| Hogan (1973) proposes that moral character and moral behavior, the latter defined as social rule compliance, can be explicated by five dimensions of personality structure: Socialization, empathy, autonomy, moral judgement, and moral knowledge. The purposes of the present study were to test in children and early adolescents (1) Hogan's hypothesis that socialization develops first followed, at later ages, by empathy and autonomy; (2) Hogan's proposition that rule-following behavior is multiply-determined by these three dimensions; and (3) the hypothesis that ego development (Loevinger, 1976) is a function of the five dimensions of Hogan's model.;The hypothesized sequence of development for the socialization, empathy, and autonomy dimensions was tested by a series of multiple regression analyses. Significant linear relationships were obtained between age and the three dimensions and the results supported the proposition that socialization developed prior to empathy and autonomy. Multiple regression analyses indicated that rule-following behavior involving prosocial activities was multiply determined by socialization and autonomy, while rule following involving antisocial activities was solely determined by socialization. Socialization had the greatest influence upon rule following, involving antisocial activities, for subjects at the lower end of the age range of the study. Multiple discriminant function analyses indicated that the five Hogan dimensions correctly ordered the two lowest of four ego level groups along a dimension of ascending ego development, while placing the two highest ego level groups above the two lowest groups but in reversed order. The results of the study provided partial support for the three hypotheses concerning Hogan's multidimensional model.;Self-report and teacher completed measures were constructed and pretested. The experimental subjects were 125 middle-class, male volunteers, who were between ten and sixxteen years of age and students in private school settings. The subjects completed self-report measures assessing socialization, empathy, autonomy, moral judgement, and social desirability, as well as the Quick Word Test (Borgatta & Corsini, 1964, 1967). They also filled in the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) to assess level of ego development. Teachers completed measures assessing the subjects' socialization, empathy, autonomy, moral judgement, and rule-following behavior. |
