Involvement in Activities and the Psychological Well-Being of Retired Men

This research represents a partial test of the activity theory of aging. The data used are from the National Longitudinal Surveys of older men and the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale and its subscales of Positive and Negative Affect were employed as dependent variables while participation in 10 types of activities were used as the primary independent variables. The central hypothesis that more involvement in activities results in higher levels of psychological well-being was supported in the cases of Positive Affect and Affect Balance. However, involvement in activities exerted trivial effects on Negative Affect and other hypotheses based on activity theory were not supported.