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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled
The Effect of Young and Middle Age Crises

0n Identity and Mbral Reasoning
presented by
Suzanne P. Siemering

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

PH D degree in W

 

 

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THE EFFECT OF YOUNG ADULT AND MIDDLE AGE CRISES

ON IDENTITY AND MORAL REASONING

By

Suzanne P. Siemering

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Psychology

1981

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECT OF YOUNG ADULT AND MIDDLE AGE CRISES
ON IDENTITY AND MORAL REASONING

By

Suzanne P. Siemering

Young and middle age adults were tested to determine whether or
not the experience of a crisis would constitute a sufficient source of
disequilibrium to motivate an individual toward a morally principled,
identity achieved, androgynous, and intrinsically religious identity.
Crisis was defined as an event which affected a central component of
an individual's life structure, seriously threatening the pattern of
roles and meanings which had provided stability for an individual's
life. To internally resolve the implications of such a crisis the
individual would have to risk the possibility of a moderate to drastic
change in his life style. Eighty subjects were divided into young
adult and middle age adult, crisis and noncrisis, groups following
completion of Rahe et al.'s1 Life Change Scale and an oral interview
centering on the subject's major life events. Each group was composed
of 10 males and 10 females. Each crisis/noncrisis-age-sex group was
further divided into five college (completion of a four year degree) and

2

five noncollege subjects. Each subject completed Kohlberg's moral

dilemmas, Marcia's Ego Identity Status questionnaire, Bern's4 Sex Role

5 Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale. A multi-

Inventory, and Hoge's
variate analysis of variance yielded a significant crisis effect due
primarily to higher Ego Identity Statuses among crisis subjects. A

series of Chi Square analyses were performed. A significant relationship

was found between the experience of a crisis and the use of principled

Suzanne P. Siemering

moral reasoning. Principled moral reasoning was also related to completion
of a four-year college degree. Correlational analyses yielded a signifi-
cant positive correlational between subjects' Ego Identity Statuses and
their stages of moral reasoning. The effects of a crisis were not a
function of a subject's age or sex. Crisis was not related to androgyny
or intrinsic religious motivation. The possibility is entertained that
crisis and noncrisis individuals vary not so much in the events which are
imposed upon them but in their willingness to allow the implications of
those events to challenge their stable life structure. Individuals may
also vary in the extent to which they allow themselves to be found in
situations where their current life style may be threatened. The will-
ingness to risk the possibility of life style changes may be a major
factor in determining whether or not an individual will allow himself to
internally experience a crisis to the extent that it may serve as an

impetus for ego identity and moral growth.

lRahe, R. H., McKean, J. D. Jr., & Arthur, R. J. A longitudinal study
of life-change and illness patterns. Journal gf_Psychosomatic Research,
1967, 19, 335-366.

 

2Kohlberg, L. & colleagues. Moral stage scoring manual. Unpublished manu-
script. Harvard University, June 1975.
Kohlberg, L. & colleagues. Moral stage scoring manual. Unpublished manu-
script. Harvard University, June 1976.

 

 

3Marcia, J. E. Manual: Identity status tapes and identity status inter-
view. Unpublished manuscript, Simon Fraser University.

 

4Bem, S. L. The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of.
Consulting_and Clinical Psychology, 1974, fig, 155-162.

5Hoge, D. R. A validated intrinsic religious motivation scale. Journal
for the Scientific Study g£_Religion, 1972, 11, 369-376.

To Sarah

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the years of changed proposals, data collection and
evaluation, and intermissions due to teaching and mothering respon-
sibilities, the one individual whose support I felt most clearly was
my advisor, Hiram Fitzgerald. His ability to combine a demand for
excellence without condemnation in the times that my life circumstances
made it difficult to progress on my degree, helped me to feel that he
would still be there believing in me and encouraging me to do well
when I could return to my work.

When this time came, the willingness of my husband Bill, and my
step-daughter Karla, to take over some of my home responsibilities while
I concentrated on my data analysis was crucial to my completion of the
degree. My 3-year-old daughter Sarah was amazingly understanding of
her mom's inability to always be there for her. I would like to thank
my friends Phyllis Slutsky, Carol Perchonock, and Hedy Cerwinka for
providing quality care for Sarah so that I would be able to study.

Statistical analysis of the data would have been extremely difficult
without the patient help of Jay Greiner who spent hours of his own time
helping me to prepare my data for the computer. I also appreciate Karen
O'Quin who came to my rescue when it seemed we would never figure out
how to perfect the instructions for the computer's analysis.

Thoughtful comments of my dissertation committee, Hiram Fitzgerald,

John McKinney, Ellen Strommen, Lucy Ferguson, and Elaine Donelson, during

my oral examination are appreciated for their assistance in the final
revisions which allowed me to smooth the rough edges and make the
elaborations needed for clarity and comprehensiveness in the final
version of the paper.

I am grateful to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, for a
$1000 grant which gave me the funds necessary to pay my subjects. With
this money I could show them in a small way, my appreciation for their
participation in the study. I will forever be overwhelmed and thankful
for their willingness to open up their lives to me. The honesty and
personal probing evident in the interviews enabled me to gain insights
a superficial discussion would never have allowed.

As I enter the last stages of completing my dissertation, I grate-
fully and somewhat nostalgically entrust to Rita Dudley the responsi-
bility for typing the final version. With her help, I bring to a close

a significant chapter in my personal and academic life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES . . . .
LIST OF FIGURES . . . .
LIST OF INSTRUMENTS . . .

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Adult Developmental Stages .

Intellectual, Ethical, and Identity Development

Adult Moral Development . .
Theory . .
Criticisms of Kohlberg' 3 Theory .

Hypotheses . . . .

CHAPTER 2: METHOD . . .

Subjects . . . .

Instruments . . . .

Procedure . . . .

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS . . .
CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION . . .

Crisis Effects . . .

Education Effects . . .

Sex and Age Effects . . .

Future Research . . .

Summary . . . .

LIST OF REFERENCES . . .
APPENDIX A: INSTRUMENTS. . .
APPENDIX B: DATA SUMMARIES . .

vi
vii

viii

18
21
21
27
37

40
40
41
48

49
54
54
60
61
63
65
66
71

78

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

TABLE

H

LIST OF TABLES

Multivariate Analysis of Variance of: Crisis/Noncrisis,
Young Adult/Middle Age, Female/Male, Noncollege/College
by Masculinity, Femininity, Androgyny Difference Score,
Social Desirability, Intrinsic Religiosity, Ego Identity
Status, Moral Maturity Score . . . . .

Cell Identification and Frequencies from Table 1 Multi-
variate Analysis of Variance for Use in Reading Table
28: Observed Cell Means. . . . . .

Observed Cell Means from Multivariate Analysis of
Variance of Table l . . . . . .

Means and Variances of Crisis, Age, Sex, Education by
Masculinity, Femininity, Androgyny Difference Score,
Social Desirability, Intrinsic Religiosity, Ego Identity
Status, and Moral Maturity Score Cells . . .

Chi Square Contingency Tables for anprincipled and
Principled Mbral Reasoning by Crisis, Age, Sex and
Education Groups . . . . . .

Chi Square Contingency Tables for Masculine Sex-Typed,
Feminine Sex Typed, Androgynous, and Undifferentiated
by Crisis, Age, Sex, and Education Groups. . .

Chi Square Contingency Table for Sex by Stages 3 and 4
Moral Reasoning . . . . . .

Correlations Between the Dependent Variables: Masculinity,
Femininity, Androgyny Difference Score, Social Desirability,

Intrinsic Religiosity, Ego Identity Status, and Moral
Maturity Score . . . . . .

vi

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

Figure 1:

LIST OF FIGURES

RESEARCH DESIGN. . .

vii

. 43

LIST OF INSTRUMENTS

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH:

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH:

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH:

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH:

EGO IDENTITY INTERVIEW . .

CONSENT FORM .

LIFE EVENTS .

SELF DESCRIPTION

RELIGIOUS VIEWS

viii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW

Until recently research on psychological changes in the life cycle
has concentrated on the childhood, adolescent, and old age periods neg-
lecting the early and middle adult years. In so doing psychologists have
implied that no significant changes occur from 20 to 65 and that individ-
uals should consequently expect their lives during this period to be char-
acterized by relative stability. The works of Erikson (1968) and Jung
(1960) are among the very few protesting the lack of research on what are
realistically the prime years of the life cycle. In spite of Erikson's
biographical study of Martin Luther (1962) indicating profound moral changes
at midlife, work by Kohlberg and Kramer (1969) clearly suggested that the
growth of moral reasoning was complete by the mid-twenties. Much of this
has begun to change. Spurred both by changes in their own lives and the
increasing clamor by the adult public to understand the causes of internal
turmoil symptomized by discontent in marriage and work roles, researchers
and theoreticians (Eisendorfer & Lawton, 1973; Keen, 1976; Levinson, Darrow,
Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1974, 1978; Neugarten, 1968a; Sheehy, 1974, 1976;
Valliant & McArthur, 1973; Gould, 1972) have begun to lay the groundwork
for a detailed description of psychological stages in the adult years.
Moral development researchers (Kohlberg, 1973a; Gibbs, 1977, 1979; Murphy
& Gilligan, 1980) have independently been forced by the inconsistencies
between their Piagetian theoretical framework and their adult data to
acknowledge the possibility of adult development. The finding of

l

2

relativistic and existential thinking in adults suggested that the end of
Piagetian structural changes in adolescence did not necessitate the end
of the development of moral reasoning. Relativistic, contextual, and
meta-ethical thought might be adult moral forms dependent upon the ex-
periences of moral choice and responsibility usually encountered only
after late adolescence.

Research by Levinson et al. (1978) on the stages of adult male devel-
opment suggests that those who experience a midlife crisis are usually
faced with an intense inner questioning which demands incorporation of
aspects of themselves left dormant in young adulthood. The purpose of the
present research was to determine empirically whether the crises experienced
in midlife might serve as a catalyst for progress in adult moral reasoning
and encourage incorporation of previously undeveloped personality dimensions.
To delineate clearly the reasoning leading to this question, prior research
and theory on adult stages and the later phases of moral development will
first be described.

Adult Developmental Stages

 

Levinson and colleagues (1974, 1978) have developed a framework of
age-linked male social-psychological developmental stages. These stages
were derived from in depth interviews with forty men ranging in age from
35 to 45. The description which follows will be primarily organized around
their work with elaboration within and beyond these stages as they have
been perceived by other investigators. The stages of adult development
are primarily based upon male samples. The main exception is Sheehy's
(1976) work.with one hundred fifteen men and women ranging in age from 18
to 55. A common thread winding through the theories of adult personality

(Jung, 1960; Erikson, 1976; Levinson et al., 1978) is that only by

pentrating problems does the possibility for widening consciousness
develop. This means that it is through confrontation and working through
a crisis that the individual gains knowledge of the unknown aspects of
himself. A fuller acknowledgement of one's own positive and negative
potentials may prompt a greater acceptance and desire to affirm the equal
rights of others and thereby lead to an advance in moral reasoning.
According to Sheehy (1974) the effect of crisis events may depend upon
the individual's particular place in the adult life cycle. Thus it is
important to be aware of the major tasks confronting the adult which may
affect his reaction to and ability to learn from the crisis event.

The first adult stage is called the 'Early Adult Transition'. This
stage begins from 16 to 18 and ends from 20 to 24 years-of—age. The
major task is to make the transition into adult life and away from ties
to the family of origin. This break is frequently not complete until the
midélife stage around age 40 (Levinson et a1., 1974; Sheehy, 1974). From
the standpoint of ego development this overlaps with the tasks of Erikson's
‘(1950, 1968) crisis of 'Identity versus Role Diffusion'. As with each of
Erikson's crises (1976) the issue is not that one side or the other
(identity or role diffusion) wins out but that there is a dynamic balance
in favor of the more positive side. The adolescent's fear of instability
may lead to too early a conclusion of this phase and in so doing sacrifice
a measure of confusion needed for openness to change and variability in
later choices. The adolescent seeks an inner sense of continuity and same-
ness in establishing an identity of his own, but he is at the same time
concerned with how others see him. The latter concern may take precedence
over establishing his own unique self. As Sheehy (1974) notes, although

the individual feels his beliefs are his own, his lack of experience in

4

living outside the family leaves him with a value system often indistin-
guishable from his parents. While groping toward autonomy, the adoles-
cent male still needs nurturance and will often find a companion in mar-
riage who will continue to fulfill the mothering needs he requires (Jung,
1954; Sheehy, 1974). If he adopts the adult marriage roles at this time,
the dependence on his family is likely to be prolonged and his growth
toward self sufficiency impeded. As Valliant and McArthur (1973) note,
the problem with a prolonged adolescent identity crisis is that it may
never end. The young man in this period is still psychologically tied
to his family and it is tipping the balance toward a more independent
existence that will move him into the next developmental stage.

The next stage is labeled 'Entering the Adult World'. It begins in
the early twenties and extends to 27 to 29. This is the stage of explo-
ration and provisional commitment concerning adult occupation, memberships,
and social relationships. The task here is to fashion a life structure
which will link the valued self with the wider adult world. The concept
of life structure throughout Levinson's stages includes both the overall
pattern of roles and the personal meanings they have for the individual.
Levinson et a1. (1974) link the ego development of this stage with
Erikson's (1968) crisis of 'Intimacy versus Distantiation'. Before an
individual can give of himself in intimacy (either to an individual or
to a job) he must have developed a sense of identity. .Without this his
individuality is apt to be lost in his union with the other. Levinson et
a1. (1978) found that most men were not ready in their twenties to make
enduring inner commitments to a wife and family and were not capable of
highly loving and intimate commitments. According to Jung (1954) men and
women at this age have not consciously incorporated their own opposite sex

characteristics, tending instead to relate to them in projection upon their

5

mate. Since their mate is clouded in the projection which may closely re-
semble a parental figure, the man or woman is unable to relate to the actual
spouse behind the projection. It is not until later when the projections
are withdrawn and one's own identity is more fully known that true inti-
macy can be attained.

