Individually-personal factors of pension stress in representatives of the intellectual type of professions

Abstract

The article introduces data from the study of the severity of social anxiety caused by the expectation of retirement and subsequent retirement; highlights signs of retirement stress: acceleration of biological aging, the discrepancy of psychological and biological age. It also regards individual-personal factors of biopsychological aging. The article presents the results of an empirical study of the biopsychological age of people – Russians by origin – pursuing intel-lectual professions and living in the European Union and in Russia. All the participants were continuing their research activity and were aged from 32 to 70 years, both living in Russia (n=101, women, 62), and having migrated to the European Union countries (n=101, women 56). Methods of assessing biological age with regard on health indicators, subjective psychological age, as well as the questionnaire of life path were applied. The results showed that in Russian sample the signs of retirement stress are more pronounced: the subjects have an acceleration of biological aging at the age of 51–65 years. The personal strategies for preventing retirement stress and maintaining relative juvenility, typical for the intellectual occupation professionals, were singled out: for men — democratic working conditions, positive attitude, collaborative non-ambitious non-aggressive behaviour; and for women — wellbeing, respectful partnership in the couple, friendly working conditions; multiple changes of place of residence. However, the difference in relative juvenility strategy for residents in Russian and EU was also observed.

Keywords

• retirement stress
• life path
• intellectual type of professions
• cross-cultural research
• biological age
• psychological age