Personality development from adolescence to emerging adulthood: Linking trajectories of ego development to the family context and identity formation

Personality Development From Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood:Linking Trajectories of Ego Development to the Family Context and

Identity Formation

Moin SyedUniversity of Minnesota

Inge Seiffge-KrenkeUniversity of Mainz

This longitudinal study analyzed personality development using an individual approach by examiningchanges in ego development across the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood. Specifically,the study mapped the heterogeniety in ego development growth trajectories and linked the differenttrajectories to the family context in adolescence and identity development in emerging adulthood.Participants were 98 families with a child who were followed from age 14 to age 24. Latent class growthanalysis identified 4 distinct trajectories of growth in ego development of the children over the 10-yearperiod. The results indicated that growth was more rapid during adolescence and tended to taper off inemerging adulthood. In addition, promotion of personal growth within the family and parents’ egodevelopment were particulary instrumental in children’s ego developmental gains in adolescence.Finally, youth who demonstrated continued ego development into emerging adulthood also demonstratedheightened levels of identity exploration.

Keywords: ego development, identity status, family climate, emerging adulthood, individual devlopment

Social scientists have recently highlighted the changing natureof adulthood in industrialized societies (Arnett, 2000; Côté, 2006).Where previously the transition from adolescence to adulthoodwas clearly marked by entry into stable adult roles and deriving asense of independence in the early 20s, these developmental mile-stones have been substantially prolonged until age 25–30. Arnett(2000, 2004) has argued that these societal changes have resultedin profound changes in the psychological experience of theseyoung people, or emerging adults. For example, meta-analyticresearch suggests a delay in identity development and great vari-ation with which mature states of identity are accomplished(Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2010). Thus, it is critical tounderstand whether personality development likewise has under-gone similar changes, and how personality develops within impor-tant developmental contexts. We take up this task in the presentstudy by charting individual trajectories of ego development, a

fundamental component of personality (Blasi, 1998), across thetransition from adolescence to emerging adulthood, and examinehow an important context in adolescence, the family, and key taskof emerging adulthood, identity, are related to these trajectories.

Personality Change: Integrating a DevelopmentalPerspective

There is substantial empirical evidence that personality is char-acterized by both stability and change across the life span (Caspi,Roberts, & Shiner, 2005; McAdams & Olson, 2010). Personalitychange is most frequently assessed in one of two ways: differentialcontinuity, or the degree to which individual differences in traitlevels maintain their rank order over time (Roberts & DelVecchio,2000), and mean levels of traits over time, indicating the averagedevelopmental course of traits across the life span (Roberts, Wal-ton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). There are, however, at least two addi-tional methods for assessing stability and change that have re-ceived much less attention in the literature: ipsative change andindividual change (Caspi & Roberts, 1999; Donnellan, Conger, &Burzette, 2007; Ozer & Gjerde, 1989; Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt,2001).

Ipsative change is similar to differential continuity, but exam-ines stability and change in personality profiles within an individ-ual (e.g., Lönnqvist, Mäkinen, Paunonen, Henriksson, &Verkasalo, 2008). In contrast, individual change is similar to themean-level change approach, but examines individual variations inchange in personality over time that may deviate from the averagetrajectory (e.g., Donnellan et al., 2007). These less frequentlyexamined forms of change are in need of greater attention giventhe substantial heterogeneity that has been observed in studies ofdifferential continuity and mean-level change (Roberts & DelVec-

This article was published Online First September 17, 2012.Moin Syed, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota; Inge

Seiffge-Krenke, Institute of Psychology, University of Mainz, Mainz,Germany.

The research reported here was supported by Bundesministerium fürForschung und Technologie Grant BMFT 0706567 awarded to IngeSeiffge-Krenke and by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant DFGSE408/10-1, 10-3.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to eitherMoin Syed, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, TwinCities, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0344, or Inge Seiffge-Krenke, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Psychologisches Institut,Abteilung Entwicklungs- und Pädagogische, Psychologie Wallstraße 3, 6.OG, D-55122 Mainz, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association2013, Vol. 104, No. 2, 371–384 0022-3514/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030070

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0030070

chio, 2000; Roberts et al., 2006). Indeed, studies of personalitydevelopment adopting an individual approach have documentedsubstantial individual variability for most personality traits. Im-portantly, these individual patterns can sometimes indicate a verydifferent developmental picture compared with the mean-levelchange for the sample. For example, Donnellan et al. (2007)highlighted how for traditionalism, a quarter of the sample in-creased and a quarter of the sample decreased, resulting in nomean-level change over time. Thus, although understanding aver-age trajectories of personality change is important for gaining asense of the normative developmental course of personality, indi-vidual level analyses may allow for a more nuanced and preciseview of the causes, consequences, and correlates of personalitydevelopment.

Despite the insights gained from studies of individual change inpersonality, the existing longitudinal research has consisted pri-marily of only two waves of assessment and characterized changein terms of increases and decreases from Time 1 to Time 2(Donnellan et al., 2007; Lönnqvist et al., 2008; Ozer & Gjerde,1989; Roberts et al., 2001). In their review, Caspi et al. (2005)noted this limitation and called for studies that include more thantwo waves to make use of sophisticated methods of mappingchange over time (e.g., latent growth curve modeling, multilevelmodeling). Such methods allow for addressing questions of greatimportance for the study of personality development, such asexamining different personality pathways and types of change(e.g., big increases, small increases, curvilinear change), as well asthe social-cognitive and contextual factors that are associated withthe different pathways (McAdams & Olson, 2010).

One of the few existing studies to adopt such an approach isJohnson, Hicks, McGue, and Iacono’s (2007) study of individualpersonality trajectories among adolescent girls. The researchersused growth mixture modeling to identify personality trajectorysubgroups over a 10-year period and then subsequently examineddifferences among the groups in terms of antisocial behavior andsubstance abuse. This approach allows for researchers to explicitlymodel the heterogeneity of personality development that can leadto new and interesting hypotheses about personality stability,change, and their correlates. Given the fluid nature and the highdiversity found in several life domains during emerging adulthood,a developmental perspective can inform changes in personality inthis important transition period.

Many authors have discussed the potential benefits for a stron-ger link between personality and developmental psychology(McAdams, 2001; Roberts & Caspi, 2003; Smith, 2005; Thorne,2004; Westenberg, Blasi, & Cohn, 1998). Wohlwill’s (1973) clas-sic articulation of developmental science specifies that after de-scribing the developmental course of a particular construct, thenext step is to understand concurrent psychological processesassociated with the observed developmental trajectories. As de-tailed above, research on the developmental course of personalityhas generally been descriptive, and has placed relatively lessemphasis on understanding why the observed changes may beoccurring (McAdams & Olson, 2010). A developmental perspec-tive on personality change highlights the need to understand whatelse is going on at the same time through an examination of thecontexts that may be associated with the observed changes (seeNeyer & Asendorf, 2001, for the role of relationship status in

personality development). Doing so facilitates a move from de-scription and toward explanation.

