Use a scored assessment instead of self-typing
If you want to know your stage, take a sentence completion test scored by a trained rater rather than matching yourself to descriptions.
Why it works
Stage descriptions invite people to pick the one that flatters them, and a person cannot see from inside what they are subject to. The sentence completion test asks you to finish open-ended stems ("When people are helpless…") and is scored by trained raters on how meaning is made, not what is said, so it reads structure you cannot easily perform. The STAGES assessment is one version; the MAP and Loevinger’s WUSCT are others in the same lineage.
How to do it
- Decide why you want to know. Curiosity and coaching are good reasons; ranking yourself or others is not.
- Choose an assessment in the sentence-completion lineage scored by a certified rater (STAGES, Cook-Greuter’s MAP, or the Washington University Sentence Completion Test).
- Read your report as one data point about how you made meaning on one day, and discuss it with someone trained in the model.
- Do not use the result to make decisions about other people.
Evidence
Sentence completion tests of ego development have a long research record: a meta-analysis found Loevinger’s measure predicts outcomes beyond intelligence, and reviews report strong inter-rater reliability. A peer-reviewed study (O’Fallon et al., 2020, Heliyon) found STAGES scoring closely reproduced Cook-Greuter’s MAP scoring up to the 4.5 stage. Loevinger herself judged the test adequate for research but not for diagnosing an individual unsupported by other data. (observational)
The STAGES validation was led by the model’s developer, with an affiliated organization; one of its four trained scorers, the one who had also learned the MAP scoring method, was described as the more experienced scorer, and the paper does not say that scorer was the developer. Independent replication has not been published. Evidence for the 5.0–6.5 stages is thinner than for earlier stages.
Sources
- O’Fallon, T., Polissar, N., Neradilek, M. B., & Murray, T. (2020). The validation of a new scoring method for assessing ego development based on three dimensions of language. Heliyon, 6(3), e03472.
- Cohn, L. D., & Westenberg, P. M. (2004). Intelligence and maturity: Meta-analytic evidence for the incremental and discriminant validity of Loevinger’s measure of ego development. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(5), 760–772.
- Loevinger, J. (1979). Construct Validity of the Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Applied Psychological Measurement, 3(3), 281–311.
- Manners, J., & Durkin, K. (2001). A Critical Review of the Validity of Ego Development Theory and Its Measurement. Journal of Personality Assessment, 77(3), 541–567.
Common mistake
Treating the score as a fixed identity or a ranking of worth. A score describes how meaning was made in one test, and people score differently under stress.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
- Notice what your attention treats as real objects
Sort a day’s concerns into concrete, subtle, and awareness-level objects to see which tier you mostly live in.
- Find the confusion your stage is working on
Use O’Fallon’s list of stage-specific confusions to locate the blind spot that is currently live for you.
- Shine a new capacity on the old confusion
Use whatever you can newly do — reflect on your thinking, notice context — to look straight at the confusion instead of around it.
- Turn your view back on yourself
Take the perspective you can now hold of others and turn it around so you see yourself from it.
- Practice the orientation your stage is not leaning toward
If your stage leans individual, deliberately practice the collective view, and the reverse.
- Walk an idea through four ways of holding it
Take one hard idea from receptive, to either/or, to both/and, to seeing how the two sides define each other.
- Expect fallback and meet it without judgment
Plan for the times you make meaning from an earlier stage under stress, and treat them as information.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
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