The phrase ‘’midlife crisis’’ was first introduced by Elliot Jacques in 1965, and used extensively by Freudian psychologists like Carl Jung. It was described as a normal period during the lifespan when we transition from young people to older adults. During this time, many adults evaluate their achievements, goals, and dreams against what they had wished for in the past, and what stage they are at in life. Both men and women can experience this phenomenon but in a different manner as men are more prone to focus directly on their achievements, and their desire to prove their success to others around them, while women tend to fixate on their physical appearance, sexual attraction, and what they can do once their parenting duties have ended. The Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) is a 90 item self-report developed by Weber, Blais, and Betz that assesses risk-taking in five content domains: financial decisions (separately for investing versus gambling), health and safety, recreational, ethical and social decisions. First, participants rate the likelihood that they would engage in domain-specific activities on a 7 point scale: 1- Extremely unlikely, 2- Moderately unlikely, 3- Somewhat unlikely, and 4- Not sure, 5- Somewhat unlikely, 6- Moderate likely, 7- Extremely likely.
As people get older, generally from the ages of 40 and above they face many important life decisions regarding to their health and finances but approach it differently based on their genders in that females are naturally more altruistic than men. Women are generally more open to risk-taking and change than males who are often stagnant in their outlook as they get older and are less likely to take risks fearing to make wrong moves either in their businesses or in the stock market. This includes making new and different financial investments from that one had pursued before whether it be a new business start-up or dealing in the stock market where the possibility of encountering monetary loss or challenges especially when pensions are involved and the affected person is no longer a producer but a consumer in society.
References
- Branas-Garza, P., Capraro, V., Rascon, E. (2016). Gender differences in Altruism: Expectations, Actual Behaviour and Accuracy of Beliefs. Preuzeto S http//ssrn.com/ abstract.
- Hu, Y., Wang, D., Pang, K., Xu, G., Guo, J. (2015). The effect of emotion and time pressure on risk decision making. Journal of Risk Research, 18(5), 637-650.