Loevinger’s (1976) conception of ego development is an idealconstruct for examining personality from a developmental per-spective. Ego development corresponds to the frame of referencethrough which an individual interprets the self and relationshipswith others, and has been considered a fundamental component ofpersonality (Blasi, 1998). Its ties to developmental conceptualiza-tions of selfhood is strong, as ego development is a personalitymodel that incorporates notions of individual differences withincohorts with an examination of age-graded qualitative change(Westenberg et al., 1998). As described in more detail below, egodevelopment provides a framework for understanding how andwhy individuals may develop at different rates. Indeed, unlikemost research on change in personality traits, research on egodevelopment has a long history of mapping individual change indevelopment (e.g., Hauser, Borman, Jacobsen, Powers, & Noam,1991). Thus, in the present study we examined the contexts ofindividual trajectories of ego development across the transitionfrom adolescence to emerging adulthood as a means for illustratinga fruitful collaboration between personality and developmentalscience.

Ego Development

Loevinger (1976) conceptualized the ego as the primary synthe-sizing and regulating agent in individuals’ personality develop-ment. Accordingly, ego development fundamentally correspondsto individuals’ mastery of their selves and social contexts (Blasi,1998). Similarly, McAdams (1998) has referred to the ego as the“master orchestrator” of personality and identity, serving to pro-vide individuals with a subjective sense of their personality,viewed either as traits, motives, or an integrated life story. In thisway, ego development is a process of meaning-making withinprogressive developmental contexts (Blasi, 1998; McAdams,1998). More concretely, Loevinger’s (1976) model of ego devel-opment suggests an empirically grounded normative developmen-tal sequence that comprises nine levels through which individualscan theoretically pass; Presocial, Impulsive, Self-Protective, Con-formist, Self-Aware, Conscientious, Individualistic, Autonomous,and Integrated. Each level is considered qualitatively differentfrom those adjacent, as the levels represent particular styles ofsynthesizing the world around. The levels are, however, alsoquantitative, in that each successive level is considered to be moresophisticated and adaptive than the previous; thus, the levelsdescribe an increasingly complex view of the interaction betweenself and society. Taken together, ego development corresponds toa developmental pattern of differential meaning, mastery, andself-understanding.

Despite the clearly articulated developmental nature of egodevelopment, the majority of research has been cross-sectional.There have, however, been several longitudinal studies investigat-ing change over time in ego development (Cohn, 1991; Gfellner,1986; Hauser et al., 1991; Lanning, Colucci, & Edwards, 2007;Loevinger, Cohn, & Bonneville, 1995). Cohn (1998) meta-analyzed the 16 available longitudinal studies by correlating ageand ego development level separately for two age groups: adoles-cence and college age. The findings indicated that age is morestrongly related to ego development during adolescence compared

372 SYED AND SEIFFGE-KRENKE

with the college years. These findings converged with Cohn’s(1998) meta-analysis of cross-sectional age comparison studies,suggesting that ego development primarily develops during ado-lescence followed by stabilization in emerging adulthood. In aseparate meta-analysis, Cohn (1991) found that girls score higherthan boys on ego development in middle and high school but thatthis gender difference is no longer apparent in emerging adulthoodand beyond, suggesting that girls progress more quickly throughthe stages than boys, but ultimately they arrive at the same level.

Although Cohn’s (1998) meta-analyses provide clear evidenceof more substantial development during adolescence than duringemerging adulthood, the studies can be more accurately describedas comparisons between longitudinal studies in adolescence andlongitudinal studies in emerging adulthood. That is, none of thestudies included in the meta-analysis actually assessed the sameindividuals across the transition. In fact, we could locate onlyone study that examined how ego development changed acrossthe transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood (Westen-berg & Gjerde, 1999). That study, which covered nearly the sameperiod of the life span (14–23) as in the present study (14–24),yielded two important findings that inform our expectations in thisstudy. First, consistent with prior work (e.g., Gfellner, 1986), theyfound that Level 5, self-aware, served as an important develop-mental marker after which progress tended to slow. This finding isimportant, as it suggests that development may stabilize onceindividuals reach a particular level, rather than a particular age, perse, as suggested by Cohn (1998). Second, they found that vari-ability in ego development levels was greater at age 23 comparedwith age 14, suggesting heterogeneity in how ego developmentunfolds across the transition to adulthood, consistent with anindividual approach to personality development.

Despite these important findings, the study was limited byhaving only two time points. Thus, Westenberg and Gjerde (1999)were unable to map the different trajectories that individualsfollowed between ages 14 and 23. Indeed, nearly all longitudinalstudies of ego development are based on only two waves of data(see Cohn, 1998), leaving many unanswered questions, including:At what point are the greatest gains observed? Is there continuousprogression in ego development during emerging adulthood? Whatproportion of youth tend to plateau at the self-aware level? And atwhat point does variability in ego development begin to increase?These are some of the questions that we were able to address in thepresent study.

Individual Change in Ego Development

There has been some research on individual trajectories of egodevelopment. Hauser and colleagues (Billings, Hauser, & Allen,2008; Hauser et al., 1991; Henninghausen, Hauser, Billings,Schultz, & Allen, 2004) have described six theoretical trajectorytypes for how individuals change in ego development over time,three of which represent stability (stable high, moderate, and low)and three represent change (increase, decrease, and fluctuating).Empirically, they have found evidence for all of the trajectoryclasses except for decreasing, with the stable moderate trajectorybeing the most common among healthy adolescents. Althoughtheir work suggests the feasibility of an individual approach topersonality development through an examination of ego develop-ment trajectories, it has been limited by focusing on relatively

short time frames (e.g., 1–2 years). Accordingly, the first goal ofthe present study was to map the variability in individual trajec-tories of ego development from age 14 to age 24. On the basis ofthe existing literature, we expected that the majority of the samplewould demonstrate increases in ego development from adoles-cence to emerging adulthood and that growth would be morepronounced during adolescence than emerging adulthood. How-ever, consistent with our individual approach to personality devel-opment and the work of Hauser, we expected that there would begroups who deviate from the general pattern previously observedin the literature. In particular, we hypothesized that there would begroups of youth who defied the overall increasing trend andremained relatively stable over time. This hypothesis is consistentwith past research that has indicated greater variability in egodevelopment in early adulthood compared with adolescence(Gfellner, 1986; Westenberg & Gjerde, 1999), suggesting thepossibility of many different personality pathways being repre-sented.

Our analysis of individual ego development trajectories buildson existing work in four important ways. First, most studiesinvestigated a relatively short time span and thus possibly did notcapture changes across time, as ego development—the integrationof inner perceptions of people and events—requires time to unfold(Loevinger, 1976). Second, most studies focused exclusively onadolescence or some segment on adulthood, meaning that they didnot study change across an important life transition. Third, mostresearch has focused on samples of college or university students,thereby neglecting other groups of same-aged individuals who areworking, unemployed, or in apprenticeships (i.e., the “forgottenhalf,” as termed by Rosenbaum, 2001). Finally, the research onindividual trajectories by Hauser and colleagues was conducted bysorting participants into categories “by hand,” rather than usingstatistical procedures to identify the trajectory types. In the presentstudy, we identified trajectory groups using latent class growthanalysis, a statistical method for identifying heterogeneous trajec-tories of change (Nagin & Tremblay, 2001).

