The Developmental Characteristics In Formal Thought And Postformal Thought And Ego Identity Of Middle School Students And College Students And The Relations Among Them

The dissertation adopted the methods of literature,interview and questionnaire.474 junior middle school students,291 senior high school students and 383 college students were used as subjects.The study aims to explore:(1)the developmental characteristics in formal thought of middle school students and college students,(2)the developmental characteristics in postformal thought of middle school students and college students,(3)the developmental characteristics in ego identity of middle school students and college students,(4)the relations among formal thought,postformal thought and ego identity of middle school students and college students.The research includes 3 parts.Part 1 explored the characteristics in formal thought and postformal thought of middle school students and college students, and the impact of grade,gender and urban or rural factors on it.Part 2 explored the characteristics in ego identity status of middle school students and college students,and the impact of grade,gender and urban or rural factors on it.Part 3 explored the relations among formal thought,postformal thought and ego identity of middle school students and college students.Based on the experiment, the following conclusions were obtained.(1)Differences exist in the formal thought levels of different grade students and formal thought levels is on the decline with the higher grade,in the formal thought levels of different gender students and the men is better than the women.Differences exist in the relativistic thinking levels and the dialectical thinking levels of different grade students,is increased with the higher grade.Differences exist in the dialectical thinking levels of different of different gender students and the women is better than the men,in the dialectical thinking levels of different of urban or rural students and is the urban students better than the rural students.(2)The distribution of students’ thinking type has extremely significant differences between grades/genders.(3)The distribution of students’ identity status has extremely significant differences between grades/urban or rural factors.(4)There is an extremely significantly positive correlation between formal thought and identity achievement /identity foreclosure,and an extremely significantly negative correlation between formal thought and idenity diffusion.There is a very significantly negative correlation between relativistic thinking and identity achievement,and an extremely significantly negative correlation between relativistic thinking and identity foreclosure/idenity diffusion.There is an extremely significantly negative correlation between dialectical thinking and identity foreclosure and a significantly negative correlation between dialectical thinking and idenity diffusion.(5)Formal thought has very significantly positive effect on identity achievement and extremely significantly positive effect on identity foreclosure and extremely significantly negative effect on idenity diffusion.Relativistic thinking has significant negative effect on identity foreclosure.(6)Differences exist in the influence between formal thought,postformal thought and identity status of different grade students.