Activities Matter: Personality and Resource Determinants of Activities and their Effect on Mental and Physical Well-being and Retirement Expectations

Remaining active throughout the lifespan is central to healthy aging. The current study tests a model derived from investment and resource theories that examines the extent to which activities mediate the relationship between individual differences in personality and resources on mental and physical well-being and retirement expectations. A subsample (N = 400; 58% female) of participants from the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was used. Self-reported activities were grouped into four broad categories: productive, physical, social, and leisure. Activity variety, operationalized as the number of different activity categories in which a person reported participating over a specified period of time, was also examined. Correlations and path analysis results suggest small but significant effects between personality traits and activity participation, and more consistent effects of personality for predicting activity variety. Personality was also significantly correlated with well-being and retirement expectations as was activity variety. There was limited evidence, however, that activity variety mediated the relationship between personality and resources and mental and physical well-being and retirement expectations as would be predicted by investment theory. (175) Activities Matter Page 3 Activities Matter: Personality and Resource Determinants of Activities and their Effect on Mental and Physical Well-being and Retirement Expectations The news of increased life expectancies around the globe highlights the importance of understanding the determinants of healthy aging. Worldwide, current life expectancy is 71 years (World Health Organization [WHO], 2015) and in the U.S., life expectancy for those born between 2003 and 2013 is 76.4 years for men and 81.2 years for women (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). In industrialized countries increased life expectancy is pushing back retirement age as people realize that they might live decades in retirement (Kanfer, Beier, & Ackerman, 2013). In the U.S., for example, where retirement is typically not compulsory, people can expect to live fifteen to twenty years after retirement from a primary job (Munnell, 2011). Decisions about when to retire are influenced by myriad factors including individual (e.g., health, economic status), psychological (e.g., motivation, values), social (e.g., family), and work (e.g., industry norms of retirement; Fisher, Chaffee, & Sonnega, 2016; Kanfer et al., 2013). One factor that has garnered attention recently is how people spend their time – the activities in which they participate – and the relationship between these activities and outcomes associated with healthy aging (Carlson et al., 2012; Celen-Demirtas, Konstam, & Tomek, 2015; Gow, Mortensen, & Avlund, 2012; Jopp & Hertzog, 2007; Jopp & Hertzog, 2010; Warr, Butcher, & Robertson, 2004). The purpose of this study is to examine the determinants and benefits of activities for retirement expectations and mental and physical well-being using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The Importance of Activities Activities Matter Page 4 Evidence suggests that participation in activities is related to healthy aging. Gerontologists have highlighted the importance of activities for mental health and psychological functioning (Smith & Baltes, 1997) as activities are thought to influence the development of cognitive skill and health outcomes by providing exercise, training, and practice and by creating intellectually stimulating environments. Research has examined the effects of participation in an array of activity types. For example, participation in family and social activities and church and charity (as measured by the frequency with which one participates), was related to affective wellbeing and to life satisfaction in a sample of older people (Warr et al., 2004). Social activities have also been associated with fewer depressive symptoms and greater mental well-being (Jopp & Hertzog, 2007). There is also evidence that leisure activities, defined as enjoyable activities related to ongoing development that one participates in during one’s spare time (Burrus-Bammel & Bammel, 1985), mediate the relationship between social relationships and self-ratings of physical health and subjective well-being (Chang, Wray, & Lin, 2014). More recent metaanalytic research has emphasized the importance of leisure activities for subjective well-being and mental health, finding a small effect for people of any age, and a medium effect of leisure activity participation for retired people (Kuykendall, Tay, & Ng, 2015). Focusing on activity participation allows for the investigation of the relationship between healthy aging and the contextual environment of older adults (Zacher, 2015). Notably, researchers have described difficulty in researching activity types given that people value activities differently (e.g., one person may view religious activities as social and another may view them as developmental and leisure; Kuykendall et al., 2015). Moreover, activity participation is typically assessed a variety of ways, by asking people to report the activities in which they have participated or by asking about the number of hours spent over a Activities Matter Page 5 specified period of time (e.g., a week, month, or year) participating in an activity. In this study, we use measures assessing activity participation duration rather than the value or quality of the time spent on the activity. As such, the construct examined in this study is duration of participation rather than mental engagement in activities. Although much of the research on activity participation has examined the effects of specific types of activities (e.g., leisure, social, physical), there is evidence that actively participating in any type of activity – or a variety of activities – is important for healthy aging. For example, Warr et al. (2004) found that activity participation in the aggregate was significantly predictive of mental and physical health outcomes. Similarly, the variety of activities in which a person participates – not necessarily the type of activity engaged in – reduced memory declines with age in a longitudinal study of over 400 older women (Carlson et al., 2012). Although there is a growing body of evidence linking activities to health outcomes, less research supports the link between participation in activities and retirement outcomes, although theoretical linkages can be made. For instance, working people are expected to replace occupational activities with leisure activities after retirement. As such, those who engage in leisure activities should have greater self-efficacy for retirement and desire retirement at earlier ages than people with less experience with leisure activities (Diehl & Berg, 2007). Similarly, people with more experience in work activities may wish to postpone retirement. In support of this hypothesis, a study of employed adults over forty found that those who reported unsatisfactory experiences with leisure activities (e.g., the feeling that they did not know what to do with their free time) had more negative retirement attitudes than those who had more satisfaction with leisure (Gee & Baillie, 1999). There is little evidence, however, that Activities Matter Page 6 participation in one activity – such as volunteering, work, or caring for others – substitutes for participating in other activities as people age (Van der Horst, Vickerstaff, Lain, Clark, & Geiger, 2016), rather activity participation is largely independent. One consideration however, is that time-intensive activities such as working full time will necessarily limit participation in other domains. In the current study, we further research on activity participation over the lifespan by exploring both activity type and activity variety as determinants of outcomes related to healthy aging: mental and physical well-being and retirement expectations. Of these outcomes, retirement expectations is perhaps less directly related to healthy aging than mental and physical well-being. In this study, however, we conceptualize retirement expectations as an indicator of a person’s engagement in work (e.g., the more engaged one is, the later the retirement age). We acknowledge that this is a coarse measure; that is, retirement expectations are a function of myriad factors other than work engagement, such as financial status, health, norms for retirement, and so on (Kanfer et al., 2013). Nonetheless, we include retirement expectations as a proxy for work engagement and to the extent possible attempt to control for these other influences on this outcome. Determinants of Activity Participation Models of cognitive aging that emphasize the benefits of active engagement fit well with investment theories of adult development (Ackerman, 1996; Cattell, 1987). Essentially, investment models posit that a person’s resources (i.e., the assets and abilities they bring to any situation) are directed by personality traits and interests toward activity engagement, which in turn leads to growth and development. For example, research in support of investment theory has found that people who are higher in trait agreeableness (empathy and an orientation to help Activities Matter Page 7 others) and conscientiousness (dependability and achievement orientation) have higher levels of health knowledge presumably because they are more likely than people low on this trait to attend to the concerns of others and to engage in activities related to health and illness (Beier & Ackerman, 2003; Bogg & Roberts, 2004). Investment theories examining the role of personality and interest in directing individuals toward experiences and activities have examined a relatively narrow set of outcomes related to intellectual development; namely, domain knowledge maintenance and development (Ackerman & Beier, 2006; Beier & Ackerman, 2001, 2003, 2005). Mo