The Study of Adults' Images of Midlife and Later Life Development

The results show that there is some consensus as to when midlife begins and ends. The majority of adults think 40 years old is the median year of entry and 60 years old is the median year of exit. Adults who agree the issue of midlife crisis hold the most prominent reasons for midlife crisis including work career, family, marriage, economic, physical health, and social stresses.

Adults who disagree the issue of midlife crisis do not deny the fact of midlife crisis rather than treat midlife crisis as chances of changing to better life. On the basis of the results of subjects' perception of the most prominent distressed, stressful events and typical behaviors, traits of middle-aged and older adults reveal that middle-aged adults in Taiwan society play the role of taking care of family members and devote to work career responsibly but rather worry about the decline of physical health and aging; older adults in Taiwan society encounter lots of loss including physical health, social status, interpersonal relationships, relatives contact, and work role losses and show some negative, undesirable traits.

Based on the results of subjects' rating of amount of stress in life domains, salience of life course issues, and nature of personal attributes for middle-aged and older adults reveal that middle-aged adults are more distressed, worrying, and hardworking in living than older adults but middle-aged adults are more positive and energetic in living than older adults. Middle-aged adults are gains more and losses less, but older adults are gains less and losses more.

The life course from middle age to old age loses the ability of competence, adjusting to environment, active energies, and rational intelligence, but gains the ability of humanity and shows pessimistic, negative attitudes toward life. Age differences in rating target subjects' life experience and traits are more obvious than sex differences and social economic status differences. Those age differences in rating can be explained by developmental perspectives which contend that young adults do not have life experience of middle-aged and older adults, middle-aged adults' positive self-expectation, older adults' contrasting with current old age living, and older adults' self-defensiveness.

A little sex differences and social economic status differences in rating are pertain to be explained by subjects' rating middle-aged and older adults with their cognitive schema of the same sex or social economic status adults' life.