ABSTRACT
Stage and type theories of character development have a long lineage, going back at least as far as Plato’s Republic. For a long while they fell into disrepute among psychologists, in part because so many people seemed to lie between stages rather than fitting exactly any stage. Recently, there have again been a number of stage and type theories proposed, in part because the strictly behavioristic psychometric alternatives failed to capture something of the dynamics of character development. Piaget’s work on stages of cognitive development also provided new stimulus.
