Further investigating thinking styles and psychosocial development in the Chinese higher education context

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Abstract

Much theorization and research have been done independently on thinking styles and psychosocial development. The primary objective of this research was to further investigate the predictive power of thinking styles for psychosocial development through replicating Zhang and He's (in press) study of Chinese university students in Shanghai, mainland China. Data were collected from two Chinese contexts: Nanjing (N = 362) in mainland China and Hong Kong (N = 117). All participants responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2, Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2007) and to the Measures of Psychosocial Development (MPD, Hawley, 1988). The TSI-R2 is grounded in Sternberg's (1997) theory of mental self-government, while the MPD is rooted in Erikson's (1968) theory of psychosocial development. Hierarchical multiple regression results confirmed Zhang and He's finding that Type I styles (typified by their creativity-generating characteristics) positively contributed to psychosocial development, whereas Type II styles (noted for their norm-favoring features), especially the monarchic and conservative styles, negatively contributed to psychosocial development. Two of the Type III styles (Type III styles may display the characteristics of either Type I or Type II styles, depending on the specific situation) consistently predicted psychosocial development: the external style positively contributed to psychosocial development, whereas the anarchic style did so negatively. Implications of these results are discussed for university students, faculty members, and for university student development educators.

Introduction

For more than seven decades, scholars have been studying the functions of intellectual styles in human performance, including student learning and development (Zhang & Sternberg, 2009). Intellectual styles, a broad term for different labels with the root word “style” such as cognitive styles, learning styles, and thinking styles, refer to people's preferred ways of processing information (Zhang & Sternberg, 2006). These style constructs are conceptually different. Cognitive styles are used to characterize how individuals prefer to cognize information. Learning styles are used to characterize how individuals prefer to learn about information. Thinking styles are used to characterize how individuals prefer to think about the information as they are learning it or after they have already learned it. Nonetheless, these constructs are fundamentally similar in a major way. That is, all of them are different from abilities. An ability refers to what one can do, whereas a style refers to how one prefers to use the abilities one has (Sternberg & Zhang, 2001).

It has been widely recognized that intellectual styles are closely related to diverse domains of student life, including academic achievement (Tsagaris, 2007), cognitive development (Zhang, 2002), career development (Morgan, 1997), and personality (Fjell & Walhovd, 2004). In spite of this, one area that has yet to be more seriously studied is the relationship between intellectual styles and psychosocial development. Investigating the relationships between styles and psychosocial development would enhance our understanding of both constructs, and findings about the association between them would have practical implications for educational practice.

Psychosocial development concerns the tasks that individuals deal with throughout the course of their lifetime. People develop psychosocially at different speeds, contingent upon not only their biological processes but also their environments. As an individual-difference variable, psychosocial development also serves important functions in student learning and development (Senior, 2002).

Studying the relationship between styles and psychosocial development is important both at the theoretical level and at the practical level. Theoretically, people's intellectual styles should contribute to their psychosocial development. This argument is based on the following reason: people's preferred ways of processing information (i.e., intellectual styles) affect the manner in which they approach the world (Jung, 1923), which in turn, would influence the ways they interact with their environments. Such interactions would become important contributory factors to psychosocial development (Erikson, 1968). Identification of such relationships could enable us to better understand the nature of intellectual styles as well as that of psychosocial development. At a practical level, should the kind of intellectual styles that contribute to psychosocial development be identified, one could consider strategies for deliberately developing those styles in one's efforts to enhance psychosocial development. Complimentarily, one could consider purposely cultivating certain intellectual styles through facilitating the advancement of particular aspects of psychosocial development.

One would naturally wonder why a significant relationship between styles and psychosocial development could be expected. Consider this line of reasoning: Style theorists (e.g., Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1995) have argued that styles are at the interface of personality and abilities. Meanwhile, personality researchers (e.g., Johnson, 1993) have contended that psychosocial development constitutes part of personality. Given these arguments, one would come to a logical conclusion that styles are related to psychosocial development because they could share a common space with personality. Indeed, Erikson (1968) himself suggested a parallel development between cognitive competence and psychosocial development. Furthermore, Erikson viewed the process of exploration as central to the formation of identity (Stage 5). This notion of exploration process has received attention in the post-Eriksonian literature (e.g., Kroger, 2003, Marcia, 1966) and it has been empirically examined with styles. For example, Berman, Schwartz, Kurtines and Berman (2001) found that individuals with the informational style (a style that is characterized by active exploration of alternatives, information seeking, and flexible commitments) scored significantly higher on the total exploration score and that individuals with the normative style (a style characterized by subservience, deference to authority, and inflexible commitments) scored significantly lower on the total exploration score.