The desire for intimacy but fear of loss of self is seen in two impul-
ses which Sheehy (1974) sees at work during this stage. One is the urge
to build a safe structure for the future through strong commitments; the
other is the urge to explore, keeping any structure tentative. Men who
follow the first impulse completely accept the 'system' -- becoming good
at following rules, anxious for promotion, but are poor at self reflection
(Valliant & McArthur, 1973). Rather than question their marriage and
career choices, they are content to live in an atmosphere of self decep-
tion. The transients who exclusively follow the impulse to explore tend
to live a fragmented and chaotic existence moving from one cause to another
unable to invest too much of themselves in any one of them. If they did,
self reflection which they are trying to avoid, might be required. Unfor-
tunately, if an individual does not at least make a provisional commitment
in the twenties or at the latest the mid-thirties, his opportunity for
change and growth later on will be gravely stunted (Levinson et al., 1974;
Sheehy, 1974). The difficulty with both of these patterns is that they are
devoid of self reflection. To win acceptance by a spouse or employer, the
young adult creates a socially acceptable persona which requires repression
or rejection of many aspects of himself. A man may repress his sensitivity
to others in order to advance in the work world. A woman may accept her
spouse's need for a nurturing mother substitute to the detriment of her

assertive logical capabilities that would enable her to thrive in the work

6

world. Repression of characteristics in one's self often leads to con-
demnation of others who dare to exert the same traits (Jung, 1959; Erik-
son, 1968; Levinson, 1978). Through such processes the individual becomes
increasingly estranged from his inner self. It is only when the individual
feels sufficiently strong in his own identity, that he can question that
identity, accept the previously unknown parts, and accept those parts in
others. This typically is an outgrowth of the middle age crisis.

Levinson (1974) has observed three major patterns in coping with the
tasks remaining from the twenties: (A) In the most frequent pattern a man
makes a provisional occupational commitment during his twenties. In the
interval from 28 to 32 he enters a transitional period in which he must
decide whether to make a deeper commitment or to make a change before it's
too late. Most decide to stay in the original occupation, marry or re-
affirm the existing marriage and enter the next phase of 'Settling Down'.
(B) Some men at 30 decide that the original occupational choice is too
constraining, that it is beyond their capabilities, or most importantly,
that it is a betrayal of an earlier dream which must now be pursued. In
these cases a career change occurs at about 30. If the sense of betrayal
of a dream is not faced now, it may reoccur at the 40-year crisis. (C)
The third pattern is that of the transient in the twenties who, feeling
the need for stability, tries to settle down as he nears 30.

Sheehy (1974, 1976) and Levinson et a1. (1978) elaborate upon the
28 to 33-year-old stage as the 'Age Thirty Transition'. As they approach
30, both men and women seem to sense an impatience with their narrowness,
a sense of being restricted, and wanting to break out. Sixty two percent
of the men in Levinson et al.'s study (1978) went through a moderate or
severe crisis at this time. If involved in a career, a woman may want to

have children. If in graduate school, a man may sense an overwhelming

7
desire to get into his profession. A common pattern is the tearing up
of the life established in the twenties. This often involves a divorce
and/or serious evaluation of the marriage. The marriage is frequently
in what Sheehy has termed a 'Catch-30' condition. When the typical
couple marries in their early twenties, the wife decides to stay home and
have children and the man enters the career world where by the time he is
30 he begins to feel competent as an acknowledged adult. In the early
years of the marriage, his needs for substitute mother figure were met by
his wife, but as he nears 30 his increased sense of his own ability leads
him to desire more of a companion than a child and mother figure. While
he wants a companion, his desire for nurturance keeps him from allowing
his wife complete.freedom to develop her own. While this battle goes on
within the male, his wife is going through her own 30-year crisis. As
part of the earlier plans she was to be a mother and didn't have to get
out in the world. She could follow her own mother's pattern. Besides,
she hasn't had the experience in the outside world and feels uneasy about
joining it. As long as she ignores the impulses to broaden she can re-
treat into her illusions of safety and a happy life as a woman at home.
She senses a backlash from her spouse were she to give in to her incli-
_na£ions.to live a more expansive life, and so retreats into the home
trying to take him with her. He feels trapped. The nuturant home is no
longer a safe place but a danger to his growth. Levinson (Sheehy, 1976)
surmises that the personality integration of a woman in her twenties is
not sufficient to enable her to successfully incorporate both the domestic
and extrafamilial occupational responsibilities at that time. This come
bination becomes possible in the thirties but the woman needs her husband's

help with the household tasks. Without his help the woman's need for

8

expansion will either go unrealized or marital conflict may ensue. The
older woman who experiences the same frustration may be able to take ad-
vantage of her urge to grow because of the lessening of home responsi-
bilities that comes as the children leave home. Even if the wife does
individuate during the 30-year transition, it takes time. According to
Levinson, the earlier stages of getting into the adult world can not be
skipped. The marriage is in a 'Catch-30' condition. The unsynchronized
rhythm of development in the two sexes may bring the marriage to a point
of crisis frequently resulting in divorce (Jung, 1954; Sheehy, 1974).

' In the early thirties the man enters what Levinson et a1. (1974,
1978) call the stage of 'Settling Down'. This stage continues until the
late thirties or early forties. The man makes deeper commitments to his
work and family thus providing himself with a sense of order, stability,
and control. At the same time he establishes a timetable for his major
goals. The focus is on external goals and as a number of investigators
have noted, many men's lives become very boring (Keen, 1976; Sheehy, 1974;
Valliant & McArthur, 1973). The settled down structure can not last. It
is based upon illusions--illusions about the importance of one's goals,
the happiness making it in the work world will bring, the delights and
fulfillment of marriage and family, and the autonomous independent nature
of one's life. No one can enter the adult world without certain assumptions
about the nature and meaning of the career and family roles he or she will
hold. But by 35 or so, the contradictions between the subjective assump-
tions and the external facts begin to emerge (Jung, 1960). The structure
developed in 'Settling Down' does not reflect all of oneself.

Somewhere in the mid to late thirties the man realizes that regardless
of his accomplishments to this point, he is not in all senses of the word

his own man. The substage Levinson et a1. call 'Becoming One's Own Man'

9
begins. The man typically feels a sense of constraint both in work and
marriage. An important force in his career has frequently been a colleague
eight to 15 years his elder who served as an experienced and much appreciated
cadworker and model when the younger man began in the occupational world.
As the young man increases in competence becoming more equal with the
mentor, a break in the relationship will occur. Termination of the re-
lationship is often bitter with the younger man accusing the elder of being
destructively critical and attempting to make him over in the elder's
image rather than encouraging his individual growth. For women the problem
of a mentor is a difficult one. There are very few professional women who
feel strong enough vis a vis men that they could take on the role of mentor.
Unfortunately the relationship between male mentors and women frequently
gets stalled by the male's depreciation of the woman as a potential equal
solely because of her sex. Those women who do have good mentors have
similar problems terminating the relationships. With the break of this
valued relationship, the man or woman may be ready to move on to become
a mentor for others (Levinson et a1. 1978; Sheehy, 1976). Levinson et
a1. (1974) suggest that becoming a mentor may be of crucial importance
in initiating and working on Erikson's crisis of 'Generativity versus
Stagnation'. No longer is the individual content to be the promising
young novelist; he now wants to be the established writer in his own
right. No longer is he growing up. He is growing old. During this
stage the man desperately seeks affirmation of his most valued roles.
There is typically some key event, for example a promotion, which carries
for him the message of affirmation or devaluation by society. For the
woman, whether she has chosen to be at home or in the outside world, there
are the beginnings of the realization that time is rapidly waning in which

she can develop the side of her life that has been put aside. As these

10
feelings and events become solidified, the man or woman enters the stage
of crucial concern for the present research--the 'Mid-Life Transition'
(or as frequently called the mid-life crisis).

The 'Mid-Life Transition' is a developmental transition between two
relatively stable stages of 'Settling Down' and 'Restabilization' in
middle adulthood. For women this period is likely to begin around age 35
and for men around 40 (Sheehy, 1976). Whether an individual is affirmed
in the previous stage or not, the crisis is likely to occur; An individual
may achieve success but experience it as hollow. He did what he was told
would bring rewards. He reached the goal but the promised illusion of
happiness did not result (Keen, 1976). The matter of crucial importance
here is the "goodness of fit between the life structure and the self"
(Levinson et a1., 1974, p. 254). The life cycle (Erikson, 1976) tends
to round itself out as a coherent experience. If this is so, there is a
need for concordance between one's earlier dreams and where one sees him?
self at middle age. If this is not possible, goals may need to be reform!
ulated so there can be a better fit between goals, dreams, and reality. In
making the choices required for settling down, certain values, character
traits, etc. were either consciously or unconsciously rejected or left
dormant. These excluded components of the self demand to be heard (Jung,
1960; Levinson et a1., 1978). The young adult in his twenties and early
thirties is so busy establishing a family and his niche in the work world
that he (really) doesn't take stock of what he is doing and why (Jacques,
1965; LeShan, 1973). In joining the adult world, the youth fits himself
into whatever pattern is valued at the time. He denies the other aspects
of himself and lives under the illusion that he is living an autonomous

life based upon his own independently developed belief system. In reality

he is as noted earlier, very much the product demanded by his environment

11
for success (LeShan, 1973).

Middle age is a time when the incomplete identity crisis of adole-
scence demands completion (Rogers, 1973; LeShan, 1973). It is not always
the contradictions between preconceptions about adult roles and reality
of them that brings on reevaluation, but there seems in addition to be a
deep seated change in the psyche that demands that the characteristics of
self that have been denied or repressed be acknowledged and incorporated
as part of the conscious whole. The process of incorporation of these
traits to form a more complete identity is called the process of indivi-
duation (Jung, 1961). According to Levinson et a1. (1978) the possibility
of initiating individuation begins in the 'Age 30 Transition' but the ego
strength is often unequal to the task and therefore the individual forfeits
the opportunity to face himself, his illusions and limitations until the
'Mid-Life Transition'. For eighty percent of Levinson et al.'s middle aged
subjects confrontations with the unexplored dimensions of their lives were
experiences which reached crisis proportions. Such dimensions can be spoken
off in terms of opposites. One pole is that which is known; the other that
which is unknown or repressed. The opposites are not, as commonly thought
in young adulthood, mutually exclusive. They can be combined in a dynamic
tension which is experienced as a unity within one's being. Four pairs of
opposites were common among Levinson et al.'s subjects: ((A) Young/Old:
Young symbolizes growth and possibility. Old symbolizes death and wisdom;
(B) Destruction/Creation: Not only does one have the power to create but
in creating one has also destroyed, perhaps causing more harm than good;
(C) Masculine/Feminine: Individuals have within themselves the capacity
for the Opposite sex characteristics. Incorporation of such traits is a

primary task of the middle adult years. Theoretically this process would

12
lead to a more androgynous perception of one's own sex role. Neugarten
(1968) has found that by old age women are more tolerant of their aggres-
sive, egocentric impulses and men are more accepting of their nurturant,
affiliative desires; (D) Attachment/Separation: To be attached is to be
engaged with the external world. Separation refers to an individual who
is primarily involved in their inner world. The ramifications of these
basic conflicts will be evident as the present discussion of the charac-
teristics of the 'Mid-Life Transition' continues.

Just as old age demands a life review (Butler, 1968), the onset of
middle age does likewise. No longer does the individual look on his life
as time since birth, but instead life is measured by the time left to live
(Neugarten, 1968). It is the sense of the finiteness of life bounded by
death that requires the middle aged adult to stop and reflect upon the
meaning of his own existence (Fried, 1976; Jacques, 1965). Generally as
the person ages, preoccupation with the inner life increases although
adaptation appears to remain relatively stable (Neugarten, 1964). The
attempt to come to terms with one's own aging and death is the attempt
to incorporate the old pole of the Young/Old pair of opposites. The ex-
ploration of the inner world exemplifies the middle aged adult's confron~
tation with the separateness pole of the Attachment/Separation dimension.
During the middle adult years the quality and content of work changes. In
the twenties and early thirties creative works seem to come with an inten-
sity and spontaneity as if ready made. With the onset of middle age the
inspiration may be just as intense, but the product comes as a sculpted,
worked, and reworked product. Radical desire and the impatience of young
adulthood are replaced by a much more philosophical nature. For some the

'Mid-Life Transition' is not bridged and creativity dies. For those who

13
do pass through the crisis, working through the inevitability of one's own
death brings a deepened awareness of self and acceptance of one's own and
others' shortcomings. There is a constructive resignation to the fact that
goals may not be met and a sense that life will go on and that one's life
will continue through his works and his loved ones, if not through immor-
tality (Jacques, 1965). The caring for others and what will follow one's
own death is characteristic of Erikson's crisis of 'Generativity versus
Stagnation' (Erikson, 1968).

For men who do face the 'Mid-Life Transition', the crisis tends to
peak sometime in the early forties. In the middle forties a stage of
'Restabilization' and concentrated work on generativity begins. Those
who don't have a crisis seem to lose the vitality needed for continued
development (Levinson et al., 1974, 1978). Sheehy (1976) reports a
study with women vice-presidents and presidents that illustrates this loss
of vitality. The women in the study had deferred considering the nurturing
role until they were 35. At this time, those who allowed themselves to
feel the tensions raised by the thought of never experiencing motherhood,
gave themselves a moratorium period in their jobs during which they pur-
posively were engaged in more social activities. Those who found someone
at this time, married. When they went back to work, the quality of their
work experience had changed. They felt happy in their work, not merely
satisfied and rewarded. A control group who refused to allow the crisis
of incorporating their nurturing side were found to be lonely in their
fifties and never reached the same professional heights as the group that
allowed themselves to act upon the tensions within.

In addition to the loss of creativity and vitality, refusal to face

the mid-life crisis may bring an increase in moral rigidity as one.nears

14
50. It is as though the existence of one's moral principles is endangered
if they are questioned. They must therefore be protected all the more
(Jung, 1960). The individual who in his forties and fifties refuses to
face the crisis may in his later years have to face the inadequacies of
the life he has led. But then it will be too late to start again. The
40-year-old still has time to incorporate the unexplored domains. For
the 70-year-old going through the life review process, the experience of
facing the unknown aspects of one's self for the first time may be de-
vastating (Butler, 1968).

