Various Theorists on Postformal Cognition

Quadrant 1 - Internal subjective

In the process of doing some research for a presentation for class, I did some reading in the realm of postformal cognition (beyond Piaget's final stage of formal cognition). Much of this is from our text, but I also included some Robert Kegan and Ken Wilber.

Wilber identifies postformal cognition with the Green Meme of Spiral Dynamics, but I believe postformal is a much more complex developmental stage than his limited view (to be fair, he may hold it in higher regard than one might guess from reading his incessant attacks on the Green Meme, or what he calls Boomeritis).

Postformalism is the backbone of the ability to think in relative terms, to cope with complexity, to understand that any given problem has multiple cause and likley also has multiple solutions. We need more of this kind of cognitive flexibility, not less.

The following quotes are from Development Across the Life Span, Fifth Edition, by Robert S. Feldman.

Gisela Labouvie-Vief - Postformal thought is thinking that goes beyond Piaget’s formal operations. Rather than being based on purely logical processes, with absolutely right and wrong answers to problems, postformal thought acknowledges that adult predicaments must sometimes be solved in relativistic terms. (456)

According to psychologist Jan Sinnott (1998a), postformal thought also takes into account real-world considerations when solving problems. Postformal thinkers can shift back and forth between an abstract, ideal solution and real-world constraints that might prevent the solution from being successfully implemented. In addition, postformal thinkers understand that just as there can be multiple causes of a situation, there can be multiple solutions. (457)

To psychologist William Perry (1970, 1981), early adulthood represents a period of developmental growth that encompasses mastery not just of particular bodies of knowledge, but of ways of understanding the world. Perry examined the ways in which students grew intellectually and morally during college. In comprehensive interviews with a group of students at Harvard University, he found that students entering college tended to use dualistic thinking in their views of the world. For instance, they reasoned that something was right, or it was wrong; people were good, or they were bad; and others were either for them, or against them. However, as these students encountered new ideas and points of view from other students and their professors, their dualistic thinking declined.

In fact, according to Perry, they had entered a stage in which knowledge and values were regarded as relativistic. Rather than seeing the world as having absolute standards and values, they argued that different societies, cultures, and individuals could have different standards and values, and all of them could be equally valid. It’s important to keep in mind that Perry’s theory is based on a sample of interviews conducted with well-educated students attending an elite college. (457)

K. Warner Schaie suggests that before adulthood, the main cognitive developmental task is acquisition of information.

Consequently, he labels the first stage of cognitive development, which encompasses all of childhood and adolescence, the acquisitive stage. Information gathered before we grow up is largely squirreled away for future use. In fact, much of the rationale for education during childhood and adolescence is to prepare people for future activities.

The situation changes considerably in early adulthood, however. Instead of targeting the future use of knowledge, the focus shifts to the “here and now.” According to Schaie, young adults are in the achieving stage, applying their intelligence to attaining long-term goals regarding their careers, family, and contributions to society. During the achieving stage, young adults must confront and resolve several major issues, and the decisions they make—such as what job to take and whom to marry—have implications for the rest of their lives.

During the late stages of early adulthood and in middle adulthood, people move into what Schaie calls the responsible and executive stages. In the responsible stage, middle-aged adults are mainly concerned with protecting and nourishing their spouses, families, and careers. Sometime later, further into middle adulthood, many people (but not all) enter the executive stage in which they take a broader perspective, becoming more concerned about the larger world (Sinnott, 1997). Rather than focusing only on their own lives, people in the executive stage also put energy into nourishing and sustaining societal institutions. They may become involved in town government, religious congregations, service clubs, charitable groups, factory unions—organizations that have a larger purpose in society. People in the executive stage, then, look beyond their individual situations.

