Brain fog and fast cars

Gendered Psychology Myths

This week’s blog includes book recommendations (follow the links for indy bookstockists) and questions the definition of midlife crisis.

How do you measure the human experience? Reading, listening, and observing are all things I love about psychology. Being able to look for cracks and gaps in evidence is a critical skill, on the one hand this looks like giving voice to people who put their hand up to be part of studies, and on the other, considering who is silent and why that might be.

Desiré Wilson the only woman to win an F1 race. There's a grandstand at Brands Hatch named after her. [source: https://rrdc.org/member/desire-wilson/] photo credit Vukie.

Criticality goes hand in hand with being a psychologist, and over on Instagram, I've been talking about 50 psychology myths (uncovered by Scott Lilienfield and colleagues), these myths are the types of things that people assume to be true, things like, our memory works like a tape recorder (it doesn't), presuming crowds to be safer than deserted spaces (they’re not), believing that a single day of the year is the bluest Monday of them all (marketing myth), and that opposites attract (maybe there is some truth in that one!).

Most psychology myths seem plausible, that’s why they slip easily into our brains and stay there rent free, but too often these myths gloss over reality with its ambiguity and nuance. With this in mind, rather than taking Lilienfield’s word for it, I’m still checking the latest evidence before I debunk each myth.

Say hello to the myth of the midlife crisis, the search for evidence is too silent for my liking when it comes to women’s experiences, absence of information isn’t the only issue though, studies can be inclusive of 30 to 60 years as the midlife period. Three decades… is a big old sample to consider.

Last week I was reminded that women’s voices have not only been ignored but have been deliberately erased from history. I went with my wonderful friend Lorraine to see the author and historian Kate Mosse (with an e) at the Nottingham Playhouse. Speaking about her latest book Kate takes us on a trip through history bringing women's voices to life as she goes. This is not a case of equal opportunities, because Kate has uncovered women who have been super active in the sciences, and have often been very deliberately removed from history. Their contribution and accomplishments in science have been silenced. I won’t spoil the book for you by talking about those women here, but she’s not the only person calling this absence out.

Caroline Criado Perez’s bestselling book Invisible Women systematically exposes the way industry has failed to account for women in design, whilst the scientist Jessica Wade has been updating Wikipedia to include women scientists, taking on gender bias every day since 2017.

When I came around to creating a short reel for Instagram debunking the idea of a midlife crisis. I stopped, because the evidence talks to male experiences. Studies on midlife crisis are associated with male stereotypes, yes, you’ve guessed it, fast cars, and affairs. So, the evidence that measures whether people experience midlife crisis, is rarely associated with the biggest midlife change for women, menopause. Of course, menopause affects people differently and some women would say that menopause is liberating rather than a period of crisis.

There are other voices to consider though, there’s a growing body of research looking at the intersection of neurodiversity and menopause, I’ve selected two quotes from a study conducted by Rachel L. Moseley, Tanya Druce, and Julie M. Turner-Cobb in 2020.

One participant comment about menopause, it ‘can make you feel very, very out of control’.

And another reflects ‘I would say that I found out that I am autistic because I'm perimenopausal, because I've stopped being able to cope with my life, the life I was able to cope with before.’ Link to open access research here.

Is a midlife crisis a myth? the stereotype of a male midlife crisis could be a psychology myth, but perhaps its plausible that women who are subject to intersections of menopause and neurodiversity are the ones who are experiencing real crisis. We might find more answers, because earlier this year Professor Julie Turner-Cobb announced a study called ‘Making sense of menopause: understanding menopause representations and moderators of menopausal experience in neurodivergent and neurotypical women’, I’m excited to see the outcomes of this and what we can learn from human experiences of midlife changes.

I’d love to know your thoughts and experiences on this one.

p.s Psychologically speaking, in debunking the midlife crisis, Lilienfeld and colleagues draw on evidence that we become less neurotic and self-conscious with age, they argue that middle age is a period of growth rather than crisis.

Tell me that again when I’m a hot hormonal mess.