The expression of mature intimacy and the exercise of power in family,
work, and community become focal areas of conflict during the 'Mid-Life
Transition' (Fried, 1967). No longer is the man the young promising execu-
tive, he now assume the roles his parents' generation held. A positive
resolution of the crisis of 'Generativity versus Stagnation' demand that
one willingly accept the authority appropriate for his age and use it con-
structively to create, nourish, and insure the future of his children's
generation. On the shoulders of the portion of the population from 40 to
60 lies the major responsibility for running the country. While power may
be a source of pride, it brings with it the depressing implications of
aging. This realization comes even more clearly if a promotion comes
with the death or retirement of a member of the previous generation. Given
the opportunity for promotion or a change of job, there is often the ten-
dency to feel that one is not yet ready. But if the opportunities are
not taken when they occur, stagnation, the negative side of middle age
crisis, will result. The transition required here may be more difficult
for the woman than for the man. He must adjust to changes in the work

world. The woman whose sense of self worth has resolved primarily around her

15
children, must with their departure begin a whole new way to spend the
remaining 30 to 40 years of life. In the present society there are few
guidelines to help her. If she refuses to look for meaningful new goals,
she like her husband will stagnate (Fried, 1967).

Just as the youth enters his career with false expectations for
meaning and happiness, so does he enter marriage. At the time of marriage
the individual is not yet completely conscious of himself as an individual
apart from the original family. As noted earlier, the young adult usually
suppresses his contrasexual side, relating to it primarily in projection
upon his spouse. Both the man and the woman must withdraw their projec-
tions and the sense of security embodied in them if they are to know their
own and their partner's unique selves. When the man enters 'Mid-Life
Transition' he seeks affirmation of his newly awakened self. Unless the
spouse's stage of development is comparable, communication breaks down.
Relating as parent to parent instead of spouse to spouse for the last 20
years may also severely limit the intimacy and depth of understanding
present in the husband-wife relationship. Now that the children are or
soon will be gone, husband and wife face each other often.with the cold-
ness, unfamiliarity, and uncertainty of strangers (Pineo, 1968). If one
partner has begun the process of individuation, his new complexity may
further confuse the spouse and dampen communication. The need for compa-
nionship through the crisis is not met. One may wait for the other to
catch up, but frequently the individuating partner turns outside of the
marriage (Jung, 1954). Not completely aware of the dimensions of his
needs he may focus on the sexual shortcomings of his spouse, or boredom
within the marriage, and therefore seek a younger person to fulfill those

needs. For a man, his own decrease in sexual vigor (Masters & Johnson,

16
1974) may also prompt him to look outside the marriage to prove to himself
that he is still attractive to younger women (Fried, 1967; Hudson, 1974).
A parallel phenomenon occurs in women in their mid to late thirties. No
longer preoccupied with childcare; aware that their appearance will soon
be failing; at the height of their sexual peak with a husband so tied up
in occupational advancement that he comes home with less sexual desire;
the woman in her late thirties is at the most common age for infidelity
(Sheehy, 1976). Even if the partners do not look outside the marriage,
a reaffirmation of that marriage is required. In either case, divorce
is often the result. Here divorce is not necessarily a failure but an
outgrowth of the increased clarity in personal values. It may represent
a courageous attempt to affirm one's ideals (AMA, 1974; LeShan, 1973).

Levinson et a1. (1978) tentatively suggest that after 'Restabili-
zation' the middle aged male continues through three additional develop-
mental stages before entering the late adult stages. From 50 to 55 years
of age the work of the 'Mid-Life Transition' may be furthered or modified
through the 'Age 50 Transition' stage. A second middle adult structure
is built in a 55 to 60 year stage analogous to the 'Settling Down' period
in the late thirties. Finally from 60 to 65 the 'Late Adult Transition'
terminates middle adulthood and begins the late adult stages.

The final life crisis which has been delineated by Erikson (1968,
1976) is that of 'Integrity versus Despair'. Although Erikson's crisis
typically begins around 60-years-of-age, this like all his crises, has its
beginnings in the earlier stages of development. It is that fact which is
of concern here. The possessor of integrity accepts the finiteness of life
bounded by death. He senses a comradeship with men and women of different

times who have striven to convey human dignity and love. He is aware of

17
the relativity of all lifestyles but is ready to defend his own. On the
other hand, he who is overcome by despair cannot accept his own death and
is likely to hide his despair with a show of disgust for others. The
'Lover' in Keen's (1976) terminology is similar to the man of integrity.
He knows his own uniqueness but also his oneness and interrelatedness
with others. He is at home in the world. His life is not dramatic but
tends to be in harmony rather than in conflict with the forces around him.
Most who enter this stage are simultaneously in the 'Outlaw' stage. This
is Keen's terminology for 'Mid-Life Transition'. In the 'Outlaw' stage
the individual demands that he govern his own life; that he decide what is
good and evil. He questions his identity and finds within himself a baf-
fling diversity of traits-both good and bad; both under his control and
somehow governed by something beyond him. But recognizing the confusing
conflicting nature of his own life he is ready to enter the 'Lover' stage
where he can accept the oneness with others who also have these traits.
The illusions of the absolutist view of my side as good and other ways
as evil can no longer be held. For the evil is within me and within those
institutions such as marriage and my career which I support (Creation/De—
struction polarity). Without the illusions of youth, the middle aged in-
dividual can be more accepting of others and himself and with a more
realistic vision, can continue adulthood.

The difficulty with all of the stages so far described is that not
all people go through them. Many adults do stagnate and are left at the
level of growth attained in their thirties-~the level characterized by
incomplete identity, illusion, and boredom (Levinson et al., 1978; Jung,

1960; Fried, 1967).

18

Intellectual, Ethical, and Identity Development

 

 

Perry (1970) and Marcia (1966) have introduced schemas for under-
standing psychological growth during the college years. If interpreted
as adult developmental processes, these schemas provide a valuable edition
to the stages already described.

Perry (1970) traces the intellectual and ethical development of col-
lege students through nine positions. The general progression is as fol-
lows. The student in the early positions sees the world in terms of
absolute right and wrong. We know the right; all others are wrong. The
job of authorities is to transmit the right. Where diversity of opinion
exists, this is due to poorly qualified authorities. As more diversity
is encountered, areas of knowledge are recognized where authorities have
not yet found the answer, although the absolute answer does exist. Later
on in development the student perceives uncertainty to be extensive and
comes to feel that in such areas of uncertainty everyone has a right to
his own opinion. He does not realize that although this may be the case,
opinions do differ in quality as a function of the logic and available
data from which they are derived. There still are areas where absolutes
do exist. The student then enters a phase where all knowledge and values
including authority's is relative. Later he realizes that while relati-
vity is truely the nature of reality as we know it, one must make some
personal commitments to a stand which he can use to orient himself in the
relativistic world. The remainder of development consists in making
commitments, and refining and revamping those commitments as experience
warrants. Clearly not all individuals pass through all the stages. While
very little work has been done with adults beyond the college years, it

may be the case that the pressures outside of the sheltered college

19

environment force a reworking and/or deepening of one's position in these
stages (Perry, 1976). The young adult who is absorbed in the illusion of
his work's importance may have recycled from a more relativistic position
in college to a more absolutist position when he became involved in the
work world. The middle age man facing the 'Mid-Life Transition' may be
entering or reentering a position of acknowledging relativity. As he
emerges in 'Restabilization', the adult may for the first time be making
a commitment based upon recognition of the relativity of life. Even if
the stages are not replayed in adulthood, perhaps Perry's concepts of
temporizing, retreat and escape are applicable. Temporizing is a long
pause in development. Retreat is a regression to absolutist thinking.
Perhaps the young adult finds retreat necessary when faced with the
demands of establishing himself in family and work life. Escape is the
refusal to recognize the responsibilities required by a relativistic
world. This may characterize the transient adult who refuses to make a
commitment and settle down. While developed with a college population,
Perry's positions clearly describe many individuals in the early adult
and mid-life stages.

A similar progression has been proposed by Marcia (1966, 1967, un-
dated manuscript) and by Henry and Renaud (1972) in the form of four
ego identity statuses. The achievement of an identity in Marcia's schema
requires commitment in the areas of occupation, political ideology, and
religious belief and a period of crisis in which active choosing among
alternative occupations and beliefs takes place. While develOped for
adolescent identity formation, the same problems that face the adolescent
may face the middle aged adult. It may be that the failure in adolescence

to achieve a relatively complete identity in the individual's own terms

20
necessitates the crisis at middle age. The four identity statuses are:
(A) Identity Achieved: The individual after a period of crisis has comr
mited himself to an occupation and a political and a religious ideology
while remaining open to change and growth; (B) Moratorium: The indivi-
dual is in an active process of struggle and is attempting to know the
alternatives and make commitments in the areas of occupation, religion,
and politics. He however has not yet made a commitment; (C) Foreclosure:
The individual typically is committed to the roles and beliefs of his
parents having experienced no period of crisis in which questioning and
evaluation occurred; (D) Diffusion: The individual has neither struggled
nor made a commitment. The four statuses differentiate themselves along
the dimensions of commitment/lack of commitment to occupation and poli-
tical and religious ideologies,and crisis of struggle/lack of struggle
with alternative occupations and ideologies. Achieved and foreclosed
individuals have made a commitment; the others have not. Achieved and
moratorium individuals have struggled; the others have not. Foreclosures
are most likely to accept traditional cultural values and endorse autho-
ritarian values (Marcia, 1967; Marcia & Freedman, 1970). The foreclosed
student is out of touch with his own feelings, handles difficult situa-
tions by conforming, and responds to differences in values as intolerable
conflict which must be avoided (Henry & Renaud, 1972). Foreclosed women
generally have a high sense of self esteem and low anxiety level probably
due to the societal support they receive. Identity achieved women are
lower in self esteem probably due to the societal difficulties inherent
in breaking with traditional roles (Marcial & Freedman, 1970). Could
the general characteristics of foreclosed individuals parallel those of

the individual who fails to face the middle age crisis? Is Marcia's

21

status of 'Moratorium' similar to Levinson et al.'s 'Mid-Life Transition'
and could Marcia's status of 'Identity Achievement' be a state similar
to Levinson et al.'s 'Restabilization'.
Adult Moral Development

Theory. Investigation and theory concerning moral reasoning in adult-
hood is limited and for the most part hypothetical in nature. By the age
of 32, none of Kohlberg's longitudinal subjects had reached his highest
clearly formulated level of moral development (stage 6) and certainly
none had reached his newly hypothesized stage 7 (Kohlberg, 1973a). Recent
research emphasizing the clarification of personal values during the
middle age crisis prompted the current investigation into the role this
crisis might have in furthering the growth of moral reasoning in adult-
hood. In order to determine if this is logically within the framework
of Kohlberg's theory, the major points of his theory will be reviewed.

Kohlberg has described seven stages of moral reasoning. He claims
that his first six stages form an invariant universal sequence culmi-
nating in the formal deontological ethical theory of a stage 6 principled
thinker. His theory deals only with the process of moral judgment con-
cerning one's duties and rights with no claims as to ultimate moral aims
or personal virtues. As a formalist, Kohlberg believes that there is a
prescriptive principle of justice which ought to guide moral decision
making (Kohlberg, 1971). Progress through the stages is a function of
Piagetian cognitive maturation and role taking experiences. As these
change the individual finds himself in situations of moral disequili-
brium; this is, the old decision making system is unable to resolve
what the individual now sees as conflicting moral claims. For dis-

equilibrium to occur, it seems that it is not enough for the individual

22
to see a model dealing with a moral conflict; he must deal with the con-
flict himself. Resolution of the conflict leads to a new stage that can
handle more ethical questions and as such is more comprehensive, dif-
ferentiated, and equilibrated than the prior stage. Each higher stage
brings a new understanding of justice whereby each of the conflicting
parties agrees that each has been fairly awarded 'his due'. The more
heterogeneous one's environment, the more likely disequilibrium and
the consequent growth in moral reasoning will occur. These equili—
brating assumptions place Kohlberg in line with the formalistic philo-
sophies from Kant to Rawls. Formalists require that rational moral
judgments be reversible (fairness as impartiality so that all could
agree on the decision), universal (what if everybody used this principle
of choice?) and consistent (the same decision would be made in any con-
text). If inequalities must be accepted it is only fair if it is to
the advantage of the least advantaged person. Through the process of
differentiation and integration of his judgments, the individual may
reach stage 6 in which he chooses justice as the consistent, reversible,
universal presciptive principle upon which to base his moral decisions
(Kohlberg, 1970, 1971, 1973a, 1973c). Because the processes of dif-
ferentiation and integration of the same moral content are required on
both the 'is' side in the process of what it is that necessarily develops
as the highest principle of moral judgment and the 'ought' side in the
process of philosophical rational justification, Kohlberg (Boyd and
Kohlberg, 1973) claims that differentiation and integration span.the.'is-
ought' gap and allow him to go from his empirical findings to the pre-

scriptive statement of what ought to be the highest moral principle.

23

A general outline of the stages follows. It should be noted that

the first six stages are divided into three levels. The levels separate

the stages in terms of three general bases upon which moral judgments

are made.

I.

II.

Preconventional level

At this level the child is responsive to cultural rules and
labels of good and bad, right or wrong but interprets these
labels either in terms of the physical or the hedonistic
consequences of action (punishment, reward, exchange of
favors) or in terms of the physical power of those who
enunciate the rules and labels. The level is divided into
the following two stages:

Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation. The

physical consequences of action determine its goodness or
badness regardless of the human meaning or value of these
consequences. Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning

deference to power are valued in their own right, not in

terms of respect for an underlying moral order supported

by punishment and authority (the latter being stage 4).

Stage 2: The instrumental-relativist orientation: Right
action consistes of that which instrumentally satisfies
one's own needs and occasionally the needs of others.
Human relations are viewed in terms like those of the
market place. Elements of fairness, of reciprocity, and
of equal sharing are present, but they are always inter-
preted in a physical pragmatic way. Reciprocity is a
matter of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours",
not of loyalty, gratitude, or justice.

Conventional level

At this level, maintaining the expectations of the
individual's family, group, or nation is perceived as
valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and
obvious consequences. The attitude is not only one of
conformity to personal expectations and social order,

but of loyality to it, of actively maintaining, supporting,
and justifying the order, and of identifying with the
persons or groups involved in it.

