Psychological environments of university departments: Effects on college students' identity status and ego stage development.

Based on the dialectic notion that environments that enhance analytic thought and mind expansion create the condition necessary for positive change, it was hypothesized that academic departments that emphasize scholarship, intellectual awareness, and critical thought would facilitate identity and ego stage development. 294 university students completed the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development, Marcia Ego-Identity Incomplete Sentence Interview, and measures of perceived psychological environments. A 2-wave data panel allowed assessment of concurrent and distal predictors of personality. Results support the notion that identity status but not ego stage functioning is influenced by psychological environmental presses in a university setting. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)