People often make predictions about their affective experience and life satisfaction in response to future events, such as changing jobs or retiring. Such forecasts of future well-being have been identified as an important determinant of decision-making, influencing all kind of decisions. In elite sport, athletes shall plan when to retire and how best to prepare for that transition out of sport sufficiently long before they actually retire. In the present study, we examined whether those athletes who do prepare for life after sport differ from those who don`t in their forecasted well-being after retirement. Elite athletes were asked to complete measures of emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction (social, financial and work areas) in relation to two periods of their life: present (current) and expected (forecast: one year into retirement). Higher life satisfaction forecasts in the social and financial areas were observed amongst the athletes who were not preparing for life after sport. Time to (expected) retirement also influenced planning in addition to well-being forecasts; precisely, athletes who thought would not retire within the next three years were not currently preparing for their working life after sport. We discuss the role that well-being forecasts may play in elite athletes` sport retirement both in their planning of the transition out of sport during their actual sporting career and their future post-sporting career life adjustment.
© Copyright 2014 19th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Amsterdam, 2. - 5. July 2014. Published by VU University Amsterdam. All rights reserved.