Stage 3: The interpersonal concordance or "good boy--
nice girl" orientation. Good behavior is that which
pleases or helps others and is approved by them. There
is much conformity to stereotypical images of what is
majority or "natural" behavior. Behavior is frequently

III.

24

judged by intention -- "he means well" becomes important
for the first time. One earns approval by being "nice".

Stage 4: The "law and order" orientation. There is
orientation toward authority, fixed rules, and the
maintenance of the social order. Right behavior
consists of doing one's duty, showing respect for
authority, and maintaining the given social order
for its own sake.

Postconventional, autonomous, or principled level

At this level, there is a clear effort to define moral
values and principles that have validity and application
apart from the authority of the groups or persons hold-
ing these principles and apart from the individual's

own identification with these groups. This level again
has two stages:

Stage 5: The social-contract legalistic orientation,
generally with utilitarian overtones. Right action

tends to be defined in terms of general individual
rights, and standards which have been critically

examined and agreed upon by the whole society. There

is a clear awareness of the relativism of personal values
and opinions and a corresponding emphasis upon procedural
rules for reaching consensus. Aside from what is
constitutionally and democratically agreed upon, the
right is a matter of personal "values" and "opinion".

The result is an emphasis upon the "legal point of

view", but with an emphasis upon the possibility of
changing law in terms of rational considerations of social
utility (rather than freezing it in terms of stage 4 "law
and order"). Outside the legal realm, free agreement

and contract is the binding element of obligation. This
is the "official" morality of the American government

and constitution.

Stage 6: The universal-ethical-principle orientation.
Right is defined by the decision of conscience in ac-
cord with self-chosen ethical principles appealing to
logical comprehensiveness, universality, and consistency.
These principles are abstract and ethical (the Golden Rule,
the categorical imperative); they are not concrete moral
rules like the Ten Commandments. At heart, these are
universal principles of justice, of the reciprocity and
equality of human rights, and of respect for the dignity
of human beings as individual persons. (Kohlberg, 1973c,
pp. 631-632.)

25
Stage 7: An attempt to answer the question: Why be moral?
A sense of being a part of the whole of life; cosmic rather
than universal humanistic perspective of justice; begins
with a sense of the finite, meaningless of life in the face
of death; resolved by valuing life from the standpoint of
the infinite with a sense of the whole and oneself as part
of the whole; no single stage 7 structure. (Adapted from
Kohlberg, 1973b.)

In addition to the above stages, a reanalysis of 1969 (Kohlberg &
Kramer) data necessitated the formulation of a Stage 43 (Kohlberg, 19733).
In the 1969 data, longitudinal subjects who had scored as a stage 4-5
mixture in high school appeared to retreat to a stage 2 in their college
years. Upon further analysis the quality of their responses was found to
differ from stage 2 individuals thus requiring that a transitional stage
43 be devised. The developmental challenges to which these students were
responding were the relativity of moral expectations and Opinions and the
gap between conventional moral expectations and the behavior they observed
in the college environment (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). Like a stage 2
individual, the stage 4B student asserted that the morally right is re-
lative to the actor's wishes or needs and requires no further validity.
But unlike stage 2, the reasoning for the relativity resulted from a
questioning of the validity of social norms (Kohlberg, 1973a).

Kohlberg (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969) found that most adult females
stabilize in stage 3 and males stabilize in stage 4 presumably because
stage 3 is functional for women but not for men. Subjects at lower stages
(1-3) often continued to develop to stage 4 between 16 and 24 years with
stabilization occurring among the higher stage subjects. This led to the
conclusion that adult development is primarily the dropping out of lower
stages rather than the progression to new ones. According to Kohlberg,

principled morality is an adult development not reached until at least

the late twenties. Progression through the preconventional and

26
conventional levels during childhood and adolescence does not require
a great deal of personal experience, but is based primarily upon cog-
nitive conflict (Kohlberg, 1973a). Unlike the first two levels, prin-
cipled thinking is not merely a more adequate perception of what the
system is but is a postulation of principles concerning what ought to
be. The principled thinker sees the basis for committing himself to a
society in which he consistently acts according to these principles.
Principled morality requires the sense of equal justice as a universal
human ethic governing all action (Kohlberg, 1970). The individual whose
moral reasoning is based upon the principle of justice cannot limit his
reasoning to that which best describes the system operating in his own
environment but must move beyond the conventional to his internally de-
rived principles. Two personal experieces which typically do not occur
until early adulthood, seem to be important in the movement to principled
morality: (A) experience of the relativistic college atmosphere, morato-
tium, and identity questioning together with stimulation to cognitive
moral reflection; and the (B) experience of anticipated and later actual
sustained irreversible responsibility for the welfare of others (Kohlberg,
1973a). Successful methods of moving subjects through the moral stages
have failed to move students into the principled level until they reach
college (Boyd, reported in Kohlberg, 1973a). Identity questioning and
commitment to responsibility for others does not guarantee principled
thinking. Kohlberg and Gilligan (1971) report Podd's dissertation an-
alysis of the relationship between Marcia's ego statuses and moral stages.
Two-thirds of those in principled stages were in the achieved status.
Forty percent of those in conventional stages had an achieved identity and

sixty percent were primarily in a foreclosed identity status.

27

Critisms g£_Kohlberg's theory. In evaluating the results of re-

 

search employing Kohlberg's moral dilemmas it is important to be aware of
the criticisms other investigators and theoreticians are making of Kohl-
berg's schema. Such criticisms may add insights which can be of assistance
in accurately interpreting the data. The following discussion reviews

the criticisms which are relevant for the current study.

Kohlberg's assertion that his theory stems from the cognitive struc-

tural model of Jean Piaget has opened him to a barrage of criticism from
his reviewers. John Gibbs (1977, 1979) states that Kohlberg's claims that
his stages satisfy the Piagetian stage criteria are accurate only with re-
gard to the first four moral stages. Piaget advocates the naturalistic
argument that cognitive (and therefore moral) stages are an expression of
a sequential, unconscious developmental process which occurs universally
throughout the species. Gibbs notes that Kohlberg is implicit but not
explicit about following the universal and unconscious criteria. Piaget
states that mental behavior consists of structures at all levels of de-
velopment which are constantly under construction as a function of biologi-
cal maturation and interaction with the environment. If ethical statements
are to follow this theory, the moral structures would relate holistically
rather than existing as an accumulation of discrete virtures. Role tak-
ing opportunities would be the moral develOpment requirement paralleling
the cognitive developmental need for interaction with the environment.
The upward movement through the stages would be gradual and consecutive
with no instances of regression. Development would be accelerated in a
rich environment. Each of these characteristics can be verified in the
preconventional and conventional levels of moral development. (See Hol-
stein below for a criticism of the consecutive criterion). The meta-

ethical principled stages, however, appear to fall under an existential

28
rather than a naturalistic psychological theme. Instead of the progression
occurring unconsciously, the principled stages require an awareness of
self and an effort to come to terms with that awareness. Kohlberg (1973a)
says that the principled stages require a specific questioning of ethics
from a position outside of society. Cross cultural studies have failed
to find much evidence of principled thinking in primitive cultures. Failure
of the naturalistic and universal criteria bring into question whether or
not stages 5 and 6 satisfy the Piagetian requirements. It is not clear
that stages 5 and 6 override 3 and 4 in the same way that a person at
stage 3 or 4 would no longer use 1 or 2 stage thinking. Stages 3 and 4
are useful adult stages for conducting everyday affairs. Gibbs notes that
when faced with a life vs. property conflict, the same patriotic Soviet
scientist who uses stage 4 on a daily basis, may show principled thinking.
Such a finding violates the hierarchical requirements of the Piagetian
scheme.

Kohlberg's (1973a) finding of regression among his principled high
school students to a stage 2, only to return to a stage 5 later, calls into
question Kohlberg's claim to an invariant sequential stage progression
(Gibbs, 1977, 1979). Even if one revamps the scoring system to include a
4B, regression has still occurred. If moral stage progression requires a
change in the underlying cognitive structures, KDhlberg runs into diffi—
culties with the principled stages (Gibbs, 1979). Stage 5 can be aligned
with a third stage of formal operations, but there is no corresponding
cognitive stage to parallel stage 6. Flavell (cited in Gibbs, 1979) feels
that the uniformity and inevitability of change in a certain direction
must be limited to the childhood and adolescent stages. It is only in
these years that the biological maturation of the nervous system which
would allow for mental changes is occurring. Given the above considerations,

Gibbs (1979) hypothesizes that it is necessary to separate Kohlberg's

29
moral stages into two phases: a standard phase which incorporates the
Piagetian based naturalistic preconventional and conventional levels;
and an existential phase which applies to the principled level.

Other investigators have questioned Kohlberg's claim for the cross
cultural universality of his six stage sequence (eg. Simpson, 1974).
Kohlberg has tested subjects in at least nine cultures using modified moral
dilemmas but he has scored them with the standard scoring manual. Cul-
tural differences in the comprehension and meaning of the situations
tested in the dilemmas and the varying cultural perceptions of the right
to life and property call into suspect any conclusions such studies may
have reached. Simpson urges that rather than accept large number of
humanity as morally deficient, it may be preferable to ask if the same
paradigm is applicable cross culturally. Simpson feels that whether there
is thinking at the principled level in other cultural groups is still
open to question.

In a related vein, Sullivan (1977) accuses Kohlberg of adopting a
modified natural law theory in which the conception of justice rests on a
model in which justice is disinterested, abstract, formal, ideal, and
universal. In Rawls' 'original position', justice is derived from an
ideal state in which persons of equal status knowing nothing of their
position in a society of the future, must form a compact concerning the
rules which would govern that society. According to Rawls, the most logi-
cal decision on which to base their rules is the principle of justice as
fairness. Kohlberg concurs with this position. The determination of
morality, independent of contingent motives such as affect, represents
for Sullivan a blatant distortion of man in his totality. Man comes into

a world which is already in momentum and into a society which molds him

30
before he is able to choose. The liberal conception of man making choices
in an a-historical society is more ambiguous than universal. This man to
which they allude is highly intellectual, analytical, and rational but is
devoid of affect. He is a nonentity. If Kohlberg is claiming that higher
order moral decisions require this man in the role of an impartial judge,
his theory is cultually biased. Only in western culture could this pheno-
menon be widely present. Sullivan proclaims what he feels is a more uni-
versal ethic: instead of becoming more detached from one's own attachments,
one should see their full force and acknowledge their limitations. One
would then be able to realize the limitations of others' views but also
their worth in giving a fuller glimpse of the whole of moral truth.

In critizing Kohlberg, it must always be kept in mind that he is
espousing a theory of moral obligations and duties. He is consistently
reprimanded for failing to include affect, virtues, habits, conscience,
ultimate religious meaning etc. in his theory (Alston, 1971; Aron, 1977;
Friquegnon, in press; Peters, 1971, 1975). Kohlberg (Boyd & Kohlberg,
1973) realizes that no matter how thoroughly one analyzes the facts of
a moral conflict, it is not until a part of the self is added that an in—
ternal sense of moral ought emerges. While Kohlberg recognizes that more
than the rational is included in morality, he has chosen to limit his
studies to the deontological (rights and duties) and should not be criti-
cized for this. Criticism should be directed to those aspects of his
deontological theory which are inadequately or erroneously developed.
Criticism regarding the lack of an affective component is only merited
when the affective is conceived as a crucial part of the decision making
process (Sullivan, 1977) rather than as another aspect of morality which

could be incorporated without altering Kohlberg's basic premises (Alston,

31
1971).

Findings by Holstein (1976) and Gilligan (1977) indicate that not
only is Kohlberg's theory culturally biased, it may also show sex-relat-
ed biases. Holstein found that subjects do tend to progress in an in-
variant sequence from level to level but that stages within the levels
tend to be skipped as a function of sex. The bias lies in the subordi—
national of stage 3 (interpersonal concordance) to stage 4 (law and
order). WOmen's morality seems to be closely tied to the issues of re-
sponsibility and care (Gilligan, 1977). They are therefore more likely
to be found in stage 3. Males are often uncomfortable in such a role
and so have tended to more rapidly progress to stage 4. These findings
have in the past been interpreted in terms of the moral inferiority of
women. Holstein found that females tended to move from stage 2 to 3 and
then to 5; whereas males moved from 1 or 2 to 4 and then to 5. This in-
dicates that stages 3 and 4 may be parallel rather than sequential in
nature. In addition to the sex-related biases which contradict the uni-
versality assumptions, such data also challenges the Piagetian require-
ment that the stages be found in an invariant sequence.

Failure of Kohlberg's principled stages to resist regression poses
a severe test to its assumed foundations in Piagetian theory. Murphy and
Gilligan (1980) counter Gibbs assertion that moral development which is
based upon cognitive change stops in late adolescence. They hypothesize
instead a cognitive transformation at that time. Inspired by Perry's
(1970) finding that adults move from formalistic to contextual rela-
tivistic thought to making a commitment in a relativistic world, Murphy
and Gilligan investigated the possibility that such a formulation could

explain the regression findings in the Kohlberg data. Murphy and Gilligan

32
note that Piaget found that with maturation there was an increase in
relativity and contextual judgments leading to a more refined sense of
justice. These notions have never been incorporated into Kohlberg's
higher stage definitions. As an outgrowth of their data, Murphy and Gil-
ligan propose that the problem with the Kohlberg scoring manual is the
failure to recognize that there are two kinds of relativism, each stand-
ing in a different relationship to principled thought. The first is
Perry's position 4, relativistic multiplicity, in which the individual
recognizes that there may be many answers to a moral problem but that
he has no way of choosing among them. This corresponds to Kohlberg's
4B. The second form of relativism is Perry's position 5, contextual re—
lativism, in which the individual realizes that no answer is objectively
right for all contexts, but some answers and ways of thinking are better
than others. Position 5 implies the ethical responsibility compatible
with principled stage 5 thinking. It is however relativistic and context
dependent-characteristics Kohlberg has not allowed into his formalistic
system (Kohlberg, 1971). Kohlberg has confused contextual relativism for
regression in order to maintain a context free principle of justice as the
only basis for the highest moral thinking.

