Adult Development

What is it I wonder about “growing up”? By “growing up,” I mean to distinguish advancement in a person’s thinking capability (vertical development) from adding of more knowledge, skills, and competencies (horizontal development). There is a difference between how you think and what you know. I wonder about the ability to think in more complex, systemic, strategic, and interdependent ways.¹

There have been decades of scientific research into “growing up,” in the field of adult development psychology. In the words of one of researcher, Susanne Cook-Greuter,² adult development

describes the unfolding of human potential towards deeper understanding, wisdom, and effectiveness in the world. Growth occurs in a logical sequence of stages or expanding world views from birth to adulthood…. Overall, world views evolve from simple to complex, from static to dynamic, and from ego-centric to socio-centric to world-centric. Later stages are reached only by journeying through the earlier stages…. Each later stage in the sequence is more differentiated, integrated, flexible and capable of optimally functioning in a rapidly changing and ever more complex world.³

Decades of Application and Research

Susanne Cook-Greuter based her research⁴ on a psychometric profile–a sentence completion “test”–called the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT), published in Measuring Ego Development (1970),⁵ Ego Development (1976), and Measuring Ego Development 2nd edition (1996)⁶ by Jane Loevinger.

Loevinger began by researching the authoritarian personality and family problems. Without an academic appointment, her initial research population was not sophomore students but rather mothers, from churches, maternity wards, mother’s groups, PTAs, etc. Her factorial analysis led her to a variable that correlated with age, and (when age was held constant) with education and experience (number of children)–a developmental variable. Psychometric methods led to a scoring manual that provided internal consistency through correlation between different sentences on the test. ⁷ (Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency, was an excellent .91,⁸ and above .90 in many later studies.⁹)

Loevinger’s research influenced several subsequent developmentalists. Bill Torbert, while developing theories of scientific progress and organizational development, determined that the most psychometrically valid and demanding measure of whether persons transform their way of interpreting and acting in the world was Loevinger’s SCT.¹⁰Bill Torbert’s 1972 course, “Toward an Action Science,” acquainted Bill Joiner with the field, leading to a research paper, training in scoring Loevinger’s SCT, larger and longer research projects on leadership development, and eventually a book, Leadership Agility (2006).¹¹

Photo by Steven Roe on Scopio

Robert Kegan was acquainted with Jane Loevinger as a doctoral student at Harvard,¹² and briefly compares his own developmental theory to Loevinger’s in The Evolving Self (1982)¹³ and In Over Our Heads (1994).¹⁴ Kegan’s theory has its own profile approach that roughly approximates Loevinger’s SCT: the Subject-Object Interview (SOI).¹⁵ Kegan applies forty years of longitudinal research into adult development to organizational development in An Everyone Culture (2016).¹⁶

Cook-Greuter worked with Torbert and Elaine Herdman-Barker on the Leadership Development Profile (LDP), an evolution from Loevinger’s SCT with greater emphasis on leadership development.¹⁰ In 2005, Cook-Greuter modified the profile into the Mature Adult Profile (MAP), and in 2012, Torbert modified the profile into the Global Leadership Profile (GLP).¹⁷

Master Trait

These decades of application and research have shown developmental stage to be a “master trait” second only to intelligence in determining measurable psychological differences.⁵ It is related to intelligence–with a moderate positive correlation of .13 to .46 in 10 out of 15 studies. However, development and intelligence are conceptually and functionally distinct concepts.⁹ Development stage affects four domains:¹⁸

• character development (impulse control and moral development),
• cognitive style,
• conscious preoccupations, and
• interpersonal style.

Favorable personality characteristics associated with developmental stage include nurturance, conscientiousness, trust, tolerance, interpersonal sensitivity, psychological mindedness, creativity, moral development, and a variety of measures related to mental health.¹⁹

Horizontal and Vertical Goals

As a lifelong learner, I often have personal goals for horizontal development, resulting in more knowledge or skill. But adding data, information, or knowledge is not the same as changing the structure of our thinking. Adult developmental research suggests also setting a personal goal for vertical development, one that requires more complex, systemic, strategic, and interdependent thinking. Typically this would address our blind spots, ways we are invisibly undermining ourselves.

Notes