Nonetheless, the existing literature on the relationship between styles and psychosocial development as defined by Erikson is largely confined to conceptual arguments. Following Zhang and He's (in press) study, the present research empirically investigates the relationships of thinking styles put forward by Sternberg (1997) to psychosocial development as described in Erikson's (1968) theory of psychosocial development.

Using the term “government” metaphorically, Sternberg (1997) contended that just as there are different ways of governing a society, there are different ways that people prefer to use their abilities, that is, thinking styles. In his theory, Sternberg proposed 13 thinking styles that fall into five dimensions: functions, forms, levels, scopes, and leanings. Based on empirical data and on the value dimension concerning the nature of thinking styles, Zhang (2002) reconceptualized the 13 styles into three types.

Type I thinking styles tend to be more creativity-generating and they denote higher levels of cognitive complexity. These styles are considered as carrying more adaptive values because they are strongly related to desirable human attributes such as higher levels of cognitive development (Zhang, 2002) and the openness personality trait (Fjell & Walhovd, 2004). Type II styles suggest a norm-favoring tendency and they denote lower levels of cognitive complexity. These styles are considered as carrying less adaptive values because they are strongly associated with undesirable attributes such as lower levels of cognitive development and unfavorable personality traits such as neuroticism. Type III styles may manifest the characteristics of either Type I or Type II thinking styles. These styles are regarded as value-differentiated. Consider the internal style (preference for working independently), a style that is classified as a Type III style. One may work independently, but creatively (thus, showing the characteristics of Type I styles). However, one could also work independently, but in a norm-conforming manner (thus, showing the characteristics of Type II styles).

Notice that because Type I styles carry the most positive values, Type I styles are deemed as the most desirable styles among all three types of styles. In Appendix A, the main characteristics of each of the 13 thinking styles (grouped into three types) are described.

Subsequently, the notion of three types of thinking styles has been broadened to that of three types of intellectual styles (Zhang & Sternberg, 2005) to contain additional style labels such as field-independent/dependent styles and divergent/convergent styles. For instance, along with Type I thinking styles, the field-independent (Witkin, 1962) style and divergent thinking style (Guilford, 1950) were classified as Type I intellectual styles. Likewise, along with Type II thinking styles, the field-dependent and convergent thinking styles were classified as Type II intellectual styles.

Thus far, over 100 studies have been conducted on the theory of mental self-government, all lending strong support to it. Research has also yielded strong evidence to support the notion of three types of thinking styles (Betoret, 2007, Fan, 2008, He, 2007, Tsagaris, 2007). The most widely used research tool is the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI, Sternberg & Wagner, 1992) and its revised version—the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (TSI-R, Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2003). This research indicates that thinking styles are related to both personal variables (e.g., age and gender) and environmental variables (e.g., academic discipline). As previously mentioned, this research also suggests that thinking styles make significant differences in students' learning and development. Yet, except for Zhang and He's (in press) recent study, existing studies investigated thinking styles only with the construct of psychosocial development as defined in Chickering's (1969) theory. Yet, Chickering's theory merely concerns the university student population, thus examining issues that are especially encountered by university students, such as emotions (Zhang, 2008) and vocational development (Zhang, 2004). Chickering's theory of psychosocial development addresses university students' development in seven domains. These are developing competence, managing emotions, developing autonomy, establishing identity, freeing interpersonal relationships, developing purpose, and developing integrity. The present research, like Zhang and He's (in press) study, goes beyond past investigations by examining the relationships of thinking styles to developmental issues over the lifespan, as theorized by Erikson, 1950, Erikson, 1968.

