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Subjective remaining lifetime and concreteness of the future as differential predictors of preparation for age-related changes

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Abstract

Demographic changes have been linked to the expectation of cuts in government-provided social security services, emphasizing individual responsibility to prepare for old age and concomitant challenges and changes. Accordingly, the identification of psychological variables predicting preparation is a matter of theoretical as well as practical importance. We thus consider different aspects of a person’s future time as theoretically prominent psychological predictors of preparation. The subjectively perceived quantity of remaining lifetime, the concreteness of future time, and preparation for life domains indicative of an active third age as well as of a more dependent fourth age were assessed in a longitudinal study in a core sample of N = 593 participants (30–80 years old at T 1) at two measurement occasions 4 years apart. The quantity of subjective remaining lifetime predicted subsequent changes in preparation, but this effect was restricted to preparation for the fourth age. In contrast, a more open and concrete outlook on ones’ personal future predicted changes in preparation for an active third age. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between different aspects of future time—its quantity versus its relation to goals and action plans—when predicting specific facets of developmental self-regulation.

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Notes

  1. The term “concreteness” might suggest a relation to Construal Level Theory, which distinguishes between concrete and abstract representations of future events, situations, or outcomes (e.g., Trope and Liberman, 2010). However, this does not correspond to the usage of the term “concreteness of the future” in our study. Rather than indicating whether the future is represented in semantically abstract versus concrete terms, high versus low concreteness of the future here refers to an outlook on the future as either providing specific opportunities for goal pursuit (=concrete future) or lacking these concrete action perspectives (=lack of concreteness of the future).

  2. Non-integer t values are Welch-corrected due to unequal variances between groups.

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Funding

This work was supported by two grants of the VolkswagenStiftung (Az. II/83 142, Az. 86 758) to Klaus Rothermund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstraße 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Anna E. Kornadt

  2. Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Am Steiger 3/Haus 1, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Peggy Voss & Klaus Rothermund

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  1. Anna E. Kornadt
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  2. Peggy Voss
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  3. Klaus Rothermund
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Correspondence to Anna E. Kornadt.

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Responsible editor: H.-W. Wahl.

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Kornadt, A.E., Voss, P. & Rothermund, K. Subjective remaining lifetime and concreteness of the future as differential predictors of preparation for age-related changes. Eur J Ageing 15, 67–76 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-017-0426-3

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