Developmental Psych Chapter 17

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

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