Page No 55-68
Hardeo Ojha and Meena Pramanick
T.M. Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur
In order to examine whether personality characteristics change with advancing
age, 1800 urban adults (service holder and retired) from six adjacent towns of
Bihar and Jharkhand belonging to six age groups (with equal number in each), viz.,
early young (21-30 yrs), late young (31-40 yrs), early middle (41-50 yrs), late middle
(51-60 yrs), early old (61-70 yrs) and late old (71-80 yrs), were administered
standardized measures of life satisfaction, ego-strength, altruism, emotional stability
and alienation individually by two project assistants in six months period. Analysis
of data by ANOVA and accompanying test of significance revealed that life
satisfaction decreases with advancement of age, while altruism and alienation
increase with age. However, ago-strength and emotional stability have inverted
Ushaped relationship with age, i.e. both go on increasing till late middle age but
decline with the arrival of early old age and reach their lowest levels during late old
age.
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