Chapter 13

Middle Adulthood: Social and

Personality Development in
Middle Adulthood
PERSONALITY THEORIES AND DEVELOPMENT

Stages of Adulthood
• The pominent theories-define stages of adult
development:
Erik Erikson’s life-span view.
Daniel Levinson’s seasons of man’s
life.
 Erikson’s Stage of Generativity vs Stagnation

• Generativity: adults’ desire to leave legacies of themselves to

the next generation-achieve a kind of immortality.
• Stagnation (self-absorption): individuals sense that they have
done little/nothing for the next generation.
• Generativity can be develop through:
biological generativity  adults have offspring
parental generativity  adults develop skills that are passed down to
others.
cultural generativity  adults create, renovate/conserve some aspect of
culture that ultimately survives.

Adults promote and guide the next generation by parenting, teaching,

leading, and doing things that benefit the community.
 Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life
• In The Seasons of a Man’s Life (1978), Daniel Levinson reported the
results of extensive interviews with 40 middle-aged men.
• Men often experience a turning point in their lives between the ages
of 35-45.
• Identified several substages in the period from 40-65 in his initial
study with men (mid 1970-s):
 Midlife transition (age 40-45)
 Early life structure for middle adulthood (age 45-50)
 Age 50 transition (age 50-55)
 Culminating life structure for middle adulthood (age 55-60)
 Late adult transition (age 60-65)
The Life-Events Approach
• The contemporary life-event approach  how life events influence the
individual’s development depends not only on the life event, but also on:
 mediating factors (eg: physical health, family support)
 adaptation to the life event (eg: appraisal of the threat, coping strategies)
 the life-stage context
 Sociohistorical context
Eg: if individuals are in poor health and have little family support, life
events are likely to be more stressful.
Stress and Personal Control in Midlife
Do middle-aged adults experience stress differently from young adults
and older adults?
• Midlife crises-stressful life events.
• Young and middle-aged adults more stressful days than older adults (Almeida &
Horn, 2004).
• Middle aged adults- “overload” stressors-too many activities at once.
• A sense of personal control decreases as adults become older (Lachman, 2006).
• Interpersonal tension-daily stressor among middle-aged adults.
 Contexts of Midlife Development

• The contemporary life-events approach (Bronfenbrenner’s theory)

highlights the importance of the complex setting of our lives.
• The three aspects of the contexts of life influence development
during middle adulthood:
historical contexts (cohort effects)
gender
culture
• Ecological theory-holds that development reflects the influence of several environment
systems.
• Identifies 5 environmental systems:
 Microsystem
 Mesosystem
 Exosystem
 Macrosystem
 Chronosystem
 Historical Contexts (Cohort Effects)
• Some developmentalists conclude that changing historical times and
different social expectations influence how different cohorts (groups of
individuals born in the same year/time period) move through the life span.
• Eg: living through the Vietnam war or growing up in the same city around
the same time.
• Values, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors: influenced by the period in
which we live.
• Neugarten (1986) holds that the social environment of a particular age
group can alter its social clock.
• The social clock:
 is the timetable according to which individuals are expected to life accomplish life’s
tasks (marrying, having children/establishing themselves in a career).
 Provide guides for our life.
 Individuals whose lives are not synchronized with these social clocks find life to be
more stressful than those who are on schedule.
 There is much less agreement today on the right age/sequence for the occurrence of
major life events.
 Cultural Contexts
• In many cultures (nonindustrialized cultures)The concept of middle age is not very
clear/in some cases is absent.
• No words for “adolescent”, “young adult”, or “middle aged adult”.
• Example: Gusii culture (the equator in the African country of Kenya):

Females Males
Infant Infant
Uncircumcised girl Uncircumcised boy Movement from one
Circumcised girl Circumcised boy worrior status to the next is due
Married woman Male elder to primarily to life
events, not age.
Female elder
• Gusii adults do reassess their lives:
 around the age of 40.
 examine their current status and the
limited time they have remaining in their
lives.
 physical strength (decreasing)-cannot
farm their land (seek spiritual powers by
becoming ritual practitioners/healers).
• What is middle age like for women in other cultures?
 depends on the modernity of the culture and the culture’s view of
gender roles.
 women in nonindustrialized societies-certain advantages:
 often freed from cumbersome restrictions that were placed on
them when they were younger.
 has the right to exercise authority over specified younger kin.
 eligibility for special statuses and the possibility that these
provide recognition beyond the household.
• Among industrialized cultures-consider the social clock.
• Ex: Australian adults advocated:
oLater ages for marriage and grandparenthood
oA younger age for leaving school
oA broader age range for retiring
STABILITY AND CHANGE

Longitudinal Studies
• To understand the extent to which there is stability/change in adult personality
development:

 Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study,

 the Berkeley Longitudinal Studies,
 Vaillant’s Studies.
 Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study
• A major study of adult personality development continues to be conducted by
Paul Costa & Rober McCrea (1998).
• Big five factors of personality-openness to experience, conscientiousness,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
• Considerable stability occur in the 5 personality factors (Costa & McCrae):
emotional stability
extraversion
openness
agreeableness
conscientiousness
Openness to Experience Conscientiousness
• A general appreciation for art, • Tendency to show self-discipline,
emotion, adventure, unusual ideas,
imagination, curiosity, and variety of act dutifully, and aim for
experience. achievement.
• High • High
• Fantasy • Self-discipline
• Aesthetics • Dutifulness
• Feelings • Competence
• Ideas
• Order
• Actions
• Values • Deliberation
• Low
• Achievement striving
• Down-to-earth • Low
• Conventional • Lazy
• Uncreative • Aimless
• Prefer routine • Quitting
Extroversion Agreeableness
• Characterized by positive emotions, • Tendency to be compassionate and
surgency, and the tendency to seek out cooperative rather than suspicious
stimulation and the company of others. and antagonistic towards others.
• High • High
• Gregariousness • Straightforwardness
• Activity Level • Trust
• Assertiveness • Altruism
• Excitement Seeking • Modesty
• Positive Emotions • Tendermindedness
• Warmth • Compliance
• Low • Low
• Reserved • Aggressive
• Loner • Ruthless
• Quiet • Suspicious
Neuroticism
• The tendency to experience negative
emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or
depression
• High
• Anxiety
• Self-consciousness
• Depression
• Vulnerability
• Impulsiveness
• Angry hostility
• Low
• Calm
• Even-tempered
• Unemotional
• Hardy
• The meta-analysis of personality stability and change organized according to the Big-5
framework included 87 longitudinal studies spanning 10 to 101 years of age indicated
that:
 results of extraversion were complex until it was subdivided into social
dominance and social vitality.
 agreeableness and conscientiousness increased in early and middle adulthood.
 neuroticism decreased in early adulthood.
 openness to experience increased in adolescence and early adulthood and then
decreased in late adulthood.

Conclusion: personality traits changed most during early adulthood.

 Berkeley Longitudinal Studies
• More than 500 children and parentsin the 1920s through midlife.
• The results: did not support that personality is characterized by stability/change from
adolescence to midlife.
• The most stable traits:
 intellectually oriented,
 self-confident,
 openness.
• Characteristics that changed the most:
 Extent to which the individuals were nurturant/hostile.
 Whether/not they had good self-control.
 George Vaillant’s Studies
• Longitudinal studies by George Vaillant help us
examine a somewhat different question than the
studies described so far.
• Does personality at middle age predict what a
person’s life will be like in late adulthood?
• Alcohol abuse and smoking at age 50 were the
best predictors of which individuals would be
dead at 75-80 years of age.
• Other factors at age 50 were linked with being in
the “happy-well” category at 75-80 years of age:
 getting regular exercise,
 avoiding being overweight,
 being well-educated,
 having a stable marriage,
 being future-oriented,
 being thankful and forgiving,
 empathizing with others,
 being active with other people,
 having good coping skills.
• Wealth and income at age 50  not liked with
being in the “happy well” category at 75 to 80
years of age.
• Generativity in middle age was more strongly
related than intimacy to whether individuals
would have an enduring and happy marriage at
75 to 80 years of age.
CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS

