How Is Psychological Adjustment Likely to Be Affected by Retiring from Work - Assignment Example

Running head: RETIREMENT Consider cross-nation and ethnic/cultural factors that make the transition from employment to retirement easier or more difficult for individuals. How is psychological adjustment and functioning likely to be affected by retiring from work? David The University of Queensland Course: Psyc3152 Tutor: Mark Consider cross-national and ethnic/cultural factors that may make the transition from employment to retirement easier or more difficult for individuals. How is psychological adjustment and functioning likely to be affected by retiring from work? Retirement is fraught with multiple pathways that lead one’s transition from active working life to the one not so active; often psychologically disruptive and full of roller coaster instances where a retiree finds it difficult to accept or reject changes that crop up as soon as retirement begins. This is one of the most difficult segments of a working human being’s life – one that dramatically and suddenly changes the retiree’s work role, his relationships, his assumptions and his routines. However, what can be debated is that present day retirements are drastically different from the traditional retirement of yesteryears on account of certain cross-national and ethnic/ cultural factors influencing the same. Earlier career patterns were, in a sense, sort of predefined – moving on smoothly over a fixed stable career path; each year adding up to that graceful year of around 65 years of age when one would retire. Over the years globalization has de facto attempted to change that, and the meaning of retirement has undergone changes depending on how easier or difficult have cross-national and ethnic/ cultural factors rendered the transition. Even though there haven’t been any direct and explicit researches conducted over the impact of these factors over retirement, yet the effect can be gauzed by the fact that work culture that these factors have resulted on a global front have, to some extent, left retirees open with multiple job choices even after they have retired. In the highly industrialised countries retirees are finding a new course of life waiting for them when it would seem to them the previous one has hit an endpoint. Earlier on, retirement was considered to be the beginning of a strange type of instability that, apart from having financial impact, had a tremendous psychological impact; mostly negative that led to increased mortality (Marshall & Clarke, 1996). But, there has always been a flip side to this traditional theory. It has been termed by Doeringer (1990) as an "economic security package". This is on account of the stable work culture that led to pensions after retirement both at the government and the private level. This was over and above the benefits of job-based health insurance, no fear of layoffs, and predictable seniority-based promotions. Doeringer contests that as years passed by; they developed in the employee an extra sense of security through seniority, higher wages, and promotion. Retirees, in this manner, ended up being more economically secure. Furthermore, how difficult or easier might a retiree find his retirement depends on a number of factors; primarily one of which is a secure future, post-retirement time full of activity, and psychological adjustment. Secure future can be proportionate to the saving that the employee has made or re-employment. Ethnicity is said to be linked to the savings people make. Since different ethnic groups have variable incomes, their propensity to save gets respectively determined. If two different ethnic groups have similar incomes, it is not necessary that both will save equally. For the group that saves less, adaptation to the retirement transition gets naturally difficult. The transition could even get difficult for those who, irrespective of their ethnicity, retire earlier. This is actually dependent on variables as life course instability and health. Elder and Pavalko (1993) studied cohorts from two generations to understand their retirement transition patterns. Of the two cohorts one retired at an early age and another at a later age; while for the former the transition was complex, for the latter it was spontaneous. Ethnicity has also to be seen through the present globalized multicultural world. At present people in the developed world are retiring at a time when these nations are becoming ethnically and culturally more diverse. The transition for the retired from active work involvement to a relatively sedentary lifestyle and pressure exerted by the cross-national multicultural way of life is determined for its ease or difficulty by what can be termed as a retirement wealth. To understand the ease and difficulty of the transition, it is important to assess the socio-economic determinants of retirement. Le, Scobie & Gibson (2007) argue that wealth at retirement is a very useful and important indicator revealing a household’s saving behavior, Hong & Jensen (2003) say that such a behavior can provide a deep insight into whether or not an individual is prepared for retirement. Naylor and Lotoala (2011) studied the ethnicity variable among four ethnic groups, which were New Zealand European, Pasifika, Maori, and Asian. The Asian group was mainly migrants from Middle East countries, some European countries, South and North America, and Australia, and all were asked their attitudes to retirement centered around their saving behavior, result of expectation, tradition and culture. Cultural values, when analyzed from a macro-social point of view provide some evidence on how they affect retirement. Unfortunately, despite their importance in this transition research has often neglected to study them. McCallum (2008) attempted to study this