Compulsive buying, defined as the inability to control purchasing behaviour, is higher among college-aged students than it is among the general public. The present study examined the factors related to compulsive buying among college students and how those factors differ as a function of who paid the majority of their debt: themselves or their parents. A total of 628 undergraduates from the US completed a questionnaire containing items to measure compulsive buying, personality and financial responsibility. Results revealed that variables predictive of compulsive buying varied depending on the amount of credit card debt that the student was personally responsible for paying. Findings have implications for reducing compulsive buying in college students.

The sources of stress (academics, financial, family, social, and daily hassles) and coping strategies (self-help, approach, accommodation, avoidance, and self-punishment) of 166 college students were examined. The relationship between sex, specific sources of stress, and coping strategies was also investigated. Students completed a stress assessment inventory and a stress coping inventory based on a 5-factor revised COPE model (Zuckerman and Gagne Journal of Research in Personality, 37:169–204, 2003). Results found that college women reported a higher overall level of stress and greater use of emotion-focused coping strategies than college men. College men and women also reported different coping strategies for different stressors; however the use of emotion-focused coping strategies dominated over problem-solving strategies for both men and women. These results have implications for designing stress reduction workshops that build on the existing adaptive emotion-focused strategies of college students.

The current chapter reviews the relationship between health literacy, cognition, and emotion in older adults. Health literacy includes the concepts of accessing and understanding health information and services, with a comprehensive skill set of literacy that potentially includes visual (graphs and charts), computer (operate and search), information (obtain and apply relevant information), and numeracy (calculate and reason numerically) skills required to make appropriate health decisions. Current reports from the American Medical Association suggest that older adults, those over the age of 65, are the most vulnerable to the health consequences caused by poor health literacy. Older adults who have low health literacy are likely to have difficulty describing symptoms, providing an accurate health history, and understanding the health diagnosis and treatment recommended by their health care provider. Individuals with low health literacy have also been found to have greater medical expenditures in part attributable to a greater number of hospitalizations and the use of emergency room services, and medication nonadherence. The current chapter identifies and discusses the cognitive and emotional changes that impact information processing, communication, and decision-making. A specific research agenda for the study of older adults with low health literacy is provided.

The current chapter reviews the relationship between future time perspective, income, health, and age. It is proposed that future time perspective, that is, how future experiences and consequences are evaluated and compared to the present, is one critical factor for understanding decision-making. Many personal decisions involve consequences (cost and benefits) that unfold over time. The current chapter focuses on health and financial decisions. Promoting preventive health behaviors and retirement savings is critical to the well-being of all Americans given the demographic trend in the United States toward a larger number of older adults using social services (e.g., Social Security and Medicare) and fewer working adults to pay for those services. Preventive health decisions (e.g., exercise, nutrition, and tobacco use) and financial decisions involve a trade-off between benefits (e.g., taking a vacation) and costs (e.g., depleting a savings account). Furthermore many of the trade-offs for preventive health and financial decisions involve an immediate benefit (e.g., eating dessert now) versus a delayed cost (gaining weight later) or an immediate cost (e.g., inconvenience and time to exercise) versus a delayed benefit (e.g., better cardiovascular health). The chapter reviews the fundamental concepts of intertemporal choice, time discounting, and related empirical research. New and emerging areas of research in future time perspective including future representation of events, age and life events, and emotion are discussed. In particular, the important role of age in future time perspective is identified and discussed. Future applications of research with an emphasis on specific determinants (e.g., anxiety) that tip decisions toward greater concern for future versus present consequences are reviewed.

The current study proposes that personal need fulfillment (relatedness, generativity, identity, growth, and finances) predicts early and late retirement intentions. The personal needs of 160 full-time older employees were measured by personal goals, job satisfactions, job characteristics, and intrinsic motivation. Results Suggest that the personal needs fulfilled by job employment remain important in retirement. The expectation for personal need fulfillment for identity, growth, and relatedness shifts from work to retirement for those who intend to retire early. The results are discussed in terms of the need for greater study of the relationship between expectations of personal need fulfillment, worker self-concept, and retirement decisions.

Identity, as a guiding concept for work and retirement decisions, is explored in the current study. Image theory suggests that actions that "fit" with the goals of the trajectory image are fundamental for maintaining a positive and consistent self-identity (Beach, 1998; Beach & Mitchell, 1987). Incompatibility is the mechanism that evaluates whether retiring or continued work provides sufficient "fit" with the goals one hopes to achieve. In the current study, the "fit" of the trajectory image with retirement and work was measured in 238 full-time employees. Consistent with image theory predictions, individuals' perception of the incompatibility between five personal goals, within the trajectory image, and the choices of working and retiring predicted 25% of their retirement intent. Further support for goal incompatibility as a decision criterion is provided by findings showing it yielded better prediction than an alternative model based on goal facilitation, and equal prediction to an alternative model based on cost/benefit. Overall, the results are consistent with image theory and expand on continuity theory's (Atchley, 1999) concept of identity as fundamental for predicting retirement intent.

The current study explored the contribution of personal goals to retirement decisions. A SMARTER methodology (to assess multiattribute utility) and taxonomy of human goals were used to investigate the relationship between older workers' personal goals and their retirement intentions. Two hundred and fifty-one employees of a large university, varying in age from 55 to 77, were asked to indicate the relative importance of 29 goals and to indicate the utility they perceived in continued work and retirement as a means to achieve these goals. The results demonstrate that goal evaluations are important predictors of retirement intentions. Furthermore, goal evaluations provide an important and unique contribution to predicting retirement intentions beyond that predicted by personal and demographic variables. These results have implications for pre-retirement education and workplace application.

We tested the hypothesis that there are age-related differences in reasons for exercising. Adults (n=461), ranging in age from 18 to 86, were asked to indicate if they had considered different types of consequences in their exercise decisions, and how important they thought those consequences were to consider. A three-factor consequence measure examined individuals’ consideration and importance evaluations of various categories of exercise consequences. Results provided mixed support for the hypotheses that younger individuals exhibit greater concern for interpersonal attraction outcomes, while older individuals exhibit greater concern for health outcomes. These results have implications for designing educational and motivational training programs.

One of the more pressing societal challenges American institutions will face in the coming decades is to ensure that individuals who choose to leave the workforce have made wise financial decisions in preparations for retirement (Cutler, Gregg, & Lawton, 1992). The present study was designed to measure pre-retirees' ability to make accurate decisions about the affordability of retiring from employment. The two goals of the investigation were to measure whether knowledge of finance and retirement planning mediated the quality of individuals' decisions, and to determine whether a brief educational training program could be used to improve decisions performance. A within-subjects design was employed in which subjects were asked to provide solutions to four realistic retirement planning decision scenarios: two prior to an educational intervention. Results indicate that although subjects' knowledge of the domain increased significantly as a function of training, the overall quality of their decisions did not significantly improve from pretest to posttest. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of both the individual and society.