In addition to correcting for the limitations of previous studies,in the present study we go beyond describing ego developmenttrajectories from age 14 to age 24 by linking this aspect ofpersonality development to other aspects of psychosocial develop-ment. As it is suggested that there is more than one way to traversethe developmental period from adolescence to emerging adulthoodwith respect to ego development (Hauser, 1991; Westenberg &Gjerde, 1999), we expand our focus to key developmental contextsduring these two periods. As described in detail below, we ex-plored how parents and the family environment during adoles-cence could lead to gains in ego development. In emerging adult-hood, we examined how ego development is associated with acentral developmental task of this period, developing a sense ofidentity (Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1968). Thus, in the present study,we investigated developmentally appropriate antecedents and con-sequences of youths’ ego development trajectories.

Predictors in Adolescence: Family Environment andParents’ Ego Development

Research in developmental psychology has highlighted the im-portance of the family context during adolescence for a number ofpositive outcomes, including well-being, emotion regulation, aca-

373TRAJECTORIES OF EGO DEVELOPMENT

demic achievement, and autonomy (Grusec & Davidov, 2010;Laursen & Collins, 2009; Steinberg, 2001). Despite this vastresearch, there have been relatively few studies that have examinedfamily influences on children’s ego development trajectories. Thisis surprising, as Loevinger (1976) suggested that movement alongthe ego development path comes about through social interactionsthat challenge individuals and require them to think deeply aboutthe relation between self and others (see also Thorne, 1993).Indeed, Loevinger (1976) offered the concept of pacers as impor-tant to the ego development process. Pacers are individuals who,by virtue of their higher ego development, challenge others inways that facilitate their ego development. Given that parents areboth proximal to and more developmentally advanced than theiradolescent children, they likely serve as pacers for their children’sego development.

A handful of empirical studies support the idea that parents playan important role in their children’s ego development. Thesestudies generally indicate that adolescents have greater ego devel-opment when their parents cognitively challenge them within thecontext of a warm and supportive relationship (Allen, Hauser, Bell,& O’Connor, 1994; Hauser et al., 1991). In one of the onlylongitudinal studies on the topic, Allen et al. (1994) found thatadolescents who had fathers—not mothers—who interacted in thisway exhibited greater gains in ego development over a 2-yearperiod. This may be explained by the distinctive function fathersserve in contrast to mothers, that is, by supporting an independentview and an autonomous development of their adolescent child(Shulman & Seiffge-Krenke, 1997). This finding raises an impor-tant point: the differential influence of mothers and fathers for egodevelopment. On this point, the literature has been inconsistent. Incontrast to Allen et al.’s (1994) findings, Hauser et al. (1991)found evidence for a link between adolescent ego development andboth mothers’ and father’s tendency to challenge their children ina supportive way. The concept of pacers can be enacted bothwithin the parenting and family context, such as in the studiesdescribed above, but also in terms of the individual characteristicsof the parents, such as their own level of ego development.However, to our knowledge, no study has actually tested directlinks between parents’ levels of ego development and their chil-dren’s levels of ego development.

Taken together, there is some evidence that a family climate thatis supportive yet able to challenge and grant freedom is importantfor the adolescent’s progression in ego development. Accordingly,the second goal of the present study was to test the hypotheses that(a) a more supportive family climate in adolescence will be asso-ciated with more progressive ego development trajectories and (b)that mother’s and father’s ego development would be predictive ofthe adolescents’ ego development trajectories.

Correlates in Emerging Adulthood: IdentityCommitment and Exploration

Identity has long been considered a central developmental taskof adolescence and emerging adulthood (Erikson, 1968; Marcia,1966). Identity from an Eriksonian perspective is defined as aninternal sense of continuity and coherence across time and lifedomains. In creating the identity status model, Marcia (1966)operationalized a portion of Erikson’s theory and highlighted theinterrelation of two key identity processes: exploration and com-

mitment. Identity exploration refers to individuals’ active searchand consideration of various identity alternatives. Commitmentindexes individuals’ selecting a particular identity to adopt, alongwith all that identity entails. Marcia proposed that considering bothidentity processes simultaneously provides insight into youth’scurrent developmental identity status: Those who have gonethrough a period of exploration and have committed to an identityare called achieved; individuals who are actively exploring theiridentities without making commitments are in moratorium; thosewho commit to an identity without engaging in the explorationprocess are foreclosed; and those who are neither exploring theiridentities nor committed to an identity are diffused. Present re-search using the identity status model uses both the four-statustypology and the continuous measures of exploration and commit-ment (Bosma, 1992; Kunnen, 2009; Meeus, 2011).

Although the development of the identity status model has led tohundreds of empirical studies documenting its correlates and de-velopment trajectories (for reviews, see Meeus, 2011; van Hoof,1999; Waterman, 1999), surprisingly little is known about howidentity processes are related to ego development. We consider thisfact surprising because both the identity status model and egodevelopment draw from portions of Erikson’s (1963) life spantheory of psychosocial development, and Loevinger (1976) con-ceptualized ego development as subsuming Erikson’s notions ofego-identity. Given that ego development has been referred to asthe “master orchestrator” of personality (McAdams, 1998), devel-opmental gains in ego development should correspond to devel-opment gains in identity development.

There is some indirect evidence for this hypothesis in the extantliterature. In an early longitudinal study, Adams and Fitch (1982)charted the changes in college students’ identity status and egodevelopment over 1 year. Their results indicated gains in bothconstructs across the year, leading them to conclude that the samepsychological processes underlie each. However, they did notexamine how the participants’ identity status classification and egodevelopment were explicitly linked. Bauer and McAdams (2010)recently linked indicators of narrative identity to increases in egodevelopment in a sample of emerging adults. In particular, thosewith higher ego development also had narratives containing evi-dence of personal growth, in terms of deeper knowledge of oneselfand a quest for knowledge. As research has indicated similarprocesses underlying identity status and narrative identity(McLean & Pasupathi, 2012; Syed, 2012), these findings can betaken as indirect evidence for the link between identity status andego development. In the present study, however, we explicitlytested this association. In particular, we hypothesized that moreprogressive trajectories of ego development would be associatedwith greater likelihood of classification as identity achieved inemerging adulthood, as well as higher levels of both identityexploration and commitment.

The Present Study

Recent research has substantiated the emergence of a newdevelopmental phase between adolescence and young adulthood,which is characterized by a postponement and delay in manydevelopmental areas, including identity and self-exploration (Ar-nett, 2004; Kroger et al., 2010). This study sets out to investigatestability and change in a fundamental component of personality


development, ego development. Accordingly, the purpose of thepresent study was to document trajectories of ego developmentacross the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood,investigate how the trajectories are influenced by the family con-text in adolescence (i.e., family climate and parents’ ego develop-ment), and link the trajectories to identity development in emerg-ing adulthood. Three main research questions guided the presentstudy:

1. Through the use of latent class growth analysis (LCGA), weaimed to identify several trajectories of ego development fromadolescence and emerging adulthood. On the basis of earlier lon-gitudinal studies (Hauser & Safyer, 1994), we expected that themajority of the sample would demonstrate increases over time inego development but that some individuals would deviate from thenormative path by remaining stable over time.