According to Erikson, 1950, Erikson, 1968, an individual develops through a sequence of eight stages that define the life cycle: 1) trust versus mistrust; 2) autonomy versus shame and doubt; 3) initiative versus guilt; 4) industry versus inferiority; 5) identity versus role confusion; 6) intimacy versus isolation; 7) generativity versus stagnation; and 8) ego integrity versus despair. Each stage is marked by a psychosocial crisis that is the product of the soma (body), ego (psyche), and society. Thus, the particular timing and methods by which the concerns are addressed are contingent upon the individual's society and culture as well as upon the individual's biological processes. Individuals experience different concerns at different points in the life cycle. Whereas an adolescent has the question of “Who am I?”, a near-retirement professor is likely to be preoccupied with the concern of “What legacy shall I leave after I retire?” In each stage, the individual confronts, and hopefully overcomes, new challenges. Each stage builds upon the successful completion of earlier stages. However, this does not mean that the pattern of individuals' psychosocial development is linear. Instead, because the challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems at a later stage in life, the pattern in which psychosocial development unfolds is cyclical.

Regardless of its popularity and its heuristic values for works following it (e.g., Marcia, 1966), Erikson's theory was not fully operationalized until 1980 when Hawley created the Measures of Psychosocial Development (MPD) that evaluates the degree and direction of conflict resolution at each of the eight Eriksonian developmental stages. Originally normed on a sample of 2480 individuals (91.7% being Caucasian Americans and ages ranging from 14 to 86 years), the MPD has been proved to be a reliable and valid research tool in several cultures, including India (Mercer, 1996), Taiwan (Chou & Chen, 2005), Japan (Mizuno, 1999), and Norway (Mercer, 1996), as well as among ethnic minority groups in the United States such as African-Americans (Johnson, 2003), Asian-Americans (Beck, 1996), and Mexican-Americans (Rugala, 2001). This body of literature suggests that people's psychosocial development could differ along several dimensions, including age (Norman, McCluskey-Fawcett, & Ashcraft, 2002), culture (e.g., Mercer, 1996, Mizuno, 1999), gender (Gribble, 2000, Kim, 1998, McGrady, 2001), and socio-economic status (Austin & Martin, 1992).

Moreover, researchers have also examined the relationships of psychosocial development to several other human attributes, notably self-esteem and self-efficacy (Senior, 2002), vocational competence (Gribble, 2000), and attachment (Timmons, 1999). Findings from this research show that more advanced levels of psychosocial development tend to be strongly related to human attributes that are normally considered as carrying more adaptive values, such as higher levels of self-esteem and of self-efficacy, higher levels of vocational competence, and positive aspects of attachment.

However, the study of the relationships of psychosocial development to intellectual styles has received little attention. As noted earlier, studying the relationship between styles and psychosocial development would have both theoretical and practical significance. Nonetheless, such studies have been confined to investigating the relationships of styles to the psychosocial development construct put forward by Chickering (1969) and to the Eriksonian Stage 5 (identity versus role confusion), as reviewed earlier. Empirical studies that employ the MPD would be particularly valuable because the MPD is, thus far, the sole assessment tool that covers the developmental issues that individuals face across the lifespan, as described in Erikson's theory of psychosocial development.

Despite its importance, research on the connection between styles and the Eriksonian stages as assessed by the MPD has been rare, with merely two such studies having been identified. In a first study, Thompson (1996) examined the relationship between psychosocial development (evaluated by the MPD) and divergent thinking (assessed by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Figure Form, Torrance, 1984) among a group of older adults in the United States. Notice that in Zhang and Sternberg's (2005) threefold model of intellectual styles, divergent thinking is classified as an ability-based Type I intellectual style. Results suggested significant relationships between divergent thinking and higher scores on five of the eight psychosocial stages. Such results dovetail well with Zhang, 2004, Zhang, 2008 finding that Type I styles are positively related to psychosocial development. They also lent support to previous studies (Berman et al., 2001, Dollinger et al., 2005).

Nonetheless, Thompson's study employed a style inventory (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) that merely addresses one style dimension (divergent versus convergent). Yet, there are many dimensions to people's intellectual styles.

To overcome the major limitation in Thompson's study, Zhang and He (in press) tested the MPD scales against the thinking style scales based on Sternberg's theory of mental self-government among Chinese university students in Shanghai and have obtained findings supporting their hypotheses. The present research extends Zhang and He's study to investigating university students in Hong Kong as well as those in Nanjing.

