ED. Not what you're thinking.

Bauer, J. J. & McAdams, D. P. (2010). Eudaimonic growth: Narrative growth goals predict increases in ego development and subjective well-being 3 years later. Developmental Psychology, 46(4), 761-772.

Three things intrigued me about this article: 1) what the heck are growth goals, and how does one measure these?; 2) Dan McAdams (big in a former interest of mine, autobiographical memory narratives); and 3) it includes two of Rich's biggest pet peeves, personality traits and a new life stage you may have heard of called emerging adulthood. As I read this article, I realized I really needed to brush up on the details of the counter-arguments for these latter concepts, which seem to be so pervasive in the top journals. With regard to the findings, the authors essentially coded growth goals for intellectual or socioemotional content and then these could display either agentic or communal orientation. They found that goals related to the self (i.e., agentic intellectual goals) predicted increases in ego development (ED, a proxy for maturity) three years later among two cohorts who were 18 and 21 at T1, whereas goals related to others (i.e., communal socioemotional goals) predicted subjective well-being (SWB) three years later. Personality traits were not a factor in predicting ED or SWB: "In other words, one cannot infer a person's life story and identity from his or her broad personality traits" (p. 768).

Well, der.