Personality Theories and Adult Development

Stages of Adulthood

• Erikson’s Stage of Generativity Versus Stagnation

  • Generativity: adults’ desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation

    • biological: adults have offspring

    • parental: adults nurture and guide children

    • work: adults develop skills that are passed down to others

    • cultural: adults create, renovate, or conserve some aspect of culture that ultimately survives

    • generativity in middle age was more strongly related than intimacy to whether individuals would have an enduring and happy marriage at 75-80

    • for women, the desire for generativity increased as the participants aged from their thirties to their fifties

    • participants in the generativity condition who held more positive expectations for mental health during the aging process reported greater perceived social support and lower levels of loneliness

  • Stagnation: individuals sense that they’ve done nothing for the next generation

• Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life

  • at the end of teenage years, a transition from dependence to independence should occur

    • marked by the formation of a dream

  • twenties: novice phase of adult development

  • 28-33: transition period where a man must face the more serious question of determining his goals

  • 30s: family and career development

  • 40-45: transition to middle adulthood

    • requires the adult male to come to grips with

      • being young vs being old

      • being destructive vs being constructive

      • being masculine vs being feminine

      • being attached to others vs being separated from them

    • success of the midlife transition rests on how effectively the individual reduces the polarities and accepts each of them as an integral part of this being

• How Pervasive Are Midlife Crises?

  • middle-aged adult is suspended between the past and the future (Levinson)

  • Vaillant: only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis

  • forties are a decade of reassessing and recording the truth about one’s adolescence and adulthood

  • many cognitive skills peak in midlife and many individuals reach the height of their career success in midlife

  • happiness and positive affect have an upward trajectory from early adulthood to late adulthood

  • the stage theories place too much emphasis on crises in development, especially midlife crises

• some individuals may experience a midlife crisis in some contexts of their lives but not others

The Life-Events Approach

• contemporary life-events approach: how life events influence the individual’s development depends on the life event and on mediating factors

• places too much emphasis on change

• life’s major events may not be as stressful as the cumulative effects of our daily experiences

  • stressful daily hassles are linked to increased anxiety and lower physical well-being

  • older adults are more likely than younger adults to use proactive strategies to deal with minor daily hassles before they become more stressful

Stress and Personal Control in Midlife

• Stress, Personal Control, and Age

  • middle age is a time when a person’s sense of control is frequently challenged by many demands and responsibilities

  • less attention is given to self-pursuits and more is given to responsibility for others

  • middle-aged and older adults showed a smaller increase in psychological distress to interpersonal stressors than did younger adults

  • a sense of personal control peaks in midlife and then declines

  • some aspects of personal control increase with age while others decrease

• Stress and Gender

  • women and men differ in the way they experience and respond to stressors

  • women are more vulnerable to social stressors (romance, family, work)

  • women are more likely to biome depressed when they encounter stressful life events

  • women are more likely to seek psychotherapy, talk to friends, read a self-help book, take prescription medication, and engage in comfort eating

  • men are more likely to attend a support group, have sex, try to fix problems themselves, and not admit to having problems

  • men face stress in a fight or flight manner

    • become aggressive, withdraw from social contact, drink alcohol

  • women face stress in a tend and befriend pattern

    • seeking social alliances

    • produce oxytocin

Contexts of Midlife Development

• Historical Contexts (Cohort Effects)

  • cohorts: groups of individuals born in the same year / time period

  • changing historical times and different social expectations influence how different cohorts move through the lifespan

  • social clock: timetable on which individuals are expected to accomplish life’s tasks

    • social environment of a particular age group can alter its social clock

    • individuals whose lives are not synchronized with social clocks find life to be more stressful than those who are on schedule

• Gender Contexts

  • stage theories of adult development have a male bias

  • early fifties are a new prime of life for many women

    • more empty nests, better health, higher income, and more concern for parents

    • confidence, involvement, security, and breadth of personality

Stability and Change

Longitudinal Studies

• Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study

  • Big Five factors of personality (OCEAN)

  • extraversion, openness, and agreeableness were lower in early adulthood, peaked between 40 and 60 years of age, and decreased in late adulthood

  • conscientiousness showed a continuous increase from early adulthood to late adulthood