The primary objective of this research was to further examine, in a statistical sense, the predictive power of thinking styles as assessed by the latest version of the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2, Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2007) for the eight Eriksonian stages assessed by Hawley's (1988) Measures of Psychosocial Development. The main rationale for examining the statistical contributions of thinking styles to psychosocial development is as follows: although both styles and psychosocial development are associated with personality, styles are more malleable than are psychosocial development because the former are rooted in the combined product of cognition, personality, and activity (see Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1995), whereas the latter is essentially grounded in personality (Erikson, 1968). With the component of activity being built into styles, compared with psychosocial development, styles are more malleable (Curry, 1983). Therefore, it is more sensible to investigate the contributions of styles to psychosocial development, as opposed to vice versa.

The general prediction was that the two constructs would be significantly related in both samples, as they were in Zhang and He's (in press) study. Specifically, it was predicted that Type I thinking styles would have positive predictive power for psychosocial development and that Type II styles would negatively contribute to psychosocial development. This prediction was grounded in the premise that a more advanced psychosocial developmental status represents a more adaptive human attribute. The prediction was further derived from past findings that consistently revealed that Type I thinking styles are positively related to human attributes deemed to be more adaptive such as higher levels of cognitive development (Zhang, 2002), open-mindedness (Fjell & Walhovd, 2004), and a stronger sense of vocational purpose (Zhang, 2004) and that Type II styles are positively related to human attributes considered to be less adaptive (see also Berman et al., 2001). No specific prediction was made regarding the ways in which Type III styles would contribute to psychosocial development. Because they may exhibit the characteristics of either Type I styles or Type II styles (see earlier discussion), Type III styles could contribute to psychosocial development either positively or negatively.

Furthermore, no specific prediction was made about the differences in the results across the three samples (one in Zhang and He's study and the two new samples). Indeed, earlier discussions regarding the conceptual link between styles and psychosocial development as well as the empirical evidence on the relationships between the two constructs indicate that there are good reasons to anticipate that the hypothesized relationships between styles and psychosocial development in the present research would confirm Zhang and He's (in press) findings. Such relationships would also be found in future studies of populations beyond the Chinese university student population. While the claim about findings in non-Chinese populations needs to be substantiated in future studies, the present research further tests the research hypotheses among Chinese university students.

Since this research is the second (after Zhang and He's study) that tested the Measures of Psychosocial Development (MPD, Chinese version) in the Chinese context and since it adopted the newly revised version of the anarchic scale in the Thinking Styles Inventory—Second Revision, it is necessary to ascertain the suitability of the inventories for the present samples Therefore, the preliminary objective of this research was to examine the appropriateness of the MPD for assessing the psychosocial development of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese university students and to ascertain the reliability of the revised anarchic scale.

To present a holistic picture of what existing data say about the relationship between thinking styles and psychosocial development, in the remainder of this paper, statistical information from Zhang and He's (in press) study will be presented along with the data obtained from the two new samples. Furthermore, the following discourse will be conducted in relation to all three sets of data (those from Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hong Kong).

Section snippets

Participants

Zhang and He (in press) conducted their study among university students in Shanghai. However, given that the Measures of Psychosocial Development had only been administered once to a Chinese sample and given that the anarchic scale of the TSI-R2 had just gone through its second revision, it was necessary to extend the research to other Chinese contexts.

Reliability: Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II and Measures of Psychosocial Development

The alpha coefficients for the TSI-R2 scales ranged from .64 (global style) to .84 (liberal style) for Zhang and He's (in press) study (Sample 1); from .61 (global style) to .85 (liberal style) for Sample 2 (Nanjing); and from .64 (global style) to .88 (liberal style) for Sample 3 (Hong Kong). In all three cases, except for the alpha coefficient of the anarchic style, the alpha coefficients of the remaining styles are comparable in magnitude to those reported in studies using the first revised

Discussion

The principal objective of this research was to investigate the relationships between Chinese university students' thinking styles and their psychosocial development, in particular, the contribution of the former to the latter, when age, gender, university class level, and academic discipline were taken into account. To achieve this major objective, a preliminary step taken was to examine if the Chinese version of the Measures of Psychosocial Development is suitable for assessing the

Conclusions, limitations, significance, and implications

Examining the results presented here holistically and across the three sets of data, one would conclude that in general, the use of Type I thinking styles and that of the external style positively contributed to psychosocial development and that the use of Type II styles as well as that of the anarchic style did so negatively. One could assert that these results are convincing based on at least the following three reasons.

First, essentially, the specific ways in which the thinking styles

Acknowledgement

This project was supported by the Committee for the Research Output Prize and the Committee on Research and Conference Grants as administered by the University of Hong Kong.

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