Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, Institute for Mental Health and Behavioral Medicine, Health and Medical University (HMU).
Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin.
Emotion. 2024 Apr;24(3):551-561. doi: 10.1037/emo0001290. Epub 2023 Sep 4.
The work role is crucial for one's identity and subjective well-being. From a role enhancement perspective, subjective well-being might increase after the transition to work and decrease after retirement. From a role strain perspective, the opposite might be true. Thus, entering and leaving working life might have benefits and costs, leading to improvements in some but impairments in other well-being indicators. To test these assumptions, we examined short- and long-term changes in life satisfaction, happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger in the 5 years before and 5 years after the transition to work and retirement, respectively. Between 2007 and 2019, each facet of subjective well-being was repeatedly assessed in 2,720 (expectant) career starters and 2,007 (expectant) retirees from the German Socio-Economic-Panel Study. Multilevel analyses adjusted for time-dependent confounders indicated that young adults were more satisfied with their lives in (but not beyond) the first year of working life compared to before, which is in line with set-point theory. In the first 5 years of working life, career starters became happier but also angrier, supporting both the role enhancement and the role strain perspective. Older adults became less satisfied, less happy, sadder, and more anxious in the 5 years before retirement. However, in and after the first year of retirement, they were more satisfied, happier, less anxious, and less angry than before, supporting the role strain perspective. Our findings show that working life is a double-edged sword that influences individual well-being indicators in partially opposing ways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
工作角色对于个人的身份认同和主观幸福感至关重要。从角色增强的角度来看，人们在过渡到工作后主观幸福感可能会增加，而在退休后则可能会下降。从角色紧张的角度来看，情况可能正好相反。因此，进入和离开工作生活可能既有好处，也有成本，这可能会改善一些幸福感指标，但也会损害其他幸福感指标。为了检验这些假设，我们分别研究了从进入工作到退休的 5 年期间，以及退休后的 5 年期间，生活满意度、幸福感、悲伤感、焦虑感和愤怒感的短期和长期变化。在 2007 年至 2019 年期间，德国社会经济面板研究中的 2720 名（预期）职业新人（期望进入职业生涯）和 2007 名（预期）退休人员（期望退休）反复评估了主观幸福感的各个方面。多层次分析调整了随时间变化的混杂因素，结果表明，与进入职业生涯之前相比，年轻人在职业生涯的第一年（但不是之后）对生活更满意，这符合设定点理论。在职业生涯的前 5 年，职业新人变得更快乐，但也更生气，这支持了角色增强和角色紧张的观点。老年人在退休前的 5 年里对生活的满意度、幸福感、悲伤感和焦虑感降低，但在退休后的第一年以及之后，他们对生活的满意度、幸福感、焦虑感和愤怒感降低，这支持了角色紧张的观点。我们的研究结果表明，工作生活是一把双刃剑，以部分相反的方式影响个人的幸福感指标。
