Impact of Retirement Worry on Information Processing

Abstract

Individuals with financially-linked retirement worries were explored using a cognitive information processing paradigm called the Emotional Stroop Task (EST). Instead of presenting color words (e.g., "RED") in a non-red color of ink and asking individuals to identify that ink color (i.e., the standard Stroop interference paradigm), the EST uses retirement "threat" words (e.g., "POVERTY;" "SAVING") and non-retirement "neutral" words ("SAILBOAT;" "TABLE"), each of which is presented in one of four ink colors. Individuals with retirement-linked fears were expected to identify ink colors for threat words slower than neutral words, due to the occurrence of an emotionally-based interference effect. Among high-fear individuals, threat word responses took 808 milliseconds to identify on average, and neutral words took 790 milliseconds (an 18 millisecond difference; t[31] = 2.21, p = .02, one-tailed). Among low-fear individuals, however, a 0 millisecond difference in response latency was observed across word types (both threat and neutral means = 780 ms; t[27] = .04, ns). It was concluded that negative emotional content associated with long-term memory-based retirement concepts disrupt processing among those with strong, financially-linked fears.