Abstract

As people enter old age after retirement, their motivation and morale decrease as they become more distant from social context and interact less with others. In addition, as they age, their perception of the remaining time naturally decreases, leading to a cognitively and emotionally depressed life. Therefore, it is necessary to explore realistic conditions for preventing this and maintaining a vibrant life. In this study, we confirmed personal and relational conditions that could enable people to maintain high morale in old age based on leisure activity and social interaction, focusing on the fact that the effect of such active old age could expand the perception of future time. A questionnaire including leisure activities, social interaction, future time perspective, and elderly morale scales was conducted on 344 unemployed elderly people aged 60 to 80 years. As expected, leisure activities and social activities predicted elderly morale and future time perspective mediated this relationship. In other words, people who actively engage in leisure activities and interact with others in old age tend to perceive the future longer, which leads to a high morale. These results have important implications for what kind of personal and relational efforts are needed to live a satisfactory old age. Finally, specific implications and limitations of the study and future research directions were discussed.