Jane Loevinger Weissman (February 6, 1918 – January 4, 2008) was an American
developmental psychologist
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
who developed a
theory of personality which emphasized the gradual internalization of social rules and the maturing conscience for the origin of personal decisions. She also contributed to the theory of measurements by introducing the coefficient of test
homogeneity
Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts relating to the Uniformity (chemistry), uniformity of a Chemical substance, substance, process or image. A homogeneous feature is uniform in composition or character (i.e., color, shape, size, weight, ...
. In the tradition of developmental stage models, Loevinger integrated several "frameworks of
meaning-making
In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people (and other living beings) Construals, construe, Understanding, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.
The term is widely used in Constructivism (psychologi ...
" into a model of humans' constructive potentials that she called
ego development (or in German, ''
Ich-Entwicklung''). The essence of the ego is the striving to master, to integrate, and make sense of experience. She also is credited with the creation of an assessment test, the
Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
Early life
Jane Loevinger was the third of five children born to Gustavus Loevinger and Millie Strause, and was born into a
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
American family.
Education and accomplishments
As a child, Loevinger showed proficiency among her classmates, often achieving far above the rest. She went to the University of Minnesota in hopes of pursuing psychology, where she was told that this major was too mathematical for her. Despite the odds, Loevinger declared her major as psychology and managed to graduate ''
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...
'' at the young age of 19. She then went on to earn her master of science degree in
psychometrics
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and rela ...
at the age of 21. She developed the statistical index that bears her name – Loevinger's H. This index is the basis of
Mokken scaling, a versatile
nonparametric
Nonparametric statistics is a type of statistical analysis that makes minimal assumptions about the underlying distribution of the data being studied. Often these models are infinite-dimensional, rather than finite dimensional, as in parametric sta ...
method of constructing a
Guttman scale
In the analysis of multivariate observations designed to assess subjects with respect to an attribute, a Guttman scale (named after Louis Guttman) is a single (unidimensional) ordinal scale for the assessment of the attribute, from which the ori ...
from a pool of candidate items. Loevinger's H has since been shown to be the fundamental statistic that underlies all measures of statitical agreement of two binary variables such as
Cohen's Kappa
Cohen's kappa coefficient ('κ', lowercase Greek kappa) is a statistic that is used to measure inter-rater reliability (and also intra-rater reliability) for qualitative (categorical) items. It is generally thought to be a more robust measure than ...
.
Still intrigued with the world of psychology, Loevinger went on to enroll in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a research assistant for Erik Erikson.
In 1943, Loevinger married
Samuel Isaac Weissman (June 25, 1912 – June 12, 2007), a scientist who contributed to the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada.
From 1942 to 1946, the ...
. They had a son and a daughter. Samuel Weissman worked on the weapon design of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, while Loevinger stayed at Berkeley to finish her dissertation. The family then moved to St. Louis where Jane taught part-time at the Washington University in St. Louis.
After growing frustrated with her time teaching and facing the societal pressures of being a working mother, Loevinger decided to begin her own research, specifically about women and mothers. During this time, Loevinger and her research team developed a number of studies and findings, including the renowned Washington University Sentence Completion Test.
See also
*
Psychological testing
Psychological testing refers to the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered or scored by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought t ...
*
Loevinger's stages of ego development
References
Other key publications
* Loevinger, J. (1970). ''Measuring Ego Development''. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Loevinger, J. (1976). ''Ego Development''. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Loevinger, J. (1987). ''Paradigms of Personality''. New York: Freeman.
* Hy, L. X. & Loevinger, J. (1996). ''Measuring Ego Development'', 2nd Ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
External links
Loevinger’s Developmental Model of Personality
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loevinger, Jane
American people of German-Jewish descent
American women psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
1918 births
2008 deaths
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
People from Saint Paul, Minnesota
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Washington University in St. Louis faculty