Maturity is all about  the appropriateness of your behaviour within a given environmental context.  A key question, is how do we evaluate whether a behavioural response is of low or high maturity?

Measuring is of critical importance because without measures adjusting the maturity level or even planning a strategy to change behaviour to a higher level is impossible.

Behaving maturely or more maturely, without knowing what that looks like, is like banging around in the dark.  You might luck out and escape but who knows.  Hard to predict the result.

Assessing Maturity

The simple and most effective measure of maturity is outcome/ consequence based.  Did the results of your behaviour increase value, pleasure, happiness? Were the results accidental or will they be consistently the same and can they be sustained.

The greater the level of behavioural maturity the more likely you can predict the result (this is now based on past experience) and given the behaviour worked positively, it makes sense to keep repeating it and sustaining the success.

Experience Required

Improving maturity requires experience.  What types of behaviour lead to consistent, sustainable positive outcomes?

This does not need to be personal experience, relying on others works well but drawing on experience of some sort is an absolute requirement.

The native Americans recognized this intuitively and is one of the key reasons elders are revered so highly within their culture.  They might not be the activists or leaders of the band but they are key sources of knowledge and maturity and recognized for that.