Old age, according to Schaie’s model, marks entry into the final period, the reintegrative stage, the period of late adulthood during which they focus on tasks that have personal meaning. In this stage, people no longer focus on acquiring knowledge as a means of solving potential problems that they may encounter. Instead, their information acquisition is directed toward particular issues that specifically interest them. (458)

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The following quotes are found at the places cited.

Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Kegan describes cognitive development as the movement from being mentally embedded in a simpler subject-object balance to a higher-order (more complex) subject-object balance. For the systemic thinker the object is the propositions or beliefs that the subject analyzes from the standpoint of one's own system of logically consistent beliefs. He calls this kind of thinker, the institutional self. The move from the institutional self to the interindividual self involves a shift in subject-object understanding in which the object becomes the higher-order set of "systems" of propositions or beliefs, with the subject viewing them from the standpoint of the evolving metasystem. This explains why the strict systemic thinker cannot understand metasystemic relations. They simply transcend the thought structures of the early formal operational cognitive system. (http://tiny.pl/zjhm)

Ken Wilber (Introduction to Volume 7 of the Collected Works - The Integral Vision at the Millennium - http://tiny.cc/uccxX). [MY COMMENTARY] Wilber identifies postformal cognition as the Green Meme of Spiral Dynamics. As he usually does, however, he makes a point of outlining the ways in which the postmodern/postformal stage is failing, rather than highlighting and supporting its strengths. I would argue that not ALL people working through the Green Meme suffering from the negative elements Wilber consistently points out (and has named Boomeritis). [END]

Pluralism, multiculturalism, and egalitarianism, in their best forms, all stem from a very high developmental stance, a postconventional stance (early vision-logic, postformal cognition, green meme, etc.), and from that postconventional stance of worldcentric fairness and care, the green meme attempts to treat all previous memes with equal care and compassion, a truly noble intent. But because it embraces an intense egalitarianism, it fails to see that its own stance --which is the first stance that is even capable of egalitarianism--is itself a fairly rare, elite stance (somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the population). Worse, the green meme then actively denies the hierarchical stages that produced the green meme in the first place. Pluralistic egalitarianism is the product, we have seen, of at least six major stages of hierarchical development, a hierarchy that it then turns around and aggressively denies in the name of egalitarianism!

Under the noble guise of liberal egalitarianism--and under the sanction of the intense subjectivistic stance of this pluralistic and relativistic wave--every previous wave of existence, no matter how shallow, egocentric, or narcissistic, is given encouragement to "be itself," even when "be itself" might include the most barbaric of stances. (If "pluralism" is really true, then we must invite the Nazis and the KKK to the multicultural banquet, since no stance is supposed to be better or worse than another, and so all must be treated in an egalitarian fashion--at which point the self-contradictions of undiluted pluralism come screaming to the fore.) [12]

Thus, the very high developmental stance of pluralism--the product of at least six major stages of hierarchical transformation--turns around and denies all hierarchies, denies the very path that produced its own noble stance , and thus it ceases to demand hierarchical transformation from anybody else, and consequently it extends an egalitarian embrace to every stance, no matter how shallow or narcissistic. The more egalitarianism is implemented, the more it destroys the very capacity for egalitarianism; the more it invites, indeed encourages, the Culture of Narcissism. And the Culture of Narcissism is the antithesis of the integral culture.

(Narcissism, at its core, is a demand that "Nobody tells me what to do!" Narcissism will therefore not acknowledge anything universal, because that places various demands and duties on narcissism that it will strenuously try to deconstruct, because "nobody tells me what to do." This egocentric stance can easily be propped up and supported with the tenets of pluralistic relativism).

In short, the rather high cognitive development of postformal pluralism becomes a supermagnet for the rather low state of emotional narcissism.

I’m sure there are a lot of other sources (Loevinger, Wade, et al.), but these theorists offer a good foundation.

Tags: Psychology, intelligence, consciousness, postformal, cognition, Ken Wilber, Robert Kegan, K. Warner Schaie, William Perry, Jan Sinnott, Gisela Labouvie-Vief