vis-à-vis retirement in Japan; a country that the researcher choose because of its unique culture and yet developed economy to act as a strong comparison with other developed countries. In comparison to other countries, Japan work culture is supposed to be based on a strong group dynamics and less individualism. This is as against to what is found in other developed countries, where individualism is rampant. This tends to make Japanese inclined towards two specific traits; one, they are not willing to separate from their work group, and two, leisure is something they would not be willing to socialize for. Clearly, even though Japanese have ample wealth security needed for retirement, cultural values are more binding on them with regard to the retirement decisions. It must also not be discounted that a lot of how transition can turn out to be exclusively rests on the retiree. Irrespective of the factors like ethnicity, cross-national background, or culture, if a retiree’s own self-esteem plummets, the transition can never be expected to be easy. Retirement is a milestone and if a retiree views it as loss of income, role, or socially recognised productivity (Nock, 1992), the transition would not only be difficult but also pathetically negative. Psychologically it could get worse for the retiree. Until recently not enough research was done and not many studies conducted on the psychological impact of retiring, not to speak of overcoming the same. It has now come to be understood that retirement follows a similar pattern of adjustment (or lack of it) as do other matters with an underlying emotional influence – like family-related issues, marriage or divorce. Broadly, retirement can be broken down into six stages, which begin with the ‘pre-retirement’ stage and end with the ‘routine’ stage. Those that fall in-between are ‘the big day (the day employment ceases; the day of smiles, handshakes and farewells), ‘honeymoon phase’ (days giving a strange sense of freedom), ‘disenchantment’ (when things don’t seem to be as good as they looked during the honeymoon phase), and then ‘reorientation’ (when the retiree accepts the new way of life and starts building a new identity out of it. Then the ‘routine’ follows. This is a typical sequence through which each retiree must pass post-retirement, but it is not mandatory that each one of them would react to the stages with the same emotional intensity. Retirement is a social change and not merely a stoppage of employment, and each social change, in whatever form it comes, brings with it certain emotional challenges triggered by the thoughts of ‘status change’, ‘standard of life change’, and ‘social status change.’ The loss of employment leads to the absence of a daily stimulant that the retired person has been living on throughout his life. This leads to problems in cognitive and social functioning; sometimes giving the retiree a feeling of ‘social identity crisis’ resulting from the lack of occupational attainment. Retirees in whom such feelings manifest beyond limits feel deprived at almost all areas in which they were previously active. One interesting observation that has been made about emotional effects of retirement has linked post-retirement well-being with pre-retirement resources. A study by Kubicek et al (2011) derived data from a Wisconsin Longitudinal Study from gendered division of labor hypothesized that if a retiree possesses key resources before retirement, it is likely that the negative impact of retirement on him would not be as much as on the one who lacked key resources prior to retirement. This hypothesis also applies to whether or not the person loses these key resources in the transition. Life circumstances that the retiree has passed through pre-retirement are also responsible for emotional states triggered by the retirement. Surprisingly it has been found that it is the daily and minor negative events that pose a deterrent to post-retirement adjustment as against any major events that occur once a while. And with regard to the quality of life, many retirees have felt that it got a little better (instead of worse) as they aged with social support and good humor. Emotional impact of retirement, thus, it can be said is multidimensional and varies from one retiree to another. References Bettina, K. Christian, K., James M. R., Peter, H. (2011). Psychological well-being in retirement: The effects of personal and gendered contextual resources. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol 16(2), 230-246. Doeringer, P.B. (1990). Bridges to retirement: Older workers in a changing labor market. Ithaca, NY: IRL Press of Cornell University. Elder, G.H. and Pavalko, E.K. (1993). Work careers in men’s later years: transitions, trajectories, and historical change. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 48 (4), pp. S180-S191. Hong, B. and Jensen, J. (2003). Assessing the Adequacy of Private Provision for Retirement: A Living Standards Perspective, Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 1- 30. Le, T., Scobie, G., and Gibson, J. (2007). The accumulation of retirement wealth: evidence for New Zealand. Paper prepared for the 15th Australian Colloquium of Superannuation Researchers, University of New South Wales. Marshall, V.W. and Clarke, P.J. (1996). Health and the Transition from Employment to Retirement. IESOP Research Paper No. 6 September 1996 McCallum, J. (2008). Japanese Teinen Taishoku: How Cultural Values Affect Retirement. Ageing and Society, 8: pp 23-41. Naylor, M.J. and Lotoala, F. (2011). Ethnicity and Retirement Wealth, Available http://economics-finance.massey.ac.nz/documents/seminarseries/manawatu/Ethnicity_and_retirement%20wealth%20(2).pdf. Accessed December 27 2011 Nock, S. (1992). Sociology of the family, 2nd ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Read More

