Postformal thought

Many developmentalists believe that after Piaget's four stages of human development is a fifth known as Postformal thought. Postformal thought is believed to go beyond the fourth stage of formal operational thought as defined by Piaget. The distinction is useful to understand when dealing with emerging adults; adolescents are typically in Piaget's formal operational stage. Postformal thought is believed to be more flexible, logical, willing to accept moral and intellectual complexities, and dialectical than previous stages in development. Scholars explained that in postformal thought "one can conceive of multiple logics, choices, or perceptions... in order to better understand the complexities and inherent biases in 'truth'" (Griffin et al., 2009, p. 173).

Critical discussion

However, the concept of postformal thinking is heavily criticized by many scholars. See for example,. There are theoretical and empirical counter-arguments against this suggested stage. Instead, adult development has been suggested to be a form of integrative thinking (Kallio, 2011), which include most of the features claimed formerly to be postformal (e.g. understanding of various viewpoints, acceptance of relativism and integrating viewpoints).