2. The degree to which parents serve as pacers for ego devel-opment was investigated in two ways. First, we examined theinfluence of an autonomy-supporting family climate on ego devel-opment trajectories. On the basis of the extant literature (Allen etal., 1994; Laursen & Hafen, 2010; Steinberg & Morris, 2001), wehypothesized that family climates characterized by high levels ofcohesion and open expression of emotions as well as support forindependence would be related to the child’s progressive egodevelopment from adolescence to young adulthood. Conversely,we predicted that family climates characterized by high levels ofcontrol would be associated with a relative lack of developmentalprogression. Second, we examined whether the different ego de-velopment trajectories of the children are related to their parents’ego development. We expected that parents’ higher level of egodevelopment would be related to their child’s progressive trajec-tory.

3. We examined whether the developmental trajectories of thechildren were related to their identity development in emergingadulthood. We expected that more progressive trajectories of egodevelopment would be associated with greater likelihood of clas-sification as identity achieved in emerging adulthood as well ashigher levels of both identity exploration and commitment.

Method

Participants

Participants were taken from the German Longitudinal Study(Seiffge-Krenke, 2003), which received full Institutional ReviewBoard approval from the University of Mainz, Germany. Theoriginal sample included a total of 145 adolescents (52% girls) andtheir families; 81% of the participants were raised in two-parentfamilies, and 19% were raised in single-parent or divorced fami-lies. For this study, a subsample of 68% was drawn, includingcomplete data sets of two-parent families; altogether, 98 adoles-cents (M age � 14.7 years, SD � 1.38) and their mothers andfathers participated in a longitudinal study spanning 10 years.Assessments were made in a total of four waves with varyingintervals, at age 14, 15, 17, and 24 years of the child. Participantscame from broad socioeconomic strata: 52% of the families weremiddle class. All of the fathers and 65% of the mothers wereemployed. Mean age of fathers at Time 1 was 44.6 years (SD �1.9); mean age of mothers was 41.6 years (SD � 2.3). All of theparticipants resided in western Germany, and 92% were of German

descent. At Time 1, 51% of the children were female, and 48%were male, attending seventh grade in secondary school. At Time4 (M age � 24.8 years, SD � 1.23), all children had finished theirsecondary school education; 42% were enrolled in vocationaltraining; 39% percent were employed, 16% were studying, and 3%were homemakers or unemployed. At age 24, only 15% of thechildren continued to reside with their parents. As in most longi-tudinal studies, data were missing at different time points fordifferent participants. For the present study, 7% of the adolescentdata, 8% of the mother data, and 10% of the father data weremissing. Comparisons of participants with and without missingdata using t tests and chi-squares indicated no differences in age,gender, parents’ marital status, family’s socioeconomic status(SES), or type of school the participant attended. To minimize thebias associated with this occasional attrition, we used expectationmaximization algorithm to impute missing data. Little’s (Little,1988) missing completely at random tests indicated that missingvalues could be reliably estimated.

Measures

Ego development. The Washington University SentenceCompletion Test (WUSCT; Hy & Loevinger, 1996) was used atWaves 1, 2, 3 (adolescent version; Form 2–77), and 4 (adultversion; Form 81) for children and at Wave 2 (adult version; Form81) for parents by using a gender-specific version for males andfemales. Altogether, 36 incomplete sentences (e.g., “When I amcriticized . . ., ” “Men are . . .”) had to be completed. Responses tosentence stems were coded by two raters using the manual by Hyand Loevinger (1996) and was based on the model of ego devel-opment by Loevinger (1985) entailing nine ego stages (impulsivestage, self-protective stage, conformistic stage, self-aware stage,conscientious stage, individualistic stage, autonomous stage, andintegrated stage). Typically, adolescents exhibit modal ego levelsfrom self-protective (i.e., to control self and others in order tofurther develop one’s own interest) to conformist (i.e., attuned tothe needs, expectations, and opinions of others), whereas themodal level for young adults varies between self-aware (i.e.,awareness of being different from others) and conscientious (i.e.,a strong sense of responsibility for one’s thoughts and values),with females scoring higher than males (Westenberg & Gjerde,1999). Answers were transcribed completely, made anonymous,and randomized across the two independent raters. Kappa rangedfrom .63 to .83 for the individual items across 30 randomlyselected protocols. A third rater provided the consensus scoring incase of disagreement. Furthermore, in line with Hy and Loevinger(1996), for each participant the total protocol rating (TPR) wascalculated, which is based on the cumulative frequency distribu-tion of the item ratings. Higher TPR scores indicate more advancedego development. For the present analyses, the TPR ratings of thechild from Waves 1, 2, 3, and 4 were used. The 36 TPR items hadan internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of .75 (adolescentversion) and .78 (adult version). For fathers and mothers, the TPRratings from Wave 2 (adult version) were used, with an internalconsistency of .81 for mothers and .77 for fathers.

Family climate. Both parents and children completed theFamily Environment Scale (FES), as developed by Moos andMoos (1981). Reliability and validity data of the German versionare provided by Schneewind (1987). The FES measures how the


family climate is perceived according to the following scales: 1.cohesion, 2. expression, 3. conflict, 4. independence, 5.achievement-orientation, 6. intellectual-cultural orientation, 7. ori-entation to active leisure-time activities, 8. moral-religious orien-tation, 9. organization, and 10. control. The 10 scales can beconsolidated into three general dimensions, namely, “InterpersonalRelationships” (Scales 1–3; sample item: “There is a kind oftogetherness in our family”), “Personal Growth” (Scales 4–8;sample item: “Our family encourages independence”), and “Sys-tem Maintenance” (Scales 9 and 10; sample item: “In our family itis very important to follow certain rules”). The first dimensionassesses the degree of commitment, help, and support familymembers provide one another. The second dimension assesses theamount of independence and autonomy experienced in the family.The third dimension assesses how much rules and structure areused to run family life. Items were rated on a scale ranging from1 (little or not true) to 5 (mostly true). Because we consider thefamily as a dynamic unit, we combined the information of bothparents and adolescents into one family score. For each dimension,we calculated the average of adolescent, mother, and father scores.Previous research on parent–adolescent relationships demonstratedthat combining scores of multiple informants significantly reducesrater bias and Type I error rate (Holmbeck, Li, Schurman, Fried-man, & Coakley, 2002; Schwarz, Barton-Henry, & Pruzinsky,1985). Cronbach’s alphas in the present study for the three dimen-sions were .81, .85, and .82 for the child’s report; .86, .88, and .84for mothers’ report; and .80, 88, and .83 for fathers’ report.

