According to Erik Erikson, middle adulthood is either spent making a personal contribution to family, community, or work, or it is spent focusing on the triviality of one's own activity making only limited contributions to the world. Erikson refers to this stage of development as

Martin, a 32-year-old human relations administrator at a university, believes that all professors over age 50 are incapable of learning the new educational technologies and are content to keep presenting their same "tired, boring" lectures. he often expresses these views to other administrators and does not encourage any of the "older" faculty members to attend professional development meetings related to new teaching approaches nor does he suggest that the university send them to any of the technology conferences. martin is exhibiting