Growth and generativity among men in middle and later career

This research explored the nature, incidence and correlates of psychological growth and generativity (Erikson, 1959) in the lives and careers of forty-one men aged 45–55, who were drawn in roughly equal numbers from the occupations of manager, engineering specialist, skilled factory worker, secondary school teacher, and priest. Three broad varieties of growth were investigated: expansive and self-enhancing growth (which included the separate but related tendencies of personal growth and career growth), individuation (or re-framing of self), and growth in interpersonal relatedness. A multi-method approach was employed in order to examine McAdams' & de St Aubin's (1992) proposition that the conscious personality domains of concern, commitment and action (or accomplishment) show only limited overlap and, consequently, that the correlates of constructs such as generativity vary with the domain in which they occur. [Continues.]