Identity status. As a measure of identity status, we used theIdentity Status Interview (ISI; Marcia, 1966), which contains semi-structured questions pertaining to three life domains (career, rela-tionships, view of the world), which were coded according to twomain identity dimensions: exploration and commitment. On thebasis of the criteria for exploration (e.g., activity directed towardgathering information, evidence of considering alternative poten-tial identity elements) and commitment (e.g., activity directedtoward implementing the chosen identity element, identificationwith significant others, projection of one’s personal future), de-tailed in Marcia (1993) and Waterman (1993), every child at Wave4 was given a 1–4 rating for both exploration and commitment andsubsequently assigned to one identity status: achievement, mora-torium, foreclosure, or identity diffusion. Interrater agreement(kappa) across 30 randomly selected interviews ranged from .76 to.80. Again, a third rater provided consensus scoring in case ofdisagreement. For this study, we used both the continuous mea-sures of exploration and commitment and the dichotomizedachievement codings (0 � not achieved; 1 � yes achieved) ofrelational identity and global identity (mean across the three do-mains).

Procedure

The present study was based on data collected when the childrenwere adolescents (Wave 1, age 14; Wave 2, age 15; and Wave 3,age 17, respectively) and a decade later, when the child was anemerging adult (Wave 4, age 24). When the participants were 14,15, and 17 years old, their ego development was assed via theWUSCT. In addition, at age 24, they completed the WUSCT toassess ego development. Furthermore, at age 24, the ISI wasconducted to assess the identity status. As regards parents’ ego

development, father’s and mother’s ego development were as-sessed by the WUSCT when their child was 15 (Wave 2). Inaddition, fathers, mothers, and children completed the FES whenthe child was 14, 15, and 17 years. Participants were visited athome by trained research assistants at each time point and wereasked to fill out questionnaires. In addition, the Marcia Interviewwas conducted. All participants provided written informed con-sent. Adolescents and parents were requested to complete thequestionnaires independently.

Results

The analysis was conducted in three steps to address the threeobjectives of the study. First, we analyzed participants’ ego devel-opment data using LCGA to identify heterogeneous trajectories ofchange over the 10-year period. Second, we compared the differenttrajectory groups identified through the LCGA model for varia-tions in family climate and in mother’s and father’s ego develop-ment at the time of the participants’ adolescence (i.e., at thebeginning of the trajectory). Third, we compared the differenttrajectory groups for variations in identity exploration and com-mitment when the participants were emerging adults.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations for all studyvariables are reported in Table 1. In terms of the child’s egodevelopment, the average at Times 1 and 2 was close to theconformist stage, whereas the average at Time 3 corresponded tothe self-aware stage, and the average at Time 4 was betweenself-aware and the conscientious stage. Thus, on average, thesample gained 1.12 steps in ego development across the 10 years,similar to previous research (Westenberg & Gjerde, 1999). Incontrast, both mother’s and father’s ego development was justabove the conformist level.

The bivariate correlations for child’s ego development revealedmodest relations between adjacent time points (rs � .42–.54). Thecorrelation between Time 1 and Time 4 child ego development,however, was much lower (r � .24), which is suggestive ofheterogeneity in the growth of ego development over time. Look-ing at the correlations between child ego development and ourother study variables, the correlations between both mother’s andfather’s Time 2 ego development were stronger at Time 4 than atTime 1. In contrast, the correlations between child’s ego develop-ment and the Time 1 FES family scores were stronger at Time 1than Time 4 for the Interpersonal Relations and Personal Growthsubscales, but identical for the System Maintenance subscale.Finally, Time 4 identity achievement and identity exploration weremore strongly related to child’s ego development at Time 1 than atTime 4.

Although these bivariate correlations are useful for describingthe sample, they do not take into account the diverse, nonlinearpaths of ego development that children may follow. The associa-tions with family factors and identity that are manifest in thebivariate world may be quite different when examining the asso-ciations with different trajectories of growth over time. That is, ourinterest in the present study is in how family and identity arerelated to the trajectory of ego development across the 10 years,rather than associations at one particular point in time.


Identifying the Trajectories of Ego Development

LCGA is a procedure for identifying multiple latent classes ofchange in a sample (Nagin & Tremblay, 2001). It is conceptuallysimilar to latent growth curve analysis, in which change is modeledby specifying latent intercept and latent slope factors. Latentgrowth curve models derive a single intercept and slope thatrepresents the average initial value and rate of change, respec-tively, in the sample. The variance of the two latent factors is alsoestimated, which are informative of the degree of variabilityaround the average intercept and slope. LCGA is a method forbuilding some of that variance back into the model. Rather than asingle latent intercept and slope for the entire sample, LCGAallows for the specification of multiple latent intercepts and slopes,each of which describes the pattern of change for a subgroup in thesample. Importantly, within LCGA, the variance of the growthparameters (i.e., intercepts, slopes) within classes is fixed to zero(unlike in latent growth mixture modeling, in which the within-class variance is estimated).

We specified a series of models, ranging from a single class tofive classes, to determine the best fitting growth model for thedata. Because we had data from four time points, and nonlinearchange is theoretically indicated, within each class solution wetested for whether a linear or quadratic growth model was a better

fit to the data. Model selection was guided by the commonly usedfit statistics, the balance and size of each class, and past theoreticaland empirical work. The three fit statistics that we consulted werethe sample size-adjusted Bayesian information criterion (ssBIC),which corrects for model complexity and allows comparisonsacross nonnested models, with lower values indicating a betterfitting model; entropy and posterior class probabilities, whichindex how well the model-implied classifications correspond to theobserved classification, with values closest to 1.0 preferred; andbootstrap likelihood ratio test (BLRT), which tests the added valueof a model with k classes over a model with k�1 classes. Asignificant BLRT indicates that the additional class results in abetter fitting model. All models were conducted using full infor-mation maximum likelihood in Mplus 6.1 (Muthén & Muthén,2010).

We tested and compared eight different growth models: two-,three-, four-, and five-class models, each with either a lineargrowth term only or a linear and quadratic growth terms. Asummary of the fit statistics for the different models that we testedand considered is in Table 2. On the basis of the fit statistics only,the five-class quadratic model was preferred, as it had the lowestssBIC, highest entropy, and the BLRT indicated added value overthe four-class quadratic model. Inspection of the class membership

Table 1Descriptive Statistics and Correlations for all Study Variables

Variable M SDObserved

range 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

1. Child’s ego development T1 4.37 0.79 2–7 —2. Child’s ego development T2 4.22 0.82 2–6 .54 —3. Child’s ego development T3 5.00 0.91 3–7 .43 .53 —4. Child’s ego development T4 5.49 0.94 3–8 .24 .49 .42 —5. Mother’s ego development T2 4.17 0.38 4–5 .11 .14 .21 .28 —6. Father’s ego development T2 4.12 0.32 4–5 .12 .13 .06 .25 .15 —7. FES family score-Interpersonal

Relations T1 3.42 0.21 2.90–3.87 .21 .25 .19 .03 .16 �.02 —8. FES family score-Personal

Growth T1 3.18 0.22 2.69–3.75 .31 .22 .07 .13 .07 .11 .44 —9. FES family score-System

Maintenance T1 2.85 0.32 2.17–3.86 �.18 �.12 �.12 �.18 �.19 �.06 �.20 �.09 —10. Child’s identity achievement-

Relationships T4 0.28 0.45 0–1 .22 .16 .05 �.02 �.16 �.13 �.06 .05 �.01 —11. Child’s identity achievement-

Global T4 0.38 0.49 0–1 .25 .12 .09 .06 �.01 �.20 �.01 .12 .08 .80 —12. Child’s identity exploration T4 2.38 0.97 1.0–4.0 .49 .26 .22 .17 .01 �.02 .14 .29 �.22 .53 .62 —13. Child’s identity commitment T4 3.10 0.77 1.5–4.0 �.12 .04 �.05 �.07 �.16 �.11 .16 �.02 .30 .42 .40 �.04 —

Note. rs � .20 are significant at p � .05. T1–T4 � Time 1–Time 4; FES � Family Environment Scale.

