Abstract
AbstractIncreasing the salience of aging has been shown to be a promising strategy to promote young adults' interest in saving for retirement. However, the processes responsible for this effect are still largely unknown. We hypothesize that increased savings choices will only occur when participants are also engaged in self‐relevant thoughts about their own future. Participants were exposed to a fictitious website advertising financial products. Study 1 (n = 78; Mage = 20.87) primed age salience and future self‐relevance orthogonally and showed that priming aging only caused increases in retirement investment decisions when self‐relevance was also high. Study 2 (n = 91; Mage = 23.40) tested whether the effects of age priming were due specifically to age or to a broader focus on the future. The study confirmed that investment decision effects are specific to exposure to the aging prime and not merely priming the future. The effects were also specific to investment in retirement funds and not just depositing money in a checking account. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for the psychology of aging and retirement planning.
Highlights
Many industrialized countries are experiencing population aging
Despite the pressing economic issues and societal implications of future generations of old and very old people who find themselves in poverty, psychology has, so far, devoted relatively little attention to this problem
The main goal of the present proposal was to investigate psychological variables that may encourage young adults to invest in their longer-term well-being, their willingness to save for retirement
Summary
Many industrialized countries are experiencing population aging. This means that there is an increasing pressure on young adults to prepare economically for their distant future. Despite the pressing economic issues and societal implications of future generations of old and very old people who find themselves in poverty, psychology has, so far, devoted relatively little attention to this problem. The main goal of the present proposal was to investigate psychological variables that may encourage young adults to invest in their longer-term well-being, their willingness to save for retirement. Saving for retirement is an intertemporal choice between spending money in the present or saving it for the future. Research shows that people tend to prefer smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed ones
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