This is on account of the stable work culture that led to pensions after retirement both at the government and the private level. This was over and above the benefits of job-based health insurance, no fear of layoffs, and predictable seniority-based promotions. Doeringer contests that as years passed by; they developed in the employee an extra sense of security through seniority, higher wages, and promotion. Retirees, in this manner, ended up being more economically secure. Furthermore, how difficult or easier might a retiree find his retirement depends on a number of factors; primarily one of which is a secure future, post-retirement time full of activity, and psychological adjustment.

Secure future can be proportionate to the saving that the employee has made or re-employment. Ethnicity is said to be linked to the savings people make. Since different ethnic groups have variable incomes, their propensity to save gets respectively determined. If two different ethnic groups have similar incomes, it is not necessary that both will save equally. For the group that saves less, adaptation to the retirement transition gets naturally difficult. The transition could even get difficult for those who, irrespective of their ethnicity, retire earlier.

This is actually dependent on variables as life course instability and health. Elder and Pavalko (1993) studied cohorts from two generations to understand their retirement transition patterns. Of the two cohorts one retired at an early age and another at a later age; while for the former the transition was complex, for the latter it was spontaneous. Ethnicity has also to be seen through the present globalized multicultural world. At present people in the developed world are retiring at a time when these nations are becoming ethnically and culturally more diverse.

The transition for the retired from active work involvement to a relatively sedentary lifestyle and pressure exerted by the cross-national multicultural way of life is determined for its ease or difficulty by what can be termed as a retirement wealth. To understand the ease and difficulty of the transition, it is important to assess the socio-economic determinants of retirement. Le, Scobie & Gibson (2007) argue that wealth at retirement is a very useful and important indicator revealing a household’s saving behavior, Hong & Jensen (2003) say that such a behavior can provide a deep insight into whether or not an individual is prepared for retirement.

Naylor and Lotoala (2011) studied the ethnicity variable among four ethnic groups, which were New Zealand European, Pasifika, Maori, and Asian. The Asian group was mainly migrants from Middle East countries, some European countries, South and North America, and Australia, and all were asked their attitudes to retirement centered around their saving behavior, result of expectation, tradition and culture. Cultural values, when analyzed from a macro-social point of view provide some evidence on how they affect retirement.

Unfortunately, despite their importance in this transition research has often neglected to study them. McCallum (2008) attempted to study this vis-à-vis retirement in Japan; a country that the researcher choose because of its unique culture and yet developed economy to act as a strong comparison with other developed countries. In comparison to other countries, Japan work culture is supposed to be based on a strong group dynamics and less individualism. This is as against to what is found in other developed countries, where individualism is rampant.

This tends to make Japanese inclined towards two specific traits; one, they are not willing to separate from their work group, and two, leisure is something they would not be willing to socialize for. Clearly, even though Japanese have ample wealth security needed for retirement, cultural values are more binding on them with regard to the retirement decisions. It must also not be discounted that a lot of how transition can turn out to be exclusively rests on the retiree.

Read More