significant increase in ego level. Furthermore, those women who were high in adjustment at Time 1 but low in adjustment at Time 2 showed a theoretically consistent regression in ego level. Patterns of adaptation to life changes, their relationship to ego development, and the theoretical implications for Loevinger's model are discussed.     

Ego development and the ethics of care and justice: the relations among them revisited

This study examined the links among ego development and the ethics of care and justice in 144 Norwegian men and women, 15 to 48 years old, taking into consideration age, sex, education, and verbal intelligence. As expected, the relationship between Loevinger's model of ego development and care-based moral reasoning as measured with Skoe's Ethic of Care Interview (ECI) was significantly stronger than the one between ego development and justice as measured with Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Both ethics correlated significantly with verbal ability. Analyses showed that beyond its overlap with verbal intelligence, the variance shared between the ECI and ego development was substantial. By contrast, when verbal intelligence was controlled, the DIT was not significantly related to ego development or to the care ethic.     

Sex role orientation and its relationship to the development of identity and moral thought

This paper examined the links among sex role orientation, ego identity development and moral reasoning. 76 female and 58 male students were assessed on Bern's sex role inventory, ego identity, care-based and justice-based moral thought. For women, identity was negatively related to femininity and positively related to androgyny. Also, high levels of care-based moral reasoning, i.e., a balanced concern for the welfare of self and others, was related to androgyny for women. There were no significant findings for men. No significant relationships were found between sex role orientation and justice-based moral reasoning. Thus, the results suggested that for women in particular, relinquishing the stereotyped sex role definition and becoming more androgynous is important for their ego identity as well as care-based moral development.     

Shame, Guilt, Ego Development and the Five-Factor Model of Personality

Shame, guilt, and ego development are conceptually interrelated constructs, yet their empirical relations have not yet been examined. Further, these constructs have not yet been mapped onto the widely used Five-Factor Model. In Study 1, relations were examined between these three domains within a sample of Australian university students. Two types of guilt were distinguished, Empathic Guilt (associated with Agreeableness) and Anxious Guilt (associated with Neuroticism). The relationship between Shame and Ego Level was found to be curvilinear, with Shame greatest for persons at intermediate stages of ego development. In Study 2, relations between ego development and the Five-Factor Model were further examined. Across both studies, Ego Level was best predicted from Conscientiousness among men and from Openness among women. Relations between Ego Level, proneness to shame and guilt, and the five factors were typically modest, suggesting that these represent complementary approaches to the study of personality.     

Sex role identity in young adults: its parental antecedents and relation to ego development

This study, inspired by Block's (1973) work, was designed to enable one to examine how ego development and socialization experience interact in relation to sex role identity. Sex role identity was measured via the Bem Sex Role Inventory, and socialization practices were measured via the Block Child-Rearing Practices Report. Both measures were scaled so as to yield scores on agency, communion, and androgyny. Ego development was assessed via Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. The sample consisted of 120 young adult men and women, married and single. Analyses revealed that the predictive power of the variables differed by sex. Ego development was predictive of sex role identity in men but not women, whereas socialization practices were predictive of sex role identity in women but not men. The results were seen as supporting Chodorow's (1974) position regarding the differing socialization experiences of men and women.     

Ego development in women without higher education

The study presents evidence that interpersonal and situational complexity, confrontation and conflict advance ego development in women. Thirty-two pregnant women of moderate education and from modest educational backgrounds were studied. Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test was used to measure ego development, and interviews and tests with the subjects and their mothers formed the data from which the mother daughter, father-daughter and parental relationship were assessed along with evaluation of environmental strain during childhood. The findings suggest that women at higher, compared to lower, stages of ego development are more individuated, and reared to more independence and conflict-tolerance by less responsive, but more active and socially engaged mothers. High ego-level daughters also had conflicted and overinvolved relationships to the fathers. Ego development was related to early environmental stress, parental marital strain and to present environmental stress. Personality or adjustment variables were not related to ego development. The relationship between ego development and complexities in the social environment was seen in light of the traditional over-socialization of females which may impede ego development.     

Ego development, authoritarianism, and social status: an investigation of the incremental validity of Loevinger's sentence completion test (short form)

This study presents two sets of analyses designed to evaluate the relation between a 12-item form of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of ego development (Short Form; SCT-S) and socioeconomic status (SES). The subjects were a large national random sample of adolescent and young adult men and women who were stratified into three artificial age cohorts. The first set of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that SES accounted for 8% to 13% of the variance in SCT-S scores. Incremental validity of the SCT-S in predicting social attitudes, beyond that predicted by SES, was generally supported for authoritarian aggression and partially supported in predicting masculine sex role expectations. Findings suggest that research on ego development with subjects over age 18 might use level of education as a rough index of SES. For younger subjects, parental factors and education are both important. This study also provides revised age-specific national norms for the SCT-S.     

