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Midlife Crisis in Men: Affective Organization of Personal Meanings

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Human Relations

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore thespecific affective organization of personal meanings inmidlife crisis in men. Midlife crisis is described as aprocess of intensive transition of the self including the reinterpretation of timeperspective, reevaluation of life values and goals,confrontation with death as a personal event in thefuture, and planning of the second half of life.Personal meanings referring to past, present, and future wereinvestigated using a self-confrontation method that issensitive to the affective properties of individualexperiences. The intensity of midlife crisis wasinvestigated by means of a Midlife Crisis Scale in a sampleof 104 men in Poland. Three groups, one high in midlifecrisis (N = 27), one medium (N = 37), and one low inmidlife crisis (N = 40) were compared. It was found that the high crisis group had a lower level ofaffect referring to self-enhancement, a lower level ofpositive affect, and a higher level of negative affectthan both other groups. Moreover, time perspective played a differential role in the organizationof the self: in an intragroup comparison of the mostinfluential personal meanings, the high crisis groupshowed a higher level of negative affect than positive affect for personal meanings referring to thefuture, but not for personal meanings referring to thepast and the present. The relevance of affectiveorganization for midlife crisis is discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Hubert J. M. Hermans

  2. Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland

    Piotr K. Oles

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  1. Hubert J. M. Hermans
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Correspondence to Hubert J. M. Hermans.

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Hermans, H.J.M., Oles, P.K. Midlife Crisis in Men: Affective Organization of Personal Meanings. Human Relations 52, 1403–1426 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016972717003

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