49-3 A Study on the Relationship among Growth Themes, Meaningfulness, and Psychological Maturity of Taiwanese Adults
| Hui-Tuz Chang | Yih-Lan Liu |
| National Chiao Tung University | |
Based on concept of psychological maturity in personality psychology (Bauer & McAdams, 2004), this study defines two forms of personality development: social-cognitive maturity (SCM) and social-emotional well-being (SEWB). SCM deals with how complexly ones think about the self and others, and how their lives have organized in the world in increasingly complex ways. It is frequently measured by Loevinger’s measure of ego development (Loevinger, 1976; Hy and Loevinger, 1996). SEWB, based on self-determination theory, deals with how good one feels about the self in a world of others (Ryan & Deci, 2001). SCM and SEWB were expected to relate differentially to two forms of growth themes: Agentic-grwoth tehms and Communal-growth themes. Agentic-growth themes (e.g., emphasizing power) correlated primarily with SCM, and communal-growth themes (e.g., emphasizing intimacy) correlated primarily with SEWB (Bauer & McAdams, 2004b). Growth themes from personal memories are narratives of specific events in a person’s life. They complete with a visual image of the event and attendant thoughts and feelings that the person remembers experiencing at the time of the event (Brewer, 1986). Growth themes often provide meaning or even contribute to a sense of meaning. A strong sense of meaning is associated with well-being (Emmons, 2003). How people construct their growth themes and make meaning of these themes greatly depend on personality. This study explores the characteristics of psychological maturity in Taiwanese adults and examines the relationships among personality, growth themes, meaningfulness, and psychological maturity. 102 participants were recruited through snowball sampling from Taiwan. The participants’ ages ranged from 18-57 years old (average age = 26.78; male, N = 44; married = 11; student = 57). The participants completed the scales of Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT), Psychological Well-being (PWB), and Big- Five Inventory (BFI), and they were asked to write down their life stories (Growth Themes). The participants completed a booklet typically took 2-6 hours to complete. Regression model was used to examine the meaningfulness would moderate the relationship between growth themes and ego development. Results showed that the average stage of ego development for participants was between Self-Aware stage and conscientious stage. Older participants displayed a higher level of ego development. Moreover, majority of people agreed with that life brings positive emotion in everyday. Consistent with previous findings, PWB and SCM were not significantly correlated. Furthermore, the results of regression analysis indicated that personality was positively correlated with social emotion well-being, but didn’t correlate with meaningfulness. Extraversion personality was positively related to the growth themes derived from life stories. In the description of the peak experience in life stories, making meanings to achievement themes was positively correlated with SCM. On the other hand, when describing nadir experience, experiencing academic setback and poor job performance was negatively correlated with SWB. Finally, the meaningfulness moderated the relationship between growth themes and ego development for participants when describing achievement themes in peak experience. The overall findings are summarized in three parts. First, the non-significant relationship between SCM and SWB indicates that these two perspectives of maturity develop independently. Moreover, the two growth themes mapped differentially onto measures of SCM and SWB, suggesting that the different underlying reasons that people for their life experience relate to specific kinds of personality development. Second, Taiwanese adults describe the achievement themes more often than communion themes. When people describe more achievement themes in peak experiences, they tend to develop a higher level of ego development. Third, when people make more meaning of achievement themes in peak experiences, they tend to display a higher ego development.
Keywords
Psychological maturity, growth themes, social-cognitive maturity, social-emotional wellbeing, meaningfulness
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