Table 2Fit Statistics for all LCGA Models

Variable

Two class Three class Four class Five class

Linear Quadratic Linear Quadratic Linear Quadratic Linear Quadratic

ssBIC 959.87 955.66 947.17 945.46 866.25 861.51 782.18 773.62Entropy .67 .67 .86 .77 .97 .97 .97 .97BLRT 57.80 59.77 16.98 15.91 85.20 89.66 86.16 93.60BLRT p �.001 �.001 �.001 �.001 �.001 <.001 �.001 �.001

Note. Preferred model is highlighted in bold. ssBIC � sample size-adjusted Bayesian information criterion; BLRT � bootstrap likelihood ratio test.


assignments, however, indicated that two of the five classes wereextremely small (n � 2 and n � 3). Thus, we selected as our finalmodel the four-class quadratic model, which had the same highentropy values (.97) as the five-class quadratic model and thelowest ssBIC of the remaining models. The growth parameters forthe final model are reported in Table 3, and the trajctories aredepicted in Figure 1.

In accordance with the nature of the trajectories, the four groupswere labeled normative stable (49%; n � 48), marked by moderateinitial growth during adolescence followed by decceleration intoadulthood; moderate progression (33%; n � 32), who steadilyincreased across the 10 years; rapid progression (13%; n � 13),marked by high initial increases during adolescence followed bydeccelerated but still increasing growth; stable low (5%; n � 5),who remained at low levels throughout the 10 years. Taken to-gether, the trajectories indicated much greater ego developmentduring adolescence compared with emerging adulthood, whereinthe different groups began to plateau (other than the moderateprogression group). There were no gender differences in the egodevelopment trajectories, despite previous research indicating such(see Cohn, 1991). Furthermore, there were no difference in clas-sification by SES, nor was SES related to any other study vari-ables. Finally, there were no differences in classification by em-ployment status at Time 4 (i.e., working, attending school, etc.).

Predictions in Adolescence: Family Climate andParent’s Ego Development

We next tested our two hypotheses about the influence of familyfactors on youth’s ego development trajectories. Mplus does notcontain an analysis of variance procedure, but equivalent modelscan be conducted within a regression-based path model frameworkby creating a set of dummy codes for the categories. A single setof dummy codes only allows for pairwise comparison. Because wewere interested in comparing all four of the groups for differenceson the parenting variables, we conducted three separate path mod-els, rotating the reference category, so that all pairwise compari-sons could be tested. We conducted two sets of multivariatemodels in this way, one set examining differences among the fourclasses in the three Time 1 FES family scores and one set exam-ining differences among the four classes in mother’s and father’sego development. The path models included all three FES familyscores (Interpersonal Relations, Personal Growth, and SystemMaintanence) in a single model so as to control for overlap in themeasures. All models included gender and SES as control vari-ables.

For family climate, the rapid progression group had significantlyhigher Time 1 Personal Growth scores compared with the norma-tive stable group (� � .22, p � .05), and marginally significantly

higher Time 1 Personal Growth scores than the moderate progres-sion group (� � .19, p � .07). There were no other significantgroup differences for Personal Growth and no differences onInterpersonal Relations or System Maintanence.

We next tested for whether the four groups differed in theirmother’s and father’s level of ego development during the partic-ipants’ adolescence. The rapid progression group had both motherswith significantly higher ego development scores (� � .29, p �.01) and fathers with significantly higher scores than the normativestable group (� � .22, p � .05). The rapid progression group alsohad mothers—but not fathers—with significantly higher ego de-velopment scores than the stable low group (� � .24, p � .05).

Correlates in Emerging Adulthood: IdentityDevelopment

Finally, we tested for whether the four groups differed in levelsof identity in emerging adulthood. This was done in two ways: byexamining difference in classification in the four identity sta-tuses and difference in the continuous identity processes ofexploration and commitment. The former was tested usingchi-square analyses, and the latter was tested in a path-analyticprocedure identical to what was used for the FES analyses above.We hypothesized that progressors would be more likely to beclassified as identity achieved and would report higher levels ofidentity exploration and commitment. Contrary to our hypothesis,the trajectory groups did not vary in their likeihood of beingclassified as achieved in the relational domain, �2(3) � 1.65, p �.65, or in terms of global identity, �2(3) � 2.19, p � .53.

The four trajectory groups did, however, vary in their levels ofidentity exploration. The moderate progression group reportedsignificantly higher identity exploration than did the normativestable group (� � .32, p � .01). There were no group differencesin identity commitment.

Discussion

The purpose of the present study was to document trajectories ofego development across the transition from adolescence to emerg-ing adulthood and to link these trajectories to the family context inadolescence and identity development in emerging adulthood. Indoing so, we aimed to highlight the utility of an individual ap-proach to personality change, as well as the benefits associatedwith a greater integration between personality and developmentalscience. In brief, the results indicate (a) heterogenity in ego de-velopment trajectories from adolescence to emerging adulthood,(b) that growth in ego development is more rapid during adoles-cence and tends to taper off in emerging adulthood, (c) familycontexts that promote personal growth are linked to greater ego

Table 3Growth Parameters for the Final Four-Class Quadratic Model

Variable Normative stable Moderate progression Rapid progression Stable low

Intercept 4.02 (.11)�� 4.62 (.14)�� 4.37 (.18)�� 3.56 (.20)��

Linear slope 0.34 (.08)�� 0.23 (.09)�� 0.67 (.14)�� 0.20 (.14)Quadratic slope �0.03 (.01)�� 0.01 (01) �0.04 (.01)�� .02 (.02)

�� p � .01. �� p � .001.


development, (d) both mother and father ego development isinstrumental in childrens’ ego gains in adolescence, and (e) thatyouth who demonstrate continued ego development into emergingadulthood also demonstrate heightened levels of identity explora-tion. We discuss each of these findings in greater detail below, aswell as the implications of this study for the broader field ofpersonality development.

