Social and Personality Development in Middle Adulthood

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Social and Personality Development in Middle
Adulthood

• Chapter 16
• Robert S. Feldman

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Two Perspectives on Adult Personality Development

• Normative-Crisis (Erikson)
• Views personality development in terms of fairly
  universal stages, tied to a sequence of
  age-related crises
• Life Events (Helson)
• Suggests that timing of particular events, rather
  than age per se, determines course of personality
  development

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Erik Erikson

• GENERATIVITY VERSUS STAGNATION
• People consider their contributions to family,
  community, work, and society.
• Generativity looking beyond oneself to
  continuation of one's life through others
• Stagnation focusing on the triviality of their
  life

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Other Views

• Erikson
• Critics argue that normative-crisis models are
  outdated
• Model came from time when gender roles were more
  rigid

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Building on Eriksons Views Gould, Vaillant, and
Levinson
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Psychiatrist Roger Gould

• Adults pass through series of seven, age-related
  stages
• People in late 30s and early 40s begin to feel
  sense of urgency in attaining lifes goals
• Descriptions not research supported

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George Valliant

• Keeping meaning ___________________
• Occurs between the ages of 45 and 55
• Adults seek to extract meaning from their lives
  by accepting strengths and weaknesses of others
• Those who are rigid become increasingly isolated
  from others

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Levinson

• Seasons of Life Theory
• Most people are susceptible to fairly profound
  midlife crisis
• Late 30s
• Early 40s
• Between 40 and 45
• He studied men only, has tried to include women
  more recently

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Midlife Crisis

• Stage of uncertainty and indecision brought about
  by realization that life is finite
• Gender differences
• Despite widespread acceptance, evidence for
  midlife crisis does not exist

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Non-Midlife Life Crisis

• For majority of people, transition is smooth and
  __________________
• Many middle-aged people find their careers have
  blossomed
• They feel younger than they actually are

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Developmental Diversity

• Middle Age In Some Cultures It Doesnt Exist
• Model of aging of Oriyan women
• High caste Hindu women
• Life course based on nature of ones social
  responsibility, family management issues, and
  moral sense at given time?not on basis of
  chronological age
• Domestic work is highly respected and valued

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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

• Does personality change or remain stable over
  course of development?
• Erikson and Levinson ___________________
• Paul Costa and Robert McCrae _________ in the
  Big 5 traits across development

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Stability and Change in the Big Five Personality
Traits

• Big Five traits are relatively stable past age 30
  with some variations in specific traits
• Neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to
  experience decline somewhat from early adulthood
  through middle adulthood
• Agreeableness and conscientiousness increase to a
  degree
• Findings are consistent across cultures

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If Youre Happy and You Know It

• Sense of subjective well-being or general
  happiness remains ___________ over life span
• Most people general set point for happiness
• Regardless of where they stand economically,
  residents of countries across the world have
  similar levels of happiness

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Middle Age Marriages

• Most frequent pattern of marital satisfaction is
  U-shaped
• Marital satisfaction begins to decline after
  marriage and falls to its lowest point following
  the birth of children
• Marital satisfaction begins to grow after
  children leave adolescence and reaches its
  highest point when kids leave home

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From Research to Practice

• After the Vows Changes in Marital Satisfaction
  Over Time
• Older research establishing U-shaped pattern used
  cross-sectional research, surveying different
  people at different points in their marriages
• Current research employed longitudinal methods
• confirmed marital satisfaction decline but failed
  to find evidence of a subsequent upswing after
  the childbearing years
• Over time, marriage quality continues to decline
  over course of marriage

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What do the newer findings suggest?

• Unhappy marriages tend to terminate so earlier
  cross-sectional methods not representative
• Long-married couples were older and were married
  during when marriage was more highly valued
• Different couples have different levels of
  marital satisfaction even at outset

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Good Marriages

• Many couples state that their spouse is their
  "best friend
• They also view marriage as a long-term
  ___________
• They believe their spouse has grown more
  ________________ over the years
• Most feel their sex lives (although frequency
  goes down) are satisfying

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Struggling Marriages

• About 1 woman in ___ will get divorced after 40
• People are more individual, spending less time
  together
• Many feel concerned with their own personal
  happiness and leave an unhappy marriage
• Divorce is more socially acceptable
• Feelings of romantic, passionate love may subside
  over time

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Divorce

• Divorce can be especially hard for traditional
  women over 40 who stayed home with kids and never
  worked outside the home
• 75 percent to 80 percent of divorced people
  eventually remarry
• It's harder for a middle-aged woman to
  remarry.90 percent of women under 25 remarry
• While 75 percent of white women remarry, less
  than half of African American women remarry
• Less than 33 percent over the age of 40 remarry

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Marriage Gradient

• The marriage gradient pushes men to marry younger
  women
• Older women are victims of the harsh societal
  standards regarding physical attractiveness
• A major reason many remarry is that being
  divorced carries a stigma

