Personality in Later Life: The Struggle Between Decline and Development
Aging, particularly from the viewpoint of youth, seems boring, depressing, and definitely not sexy. Most research on aging has focused on the physical, mental, and social losses associated with getting old, such as physical limitations, diseases, cognitive impairment, retirement, and the death of people in one’s social circle. The picture is generally one of decline or – at best – maintenance, and for people in the second half of their lives, the future often appears to lack opportunities for continued development.
However, in the last couple of decades, researchers have recast the process of aging as one of development rather than decline. Many have been interested specifically in personality development in later life. What aspects of character change as we age, and in what ways?
Theorist Erik Erikson believed that personality continues to develop throughout adulthood. For example, Erikson proposed that a central change in midlife is the development of either generativity or stagnation, with generativity as the ultimate goal. Generativity involves caring and providing for later generations by doing things such as raising a family, mentoring, or volunteering. Creating things that may benefit future generations, such as gardens or works of art, or, on a grander scale, working to preserve planet Earth are also examples of generativity.
However, all of the stages that make up Erikson’s theory have two poles that represent positive and negative features of that stage. The negative side to generativity’s positive side is stagnation: a lack of caring for others and high self-absorption. Traditionally, research has not focused specifically on stagnation, but examined it as the absence of generativity.
In Erikson’s scheme, the next (and final) stage of life that follows generativity vs. stagnation is ego integrity vs. despair. Ego integrity, the positive side of this stage, involves coming to terms with the life that one has lived, warts and all. Conversely, despair is the inability to accept one’s life, feeling that it has been inadequate, having regrets, and believing that there’s no time left to do anything about those regrets. Coming on the heels of midlife, this stage is usually associated with older age and involves how people deal with the various physical, mental, and social losses associated with aging. And as with generativity, a lot of research has been conducted on ego integrity (the positive angle) with little research on despair (the negative angle).
High levels of generativity and ego integrity each reflect healthy personality development, according to both Erikson and recent research. For instance, researchers have found that generativity peaks in midlife, with higher generativity being associated with satisfaction with life and with successful aging. Likewise, higher ego integrity is also related to life satisfaction, along with lower depression, although its developmental arc into old age has not been examined.
The issue here is that, because most research has folded both the positive and negative sides of each stage together, any potential differences in their levels or patterns of development have been overlooked. Separately examining the positive and negative aspects of each factor can reveal possible differences in the development of generativity and stagnation, and ego integrity and despair, especially any changes that might occur in their development patterns across the adult life span.
In a recent study of generativity/stagnation and ego integrity/despair, Abigail Stewart, Elizabeth Vandewater, and I examined both the positive and negative side of these two factors separately. Specifically, we looked at the separate developmental arcs of generativity, stagnation, ego integrity, and despair over almost 30 years (at ages of 43, 53, 62, and 72) in a group of college-educated women. Overall, we found evidence that these four aspects of personality continue to develop and change at least into people’s seventies (and possibly longer, of course).
Most interesting was that the four facets exhibited different patterns of development. Generativity (the positive side) increased steadily from age 43 and remained high at 72, while stagnation (the negative side) also increased until approximately age 62 but then decreased. These results show that both generativity and stagnation increase well into midlife (and beyond, in the case of generativity) before stagnation decreases, perhaps then allowing generativity to continue to increase.
Similarly, ego integrity increased over the nearly 30-year period with no sign of decrease. But despair decreased more precipitously and at a slightly earlier age than stagnation. This pattern shows that ego integrity and despair are not merely concerns in later life, but are also developing in midlife. And, the interplay between the two suggests that ego integrity, like generativity, eventually ‘bests’ its negative counterpart, despair.
Our work supports Erikson’s idea that each stage of older age involves a tension or struggle between its positive and negative sides, as well as his idea that healthy development is achieved after this period of struggle when the positive side of each factor triumphs. This resolution seems to occur at different ages for the two factors. Furthermore, the dynamic relationship between the positive and negative aspects of the factors means that looking at them separately over time provides a more accurate picture of when we might arrive at a “healthy” personality.
Perhaps most importantly, as with earlier periods of life, later life can be a period of personality development. So, whether older people volunteer as a teaching assistant in their grandchildren’s school, take time for themselves, write their tell-all memoir, or finally finish their degree – or all of these things at once – they still have plenty of room to develop and grow.
For Further Reading
Newton, N. J., Stewart, A. J., & Vandewater, E. A. (2019). “Age is opportunity”: Women’s personality trajectories from mid- to later-life. Journal of Research in Personality, 80, 43-54.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.04.005
Van Hiel, A., Mervielde, I., & De Fruyt, F. (2006). Stagnation and generativity: Structure, validity, and different relationships with adaptive and maladaptive personality. Journal of Personality, 74(2), 543–573. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00384.x
Westerhof, G. J., Bohlmeijer, E. T., & McAdams, D. P. (2017). The relation of ego integrity and despair to personality traits and mental health. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences, 72(3), 400-407. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbv062
About the Author
Nicky Newton is an assistant professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She researches adult development and aging, focusing on the relationships between age, gender, social roles, health, and personality.
