Obligatory and optional personal life investments in old and veryold age: Validation and functional relations

摘要

Personal life investment (PLI) measures moti-vational energy invested in central life domains. Wedistinguished between obligatory PLIs, that is, requiredinvestments, and optional PLIs, that is, investments that arepossible but not necessary. Data from the Berlin AgingStudy (N = 516; 70-103 years) were employed to investi-gate the validity of this distinction. We further exploredhow both PLI types relate to aging satisfaction and whetherassociations with validation variables and satisfaction dif-fered depending on resource limitations (poor health). Asexpected based on conceptual affinities between the dis-tinctions of obligatory-optional PLI and approach-avoidance tendencies, both PLI types showed positiverelations with extraversion (a correlate of approach), butonly obligatory PLI was positively related to neuroticism (acorrelate of avoidance). Optional PLI (not obligatory PLI)was related to higher aging satisfaction, but only in fairlyhealthy people. This underscores differential functionalrelations of optional PLI depending on resource availability.