PERSONAL WARMTH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AT MIDLIFE

Personal warmth, arguably a strong trait in the makeup of psychologica l health, seems to fade in conceptual importance at midlife. In contra st, ideas of interiority and androgyny appear to gain conceptual impor tance at midlife. The present study sought to rebalance these foci by determining the predictive power of personal warmth for psychological health of men and women at age 50: first, by developing separate Calif ornia Psychological Inventory (CPI) scales to assess personal warmth; next, by joining these warmth scales with the 20 standard CPI scales t o predict psychological health. Without the personal warmth scale, the standard CPI scales do not significantly predict psychological health for men; for women, the standard scales do. For both genders, the per sonal warmth scales add significantly to the predictability of psychol ogical health. The results point to an amendment of current theoretica l formulations of interiority and androgyny to better understand optim al psychological development in men and women at midlife.