About Personal Identities After
Retirement[1]
This study addresses the question of how retired people’s
self-image differs from that of working people and what factors predict peoples
self-definition as professionals or retirees. Seven hundred ninety-two Swiss persons aged 58-70 (386 men,
406 women; 349 not retired, 443 retired) was asked to rate the importance of
different self-description domains (such as profession, family roles, personal
values, etc.). Results indicated that
the profession domain remains important for self-description even after
retirement, to the extent that retirement status does not predict the
importance of professional identity at all. Rather, consistent with social identity theory, the
importance of the profession for self-description is best predicted by the
status of the (former or current) job.
The importance of retirement status for self-definition is predicted
best by a positive attitude toward aging.
In general, retired respondents rated more domains of self- description
as important than did the not-yet-retired respondents and no domain was less
important after retirement. In
other words, identity diversity was higher for the retired than for the not-yet
retired persons. In addition, high
identity diversity correlated with a high satisfaction across different life
domains.
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