Murphy and Gilligan propose a two category typology for postconven-
tional thinking: Postconventional formal in which moral solutions are
derived from formal criteria such as social contract (stage 5) and justice
(stage 6); and Postconventional contextual in which social contract or
justice is seen as only one among several potential decision making guides
depending upon the context. In the postconventional contextual mode, the
individual bears personal responsibility for the consequences of his

choices in the same situation. Incorporation of these ideas into

33

Kohlberg's schema would allay the criticisms of many who reject Kohlberg's
theory because of its formalistic orientation. It would also solve the
problem of regression. Those adolescents who scored as principled but
then seeing shades of grey became less absolutist, would remain in the
postconventional level rather than regress to conventional 43 thinking.

Kohlberg's attempt to bridge the gap between the 'is' of empirically
observed behavior and the 'ought' of formalist ethical philosophy has in-
cited the criticism of those who feel that one can not go from develop-
mental facts to moral philosophy or that one can not assume that one prin-
ciple, justice, can serve as the universally highest principle of moral
choice. While Kohlberg (1971) realizes that his arguments are not com-
pletely successful, he feels that philosophical analysis should take into
account the empirical facts his moral investigations have produced. One
possible fallacy is that because he refuses to allow relativistic context-
ual viewpoints to be included in his postconventional stages, he has eli-
minated the possibility that developmentally something other than justice
could emerge as an advanced basis for moral judgment. His insistence upon
the rational as the primary mode of judgment limits his view of Sullivan's
universal ethic (1977) but it does give him a system through which he can
progressively arrive at a most adaptive moral judgment. Kohlberg claims
that justice is the highest principle because it is the only principle
for solving moral conflicts of obligation.which men would want to adopt
in all situations (1971). Kohlberg maintains that denial of justice as
the highest principle is denial of a formal deontologial concept of mor-
ality rather than an assertion that another principle would be better.
His claim that the higher, more differentiated, and integrated stages are
more morally adequate and therefore parallel to rational philosophically

generated principles, is questionable given indications that his stages

34
are neither universal nor sequentially invariant. His assertion that
stage 6 subjects are better able to consistently make moral judgments
may be true because the principle of justice does provide a guide for
their behavior. But the ability to resolve all conflicts does not neces-
sarily make stage 6 morally superior (Friquegnon, in press). Neither
does that ability mean that their judgments are more moral than those of
Murphy and Gilligan's (1980) postconventional contextual subjects who
were also capable of meta-ethical reflective thinking but chose not to
accept one principle as the determiner of their moral judgments. Aron
(1977) questions Kohlberg's statement that higher stages are better be-
cause they represent a more differentiation and integration are so nar—
row that their standing as independent criteria are questionable. Why,
asks Aron, is it more rational to consider the intrinsic value of life
or the social contract rather than another criterion before making a
judgment. Why should higher stage differentiation be that of the sepa-
ration of life from property or obligation from sentiment. This may be
a bogus criticism for both the social contract and property require life
to have any meaning and as such would be subordinate to it in value. If
Anon is correct, his doubts may be significant for it is the criteria of
differentiation and integration on both sides of the 'is-ought' gap which
form the bridge between the developmental facts and the philosophical
oughts. Friquegnon (in press) questions the use of justice rather than
Hume's idea of benevolence as the highest principle. Kohlberg (1971)
counters that concern for the welfare of others is required before one can
experience a moral conflict. But it is not a means of solving conflict.
It is possible as Simpson (1974) suggests that stage 6 thinkers are not

really as autonomous and culture free as Kohlberg maintains. They may

35
instead be responding to a subculture of intellectual elites rather than
to the cultural majority. This would coincide with the criticism that
stage 6 subjects are just more verbally facile (Friquegnon, in press;
Simpson, 1974). It is true that principled subjects are better educated
than conventional ones(Kohlberg, 1973a), but the scoring system requires
a conceptual match between the subjects statements and a written example.
It is unlikely that the subject's verbal facility would cause a great
deal of scorer bias (Scoring Manual, 1976).

Kurtines and Grief (1974) are the primary source of criticism of
Kohlberg's measurement techniques. The first part of their article criti—
cizes the procedure and tools used in administering moral judgment inter-
views. Most of their arguments are outdated and do not apply to the re-
vised scoring manuals (Scoring Manual, 1975, 1976). In the 1976 edition,
for example, there are only two interview forms each composed of three
dilemmas. This relieved the time problem of administering nine dilemmas
and encourages investigators to use the entire interview. The scoring
system is considerably easier than the 30 moral aspect system they des-
cribe. The investigator groups the subject's responses into six moral
issues and then compares them to the examples in the Scoring Manual in
order to obtain a stage score on each issue. The one major problem is
scorer bias. This can not be avoided in the process of comparing the
subject's responses to those in the manual. It is however reduced by the
criterion of strict correspondence between the subject and the manual.

If the subject's response is at all ambiguous, it receives a lesser
weight in the scoring process. The final score is not a single stage

but a moral maturity score which indicates the extent to which the

36
subject's responses fit a single stage or overlap with adjoining stages.
The criticism that the main characters are all male, no longer applies.
If in a given study, half of the subjects are given each of the two forms,
the number of male and female characters will be approximately the same.
The observation that the scale is prone to subject-interviewer interaction
biases can not be helped except by having more than one interviewer per
subject. More damaging criticisms involve the reliability and validity
of the scales. According to Kurtiness and Grief there were at the time
of writing no reported reliability estimates of the scale. The reader
is encouraged to turn to the method section for a description of reli—
ability studies on the Kohlberg scoring system. There is minimal data
concerning the predictive validity from moral stage to behavior, but it
is not sufficient to claim a strong judgment-action correlation (Aron,
1977). There is also no clear evidence supporting the assumption of
sequential invariance and as shown earlier there is evidence that this
assumption may be incorrect.

The above criticisms of Kohlberg's theory and research influence the
possible interpretations of data derived from the current research. If
crisis promotes moral development toward Kohlberg's postconventional st-
ages, the effects might be enhanced or clarified by incorporation of con-
textually relative thinkers into the postconventional level. It could be
that subjects who choose to use justice as a criterion in responding to
Kohlberg's dilemmas, thought of justice as only one of a number of cri-
teria which could be chosen depending upon the context. Those who used
another meta-ethical criterion would not be distinguished in the data
from lower level thinkers. It would be interesting to know whether or

not a crisis diminished one's certainty that any one principle could be

37
relied upon in decision making. The question of whether justice is nece-
ssarily the highest 'ought' may mean that subjects who had grown morally
through their crisis experiences but had either chosen a different cri-
terion or a contextually relative one would not be discovered by their
responses to the dilemmas. The findings that stages 3 and 4 may be par-
allel rather than sequential could alter the interpretation of any sex
related differences in moral growth. Clarification of Kohlberg's theory
as solely relating to questions of rights and duties restricts the tena
dency to assume that a higher stage necessitates more moral behavior. In
90 doing it explains any glaring discrepancies between a subject's life
story and his moral maturity score. The failure to prove universality
restricts the findings of the present study to western societies. Fail-
ure of the regression criterion and the consequent possibility of two
phases of moral thought--the standard and the existential--help to clari-
fy the past findings of the necessity of a college education among prin-
cipled thinkers. College may be a main road to abstract reflective think-
ing. It may also be important in alerting individuals to the relativity
of values. As such college may also be highly associated with contextual
relativistic thought. The importance of considering the criticisms of
Kohlberg's system is evident from the above possible implications those
criticisms may have in understanding the data resulting from the present
research.

Hypotheses

 

With the possibility of adult development reopened, the question
arises as to whether the experience of a crisis in adulthood constitutes
a source of sufficient disequilibrium to motivate an individual to progress

to the principled level of moral reasoning. For the purpose of the

38
present research a crisis must have affected a central component of an
individual's life structure. That is, the pattern of roles and meanings
which provide stability for his life must have been seriously threatened.
The crisis must have been of sufficient magnitude that in order to inter-
nally resolve its implications for his life the subject would have to
risk the possibility of a moderate to drastic change in his life style.
A crisis subject in the present study need not have taken that risk. It
was hypothesized that a crisis of that degree would particularly for col-
lege educated subjects, provide the impetus for the significant identity
questioning required by Kohlberg as a prerequisite for principled morality.
The crisis experience would thus lead to more principled thinking than
in subjects without such an experience. It was also hypothesized that
the crisis would encourage self reflection in other areas of the subjects'
lives thus leading to more achieved identities in crisis subjects. In
addition to the major hypotheses it was predicted that the self reflec-
tion generated by the crisis would encourage the confrontation of oppo-
sites described by Levinson et a1. (1978) as so central to the tasks of
the 'Mid-Life Transition'. In particular, it was hypothesized that sub-
jects who had experienced a crisis would be more androgynous in their
self perceptions as a result of incorporation of their contrasexual char-
acteristics. It was hypothesized that incorporation of the separateness
pole of the Attachment/Separation dimension would be evident in a higher
degree of intrinsic religiosity among crisis subjects. To determine if
the effects of crisis were specific to the middle adult years young adult
crisis and young adult noncrisis control groups were included. It was
predicted that the growth producing effects of a crisis would be greater

for the more internally looking middle aged adult than for the more

39
externally directed young adult. It also was hypothesized that in some
cases the accumulation of life experiences by middle age would substi-
tute for the necessity of college as a prerequisite for principled moral
thought. For most subjects, however, this educational requirement

would be necessary.

CHAPTER 2

METHOD

Subjects

Subjects were obtained through newspaper ads, personal referrals,
and organizations such as Parents Without Partners in the Fargo, North
Dakota, Moorhead, Minnesota, community. The newspaper ads asked for
individuals in the 25 to 35 and 40 to 55 year age ranges who would
take part in research on middle age crisis. Each subject was paid ten
dollars fur participating. Subjects were divided into young adult and
middle age adult crisis and noncrisis groups following an oral inter-
view centering on the subjects' major life events and the ways they
perceived and dealt with those events. Crisis was defined in accord-
ance with the definition given in the hypotheses section above. A
total of 99 subjects were interviewed and tested with a final sample of
80 being used in the research. Some of the 19 extra subjects were tested
only because a commitment had been made to see them, even though by the
time of the interview they were no longer needed. Others whose crisis/
noncrisis status was unclear from the initial telephone contact were
tested only to find that they did not meet the criteria of the group
they were intended to fill. Middle aged noncrisis college educated men
were difficult to find. By this time in their lives many men of this
age and education are currently in or have been through a time of

significant questioning and evaluation of their lives. As noted above,

40

41
subjects were divided into four experimental groups. Each was composed
of 10 males and 10 females. The four groups and the mean ages of the
subjects within the groups were as follows: (A) Young adult crisis, ages
25-35, mean age 29.9 years; (B) Middle age crisis, ages 40-58, mean age
48.9 years; (C) Young adult noncrisis, ages 26-34, mean age 29.9 years;
(D) Middle age noncrisis, ages 41-59, mean age 47.6 years. Within each
sex subgroup, half of the subjects had completed a four year college
degree and half had not. (See Figure 1 for clarification of the re-
search design.)

Instruments

 

Each subject completed a modified version of the Life-Change Scale
(Rahe, McKean, and Arthur, 1967); the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974);
Hoge's (1972) Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale; an oral interview
concerning the subject's life history with particular emphasis upon adult
crisis events; an oral interview based upon a modified version of Marcia's
(undated manuscript) oral and written Ego Identity Status questionnaires;
and Kohlberg's standard moral dilemmas (Kohlberg et al., 1975, 1976).

The Life Change Scale was originally intended as a measure of the
subjects' experience of crises in their lives. The scale (see Appendix
A, Life Events) lists a number of significant life changes and is scaled
according to the degree of adjustment required in coping with each change.
The scale was developed as a means of predicting illness for military men
as a function of the accumulated experience of life changes in the pre-
vious year. The items listed had to be slightly modified to be appli-
cable to the current subject population. In addition to noting which
events had happened since age 20 for the young adults and since age 35

for the middle age adults, the subjects were asked to rate on a 1 to 7

42
scale the extent of the impact they perceived the events to have had
on their lives. Each subject was to receive a score composed of the
sum of each of the impact scores multiplied by its respective adjust-
ment score. The original intent was to place subjects in crisis or
noncrisis groups as a function of their placement above or below the
median of all the scores in their age/sex/education group. The Life
Change Scale was rapidly seen to be inadequate for the present study.
Subjects had experienced personal tragedies, frequently in health re-
lated areas which were not even tapped by the scale. The subjects' 1
to 7 impact score did not always coincide with the life story that un-
folded in the course of the interview. In testing the subjects it
quickly became apparent that they could be quite easily differentiated
in terms of whether or not they had experienced a crisis event which
touched and had the possibility of transforming a central aspect of
their lives. (See hypotheses for a full definition of a crisis). The
subjects continued to fill out the Life Change Scale but it became a
springboard for discussion of the subjects' life events rather than the
primary means of assigning them to crisis or noncrisis groups. The ex-
perimenter would ask the subjects to give a brief overview of their
lives. Then she would ask for an elaboration of events marked on the
scale. The experimenter would often probe to determine the subjects'
evaluation of how the crisis events had affected their feelings and
attitudes about life. The goal of the questioning was to determine
whether or not the event had had a major impact upon a central compon-
ent of the life structures such that the subjects' previously stable
roles and assumptions had been seriously challenged. The subjects

were also encouraged to discuss events not covered by the Life Change

43

 

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES:

DEPENDENT VARIABLES:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CRISIS/NONCRISIS AGE SEX EDUCATION ALL SUBJECTS RECEIVED:
(determined by
interview)
NODC011983 l. Life-Change
Female (5) Scale (Rahe et
at. 1967)
Young (10) College
(5) 2. Bem Sex Role
Adult Inventory
Noncollege (Bem, 1974)
(20) (5)
Male 3. Intrinsic
College Religious
(10) (5) Motivation
CRISIS Scale (Hoge,
(40)* NOncollege 1972)
Female (5)
Middle 4. Ego Identity
(10) 0011389 Status Ques-
Age (5) tionnaire
(Marcia, undated
Adult Noncollege manuscript)
Male (5)
(20) 5. Kohlberg's Standard
(10) College Moral Dilemmas
(5) (Kohlberg et al.,
1975, 1976)
NOncollege
Female (5)
Young
(10) College
Adult (5)
(20) Noncollege
Male (5)
(10) College
(5)
NONCRISIS
(40) Noncollege
Middle Female (5)
Age (10) College
(5)
Adult
Noncollege
(20) Male (5)
(10) College
* Number of subjects (5)

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1. Research Design

44
Scale. The experimenter used the subjects' elaboration of their life
events and the emotional intensity of the description of the impact of
those events to place subjects into crisis or noncrisis categories.
Sixteen subjects representing each of the crisis/age/sex/education sub-
groups were evaluated independently by an second judge to determine the
inter-rater reliability of the crisis versus noncrisis placement. An
inter-rater reliabilityof 100% was found.

