1. Chapter 14
Social & Personality Development
in Middle Adulthood
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2. I. Personality Development
in Middle Age
• There are 3 major controversies
involving personality development in
middle age
 Midlife crisis
 Normative-crisis versus life events
 Stability versus change in
personality
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3. A. Two Perspectives on Adult Personality
Development
1. Normative-crisis models
 Traditional view – fixed stages
 Specific crises lead to growth; related to age
 Erickson – contributions to family, community, work,
and society; leaving a legacy
 Critics suggest outdated (gender roles were more
rigid). Look for biases in research!
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4. Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Adulthood
Stagnation: focus on the triviality of life; people
feel they have made only a limited contribution to
the world
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5. Levinson’s Seasons
of Life
• Results of extensive interviews
with middle-aged men
• 20s -- novice phase of
experimentation and testing
• 28 to 33 years -- transition and
adoption of goals
• 30s -- BOOM -- becoming one’s
own man phase
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6. Levinson’s Seasons of Life
• Early 40’s are marked by transition and
crisis May 16, 2005:
• Midlife crisis.
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7. Levinson
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8. Two Perspectives on Adult Personality
Development, continued
2. Life events models (Helson)
• Events in life determine personality
development (not age).
 Childbirth, divorce
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9. “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”
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10. The “Big Five”
• The five major clusters of relatively stable personality
characteristics:
 Neuroticism
 Extraversion
 Openness
 Agreeableness
 Conscientiousness
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11. II. Relationships: Marriage and Divorce
in Middle Age
• Societal norms change over time [how?]
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12. The Phases of Marital Satisfaction
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13. Remarriage
• 75% of white women remarry less than
half of black women
• Harder for a middle-aged woman to
remarry
 90% of women under 25.
 Less than one-third over the age of 40.
 The marriage gradient
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14. Second marriages are different.
• Roles are more flexible.
• Less romantic, more cautious.
• The divorce rate is higher for second marriages.
 More stress.
• But, many remarried people report satisfaction
rates as high as those is successful first marriages.
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15. B. Family Evolution
• 1. Empty Nest Syndrome
• 2. Boomerang Children
• 3. Sandwich Generation
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16. C. Becoming a Grandparent
• Grandparents tend to fall into 3 categories:
 Involved
 Companionate
 Remote
• Changing roles
 Legal visitation rights
 Parental roles
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17. D. Spousal Abuse
 The 1985 National Family Violence Survey in the U.S.; 1987
study of Alberta, Canada: 11.3 percent of U.S. women; 11.2
percent of Canadian women
 WHO 2002: 12-month rates of 1.3 percent (overall
prevalence rate of 22.1%), Statistics Canada (Trainor and
Mihorean 2001) reported that both the 1993 Violence
Against Women Survey and the 1999 General Social Survey
found twelve-month wife abuse rates of 3 percent.
 Worse in cultures where women are seen as inferior
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18. Lenore Walker (The Battered Woman, 1980)
Three stages:
• Tension-building stage
• Acute battering incident
• Honeymoon Phase (Loving contrition)
[Next]
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19. The Cultural Roots of Violence
Text: Original English law allowed husbands
to beat their wives by the “rule of thumb.”
MYTH
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20. III. Work and Leisure in Middle-age
• Often greatest productivity, success, and
earning power.
• Tend to stay unemployed longer
 Associated with: anx, dep’n, irritability
• The older you are, the more job satisfaction
you are likely to experience
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