Moderating effects of positive and negative affect on the association between satisfaction with social support and retirement satisfaction over time

Retirement is becoming more important for today’s older adults because they are living longer than before. Recently, research has started to explore how different individual resources (e.g., health or finances) and social resources (e.g., social support or social network size) influence retirement outcomes such as retirement satisfaction. Moreover, the proposed study seeks to examine the influence of time, satisfaction with social support, and affect (i.e., positive or negative) as predictors of retirement satisfaction. Data was obtained from a longitudinal study that explored how older adults in Montreal, Canada adjusted to life in retirement over the course of three years. Hypotheses will be tested using a structural equation model that investigates retirement satisfaction as predicted by time, satisfaction with social support, positive affect, and negative affect. Gender differences will also be explored. I expect that retirement satisfaction will increase over time, and retirement satisfaction will increase more over time for retirees with high levels of satisfaction with social support. Also, positive affect is expected to be associated with increases in retirement satisfaction over time while negative affect is expected to be associated with decreases in retirement satisfaction over time. This study adds to the literature by exploring how social support and affect influence retirement satisfaction specifically over time. Future research should examine how individual and social resources can interact with each other to better understand retirement satisfaction.