Ask where each rule you live by comes from
For the rules that run your life, notice which ones you were handed and which ones you have chosen to keep.
Pourquoi ça marche
In Loevinger’s account, the move from the Conformist to the Conscientious stage is a change in where rules come from. At the Conformist stage the person accepts the group’s rules, given by authorities and experienced as fixed; at the Conscientious stage the person evaluates and decides which rules to give their allegiance to. The same rule can be held either way, so sorting rules by their source — rather than by their content — is what makes the shift visible.
Comment faire
- Write down five rules you live by: about work, money, family, how to treat people, what is right.
- For each, write where it came from: a parent, a faith, a team, a culture, a mentor, your own experience.
- Ask of each: "If no one I respect held this rule, would I still keep it — and why?"
- Mark each one as handed, chosen, or not yet decided. Keep "not yet decided" as a real option.
- Notice how it feels to choose a rule you were handed. Keeping it on purpose is different from keeping it by default.
Données probantes
Loevinger (1973) describes the Conformist stage as accepting the rules of the group — family, school or country — as given by authorities, and the Conscientious stage as evaluating and deciding for oneself which rules to follow, with the Autonomous stage tolerating ambiguity and paradox. She reports that most American adults in her samples were at the Conformist or Conscientious stage or between them. The sorting exercise is a reflective application, not a tested intervention. (mechanistic)
Loevinger warned that not every conforming act means a person is at the Conformist stage, and conscience appears before the Conscientious stage. Questioning one rule does not by itself indicate a change of frame.
Sources
Erreur fréquente
Treating rejection as the goal. Throwing out every rule you were raised with is still letting the group decide — just in reverse. The shift Loevinger describes is about evaluating, and many handed rules turn out to be worth keeping.
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Plus de pratiques pour Ego Development Theory: What It Is and How It Is Measured
- Trace one shift through all four strands
Take one way you have changed and look for it in how you handle impulses, relate to people, see yourself, and think.
- Journal with open sentence stems — and do not score yourself
Finish your own open-ended sentence beginnings in writing to hear the frame you make meaning from, without rating it.
- Understand what the sentence completion test actually reads
Before you trust or dismiss an ego development score, learn how it is produced and what it can and cannot say.
- Keep maturity, intelligence and happiness apart
Treat ego development, being clever, and feeling good as three different things that each need their own attention.
- Write your big goals as growth stories — for understanding and for connection
Describe your major life goals in narrative form, and check whether they include growing in understanding as well as in feeling good and close to others.
- Write in detail about the future you lost and the one you have now
After a major life change, describe both the future self you lost and the future self you are building, in vivid detail.
- Hold ego development without ranking people
Use what you learn about ego development to understand people, never to sort them by worth.
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