Cheng, S-T. (2009). Generativity in later life: Perceived respect from younger generations as a determinant of goal disengagement and psychological well-being. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 10.1093/geronb/gbn027

ACCORDING to E. H. Erikson (1950/1963) , the human life cycle evolves through eight sequential stages from infancy to late adulthood on the basis of biologically and culturally determined timing. In later adulthood, the major psychosocial crisis to be resolved is ego integrity versus de-spair. Ego integrity is achieved by accepting how things have turned out, and by fi nding order and meanings, in life. It is also the cumulative product of the previous seven stages because the successful resolution of the earlier psychosocial crises, including generativity versus stagnation in midlife, forms the foundation for a sense of completeness and coher-ence in old age. However, after having experienced old age himself, E. H. Erikson (1997) believed that generativity has a more impor-tant role to play in later life than he initially thought. “ Much of their [older people’s] despair is, in fact, a continuing sense of stagnation ” (p. 63). Indeed, research suggests that generativity may be the single most important factor in achieving ego integrity. In a recent study, a small sample of 78 women aged 70 – 91 years provided self-report measures of ego integrity and generativity ( James & Zarrett, 2006). These measures were analyzed with the data on identity for-mation obtained through an unstructured interview 45 years earlier. Results showed that generativity was the only vari-able predicting ego integrity, whereas identity, number of major or chronic illnesses, and sociodemographic variables had no independent effects. However, information on the other Eriksonian constructs was not available, and the dif-ferent data collection methods for the key variables made data interpretation diffi cult. To date, only one study is known to have examined how ego integrity is predicted by the achievement of the other seven psychosocial tasks. Using the Inventory of Psychoso