Achieving ego integrity: Personality development in late midlife.

Abstract

As people progress through the lifespan and attempt to come to terms with the lives they have led and the people they have become, they confront the tension between ego integrity versus despair. According to Erik Erikson and his colleagues, this developmental stage becomes focal in old age; however, to some degree, people can be engaged in balancing and processing its tensions much earlier. This study explored precursors and correlates of ego integrity versus despair in a sample of women in late midlife---as the issues associated with this developmental stage started shifting to their central developmental concern. For this study, an implicit measure of ego integrity was developed, and all data were analyzed using this new implicit measure, as well as Ryff and Heincke's (1983) self-report measure. In cross-sectional analyses, both implicit and self-reported ego integrity correlated positively with life satisfaction. Self-reported ego integrity also correlated positively with psychological well-being and zest, and negatively with envy, whereas implicit ego integrity correlated positively with physical well-being. All relationships with self-reported ego integrity remained significant after controlling for social desirability (assessed fifteen years earlier). Furthermore, the more women had resolved their regrets earlier in midlife, the higher their self-reported ego integrity in later midlife; this relationship held within time as well. Finally, consistent with Erikson's developmental theory, women who had achieved higher levels of generativity earlier in midlife also attained higher levels of integrity in late midlife. Continuing to study the processes and outcomes associated with ego integrity versus despair, throughout the life cycle, could provide meaningful information about how people find peace within themselves that can be extended to improving society at large.