Ego Development and the Influence of Gender, Age, and Educational Levels Among Older Adults

Does Ego Development Increase During Midlife? The Effects of Openness and Accommodative Processing of Difficult Events

“…One notable exception is a recent conference abstract describing a 12‐year longitudinal study in a lifespan cross‐sectional sample (age 10 to 87) in which ego level was found to increase during adulthood and peak in late midlife rather than remain stable (Grühn, Diehl, Lumley, & Labouvie‐Vief, ). Similarly, two recent cross‐sectional samples spanning middle adulthood identified weak but positive trend‐level associations between ego level and age (Bauer et al., ; Truluck & Courtenay, ). Thus, the evidence that has emerged since Cohn's review is, though still limited, more suggestive of an increase in ego development during midlife than of stability.…”

“…Fourth, we hypothesized that openness at age 21 and accommodative processing at age 52 would be independent predictors of ego development in midlife. Finally, we took into account both graduate level education and verbal ability in testing these hypotheses, as both educational attainment and intelligence have been found to be modestly correlated with ego level in adult samples (McCrae & Costa, , ; Truluck & Courtenay, ).…”

Counselor Cognitions: General and Domain‐Specific Complexity

“…The WUSCT has strong evidence of reliability and validity as a measure of conceptual complexity in adolescents and adults (Hy & Loevinger, 1996;Loevinger, 1998;Manners & Durkin, 2001). Originally developed for use with women, the instrument was later expanded for use with men and has been validated with samples of racially and geographically diverse middle and high school students, 2-and 4-year college students, and adults from a variety of professions and affiliations (e.g., Bursik, 1991;Cramer, 1999;Novy, 1993;Novy & Francis, 1992;Truluck & Courtenay, 2002).…”

Developmental Recapitulation in Adaptation to Vision Loss Among Middle-Age and Older Adults

“…Transitions and structural changes brought about by life events (e.g., divorce, illness) led to unsatisfactory situations for these women, prompting an initiation of adaptations leading to increased ego development (Helson et al, 1985). Truluck and Courtenay (2002) reported similar findings regarding adaptation and ego development. Merriam and colleagues (1997) provided further support for the developmental recapitulation hypothesis in a study of the effects of HIVpositive diagnosis on psychosocial development.…”