Retirement (060521)

Hierarchy of personal goals :

Being a successful corporation president

(...)

Being a "good" husband

The dotted line is there to indicate distance and also to indicate that a large number of personal goals, both qualitative and materialistic, are tied to success on the job. For this type of individual, retirement takes out not only the job but several other goals as well. And it leaves very little. In this situation, the individual was involved in the job at the exclusion of everything else, and as result must find alternatives to replace the job in his hierarchy of personal goals. The extent to which this task can be accomplished depends again on the individual's having the necessary physical energy, skills, personal qualities and opportunities. Failure to satisfy any of these prerequisites will necessarily result in withdrawal. This is the model of disengagement theory.

Success gives the individual the materials with which to forge new hierarchy of personal goals. This is the model of activity theory. The theory of differential disengagement leads us also to expect that the individual will often undergo a net decline in activity even if the hierarchy of goals is successfully reorganized.

The process involved in developing or changing the hierarchy of personal goals is, of course, decision-making, and the expression internal compromise is used to describe this decision-making process in order to indicate that its outcome is far from determinate. This process whereby people reorganize their criteria for decision-making, though it may exist, is one we know precious little about.

An important aspect of all this is just where the retired role (as opposed to the job role) fits into this hierarchy. Some people may resist including successful retirement in their hierarchy of personal goals at all. Still others may put it at the bottom. Increasingly, however, playing the role of retired person seems to be taking a high position in the hierarchy and, therefore, can be expected to play a part in the reorganization of the hierarchy. Research is needed to establish just where the retirement role fits into the structure of personal goals and under what circumstances its rank may vary.

Interpersonal negotiations is a process which articulates the individual's goals and aspirations with those of the people he interacts with. It is through this process that the world outside the individual can influence development of and change in his hierarchy of personal goals. When we say that we "know" a person, one of the things we "know" is his hierarchy of personal goals. When this hierarchy changes, the individual indicates to others, through the decisions he makes or through his actions, that a change has taken place. I used the term negotiation here because often the individual runs into resistance in getting others who are important to him to accept his new hierarchy of personal goals. And at this point, the results of internal compromise and feedback from significant others enter into a dialectic.

(...) Theory and research must be developed hand-in-hand. (...)

Summary

Not quite a third of the retired population encounters difficulty in adjusting to retirement. Adjusting to reduced income is by far the most frequently encountered reason for difficulty in adjustment (40 per cent) among those who have difficulty. Missing one's job accounts for about 22 per cent of the adjustment difficulties. The remaining 38 per cent is accounted for by factors such as death of spouse or declining health which are directly related to retirement adjustment only in that they influence the situation in which retirement adjustment must be carried out. This suggests that certain situational prerequisites are often necessary to a good adjustment.

From a positive point of view, it seems safe to say that adjustment to retirement is greatly enhanced by sufficient income, the ability to gracefully give up one's job, and good health. In addition, adjustment seems to be smoothest when situational changes other than loss of job are at a minimum. Another way of viewing this is to say, assuming that one's fantasy concerning the retirement to live out his retirement ambitions hinder his ability to adjust to retirement smoothly.

People who have difficulty adjusting to retirement tend to be those who are either very inflexible in the face of change or faced with substantial change or both. The prime things about retirement that must be adjusted to are loss of income and loss of job. We know very little about how people adjust to loss of income.

A theory of how people adjust to a loss of job at retirement was presented which attempts to integrate existing theories by means of the impact of retirement on the individual's hierarchy of personal goals. If the job is high in that hierarchy and yet unachieved, then the individual can be expected to seek another job. If a job substitute cannot be found, then the hierarchy of personal goals must be reorganized. If the individual is broadly engaged, then he must search for alternate roles. If he is successful, he then developes a new hierarchy of personal goals. If not, he withdraws. Of course, if the job is not high in the hierarchy to begin with it requires no serious change in the personal goals used as the basis for everyday decisions.