The Bem Sex Role Inventory was used to determine the subjects' self
perceptions of their own androgyny (See Appendix A, Self Description).
The Inventory is composed of 20 masculine, 20 feminine, and 20 neutral
traits. The subjects used a 7-point scale to indicate the extent to
which the personality characteristics described themselves. The scale
ranges from 1 (never or almost never true) to 7 (always or almost always
true). Four initial scores are calculated from the subject's responses:
masculinity, femininity, social desirability, and an androgyny dif-
ference score. Masculinity and femininity are the mean ratings on all
the masculine and feminine items respectively. The higher the score
the more masculine or feminine is the subject's self perceptions. The
neutral items allowed for a measure of the extent to which a subject
described himself in a socially desirable manner with regard to non sex-
typed characteristics. The social desirability score was determined by
reversing all the scores on the unfavorable items and then calculating
the mean endorsement score across the 20 items. The higher the score the
more the person tends to describe himself in a socially desirable manner.
In Bem's (1974) earlier research, androgyny was defined as the difference
between the subject's masculinity and femininity scores. The closer the

difference score to zero, the more androgynous the subject was considered

45
to be. More recent research by Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp (1975) has
updated the definition of androgyny to include only those subjects who
are above the median in both masculinity and femininity. Bem (1977) and
Bem et a1. (1976) agree with this revised conceptualization. This change
was made because of findings indicating that high masculine-high feminine
subjects score higher than low masculine—low feminine subjects on measures
of self esteem. In the revised classifications, high sex-typed individuals
are those who score high on either masculinity or femininity but not on
both. Subjects with low masculinity and low femininity are designated as
undifferentiated. Test-retest reliability for Bem's Inventory (1974) has
been found to be £_8 .90 for masculinity; £_= .90 for femininity; £_= .93
for an originally defined androgyny difference; and £_- .89 for social
desirability .

Hoge's Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (See Appendix A Religious
Views) is a lO—item evaluation of the extent to which an individual is
intrinsically or extrinsically motivated with respect to their religious
beliefs. An individual who is more intrinsically motivated would see
religion as an ultimate whereas an extrinsically motivated individual
would see religion in more instrumental terms. Subjects responded to a
4-point Likert Scale (1: strongly agree; 2: agree; 4: disagree; : strongly
disagree). Three items (2, 6, and 9) are extrinsic. Scoring of these
items is reversed so that in the final average the lower the score, the
more intrinsic the subject's motivation. Hoge's scale has been found to
have a Kuder Richardson formula 20 reliability coefficient of .901 (Hoge,

1972).

46

Marcia has developed oral and written evaluative techniques for deter—
mining an individual's Ego Identity Status. For the present study it
seemed most appropriate to incorporate the standard oral interview as
an extension of the discussion of the individual's life crisis. In
addition questions from the written form were asked orally if they were
needed to clarify the subjects' positions in Marcia's Ego Identity
Statuses (See Appendix A). Each subject's Ego Identity Status was given
a 0-6 designation as a function of whether their responses exhibited (0)
identity diffusion; (1) a combination of diffusion and foreclosure; (2)
foreclosure; (3) a combination of foreclosure and moratorium; (4) mora-
torium; (5) a combination of moratorium and achieved; or (6) achieved.
The 6-point scale was used instead of the 4-point scale used by Marcia
because many adult subjects tended to fall between the four main statuses.
A subject's status is the average of his Ego Identity Status designations
in the three areas of politics, religion, and occupation. Marcia's sen-
tence completion written form has a total score reliability of .73. The
interview method has an average percentage of agreement reliability among
three judges of 75% (Marcia, 1966). Using the combined written and oral
forms and the 6-point scale, the present study found an inter-rater reli-
ability of £_= .90 for 16 subjects representing each of the crisis/sex/
age/education subgroups. It should be noted that a subject's score on
Marcia's scale differs from the crisis/noncrisis classification because
Marcia taps only the areas of religion, politics, and occupation all of
which were rarely areas of significant crises for adult subjects. It is
possible that a crisis in one of these three areas would affect the Ego
Identity Status designation. Theoretically there would not need to be

a positive correlation between any particular status and a crisis in

47

these areas. An individual experiencing a crisis for example in his
occupation could be in a foreclosure, moratorium, or achieved status.
He need only at some time to have made a substantial enough commitment
to his occupation that it became a central element of his life struc-
ture. He need not have questioned his particular choice of occupation.
Even if he made a commitment at one time, at time of testing he may be
in a period of questioning that commitment. Thus, crisis in a given
area does not determine the presence or absence of commitment or ques-
tioning in that area and therefore does not predetermine the subject's
Ego Identity Status.

To determine the subjects' stages of moral reasoning, forms A and
B of Kohlberg's standard moral dilemmas were given. Approximately half
of the subjects responded to each form. Each protocol was transcribed
and later scored by the experimenter without knowledge of the subject's
crisis, age, sex, or educational classification. The process of admini-
stering the dilemmas consists of reading stories in which moral dilemmas
are posed and then asking the subjects questions about what the characters
should do. The questions probe for the subjects' reasoning regarding
the moral issues of life, law, punishment, conscience, affiliation, and
contract. Each subject's position in Kohlberg's stages was represented
by two scores: (A) a Moral Maturity Score from 100 to 500; and (B) a
Global Score from 1 to 5. A Moral Maturity Score of 200 indicates a
pure stage 2; a score of 300 represents a pure stage 3; a score of 339
indicates a protocol between stages 3 and 4 with slightly more stage 3
responses. A Global score represents the stage containing the majority
of responses and any stage representing at least 25% of the subject's

entries. A score of 4(5) means that the majority of the responses were

48

in stage 4 but at least 25% were in stage 5. The highest score a sub-
ject could obtain was a stage 5 because Kohlberg et a1. (1975, 1976) in
developing the Scoring Manual did not have enough stage 6 subjects to
have the number of examples necessary for the manual. Kohlberg and Colby
(1978) report an inter-rater reliability of £_= .88 for scoring the moral
dilemmas. The Harvard Center for Moral Education (1979) reports a test—
retest reliability on Form A of .96 for Rater l and .99 for Rater 2. On
Form B for Rater 2 a reliability of .97 is reported.
Procedure

Each subject was interviewed and tested individually at a quiet
location of their choice. After signing a consent form (Appendix A),
each subject completed the Life Change Scale, noting the impact of the
changes; the Bem Sex Role Inventory; and the Intrinsic Religious Mbti-
vation Scale in that order. When those were completed, the experimenter
asked for an extensive elaboration of the items marked on the Life Change
Scale and any other significant events in the subjects' adult lives which
the scale had not included. The experimenter then conducted the Ego
Identity Status interview and gave Kohlberg's moral dilemmas. All inter-
view data were taped on a Sony cassette recorder. The entire testing
session lasted between two and five hours depending on the length of

the subjects' report of their life experiences.

CHAPTER 3

RESULTS

A multivariate analysis of variance (Finn, 1973) was performed using
as independent variables the subject characteristics of crisis versus non-
crisis, young adult versus middle age adult, male versus female, and col-
lege (completion of a four year degree) versus noncollege (no four year
degree). The dependent variables were Bem's masculinity, femininity,
androgyny difference score, and social desirability; Hoge's Intrinsic
Religiosity score; Marcia's Ego Identity Status; and the Kohlberg Moral
Maturity Score (see Appendix B, Tables 1, 2A, 2B, 3).

There was a significant main effect of crisis (F_= 3.57, g£_= 7/58,
pg<.003). A significant univariate effect of Ego Identity (F.= 22.28,
df_= 1/64, p}<.001) accounted for most of the crisis effect. The mean
Ego Identity Status score for crisis subjects was 4.19 and for noncrisis
subjects was 2.91, indicating as hypothesized, that subjects with higher
Ego Identity Statuses were more likely to have experienced a crisis in
their adult lives. It also means that noncrisis subjects on the average
had not experienced a moratorium questioning period.

There was a significant main effect for sex (F_= 2.70, df_= 7/58,
pg<.02). This was due primarily to significant univariate effects of
masculinity and femininity (F_= 8.03, df_= 1/64, pg<.006; and F_= 4.77,
df_= 1/64, pg<.03, respectively). For males the mean masculinity score

was 5.00 and mean femininity score was 4.56. For females the mean

49

50
masculinity score was 4.49 and the mean femininity score was 4.81. That
is, for males the masculinity score was higher and for females the fem-
ininity score was higher thus precipitating the main sex effect.

In light of Kohlberg's (1973) finding that only college students
attained principled morality, it should be noted that the near signifi—
cant effect of educational level (§_= 2.08, d£_= 7/58, pg<.06) was due
primarily to a significant univariate effect of the Moral Maturity Scores
(§.= 7.81, d£_= 1/64, 25:.007). The Mean Moral Maturity Score for col-
lege subjects was 349.68 and for noncollege subjects was 305. That is,
subjects with a college degree were likely to have a higher Moral Maturity
Score than subjects without a degree.

Analysis of variance using the Moral Maturity Scores does not make a
distinction between subjects' positions in two stages within a moral
level and in two stages which span moral levels. For the present research
it was important to know whether or not subjects in different experimental
groups are in different levels (i.e. stage 4, conventional morality, ver-
sus stage 5, principled morality) rather than just differing within a~level
(i.e. stage 3, conventional morality, versus stage 4, conventional mor—
ality). To overcome this difficulty Chi Square analyses using the fre-
quency of principled versus nonprincipled thinking were run to determine
if moral reasoning differed as a function of the subject variables of
crisis, age, sex, and education (see Appendix B, Table 4). Global scores
of 1 to 4 were considered nonprincipled.Globa1 scores<fi55 were considered
principled. In addition, Global scores of 3 and 4 which had principled
thinking in at least 25% of the responses were considered principled.
These subjects were included because of Gibbs' (1977) suggestion that

those who are capable of principled thought may not use it on a day to

51
day basis but only when pressed with issues threatening the sanctity of
life. At other times they would use conventional morality. A score of
25% principled thought was considered to be sufficient evidence of the
presence of the capacity for this level of moral thought. Holstein's
(1976) data indicating that stages 3 and 4 may be parallel rather than
sequential required that both 3 and 4 be considered as conventional
stages that could accompany stage 5 thought.

Chi Square analyses using the Yates correction (Hays, 1963) for
small cell frequencies, found as predicted in the hypotheses, that both
subjects' educational levels and experience of crises in adulthood had
a significant relationship to their positions in principled versus none
principled stages. The level of education and level of moral reasoning
were related at the 2; .005 level with £2 = 10.01, it; = 1. 0f the 15
principled subjects only 2 had not completed a college degree. The ex-
perience of crisis was related to the level of moral reasoning at the
p<.05 level with 52 = 4.10. Of the 15 principled subjects only four
had not experienced a crisis. Seven of the eight subjects with a strict-
ly principled score of 5 had experienced a crisis and had completed a
college degree.

Chi Square analyses were also performed on the scores obtained by
dividing the masculinity and femininity scores at their medians in order
to obtain sex-typed, androgynous, and undifferentiated subject designa-
tions (see Appendix B, Table 5). The median for masculinity was 4.7.
This was moved to 4.69 on inspection because of multiple scores at the
median and the desire to make the high and low ends of the scale more

equal. The median score for femininity was 4.69. Once the medians were

52
determined the scores were divided into high and low masculinity and
femininity. As noted earlier, subjects with high masculinity (above
the median) and low femininity scores were classified as masculine sex-
typed. Nineteen subjects were in this category. Subjects with high
femininity and low masculinity were feminine sex-typed. Seventeen
subjects fit this description. Twenty-two subjects had both high
masculinity and femininity. These were called androgynous. The twenty-
two subjects with scores below the median on both masculinity and femin-
inity were designated as undifferentiated. Each of the independent sub-
ject variables was analyzed for differences among the sex-typed, andro-
gynous and undifferentiated subjects. As would be expected, a significant
sex effect was found (12 = 10.05, g; = 3, p_<.025). The effect was due
to the finding of 13 masculine sex-typed males versus six females; and
three feminine sex-typed males versus 14 females. No other significant
Chi Squares were found.

In light of Kohlberg's findings (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969) of more
females in stage 3 and males in stage 4 of the conventional moral level,
a contingency table was determined for the number of men versus women
whose major Global score was in stage 3 or 4 (see Appendix B, Table 6).
No sex differences were found. There was an equal number of men and women
in both stages. There were 22 men and 22 women in stage 3 and seven of
each in stage 4.

Correlational analyses were performed upon the dependent variables
of masculinity, femininity, androgyny difference score, Intrinsic Relig-
iosity, Ego Identity Status, and the Moral Maturity Score (see Appendix
B, Table 7). The correlation between Moral Maturity Scores and Ego

Identity Statuses was .417, Pi = 78, which is significant at the p_< .001

53
level. This finding is clarified by looking at the relationship between
Ego Identity and the Global scores. Seven of the eight strictly prin-
cipled thinkers (Global score of 5) had experienced moratorium Ego Idenr
tity. TWelve of the 15 principled subjects with at least 25% principled
thinking had experienced moratorium. These data substantiate Kohlberg's
(1973a) claim that a moratorium period is a prerequisite for principled
moral reasoning. There was also a significant correlation between in-
trinsic Religiosity and social desirability (g = -.3l3, p_<.01). That
is the higher the social desirability score, the more intrinsic the sub-
jects' responses on the Intrinsic Religiosity measure. The lower the
Intrinsic Religiosity score, the more it represents intrinsic religious
motivation. The correlation between Intrinsic Religiosity and Ego Iden-
tity Status was also significant (3 = -.278, p<.02). This means that
the higher the Ego Identity Status, the more intrinsic the religious

motivation.