Trajectories of Ego Development

The first goal of the present study was to document theheterogeniety in ego development trajectories across the tran-sition from adolescence to emerging adulthood. We found ev-idence for four unique trajectories that are consistent with pastresearch (e.g., Hauser, 1991): normative stable, rapid progres-sion, moderate progression, and stable low. Congruent with pastresearch (Gfellner, 1986; Hauser, 1991; Westernberg & Gjerde,1999), the normative stable group made up the largest group.These youth spent most of their adolescence within the con-formist stage and began to plateau as they approached the nextstage, self-aware. Thus, for the majority of individuals, theself-aware stage appears to represent a ceiling on ego develop-ment (see also Gfellner, 1986; Westernberg & Gjerde, 1999). Intandem with prior work, our findings suggest that the stabili-zation of ego development has more to do with reaching aparticular level—self-aware—rather than a particular age, aswas suggested by the Cohn (1998) meta-analysis. That is, age isnot likely the reason why most youth do not continue toprogress through the ego development sequence. Rather, asmany youth experience upheavals in the professional and therelationship domain during the transition to adulthood (Osgood,Foster, Flanagan, & Ruth, 2005), they may not be in theposition to face the challenges of moving into the greater

self-reflection, insight, and cognitive complexity associatedwith the conscientiousness stage.

An important finding of the present study, which is masked bythe Cohn (1998) meta-analysis, is that a substantial proportion ofyoung people do not follow the stabilization trend into adulthood.Indeed, the two trajectories of progression represent departuresfrom the tendency to plateau at the self-aware stage. The moderateprogressors reached the self-aware stage at about age 16 andcontinued to make progress toward Stage 6, conscientious, as theytransitioned to emerging adulthood. The rapid progressors werequite exceptional, in that they had rapid gains in adolescence, fromconformist toward conscientious, and continued to develop intoemerging adulthood, ending up near Stage 7, individualistic, at age24. These two trajectories of progression constituted nearly halfthe sample, indicating that a large portion of youth continue todevelop beyond adolescence and into emerging adulthood. Ingeneral, these findings support present theories of developmentthat highlight the continuation of developmental processes beyondthe adolescent years (e.g., Arnett, 2000), at least for some propor-tion of youth, and, as is discussed below, under a favorabledevelopmental context. In regard to ego development specifically,as suggested by Cohn (1998), analyses based only on group dataobscure the fact that some individuals may indeed continue todevelop.

The final trajectory that we observed was a stable low group,which was a small group of youth who started out lower thanthe others and remained much lower over time. In adolescence,these youth were between Level 3, Self-Protective, and Level 4,Conformist, and they remained near self-protective as theytransitioned to emerging adulthood. Although the frequency ofthis group was quite small in the present sample, it is a theo-retically important group that has been previously identified

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Age 14 Age 15 Age 16 Age 24

Ego

Dev

elop

men

t

Age

Stable Low

Rapid Progression

Norma�ve Stable

Moderate Progression

Figure 1. The four ego development trajectory classes.


and examined in detail by Billings et al., 2008. Future researchwith larger samples is necessary to better understand the factorsthat inhibit personality development in this group.

Taken together, the four trajectories identified in the presentstudy indicate a good deal of development in both adolescence andemerging adulthood. More specifically, at age 14, the four trajec-tory groups did not vary substantially in their levels of ego devel-opment (range � 1.07 steps), but began to diverge by age 15, andcontinued to diverge at age 16. Finally, by age 24, the differencebetween the highest and lowest levels of ego development was4.08 steps. Thus, the range in emerging adulthood was 4 times thatrepresented in mid-adolescence (see also Westenberg & Gjerde,1999). Importantly, the present findings indicate that this devel-opmental divergence, or multifinality, is a gradual process thatunfolds over time and not the result of abrupt and sudden change(see also Josselon, 2009; Syed, 2010, for simliar views of the slowprogress of identity development). Moreoever, as discussed above,the findings in this study suggests that the prevailing view of egodevelopment occurring primarily in adolescence and stabilizinginto adulthood ought to be reconsidered. Although we found this tobe the case for approximately half the sample, the majority of theother half continued to progress through the ego developmentstages. This observation underscores the value of the individualapproach to personality development, as the average trajectorycan, at times, provide a misleading account about the nature ofdevelopmental processes (Donnellan et al., 2007).

The Impact of the Family: What Have Parents Got toDo With It?

Our second goal in the present study was to use family climateand parents’ ego development during the youth’s adolescence topredict membership in the four different ego development classes.We hypothesized that family climate would be related to adoles-cents’ ego development due to past research demonstrating thedevelopmental benefits of an open, supportive family environmentthat fosters autonomy (Laursen & Hafen, 2010; Steinberg & Mor-ris, 2001). Unexpectedly, family climate was not a strong predictorof class membership. In general, the four trajectory groups allseemed to experience an authoritative and a supportive environ-ment as they traversed adolescence. The one exception to thispattern is that those youth who were in the rapid progression groupcame from families who promoted greater personal growth com-pared with those in the normative stable group, and marginallygreater than those is the moderate progression group. This findingdovetails with recent research (Bauer & McAdams, 2010) linkingego development gains to personal growth in other domains ofindividuals’ lives. Furthermore, in terms of fostering ego develop-ment, it appears that simply providing a warm and supportiveenvironment is not sufficient. Rather, engaging in family practicesthat specifically target autonomy and personal growth is what hasan impact on the adolescent’s ego development (Allen et al.,1994). Personal growth, in this study, was indexed by familysupport for such dimensions as independence, achievement, andintellectual curiosity. These dimensions dovetail with the nature ofthe conscientious and individualistic stages of ego development,which is the terrain that the rapid progressors were navigating.Thus, the findings suggest that those adolescents who are on theupper end of the distribution of ego development come from

families who serve as pacers, fostering associated developmentaltasks within their children.

In addition, Loevinger’s concept of pacers (i.e., individuals whofacilitate the ego development of others), was applied more spe-cifically in order to analyze the function of mother’s and father’sego development in this process. Similar to the findings for familyclimate, mother’s and father’s ego development primarily servedto discriminate between the rapid progression and normative stablegroups. Importantly, and in line with the findings of Hauser et al.(1991), both mother’s and father’s ego development were uniquepredictors of the rapid progression group. In contrast, only moth-er’s ego development differed between the rapid progression andstable low groups. Taken together with the findings for familyclimate, it appears that rapid progression is fostered by a networkof family support that promotes personal growth and ego devel-opment. In general, however, it appears that parents do not uni-versally serve as pacers for their children’s ego development. Thisis understandable, as parents’ levels of ego development, on av-erage, were lower than the child’s level. The average level ofparents’ ego development was at the conformist level, which issimilar to the majority of the adolescents. But nearly half theadolescents exceeded this level. Given that parents’ ego develop-ment was only related to the rapid progression group, it may be thecase that the direction of influence is the other way around:Children may impact their parents’ ego development. Research onthe reciprocal influences have substantiated that parental behavioris greatly influenced by their child’s behavior (Kerr & Stattin,2003) and that parents, for example, alter their coping behavior inresponse to their children’s’ coping (Hauser et al., 1991; Seiffge-Krenke & Pakalniskiene, 2011). Such a reciprocal view of egodevelopment has rarely been investigated or discussed in theliterature (for an exception, see King, Scollon, Ramsey, & Wil-liams, 2000), but could be an important direction for future re-search. Of course, like most dimensions of personality, ego devel-opment has been shown to be strongly heritable (Newman,Tellegen, & Bouchard, 1998), and therefore genetics cannot beruled out as an explanation for the observed findings.

