Gender differences in how retirees perceive factors influencing unretirement.

Returning to paid employment after retirement is occurring in many developed countries and can be expected to increase in the future. This study compared how women (n = 202) and men (n = 347) who had retired from a managerial or professional career occupation perceived factors associated with unretirement. Retired professional women perceived reasons to unretire, age-friendly human resource practices, and re-entry barriers to have greater influence on retirees' decision to unretire than retired managerial women and retired men. Both groups of retired women perceived training and development opportunities to have more influence than retired men. A major contribution of this study is the identification of pre-retirement career occupation as having an important effect on how female, but not male, retirees perceived the various factors. The findings suggest that researchers and employers need to consider the diversity that exists among retirees, not only gender differences but also differences among retired career women.

The hero concept: self, family, and friends who are brave, honest, and hopeful.

The concept of the hero is pervasive and enduring, extending across time, culture, and age. Although an influential schema, the hero has not been empirically examined in depth. Heroic exemplars given by students and community members were examined, and the hypotheses that individuals with high Heroism scores are more hopeful and report higher Coping than individuals with low Heroism scores were also tested. Participants reported similar depictions of heroes and heroic acts; the prototypic hero being a family member, and the most common act exemplified as averting physical harm to others. Quantitative results suggest that individuals high on Heroism scores are more hopeful and cope better than individuals low on Heroism scores. Results indicate that heroism is experienced in everyday life, and a model is proposed.

Honesty and heroes: a positive psychology view of heroism and academic honesty.

Academic honesty is under-researched in contrast to academic dishonesty. A majority of students self-report cheating in college. A low probability of punishment is reflected by few tried cases of academic misconduct. The authors argue that students who are in the minority by not engaging in academic dishonesty show considerable character strength and are examples of everyday heroes. The authors consider heroes persons who are courageous, have empathic concern for others, and have a high degree of honesty. Experiment 1 established courage, empathy, and honesty as predictors of academic honesty. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and found heroism to be predictive of students' future intent to cheat. These experiments have constructed an effective working model of heroism in the context of the academic environment.

Sources of happiness and stress for college students: a replication and comparison over 20 years.

The advancement of positive psychology is dependent upon measures of happiness, both globally and in specific contexts. Data are presented on two measures of sources of college students' happiness from two samples. Testing of the two cohorts (Ns=258, 68) was separated by 20 years. Measures for both samples had acceptable psychometric properties. There was an increase in college students' self-reported happiness across the 20-year period in the rankings of different sources of college happiness and general happiness. In a second study, a different group of students (N= 176) were given a list and asked to select the most important uplifts and hassles in their lives. In general, mean scores on affect measures were relatively stable across time, but transportation hassles were reported as a new source of negative affect in the present study.

Predicting travel attitudes among university faculty after 9/11.

The authors interviewed a random sample of 306 university faculty as part of an annual university poll. Items focused on air travel concerns following 9/11, positive aspects of travel, and future travel intentions. Demographic factors were not significant predictors for men or women faculty. Faculty expressed positive attitudes toward travel, for example agreeing that travel allows them to demonstrate competency. Concerns about missing connections and delays elicited a larger percent of negative reactions than concerns about hijackings or security. Gender differences were not observed on individual items, but in regression analyses a composite of self-reported travel risk factors was more predictive of future travel plans for women than for men, although women expected to travel as much in the future as men. The results are consistent with positive psychology and speak to applied aspects of travel and tourism.

College students' perceptions of job demands, recommended retirement ages, and age of optimal performance in selected occupations.

Two studies were conducted. In study one 100 participants rated 60 occupations on the amount of cognitive/intellectual, physical, sensory-perceptual, and perceptual-motor demands they perceived as required for successful performance in that particular occupation. Results of a cluster analysis determined four clusters of occupations on the basis of the four demands. These clusters were described as High Risk, Professions, Skilled Trades, and White Collar. Further, for each of the four demands/dimensions, the cognitive/intellectual, physical, sensory-perceptual, and perceptual motor demands were significantly different both between and within clusters. In study two, 100 participants rated the perceived retirement age, and 99 different participants rated the perceived optimal performance age for the 60 occupations employed in study one. Results indicated that age norms for perceived recommended retirement and perceived optimal performance age were differentially correlated across the four clusters of occupations. Perceived retirement age and optimal performance age varied discriminably between occupational clusters.

Travel: a long-range goal of retired women.

The authors surveyed retired persons (predominately women) with regard to their immediate, intermediate, and long-range activities following retirement. As predicted, leisure travel emerged as a frequent long-range goal for persons retired more than 5 years. The travel activity preferences of long-retired older women present challenges and opportunities to both researchers and marketers. Length of trips and frequency of trips have been predicted from regression models, with trip length in particular being well predicted by the problem of daily life hassles. A theoretical model of continued post-retirement travel is presented as a variant of Solomon's opponent process theory of affect (R. L. Solomon, 1980). The authors suggest that to the degree that places traveled to are varied and different, older people may remain stimulated and continue to enjoy retirement.