Men's and women's self-confidence in persuasive,comforting, and justificatory communicative tasks

The self-confidence of men and women was assessed in three types of interpersonal communicative situations. Participants indicated anticipated level of success, evaluated their performance, and assessed the extent to which the outcome was due to ability and to effort. The most striking finding was higher self-confidence in women than in men in comforting tasks. No difference emerged in level of self-confidence between men and women in persuasive tasks. Men tended to anticipate more success in justifying decisions, but following their performance, did not rate either the quality of the performance or their ability higher than did women.     

Ego development in adult women

Ego development in adult women was studied using Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development (SCT). The subjects were 163 women in a university nurse practitioner training program. Ego development scores were correlated with scores from personality tests and with interview data. Higher ego levels were related to personal adjustment, nurturance, responsibility, tolerance, enjoyment of children, inner control, capacity for status, and age. Improvement in ego level scores was found only for those at, or below, the self-aware level. The SCT, as scored for women, seems to be particularly sensitive to differences in responsible caring in relationships, an aspect of personality development often neglected by other tests.     

Stories of Life Transition: Subjective Well-Being and Ego Development in Parents of Children with Down Syndrome

Eighty-seven parents of children with Down Syndrome (DS; 63 women, 24 men) wrote narratives about finding out that their child had DS and completed questionnaire measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and stress-related growth and completed the Sentence Completion Test as a measure of ego development. Forty-two of these individuals participated in a follow-up 2 years later. Foreshadowing and happy endings in the stories were related to heightened SWB at both time periods. Evidence of accommodative change—actively experiencing a paradigmatic shift—was related to stress-related growth and ego development at both time periods. A high sense of closure and accommodation in the stories was associated with the highest levels of stress-related growth. Implications for research on well-being and personal growth are discussed.     

Gender differences in the age-changing relationship between instrumentality and family contact in emerging adulthood

Data from the Children in the Community Transitions Study were used to examine gender differences in the impact of family contact on the development of finance and romance instrumentality from ages 17 to 27 years. Family contact decreased among both men and women across emerging adulthood, although it decreased more rapidly in men than in women. Both finance and romance instrumentality increased for men and women across emerging adulthood. The growth rate did not differ between men and women in either domain, although men tended to be characterized by higher levels of instrumentality than women. There were noteworthy gender differences in the impact of family contact on the development of instrumentality. At age 17, family contact was negatively associated with instrumentality for both men and women; at age 27, the impact of family contact on instrumentality was less negative for women and was positive for men.     

Susceptibility to faking of a sentence completion test of ego development

Effects of faking on a sentence completion test. of ego development, explored in five experiments, partially confirmed the developmental hypothesis that persons can lower their ego level test scores but not increase them. When faking high on retest, subjects scores either stayed the same or increased by about a half step. Only intensive study of ego development seemed genuinely to increase scores. When faking a bad impression or a low ego level, subjects' scores decreased, typically to the pre-Conformist level. Unexpectedly, attempts to make a good impression lowered high scores, especially for women, Because the test is susceptible to factors which can artificially lower scores, careful planning and evaluation of testing conditions must accompany test use.     

Ego Development at the Crossroads: Identity and Intimacy Among Black Men and White Women in Cross-Racial Relationships

This study addressed the ego development of White women and Black men who were in cross-racial relationships. Twenty-one participants completed in-depth, individual interviews, focus group inquiries, and the Sentence Completion Test (SCT). The results indicate that a majority of the participants scored at the higher levels of ego development: 50% of the Black males and 67% of the White females were at the conscientious stage of ego development, 25% of the Black males and 22% of the White females were at the individuated stage. The results from the interviews and the focus groups substantiated the participants' scores on the SCT, exemplifying the complexity in which Black men and White women perceive themselves as individuals and others in relationships. Loevinger (1976, Ego development: Conceptions and theories. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.) contends that these higher stages represent a complex means of understanding oneself and of interacting in intimate relationships. The terms of African American heritage, African American, and Black are used synonymously and interchangeably, as are the terms of European American heritage, European American, and White.     

Relations between level of ego development and adjustment pattern in adolescents

The present study was designed to assess the relation between Loevinger's hierarchy of ego development stages, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, and adjustment patterns as measured by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. A total of 150 high school students between the ages of 14 and 15, 75 boys and 75 girls, served as subjects. It was hypothesized that certain adjustment patterns were more prevalent at certain points of the ego development hierarchy than at others, specifically: (a) hypochondriasis and psychopathic deviance at the ego stages below conformity; (b) hysteria at the conformist ego level; and (c) obsessive-compulsiveness and paranoia at the ego stages above conformity. All of these hypotheses, except that regarding psychopathic deviance, were supported by the data. One unpredicted relationship, a tendency for depression to be most characteristic of the conformist ego group, was found.     