Finally, it is important to note the differences between thegroup-level and individual level data. Inspection of Table 1 showsthat personal growth is most strongly correlated with Time 1 egodevelopment, suggesting the possibility that the trajectory groupdifferences between the rapid progression and normative stablegroups may simply be capturing the correlations between personalgrowth and ego development at Time 1. However, at Time 1, themoderate progressors—not rapid progressors—actually had thehighest levels of ego development. Thus, if the group differencesreflected only the Time 1 correlations, we would expect to see themoderate progression and normative stable (or stable low) groupsto differ. But this was not the case. This discrepancy highlights thetype of insight that can be gained from adopting an individualapproach to personality change, as the implications of the groupswhen considered longitudinally do not mirror the cross-sectionalfindings at a single time point.

Links Between Ego Development Trajectories andIdentity Status

Our third and final research question guided our examination ofthe associations between the four ego development trajectories and


a key developmental task of emerging adulthood: identity. There isa surprising dearth of research in which explicit links between egodevelopment and identity development are tested, given the strongtheoretical links between the two constructs (Erikson, 1968; Lo-evinger, 1976). On the basis of the theoretical underpinning, aswell as indirect empirical evidence of a link (e.g., Adams & Fitch,1982), we hypothesized that greater ego development progressionwould be associated with greater identity development, both interms of classification in the achieved identity status and higherlevels of identity exploration and commitment. Although therewere no differences in identity status classification across the egodevelopment trajectory groups, the moderate progression groupreported higher levels of identity exploration than the normativestable group. This suggests that the moderate progressors wereparticularly embroiled in the process of learning and exploringmore about different identity alternatives that they may adopt.Such behaviors are consistent with their steady increases in egodevelopment over time. It is surprising, however, that the rapidprogression group did not also evidence greater levels of explora-tion. It may be that this group, who is exceptionally high in egodevelopment at age 24, has slowed their exploratory behaviors andhave begun the processes of settling down into a more stableadulthood, which should be marked by a gain in commitment. Wedid not, however, find group differences in identity commitment,but this may have been due to the fact that most emerging adultsreported relatively high levels of commitment. Interestingly, thebivariate correlations indicated that the strongest link was betweenTime 4 identity exploration and Time 1 ego development—notTime 4 ego development. This findings is due, in part, to the factthat the moderate progression group, which showed the clearestlinks to identity exploration, had the highest levels of ego devel-opment at Time 1 but the second highest at Time 4, again high-lighting the different information gleaned in the longitudinal ver-sus cross-sectional analyses. However, it also suggests that egodevelopment may precede identity development. Although intrigu-ing, we did not have sufficient data to be able to properly test thiscausal claim. In sum, although the links we found were modest,this is the first study that we are aware of that explicitly tested fora connection between ego development and identity development.

Implications for the Study of Personality Development

Although the present study was focused on ego development,the conceptualization and analysis have several implications forthe broader study of personality development. In contrast to themajority of studies examining personality change over time thatanalyze mean levels or differential continuity (Roberts & DelVec-chio, 2000; Roberts et al., 2006), in the present study we adoptedan individual approach to personality development to understandhow some trajectories may deviate from the normative pattern.Although this approach has been used in personality psychology(Donnellan et al., 2007; Lönnqvist et al., 2008; Ozer & Gjerde,1989; Roberts et al., 2001), the vast majority of studies haveconsisted of only two waves of data collection, which limits thetypes of analyses that can be conducted (see Johnson et al., 2007,for a notable exception). Furthermore, our approach brings themostly autonomous fields of personality and developmental psy-chology into better alignment (at least with respect to adolescenceand adults). As described by McAdams and Olson (2010), recog-

nizing the different personality pathways that individuals traverseopens the door for new and interesting questions about social-cognitive and contextual factors that can predict, and be predictedby, membership in the trajectory groups. By adopting a develop-mental approach, we examined developmental contexts that areparticularly salient at the beginning (family) and end (identity) ofthe trajectory period examined. The field of personality develop-ment would greatly benefit from using an individual, developmen-tal approach, particularly as the field moves beyond description ofpersonality change over time and into explanation for why thechanges occur and how they matter for people’s lives.

Limitations and Future Research

The present study had several strengths over previous research,such as the inclusion of multiple time points over a 10-year period,examination of change over an important life transition, mappingtrajectories of ego development statistically, and linking ego de-velopment to the adolescent family contexts and emerging adult-hood task of identity. In addition, the sample includes “theforgotten half” and multiple informants. These strengths not-withstanding, there are limitations that must be considered wheninterpreting the findings. First, the sample size was somewhatsmall, which may have precluded our ability to detect certain egodevelopment trajectories that are less frequently occurring (e.g.,regressive). This limitation is mitigated, however, by the four timepoints and long time span, but it remains a limitation nevertheless.Second, it would have been optimal to have more time points ofassessment, particularly between the ages of 16 and 24. There maybe some fluctuations in ego development during this time that wewere unable to detect. Studies with annual or biennial assessmentsthat cover this same period (and beyond) would be particularlyuseful. Third, we only had measures of identity development atWave 4, precluding the ability to understand the causal relationswith ego development. Similarly, having information about par-ents’ ego development at one time point only was a limitation.Having parent ego development data that were aligned with childego development data would have allowed us to ask additionalquestions, such as how parents’ and children’s ego trajectoriescodevelop and whether parents have a greater influence on theirchildren or vice versa. Future studies that examine how parentsbenefit from their children’s ego development would be particu-larly interesting, as such a viewpoint has been largely neglected inthe extant literature. Another important direction for future re-search is to examine other factors beyond family that may berelated to the different ego development trajectories. For example,exploring the role of friendship and partnership for ego develop-ment trajectories would be valuable. Additionally, probing deeperinto individuals’ own agency and motivation may provide insightsinto how youth create life contexts that will foster their egodevelopment. In general, future research would be well served bythe study of how ego development is related to the wide variety oflife contexts that youth inhabit.

Conclusions

The present study builds on and extends prior research on theheterogeneity of ego development trajectories from adolescence toemerging adulthood. It is the first study of ego development to


include more than two waves of data collection and follow thesame individuals across an important life transition: the transitionto adulthood. The findings indicate that, although ego developmentstabilizes into adulthood for many young people, a substantialnumber continues to progress. The present study also fills gaps inthe literature by linking parents’ and their children’s levels of egodevelopment and testing for linkages between ego developmentand identity development—two closely related constructs. Takentogether, the integration of personality and development sciencereflected in the present study suggests promising new avenues forfurthering our understanding of the nature, causes, and conse-quences of personality development.

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Received December 12, 2011Revision received July 23, 2012

Accepted August 20, 2012 �





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Personality development from adolescence to emerging adulthood: Linking trajectories of ego development to the family context and identity formation