CHAPTER 4

DISCUSSION

The main results of the present study confirm the hypotheses that
crisis is significantly related to a more achieved, morally principled
identity but failed to find the hypothesized relationship between crisis
and one's androgyny or Intrinsic Religious Motivation. Contrary to pre-
dictions, a subject's age was not an important differentiating factor.
However a college education, even among middle age subjects, was found
to be practically a prerequisite for principled moral thought.

Crisis Effects

 

Jung's (1960) and Erikson's (1976) belief that crises provide a
crucial opportunity for widening conscious awareness of one's attributes
and increasing one's potentials is given substance by the findings of
significant relationships between crises and one's Ego Identity Status
and level of moral reasoning. Jung says that in order to penetrate pro-
blems one must not resist the ways that lead through darkness and obscurity.
Nbr must one wish to find unequivocal results when one emerges from the
darkness. In other words, to face a crisis and learn from it one must
risk experiencing Marcia's moratorium phase or Perry's relativism in
which for a time one feels afloat in a sea of unknowns freely and perhaps
painfully questioning personal and conventional assumptions. If one
emerges from the darkness it is likely to be in a state where relativism

continues but the necessity of commitment with openness to change is

54

55
affirmed. Murphy and Gilligan's postconventional contextual and formal
subjects could both fit in here as long as the formal subjects remained
open to the possibility of discovering a more inclusive guiding prins
ciple. Only six of 40 crisis subjects had not experienced Marcia's mora-
torium status. This means that in addition to the precise area of their
personal crises, most of the subjects had dared to question in the re-
ligious, political, and occupational areas tapped by the Marcia ques-
tionnaire. Listening to the life events of the crisis and noncrisis sub-
jects, the experimenter found many cases where an objectively similar
event in the lives of noncrisis and crisis subjects had not been fully
experienced by the noncrisis subjects to the point of causing real inner
questioning. An example of such an event would be the difference between
a noncrisis subject's resigning himself to his occupational dissatis-
factions in middle age instead of dealing with the implications of those
dissatisfactions for how he has lived or will continue to live the re-
maining part of his occupational life.

It may be that subjects who experience a crisis are not so different
in their life events but in the extent to which they risk being vulner-
able to the changes evaluation of those events might bring. It is also
the case that while events may be the same, their importance varies from
individual to individual thus changing their motivational power for ge—
nerating change. Crises occurring at the age 30 and 40 transitions may
often be events which one chooses to make into a crisis rather than
events which are entirely out of the control of the individual. That is,
a crisis such as a divorce or change of job might not occur if the indi-
vidual chose to ignore the discrepancies the marriage or job required

between his inner self and his life style. Levinson (1978) claims that

56
a positive outgrowth of a transition phase should be a better fit between
the life structure and the self. It may also be that some of the crises
are brought upon themselves by the life styles crisis subjects chose
consciously or unconsciously to live. For example, one principled crisis
subject had to deal with the implications of raising biracial children in
a conservative community; another had to deal with the frustrations and
sorrows brought on by marrying an unreformed convict. The latter subject
was a social worker who must have been clearly aware of the risks her
spouse's background meant she might be taking. When an individual has
a crisis imposed upon him from the outside he may or may not be ready
to learn from that experience. Others may feel like the crises have
originated outside and independent of themselves, when in reality they
have played a major role in the crises formations. A 45-year-old female
subject whose first husband became an alcoholic after three years of
marriage, whose second husband had an extended affair after 20 years of
marriage, and whose third husband died after six months of marriage,
viewed herself as the victim of a tragic series of events. She totally
removed herself from any possible role in the dissolution of the first
two marriages. Without acknowledging that there may have been something
in her manner of relating to her first two husbands that led to their
particular destructive means of coping, the possibility of her increasing
her awareness of aspects of herself and thus growing through crisis, is
probably minimal. In contrast to the struggles of many of the crisis
subjects, the noncrisis subjects' average Ego Identity Status indicated
that they had not yet experienced the questioning period of moratorium.
Such a distinction suggests that within the crisis subjects there may be
a subgroup of individuals who chose to live a life in which they period-

ically challenge their beliefs and ways of living and by so doing

57
increase their knowledge of their potentials, limitations, and values.
Affirmation of one's self in the face of one's limitations may be a factor
which encourages respect for the rights of others who share the imper-
fections of being human. Such respect is the basis of principled mor-
ality.

Perry's (1970) findings that some college students preferred to
actively deny the urge to progress and reorganize their intellectual
structures for dealing with the relativism of knowledge and values adds
credence to the possibility that noncrisis and crisis subjects, particu-
larly crisis subjects with principled moral reasoning, exemplified two
Very different ways of dealing with life's problems. Jung's (1960) work
with middle age patients found a similar resistance to change among cer-
tain individuals. Jung also found that those who in their forties chose
to retain their cherished convictions tended to grow increasingly rigid
especially in areas of morality to the point of fanaticism around age 50.
It was as though the possibility of endangering their principles made it
necessary to emphasize them more. The present experimenter found in a
number of her nonprincipled crisis subjects a sense of bitterness and
resolute acceptance of their lives which seemed to be replaced by a thought-
ful questioning attitude in principled subjects. It was as if going be-
yond the need to conform to conventional bases of moral decision making
released the principled subjects of the need to rigidly control and de-
fend their behavior. An example of a nonprincipled crisis subject's at-
titude is the 31-year-old male who summarized his life, "Definitely, I've
had a mighty fine life, no doubt about it". This was a man who claimed
to have been involved in motorcycle gangs, hangings, rape, murder, gun-

fights, and now due to an automobile accident was paralyzed, relying on

58
an elaborate CB radio system to make contact with his friends.

As noted earlier, Kohlberg (1973a) claimed that movement to prin-
cipled morality is enhanced by (A) experience of a personal period of
moratorium and identity questioning brought on by immersion in a rela—
tivistic college atmosphere, and by (B) anticipated and later sustained
irreversible responsibility for the welfare of others. The significant
correlation between Ego Identity Status and moral development (Moral
Maturity Scores) reflects this relationship and extends Podd's findings
(reported in Kohlberg & Gilligan, 1971) with college students to include
young and middle age adults. The higher one's Ego Identity Status, the
higher one's Moral Maturity Score. All but one of the eight subjects
with a Global morality score of 5 (i.e. the majority of responses were
principled) had experienced a moratorium period. The significant Chi
Square between crisis and principled moral thought also reflects this
relationship. It must be remembered that for the purposes of the pre-
sent study, a subject was placed in the crisis category only if internal
resolution of his crisis necessitated a re-evaluation of a central por—
tion of his life structure. A crisis of this sort would for many sub—
jects satisfy Kohlberg's prerequisite of a moratorium phase. It is pos-
sible however for a subject to have experienced a crisis and have attained
an achieved identity without being a principled moral thinker. Levinson
(1978) found that if a man's early adulthood is dominated by poverty and
the inability to find a reasonably satisfactory place in society, his
adult development will be stunted. Such was the case of a woman in the
present study who clearly placed as a 6 (achieved) in Marcia's Ego Identi-
ty Statuses, but only obtained a Moral Maturity Score of 204 and a Global

score of 3(1). Her life circumstances including poverty, divorce, rape,

59
and delinquent children allowed her no time for meta—ethical reflection.
Her lack of even a high school education may have left her without the
intellectual tools for abstract reasoning in the principled domain.

The crises experienced by the principled crisis subjects were either
interpersonal in nature or what was termed an emotional crisis. The
latter involved extensive inner questioning and turmoil. The former for
the most part met Kohlberg's criterion for principled thought of exper-
iencing an anticipated or later irreversible responsibility for the wel-
fare of others. An example of a frequent interpersonal concern would be
the effect of one's divorce upon others. It is interesting to note that
none of the principled subjects experienced solely a health related crisis
whereas health crises did occur among the nonprincipled subjects. This
may have just been chance but it does fit in with the pattern that there
may be personality differences in the willingness to risk moratorium, at
the basis of the crisis relationship to principled thought. Health cri—
ses for the most part are out of one's control and do not differentiate
individuals along the dimension of willingness to risk a basic life style
change.

The rationale behind the hypothesis that crisis would lead to prin-
cipled thinking was the assumption that crisis would encourage one to
reflect upon the basic values guiding one's life. In this vein, it is
important to note that the three subjects who were included in the crisis
groups for experiencing emotional crises were found upon analysis of their
Kohlberg dilemmas to all be principled thinkers. The extensive internal
questioning of these subjects is precisely the aspect of the crisis ex-

perience that was hypothesized to lead to principled thought.

60

Education Effects

 

The significant Chi Square relationship between educational level
and principled versus nonprincipled thought suggests that attainment of
principled morality is highly dependent upon a college education. This
finding replicates Kohlberg's findings that a college education is a
prerequisite for principled thought but it does not specify what aspect
of a college education is necessary. Is it the experience of the diver-
sity of viewpoints which encourages one to question one's own? Is it
the training in abstract reasoning which allows one to think in terms of
principles? Is it the period set aside for individual development which
gives the time necessary for self reflection? Is it the economic secu-
rity after college which frees one from an overwhelming preoccupation
with basic life necessities even during a crisis and therefore gives
more time for reflection. The role of the economic derivatives of the
college degree as well as the need for abstract reasoning is exemplified
by the identity achieved woman described above whose impoverished condi-
tions and lack of training in abstract thought may have prohibited her
attainment of principled thought. The findings of (A) a significant
positive correlation between one's Ego Identity Status and Moral Maturity
Score and (B) that all but one of the Global score of 5 principled sub-
jects had experienced moratorium, supports the hypothesis that it is the
questioning of one's values in the college environment that influences
the attainment of principled morality. It does not however rule out the
other possibilities. Whatever the vital component, the need for a college
education fuels the criticism that Kohlberg's stage theory is elitist
(Simpson, 1974; Fraenkel, 1976; Friquegnon, in press). It may in fact be

that for most people the college experience is necessary to bridge the

61
gap between what Gibbs (1979) terms the naturalistic preconventional
and conventional levels of moral thought and the existential self re-
flective postconventional level of adult reasoning.

Sex and Age Effects

 

The only sex related findings were the significant relationship
between a subject's sex and their evaluation of their own masculine and
feminine traits and the relationship between their sex and their place-
ment in the highly sex-typed categories. In contrast to Kohlberg and
Kramer's (1969) findings, the results of the present study showed no
differences in the frequency of men and women in stages 3 and 4 conven-
tional morality. In fact, both men and women were more likely to be in
stage 3 than in stage 4. A possible explanation for this discrepancy with
the Kohlberg and Kramer findings is the strong familial orientation in
the cultural values of the Fargo-Moorhead community. Such an orientation
would foster stage 3 (interpersonal concordance) reasoning in response
to the moral dilemmas. There was no relationship between a subject's
placement in the androgynous category and their positiOn in the crisis,
age, sex, and educational groups. The failure to find the predicted in-
crease in androgyny with age may be because the incorporation of opposite
sex characteristics that frequently begins in middle adulthood had not
progresses sufficiently to be statistically significant. It may take
until old age to find the increase in androgyny noted by Neugarten
(1968). It may also be as Neugarten (1964) reported, that the most
effective measures for uncovering differences between older and younger
adults are projective. She claims that the ability of adults to display
learned behavior long after internal changes have occurred frequently

results in failure of objective measures to uncover group differences.

62
The failure to find age differences in any of the variables may also be
reflective of the times in which the young and middle age adults were
growing up. It could be that while the individuation process of Jung
(1960) and Levinson's (1978) middle age subjects did indeed peak in the
second half of life, individuation for young adults in the mid-1970's
may for some reason begin at an earlier stage of development. Levinson's
description of the 30—year transition closely parallels that occurring
around age 40. Both are times of reappraisal of a previous life struc-
ture and creation of a more satisfactory structure for the future. Sixty-
two percent of Levinson's subjects went through a moderate or severe cri-
sis at the age 30 transition. Levinson notes that there is no firm bas-
is for comparing the difficulties of.this transition for different gen-
erations. There may however be a difference between today's young and
middle age adults in the tools available for coping with the dissatis-
faction they experience(d) at the age 30 transition. Such social changes
as an increase in job opportunities for women and the acceptibility of
divorce and single parenthood may lessen the risk, mollify the fear and
encourage the possibility of significant life style changes in the late
twenties and early thirties. In previous times individuals may have
been more inclined to wait until the responsibilities for children had
declined or ceased before they felt the freedom to dissolve a marraige
or seek alternative employment that could possibly put the family in
jeopardy. These similarities between young and middle age subjects may
have been sufficient to eliminate differences due to the age factor.
This would apply to noncrisis as well as crisis subjects. In the non-
crisis groups, subjects of both ages faced their respective transition

stages and chose as of testing not to be totally involved in the

63
reevaluation and restructuring of their life styles. This may not apply
to the younger subjects in the young adult group who may still be on the
verge of the age 30 transition dilemmas.

Future Research

 

Future research is needed to determine whether or not there actually
are personality differences in the willingness to face a crisis experience
when the possibility is high that a change in one's life structure may be
required. Confirmation of such a personality dimension would have im-
plications for counseling techniques. It may be that not all individuals
can gain from facing a crisis and would in fact be hurt if forced to do
so. It may also be that some individuals require extra support and en—
couragement when they dare to take the risk of squarely facing their
problems. Empirical evidence that crisis is associated with a higher
Ego Identity Status and level of moral reasoning does add hope to the
process of grappling with problems in the counseling situation.

Crisis itself as a phenomenon of empirical investigation needs to
be more objectively defined. The emotional tone of the subject's re-
sponses could be rated through analysis of their voice qualities. This
however would not be a sufficient indicator of crisis. A technique
would have to be devised which could take into account and objectively
evaluate the subject's description of the process of facing and working
through a crisis event.

Jung's (1960) belief that penetrating a problem requires the will-
ingness to risk moratorium and the possibility that one will emerge from
moratorium to a world of relative values, suggests the importance of
making Murphy and Gilligan's (1980) postconventional formal and contex-

tual distinctions in understanding the relationship between crisis and

64
postconventional morality. It would be illuminating to know whether the
experience of a crisis which shatters a person's stable life structure
would make the individual reluctant to invest himself in a single de-
cision making principle. If this followed, postconventional contextual
morality would be more prevalent in subject's following a crisis than
would the postconventional formal mode. In the present study it is pos-
sible that some of the principled thinkers could have been postconventio-
nal contextual subjects who decided to use the principle of justice in
guiding their decisions concerning the Kohlberg dilemmas.

