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Do moral and ego developments follow the same path?
Anna von der Lippe
University of Oslo
Eva Skoe
University of Tromso
Cathrin Ringdal Nina Stenberg Odd Sivert Svanes
University of Oslo
(Abstract)
Two kinds of moral development, justice and care ethics, and ego development were studied in a Norwegian population of 166 individuals, covering an age span from 15 to 67 years. Ethic of care was measured by Skoe¿s Ethic of Care Interview and ethic of justice by Rest¿s Defining Issues Test. Ego development was assessed by Loevinger¿s Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
The relationship between care ethic and ego development was considerably stronger than the relationship between justice ethic and ego development, especially for men. Different correlates of the two types of ethics and ego development could was also observed, suggesting that the three types of personality developments may follow different paths. Several correlates of moral and ego development were investigated: age, education, verbal ability, empathy, mature defenses, negative life events and narcissim No gender differences were found on any of the measures except for one empathy subtest (empathetic concenr), where women scored higher than men.
Ethic of care was related to verbal ability, education, and empathic perspective taking, and to seeing positive aspects of negative events. It was negatively related to entitlement attitudes of nacissism. Ethic of justice was related to education, to verbal ability and to narcissim, especially to the authority and exhibitionism subscales. Age was negatively and linearly related to ethic of justice, as was, number of sisters and empathic concern. While ethic of care seems to develop with empathy and mature defenses, ethic of justice develops with narcissism and decreases with age. Age was unrelated to ethic of care and ego development in this study of adults.
Ego development was related to education, verbal ability, empathic perspectice taking, number of life events, seeing potential in negative events and to plan a course of action to cope with the event. Thus, both ethic of care and ego development covaried with intelligence, education, empathy and mature defenses. In addition, ego development seemed to develop from having to cope with challenging and negative life events. This was not the case for either of the two types of moral development. By comparison, while justice ethic also was related to cognitive development, it was not related to positive personality development in this study. Implications of the main finding that ethic of care and ethic of justice follow somewhat different paths of development are discussed.
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