The Impact of Graduate Education on the Mental Complexity of Mid-Career Military Officers

This paper empirically explores baseline levels of mental complexity among military graduate students as defined by constructive-developmental theory, reports changes in baseline scores during their year-long enrollment in a professional graduate degree program, and, through the use of quasi-experimental design and comparison groups, examines the efficacy of developmental interventions. We used the subject-object interview with a 16-item scale for pretesting and posttesting. This study shows that professional graduate education can have a significant impact on the development of one’s self-authoring capacity. Growth rates exceeded expectations; 69% of participants increasing mental complexity by one level and half of participants changed at rates unanticipated by the previous research. Growth rates were higher for participants entering graduate school with a socialized form of mind versus a self-authoring form of mind with 88% of dominant socialized experiencing growth versus 46% of dominant self-authoring. Findings suggest that graduate education programs can accelerate developmental growth toward self-authorship.