  • optimism is linked to better adjustment, improved health, and increased longevity

• Helson’s Mills College Study

  • women were experiencing midlife consciousness

  • commitment to the tasks of early adulthood helped women learn to control their impulses, develop interpersonal skills, become independent, and work hard to achieve goals

Conclusions

• greatest change in personality traits occurred in early adulthood

• people show more stability in their personality when they reach midlife than when they were younger adults

• cumulative personality model of personality development: with time and age people become more adept at interacting with their environment in ways that promote increased stability of personality

• changes in personality traits across adulthood occur in a positive direction

Close Relationships

Love, Marriage, and Divorce at Midlife

• romantic love is strong in early adulthood

  • physical attraction, romance, and passion are more important in new relationships

• affectionate love increases during middle adulthood

  • security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest become more important as relationships mature

• Marriage

  • middle-aged partners are more likely to view their marriage as positive if they engage in mutual activities

  • middle-aged married individuals have a lower likelihood of work-related health limitations

  • positive martial quality was linked to better health for both spouses

  • for both husbands and wives, negative emotional behavior decreased and positive emotional behavior increased with age

• Divorce

  • divorce rate increased for young adults but decreased for middle-aged and older adults

    • could be because of changing view of women: divorce has less stigma now, women are less dependent on husbands

  • divorce was more likely to occur when they had been married fewer years, their marriage was of lower quality, they did not own a home, and they had financial problems

The Empty Nest and Its Refilling

• empty nest syndrome: decline in marital satisfaction after children leave the home

• for most parents, marital satisfaction increases after children leave the home

  • marital partners have time to pursue career interests and to spend time with each other (increased quality of time)

• adult children are returning to home to save money after college

  • common complaint: loss of privacy

  • disequilibrium in family life that requires considerable adaptation by parents and their adult children

Sibling Relationships and Friendships

• majority of sibling relationships in adulthood are close

• it is rare for sibling closeness to develop for the first time in adulthood

• adult siblings provide practical and emotional support to each other

• men who had poor sibling relationships in childhood were more likely to develop depression by age 50

• friendships that have endured over the adult years are often deeper than those that are newly formed in middle adulthood

Grandparenting

• the increase in longevity is influencing the nature of grandparenting

• US grandparents are characterized by higher parental efficacy, more role satisfaction, better well-being, and more attachment than Chinese grandparents, who are characterized by better resilience and more authoritative parenting

• grandparents play important roles in grandchildren’s lives especially when family crises occur

• many adults become grandparents for the first time during middle age

• grandmothers have more contact with grandchildren than grandfathers do

• Grandparent Roles and Styles

  • grandparenting can provide a sense of purpose and a feeling of being valued during middle and late adulthood when generative needs are strong

  • grandmothers have closer relationships with their children and grandchildren and give more personal advice than grandfathers do

• The Changing Profile of Grandparents

  • grandparents are sometimes thrust back into a parenting role - divorce, adolescent pregnancies, and drug use by parents

  • grandparent involvement was linked with better adjustment in single-parent and stepparent families than in two-parent biological families

  • grandparents who are full-time caregivers for grandchildren are at elevated risk for health problems, depression, and stress

    • full-time grandparent caregivers are often characterized by low-income, minority status, and by not being married

    • when children live with grandparents this arrangement benefits low-income and single parents

  • grandparents who are part-time caregivers are less likely to have the negative health status that full-time caregivers have

  • more states have passed laws giving grandparents the right to petition for visitation rights w their grandchildren (in cases of divorce and remarriage)

Intergenerational Relationships

• more than 80% of middle-aged and older adults reported that adults have a duty to care for their parents in time of need later in life

• middle-aged adults have responsibilities to their adolescent and young adult children as well as their aging parents

• many middle-aged adults experience considerable stress when their parents become very ill and die

• middle-aged parents are more likely to provide support to their grown children than to their parents

  • when their parents have a disability, their support for that parent increases

• relationships between aging parents and their children are usually characterized by ambivalence

• gender differences characterize intergenerational relationships

  • women’s relationships across generations are typically closer than other family bonds

• when adults immigrate to another country, intergenerational stress may increase