Love and Marriage at Midlife

• Affectionate/companionate love  increases during middle adulthood.
• Security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest become more important as relationships
mature  especially in middle adulthood.
• Some marriages that were difficult and rocky during early adulthood turn out to be better
adjusted during middle adulthood.
• Conflicts in some marriages turn out better adjusted.
• The partners may have fewer financial worries, less housework and chores, and more time
with each other.
• View their marriage as positive if they engage in mutual activities.
• Voice considerable satisfaction with being married.
• Possibly by middle age, many of the worst marriages already have dissolved.
• Divorce: more positive in some ways, more negative in others, than divorce in
early adulthood.
• Mature individuals: divorce can be fewer and less intense than for younger
individuals.
• Have more resources, and they can use this time as an opportunity ti simplify
their lives by disposing of possessions, such as a large home, which they no
longer need.
• The children: adults and may be able to cope with their parents’ divorce-
effectively.
• The partners: gained a better understanding of themselves and may be
searching for changes that could include the end to a poor marriage.
• One study found that women who initiated a divorce in midlife were characterized more
by self-focused growth and optimism than were women whose husbands initiated the
divorce.
• The emotional and time commitment to marriage: not be lightly given up.
• Midlife individuals: perceive a divorce as failing in the best years of their able
r/ship, but the divorced partner usually sees it as betrayal, the ending of a r/ship
that had been built up over many years and that involved a great deal of
commitment and trust.
• AARP (2004) survey: staying married because of their children was by the
main reason many people took so long become divorced.
• The divorced women: afraid of having financial problem (44%) than the
divorced men (11%).
• Main causes for women cited for their divorce:
 Verbal, physical/emotional abuse (23%)
 Alcohol/drug abuse (18%)
 Cheating (17%)
• Main causes for men cited for their divorce:
 No obvious problems, just fell out of love (17%)
 Cheating (14%)
 Different values, lifestyles (14%)
The Empty Nest and Its Refilling
• The launching of a child into adult lifean important event in a family.
• Parents face new adjustments as a result of the child’s absence.
• Empty nest syndrome-includes a decline in marital satisfaction after children leave
the home.
• For most parents, marital satisfaction does not decline after children have left home
but rather increases during the years after child rearing.
• Pluses and minuses when adult children return to live at home:
 Loss of privacy
• Adult childrenparents restrict their independence, cramp
their sex lives, reduce their rock music listening, treat them as
children.
• Parentstheir quite home has become noisy, stay up late
worrying when their adult children will come home, meals are
difficult to plan, their r/ship as a married couple has been
invaded, have to shoulder too much responsibility for their adult
children.
• Parents and their adult children should agree on the conditions and
expectations beforehand:
oPay rent, wash their own clothes, cook their own meals, do any
household chores, pay their phone bills, come and go as they please, be
sexually active/drink alcohol at home.
Sibling Relationships and Friendships
• Sibling r/ships:
 Singling r/ships in adulthood: extremely close, apathetic/highly rivalrous.
 close to each other in adulthood (tended to be that way in childhood).
 r/ships with siblings who remain in contact are important to psychological
well-being in midlife.
 serve somewhat different purposes for men and women.
 women: positive feelings towards siblings are linked with a favorable self-
concept.
 men: with high morale.
• Types of relationships among siblings (Gold, Woodbury, & George, 1990):

Congenial sibling r/ships- Loyal sibling relationships-

Intimate sibling relationships-
characterized by high levels of characterized by average
characterized by high levels of
closeness and involvement, levels of closeness,
closeness and involvement,
average levels of contact, and involvement, and contact and
high level of contact, but low
relatively low levels of envy and relatively low levels of envy
levels of envy and resentment.
resentment. and resentment.

Hostile sibling relationships-

Apathetic sibling r/ships- characterized by relatively high
characterized by low levels level of involvement and
on all dimensional resentment and relatively low level
on all other dimensions.
• Friendships:
 Continue to be important in middle adulthood.
 Takes time to develop intimate friendshipsdeeper in
middle adulthood.
Grandparenting
• G/parents play important roles in the lives of many grandchildren.
• Grandmothers: more contact with g/children than g/fathers-as part of their
responsibility for maintaining ties between family members across generations.
• Men: fewer expectation about the g/father role and see it as more voluntary.
 Grandparent Roles
• Meaning of g/parent role:
 a source of biological reward and continuity.
 a source of emotional self-fulfillment, generating feelings of companionship and
satisfaction that may have been missing in earlier adult-child r/ships.
 a remote role.
• Different functions in different families/ethnic groups and cultures/situations.
 The Changing Profile of Grandparents
• U.S.-g/children live with their g/parents.
• Reason:
 divorce,
 adolescent pregnancies,
 drug use by parents.
• Stress was linked:
 Being a younger g/parent,
 Having g/children with physical and psychological problems,
 Low family cohesion.
• A special concern of g/parents is visitation privileges with their g/children.
Intergenerational Relationships
• Affectionate/companionate, love increase during middle adulthood.
• Roles in the lives of the young and the old:
 Share their experience and transmit values to the younger generation.
 Launching children and experiencing the empty nest.
 Adjusting to having grown children returning home.
 Becoming g/parents.
 Giving and receiving financial assistance.
 Caring for a widowed/sick parent.
 Adapting to being the oldest generation after both parents have died.
• New generation: personality characteristics, attitudes, values, and
problem are replicated/changed.
• Their children become the oldest generation-grandchildren the 2 nd
generation.
• Adult children middle-aged: develop more positive perceptions of
their parents.
• Family members: considerable contact across generations.
• Conflicts between parents and their adult children:
 communication and interaction style,
 habits and lifestyle choices,
 child-rearing practices and values,
 politics, religion, and ideology.
• Sandwich generation: responsibilities they have for their
adolescent and young adult children on the one hand and their
aging parents on the other.
• Contribute to stress in middle adulthood-when their parents
become very ill and die.
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