Race differences in self-perception and locus of control during adolescence and early adulthood: methodological implications.

Data from a longitudinal sample of 14,721 White (7,193 men, 7,528 women) and 5,197 Black (2,400 men, 2,797 women) American high school students tested first between ages 16 and 19 and then in two follow-ups 4 and 6 years later were examined to determine Black-White and male-female differences in self-esteem and causal orientations. On general self-esteem scores, Blacks rated themselves more positively than Whites. Blacks also rated themselves more positively on specific self-beliefs (e.g., social attractiveness), although the magnitude of differences in such cases was quite small. On control measures, Blacks perceived greater external control pertaining to both cultural events and personal efficacy, although they had slightly greater expectations about future academic success. Results concerning the general and personal self-efficacy of Blacks were somewhat inconsistent with earlier reports (Coleman et al., 1966; Osborne & LeGette, 1982). Women tended to show less self-efficacy than men, but there were no interactions of race and sex. Even in the presence of significant effects for race and sex, mean differences tended to be relatively small.     

Individuation,ego development and the quality of conflict negotiation in the family of adolescent girls

Individuation, ego development and family negotiation of conflict were studied in 27 Norwegian families with an adolescent daughter, 16–19 years, drawn from a larger sample to represent a rectangular distribution of ego development. Individuality and Connectedness (individuation) as conceptualized and scored by Condonet al. (1984) was modified and adapted to a Norwegian material. Four factors were extracted, one related to individuality (self-assertion and separateness) and two to connectedness (clarification and acceptance). Ego development, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) was related to connectedness between mother and daughter and between father and daughter, but not to individuality. Maturity of conflict negotiation was positively related to connectedness between mother and daughter and negatively to individuality between father and daughter. It was argued that for women, individuality may not be a singular goal in ego development or in individuation and that self-other differentiation of identity and interests may develop within a close relationship and not only through separation.     

Gender and education impact on brain aging: a general cognitive factor approach

In cognitive aging research, the study of a general cognitive factor has been shown to have a substantial explanatory power over the study of isolated tests. The authors aimed at differentiating the impact of gender and education on global cognitive change with age from their differential impact on 4 psychometric tests using a new latent process approach, which intermediates between a single-factor longitudinal model for sum scores and an item-response theory approach for longitudinal data. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 2,228 subjects from PAQUID, a population-based cohort of older adults followed for 13 years with repeated measures of cognition. Adjusted for vascular factors, the analysis confirmed that women performed better in tests involving verbal components, while men performed better in tests involving visuospatial skills. In addition, the model suggested that women had a slightly steeper global cognitive decline with oldest age than men, even after excluding incident dementia or death. Subjects with higher education exhibited a better mean score for the 4 tests, but this difference tended to attenuate with age for tests involving a speed component.     

Intelligence and maturity: meta-analytic evidence for the incremental and discriminant validity of Loevinger's measure of ego development

This review examined whether Loevinger's measure of personality (ego) development is equivalent to the measurement of intelligence. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 52 correlations between ego level scores and intelligence test scores (retrieved from 42 studies involving 5,648 participants). The weighted average correlation between ego level and intelligence ranged from.20 to.34, depending on the intellectual ability assessed (e.g., verbal intelligence). Adjusting for measurement unreliability increased these values only minimally. The authors also reviewed 16 studies that examined the association between ego level and various criterion variables (e.g., aggressive behavior) after statistically controlling for the effects of intelligence. Ninety-four percent of the tests revealed significant relations between ego level and criterion variables after controlling for intelligence, indicating that ego development and intelligence are not interchangeable constructs. These findings do not support recent speculations concerning the limited value of stage models of maturity, social development, and moral reasoning.     

Negro Responses to Certain Intelligence Test Items

Fifty-eight female undergraduate students were administered the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Figural form B, and the Washington Sentence Completion Test in order to investigate the hypothesis of a positive relationship between creativity and ego development. A Spearman rank order correlation coefficient was computed for ego development and each TTCT creativity factor (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration), as well as a total composite creativity score. All creativity scores correlated with ego development at the .01 level, except for originality, which correlated at the .05 level. Results were discussed in terms of Maslow's theories concerning highly developed persons, and possible preconscious aspects of the creative process. Conclusions were drawn, and recommendations for further research were made.