user@terminal ~ % less 1280526120.txt

Cognitive Complexity

Above is Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan’s framework of Cognitive Complexity. Background/context/subject of consciousness becomes foreground/content/object at each developmental stage.

Context of query was on global talent shortage and thought that a curiosity shortage precedes and must be recognized as such. Cognitive complexity is an immensely important trait and one which I feel can’t be taught truly after a certain stage.

Sure, there are biases to be wary of but the following two are curious perspectives. One for science, second for business/organizations:

Science: would point to this academic paper: “High Cognitive Complexity and the Making of Major Scientific Discoveries” (link)

For business: “The Structure and Theory of Organizations” course at Villanova has a nice slide (link). But like the silly strategic thinking courses with titles invoking “Napoleon’s glance” I am dubious of the conclusion that either can be inculcated, feeling rather that they are only understood pedagogically. As the playing field is so rife with would-be jargon the difference might not be noticeable, after all. Good material otherwise, though. (Take the best from all, right?)

Review of Robert Kegan’s book “In Over Our Heads” below sounds quite interesting, but unfortunately isn’t going to be moved to the top of the to-read list. My interest is in how cognitive complexity as a factor - acknowledged or not - shapes perpetuation of lamented institutional characteristics as well as the trajectory of those institutions given present structural constraints. 

From below, this in specific stood out: Yet, one study he conducted revealed that approximately 50% of our society is not even at the cognitive level of modernity, let alone post-modernity. 

Interesting, no? (Reminds vaguely of SOLO Taxonomy … but yes, keep applied, keep applied.)

Robert Kegan is a developmental psychologist whose recent book, In Over Our Heads, looks at the dilemmas of our contemporary society through his theory of self-complexity, which builds upon the perspective of the famous Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. In his presentation Kegan puts forth the following questions: are there gradual qualitative differences in mental complexity as humans develop? As cultures develop? Interestingly, Piaget called himself not a child psychologist but a genetic epistemologist, because his interest was in studying the origin, process, and development of how we know.Kegan outlines The Five Orders of Increasing Mental Complexity, a brief summary of which follows:

1st Level: Fantasy, impulse, single-point of view, immediate, atomistic

2nd Level: Concrete-operational, role-concept, social perceptions, durable category

3rd Level: Traditionalism, role consciousness, mutual reciprocity, trans-categorical

4th Level: Modernism, abstraction, ideology, multiple roles, system/complex

5th Level: Post-Modernism, dialectical, trans-ideological, trans-system/complex

Kegan recounts one of Piaget’s well known studies in which he revealed that children make a qualitative leap in their knowing around the age of 6. The experiment that revealed this had children younger than 6 watch as an adult poured water from one glass into another. If the adult poured the water from a short, wide glass into a tall skinny glass, the children invariably would indicate that the tall glass has more water—even though they saw the adult pour the water right before their eyes. It is only after the approximate age of 6 that children develop the cognitive capacity to realize that the amount of water stays the same regardless of the shape of the glass.

In developing Piaget’s work Kegan has focused on the nature of the subject-object relationship. In Kegan’s definition something is subject to us when we are controlled by, captive of, and identified with aspects of its meaning. Something is object, by contrast, when we can take a perspective on it and take responsibility for it. We are no longer captive to it. As we grow and develop, we become less subject to our perceptions of the world. We become more objective and are able to entertain multiple points of view. Using this scheme, Kegan suggests that any stage of conscious awareness can be distinguished by what is subject and what is object in that particular stage. What are we captive to and what are objective about? From the Buddhist perspective, we begin to relate to something that we were once attached to with a growing detached awareness (objectivity). This is how the growth of the mind occurs. An important line of questioning that Kegan offers is: do we keep growing mentally after adolescence (the last stage Piaget studied)? What qualitative transformations occur after the teenage years?

One of the central concerns that Kegan’s book investigates is whether enough individuals in our contemporary culture have the mental development to handle the cognitive tasks demanded by our post-modern society. According to Kegan, there are three worldviews operating simultaneously today: the traditional, the modern, and the post-modern. Yet, one study he conducted revealed that approximately 50% of our society is not even at the cognitive level of modernity, let alone post-modernity. Hence, we are in over our heads, as his book title indicates. Kegan notes that the psychologist Jane Lovinger came to a remarkably similar conclusion herself.

In response to the trend of deconstructionism in post-modern academic circles, which seeks to undercut all personal authority, Kegan suggests that this is not a stage in and of itself, but rather a transitional move to a higher stage that Kegan calls reconstructive post-modernism. At this stage we will be able to move flexibly back and forth over and between different points of view and ideologies.