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Second Time Around

• Older couples are more mature and realistic
• Roles are more flexible
• Couple looks at marriage less romantically and is
  more cautious
• Divorce rate is higher for second marriages
• More stress especially with blended families
• Once divorce experienced it is easier to walk
  away a second time

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Family Evolutions From Full House to Empty Nest

• When parents experience feelings of unhappiness,
  worry, loneliness, and depression resulting from
  their children's departure from home
• More myth than reality

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When children leave home

• Parents can work harder
• More time alone
• House stays cleaner
• Phone doesn't ring as often

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Boomerang Children Refilling the Empty Nest

• Young adults who come back to live in homes of
  their middle-aged parents
• Men are more likely to do it than women
• Parents tend to give sons more freedom than
  daughters
• Unable to find a job
• Difficulty making ends meet

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Sandwich Generation

• Fulfill needs of both their children and their
  aging parents
• Couples are marrying and having children later
• Parents are living longer

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Caring for Aging Parents

• Care of aging parents can be ___________________
• Significant degree of role reversal
• Range of care varies
• Financial
• Managing household
• Providing direct care
• Influenced by cultural norms and expectations

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Becoming a Grandparent Who, Me?

• Involved
• Companionate
• Remote

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Are all grannies the same?

• Marked gender differences in ways people enjoy
  grandparenthood
• Grandmothers are more interested and experience
  greater satisfaction than grandfathers
• African American grandparents are more apt to be
  involved

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Family Violence The Hidden Epidemic

• Prevalence
• Characteristics of abuser and abused

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Factors

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Neil Jacobson and John Gottman

• Husbands who abuse fall into two categories
• Pit bulls confine violence to those they love
  and strike out against their wives when they feel
  jealous or when they fear being abandoned
• Cobras are likely to be aggressive to everyone,
  are more likely to use weapons, and are more
  calculating, showing little emotion or arousal

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Lenore Walker

• Marital abuse by a husband occurs in three
  stages
• Tension-building stage where a batterer becomes
  upset and shows dissatisfaction initially through
  verbal abuse
• Acute battering incident when the physical abuse
  actually occurs
• Loving contrition stage where the husband feels
  remorse and apologizes for his actions

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Why Women Stay

• Wife feels somewhat at fault
• This explains why women stay in abusive
  relationships
• Some stay out of fear
• Learned helplessness

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Cycle of Violence Hypothesis

• Abuse and neglect of children leads them to be
  predisposed to abusiveness as adults
• About one-third of people who were abused or
  neglected as children abuse their own children
• Two-thirds of abusers were not abused as children

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Cultural Differences

• Cultural correlates
• Status
• Low status they are easy targets
• High status they are seen as a threat to husbands

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Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development

• Dealing with Spousal Abuse
• Teach both wives and husbands that physical
  violence is NEVER acceptable
• Call the police
• Understand that the remorse shown by a spouse, no
  matter how heartfelt, may have no bearing on the
  possibility of future violence
• If you are the victim of abuse, seek a safe haven
• If you feel in danger from an abusive partner,
  seek a restraining order
• Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at
  1-800-799-7233 for immediate advice.

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Spousal Abuse and Society 

• Cultural Roots of Violence
• Other cultures have traditions in which violence
  is regarded as acceptable
• Some experts suggest traditional power structure
  under which women and men function is root cause
  of abuse

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Jobs at Midlife

• Productivity
• Job satisfaction
• Worker characteristics and attitudes

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Burnout

• When highly trained professionals experience
  dissatisfaction, disillusionment, frustration,
  and weariness from their jobs
• For many workers, unemployment is a hard reality
  of life and the implications are more
  psychological than economic.
• Middle-aged adults tend to stay unemployed longer
  than do young workers.

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Unemployment The Dashing of the Dream

• Causes ___________ and ______________
  consequences
• Feeling anxious, depressed, and irritable
• Self-confidence and concentration may plummet
• Sometimes depression and/or suicide

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Seeking Work After Job Loss in Middle Age

• Employers may discriminate because of age and not
  hire older applicants
• Research shows that older workers have less
  absenteeism, hold their jobs longer, are more
  reliable, and more willing to learn new skills

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Switchingand StartingCareers at Midlife

• Some people change or seek jobs voluntarily in
  middle adulthood
• Old job gave little satisfaction
• Mastery of the old job's challenges achieved
• No longer enjoy what they do
• Need employment after raising children, divorce,
  or death of spouse

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When Mom Goes to WorkHey, What Do You Think She
Has Been Doing At Home All Those Years?

• 65 percent of women between ages of 50 and 60 (80
  percent of those who graduated from college) are
  now in the workforce
• Three-quarters are in full-time jobs

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Immigrants on the Job Making It in America

• Demographics
• Contributions
• Prejudice

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Leisure time

• Leisure activities
• Average number of hours
• Nature of activities
• Pace of life differs across countries

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