Failure to find a relationship between Intrinsic Religious Moti-
vation and crisis may be a problem with the limited nature of the mea-
suring device. A number of divorced subjects who no longer felt accepted
by their past church affiliations questioned their old allegiances, indi-
cating that crisis did affect their religious life. Future research
should employ Fowler's (1975, 1976) detailed interview method of deter-
mining the developmental stage of crisis versus noncrisis subjects' faith
systems. At the time the present study was developed, the experimenter
was not aware of Fowler's stages. Hoge's measure was used to test the
hypothesis that the increase in self reflection accompanying a crisis
would be reflected in a move to a more individualized faith, set apart
from the authority of established institutions. Hoge's measure does not
directly examine this hypothesis but looks at the extent to which an in-
dividual allows religious concerns to enter into his daily behaviors.

It was thought that a more intrinsic religious motivation would reflect _
a more individualized faith. Fowler's system is much more inclusive than
Hoge's. Among the areas he explores are (A) the authority to whom the

individual turns to validate his personal orientation toward the ultimate

65

conditions of existence; (B) the challenges the individual's faith is
currently facing; and (C) the individual's criteria for weighing and
appropriating insights and claims regarding faith issues. His last
stages epitomize the middle age challenge of confrontation and unifi-
cation of the opposites. Fowler's stages parallel Erikson's psycho-
social and Kohlberg's moral stages. The general progression is from
external authorities to internally derived beliefs. The increase in
detail, the parallels with middle age concerns and with Kohlberg and
Erikson's schemas make Fowler's instrument more appropriate for deter-
mining the relationship of faith to the variables of concern in the
present study.
Summary

To summarize, the possibility of attainment of principled moral
thought is higher in those who have experienced a significant life cri-
sis and the completion of a four year college degree. Individuals who
have experienced a crisis which threatened a central aspect of their
life structure are more likely to have dared to question their own
political, religious, and occupational views. Such findings apply to
young and middle age adults and to both male and female subjects. The
possibility is entertained that personality differences in the willingness
to risk major life changes may influence the degree to which a crisis

event can serve as an impetus for growth.

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Kohlberg, L. Stages and aging in moral development: Some speculations.
The Gerontologist, 1973b, 13(4), 497-502.

 

Kohlberg, L. The claim to moral adequacy of a highest stage of moral
judgment. Journal of_Philosophy,'l973c, 19, 630—646.

Kohlberg, L. & Colby, A. Assessment o£_moral judgment 12 childhood and
youth. NIA Grant Proposal, 1978.

 

 

 

Kohlberg, L. and colleagues. MOral stage scoring manual. Unpublished
manuscript, Harvard University, June, 1975.

 

Kohlberg, L. and colleagues. Moral stage scoring manual. Unpublished
manuscript, Harvard University, June, 1976.

 

Kohlberg, L. & Gilligan, C. The adolescent as a philosopher: The
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KOhlberg, L. & Kramer, R. Continuities and discontinuities in childhood
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LeShan, E. The wonderful crisis of_middle age. New York: David McKay, 1973.

 

 

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Levinson, D. J., Darrow, D. H., Klein, E. B., Levinson, M. H., &
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Life history research ig_psychopathology: III. Minneapolis, Minn.:
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Levinson, D. J., Darrow, C. H., Klein, E. B., Levinson, M. H., McKee, B.
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Marcia, J. E. Development and validation of ego identity status. Journal
'of Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, 3, 551-558.

 

Marcia, J. E. Ego identity status: relationship to change in self esteem,
"general maladjustment", and authoritariansim. Journal 8£_Personality,
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Marcia, J. E. & Friedman, M. L. Ego identity status in college women.
Journal g£_Personality, 1970, 38, 249-263.

 

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70

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APPENDIX A

INSTRUMENTS

71

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH

The present study is an attempt to determine the effects one's
experiences in the adult phase of development have upon one's orienta-
tion toward social and moral values in life. In an attempt to begin to
study this area, you will be asked to fill out a few questionnaires and
to answer questions concerning your life experiences, how you have
perceived them, and the values you currently hold. You will also be
asked to make some decisions concerning hypothetical moral dilemmas.
There are no right or wrong answers to any of the questions you will
be asked. I am merely looking for patterns in people's lives that tie
together their experiences and the perceptions of the world which they
hold. Your participation is very much appreciated.

 

CONSENT FORM

Realizing that my responses given in the present study will be used
for research purposes only and that all data will be anonymous, I agree
to participate in the present study and give permission for my responses
to be used as part of the research data.

Name Date

 

 

SUMMARY

If you would like to receive a summary of the results of the present
study, please write your name and address below. Remember that your name
will not be kept with your data, so I will be only able to provide you
with a general summary of all the data collected.

Name (please print)

 

Address

 

 

72

ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH: LIFE EVENTS

Number

Age

Sex

Education

Employment

Marital Status
For each of the following possible events, please indicate which of these
have happened to you since age ___ by circling the appropriate number.
After you have done this, go back to each one you have circled and mark
on the scale from 1 to 7 how significant this event was for you in terms
of its emotional impact and the changes it made in your life. A '1'
indicates very little impact from the event and a '7' indicates that the
event caused profound changes in your activities and thoughts regarding

your daily life. Place your rating of the event on the blank to the
left of the circled items.

/ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 /
Event had Event had
little impact profound impact
1. Guilty of a minor infraction of the law

2. Took a vacation

3. Marked change in eating habits

4. Substantial change in family get-togethers

5. Marked change in sleeping pattern

6. Took on a mortgage or loan less than $10,000

7. Substantial change in social activities

8. Substantial change in the usual amount and/or type of recreational
activity

9. Substantial change in church activity
10. Substantial change in working hours or conditions
11. Change of residence
12. Changed high schools or colleges
13. Eligible for promotion but cut by quota system
14. A lot more or less trouble with superiors
15. Substantial change in personal habits
16. Substantial change in living conditions

17. Spouse started or stopped working outside the home

73

 

 

Number
/ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 /
Event had Event had
little impact profound impact

18. Either began or ceased attending high school or college

19. Personal successes

20. A lot more or a lot less in—law trouble

21. A son or daughter married or moved out of the home

22. Major change in responsibilities at work (either in home or
outside of home)

23. Experienced a foreclosure on a mortgage or loan or received a
letter of indebtedness

24. Took on a mortgage or loan greater than $10,000

25. A lot more or a lot less arguments with spouse

26. Change to a new line of work or a new type of work than done
previously

27. Loss of close friend by death

28. A lot more or a lot less financial problems

29. Gain of a new family member

30. Major change in the situation of parents (divorce, etc.)

31. Major change in dating habits

32. Change in health or behavior of a family member

33. A lot more or a lot less association with spouse due to demands
of your job such as change of location

34. Loss of job

—*—

35. Marriage

36. Loss of close family member by death

37. Held in a jail

38. A lot more or a lot less than usual association with your
spouse due to marriage trouble

39. Divorce

40. Loss of Spouse through death

74

Number

 

ADULT DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH: SELF DESCRIPTION

Please indicate how well each of the following characteristics describes
you as you now see yourself. Use the 7-point scale described below. A
number 1 indicates it is never or almost never true of you and a number

7 indicates it is always or almost always true of you. Mark your answers
in the blank to the left of each item.

/ I / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 /

 

Never or Always or
almost never - almost always
true of me true of me
____1. Self-reliant ___21. Reliable
___ 2. Yielding ___22. Analytical
____ 3. Helpful ___23. Sympathetic
___ 4. Defends own beliefs ___24. Jealous
___ 5. Cheerful ____25. Has leadership qualities
___ 6. Moody ___26. Sensitive to the needs of others
___ 7. Independent ___27. Truthful
____ 8. Shy ___28. Willing to take risks
___ 9. Conscientious ___29. Understanding
___10. Athletic ____30. Secretive
___11. Affectionate ___31. Makes decisions easily
___12. Theatrical ___32. Compassionate
___13. Assertive ___33. Sincere
___14. Flatterable ___34. Self-sufficient
___15. Happy ___35. Eager to soothe hurt feelings
___l6. Strong personality ___36. Conceited
___17. Loyal ___37. Dominant
___18. Unpredictable ___38. Soft spoken
l9. Forceful 39. Likeable

20. Feminine 40. Masculine

75

Number

 

/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/

Never or Always or
almost never almost always
true of me ,true of me
___41. warm ___5l. Adaptable
___42. Solemn ____52. Individualistic
___43. Willing to take a stand ___53. Does not use harsh language
___44. Tender ___54. Unsystematic
___45. Friendly ___55. Competitive
___46. Aggressive ___56. Loves Children
___47. Gullible ___57. Tactful
___48. Inefficient ___58. Ambitious

49. Acts as a leader 59. Gentle

50. Childlike 60. Conventional

76

Number

 

ADULT DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH: RELIGIOUS VIEWS

Please respond to the following statements in terms of the scale
below. Mark the number corresponding to your response in the
blank to the left of the item.

 

/ 1 / 2 / 4 / 5 /
Strongly Strongly
Agree Disagree

1. My faith involves all my life.

2. It doesn't matter so much what I believe as long as I
lead a moral life.

3. One should seek God's guidance when making every important
decision.

4. In my life I experience the presence of the Divine.
5. My faith sometimes restricts my actions.

6. Although I am a religious person, I refuse to let religious
considerations influence my everyday affairs.

7. Nothing is as important to me as serving God the best I
know how.

8. I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other
dealings in life.

9. Although I believe in my religion, I feel there are many
more important things in life.

10. My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole
approach to life.

77

EGO IDENTITY INTERVIEW

Opening questions: clarification of marriage status, employment,

education -- HOW LONG SINCE CHANGES OCCURRED?

Ego-Identity Status

1.

10.

11.

12.
13.
14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

For me, success would be

 

When I consider my goals in the light of my family's goals

I'm at my best when

 

Sticking to one occupational choice

 

When I let myself go I

 

I chose to go into my particular job after

 

Most parents have plans for their children, things they would

like them to do; did yours have any such plans; did that affect
your career choice?

How willing would you be to change if something better came along?
Have you ever seriously considered changing employers or looking
into a completely different line of work?

I know that I can always depend on

 

Choose one: I am I am not

 

 

It seems I've always

 

I wish I could make up my mind about

 

Getting involved in political activity

Do you have any particular political preference? Any issues you
feel strongly about? How do your beliefs compare with parents?
Any particular time you decided upon your political beliefs?

 

What happens to me depends on

 

As compared with when I was (20, 35), I

 

I belong to

 

To change my mind about my feelings toward religion

Do you have any particular religious affiliation? Are you very
active in a religious group? Do your current beliefs vary much
from those you were raised with? Were there times when you doubted
your beliefs? When? How did you resolve your questions? How

do you feel about them now?

 

If one commits oneself

 

Ten years from now, I

 

It makes me feel good when

 

APPENDIX B

DATA SUMMARIES

78
TABLE 1

Multivariate Analysis of Variance of:
Crisis/Noncrisis, Young Adult/Middle Age, Female/Male, Noncollege/
College by Masculinity, Femininity, Androgyny Difference Score, Social
Desirability, Intrinsic Religiosity, Ego Identity Status, Moral Maturity
Score

 

 

Source of Variation .8f_ .8 .2
Crisis 7/58 3.57 <.003
Age 7/58 .54

Sex 7/58 2.70 (.02
Education 7/58 2.08 (.06
Crisis X Age 7/58 .87

Crisis X Sex 7/58 .82

Crisis X Education 7/58 ' 1.15

Age x Sex 7/58 1.71

Age X Education 7/58 1.13

Sex X Education 7/58 .34

Crisis X Age X Sex 7/58 .52

Crisis X Age X Education 7/58 .87

Crisis X Sex X Education 7/58 1.64

Age X Sex X Education 7/58 .14

Crisis X Age X Sex X Education 7/58 .63

 

79
TABLE 2A

Cell Identification and Frequencies from Table 1 Multivariate Analysis
of Variance for Use in Reading Table 2B: Observed Cell Means

 

 

Cell Crisis(1) Young (1) Female (1) Noncollege (1)
Number Noncrisis (2) Middle (2) Male (2) College (2) Frequency
1 1 l l l 5
2 l 1 l 2 5
3 l l 2 1 5
4 l l 2 2 5
5 1 2 1 l 5
6 1 2 l 2 5
7 l 2 2 1 5
8 1 2 2 2 5
9 2 l 1 l 5
10 2 1 1 2 5
ll 2 1 2 1 5
12 2 1 2 2 5
13 2 2 l l 5
14 2 2 1 2 5
15 2 2 2 l 5
l6 2 2 2 2 5

 

80

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82

TABLE 4

Chi Square Contingency Tables for Nonprincipled and Principled Moral
Reasoning by Crisis, Age, Sex and Education Groups.

 

 

Nonprincipled Principled Nonprincipled Principled
Morality Morality, Morality Mbrality
Noncrisis 36 4 Noncollege 38 2
Crisis 29 11 College 27 13
g2= 4.10, R< .05 ggz= 10.01, 2 < .005
Yates Correction Yates Correction
Young 30 10 Female 34 6
Adult
Middle 35 5 Male 31 9
Age
g2= 2.05, NS x2= .74, NS

 

83

TABLE 5

Chi Square Contingency Tables for Masculine Sex-Typed, Feminine Sex-
Typed, Androgynous, and Undifferentiated by Crisis, Age, Sex, and
Education Groups

 

 

Masculine Feminine Androgynous Undifferentiated
Sex-Typed SexsTyped
NOncrisis 10 8 ll 11
Crisis 9 9 11 11
2
X = .110, NS
Noncollege 5 ll 12 12
College 14 6 10 10
2
x = 6.09, NS
Young 10 10 12 8
Adult
Middle 9 7 10 14
Age 2
X = 2.4, NS
Female 6 14 10 10
Male 13 3 12 12

2
X = 10.05, p. < .025

 

84
TABLE 6

Chi Square Contingency Table for Sex by Stages 3 and 4 Moral Reasoning

 

 

Stage Stage
3 4
Females 22 7
Males 22 7

x2= 0, NS

 

85

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