The passage of time leaves a deep mark on all of us: is ageing every year a party that seems to be losing?While we’re winning. A recent study examined how the four dimensions of personality evolve with age; of all, feelings of despair were the first to fade.
The four dimensions of personality studied in this study were generativity, stagnation, the integrity of the self, and despair. These four dimensions come from Erik Erikson’s personality theory and refer to the extremes of two of the eight psychosocial states proposed by him.
These two psychosocial states correspond to the last two stages of life.
Each stage of life is characterized by a series of conflicts that we must face for our own personal development, between the age of 40 and 60, the conflict between stagnation and generativity, the integrity of ego and despair, on the other. Hand in hand, they correspond to the 60-year-old scene.
Let’s look at what each dimension is, what characterizes them, and the findings of this study, conducted by a team of psychologists led by Nicky J. Newton and Elisabeth A. Wanderwater and published in the Journal of Research in Personality.
Generativity is the dimension of personality related to the degree of active participation in building a healthy future. This dimension of personality develops attitudes of understanding and consideration for others.
It is the one that allows you to see the center of problems beyond appearances, and offers advice based on the wisdom acquired over time.
On the other hand, stagnation refers to the lack of personal growth and the development of these generating skills, characterized by a low tolerance to frustration and mis management of uncertainty and problems that require complex analysis.
At this stage of life, the integrity of the ego is the ability of people to recover from adversity, that is, it refers to resilience, characterized by a sense of satisfaction with life, which is a starting point for the person to demonstrate good self-control.
The dimension of despair, on the other hand, relates to the lack of integrity of the ego, is associated with feelings of despair, with the feeling that life makes no sense, despair makes us hostile towards others and situations that are not understood. .
The study involved 166 women from 43 to 72 years of age, which developed in four phases over 28 years (1986-2014). The research consisted of recording the four dimensions of the personality we already talked about during this period.
The data showed a steady increase in the dimensions of generativity and integrity between the ages of 43 and 70, however, stagnation reached its highest level at the age of 60 and then began to decline until the age of 70.
Finally, the dimension of despair was the first to reach its climax, manifesting itself at younger ages, from the age of 50; however, feelings of despair declined considerably between the age of 60 and 70.
Feelings of despair and stagnation seem to fade over time, while positive emotions seem to become more relevant. During the last life cycle of the women’s study, feelings of despair decreased due to an increase in ego integrity.
Stagnation also subsided later, while generativity and integrity remained constant or increased over time.
It seems that this decrease in stagnation is also linked to a new sense of personal development generated by the integrity of the ego.
These results fill us with hope. It seems that good conflict resolution in the latter stages of life can lead to a considerable reduction in feelings of despair and a significant increase in the positive dimensions of personality.
For all these reasons, perhaps we should start looking at the middle-aged stage enthusiastically, with a deeper meaning.