Altruism, helping, and volunteering: pathways to well-being in late life.

Objective: We examined the influence of prosocial orientations including altruism, volunteering, and informal helping on positive and negative well-being outcomes among retirement community dwelling elders.

Method: We utilize data from 2 waves, 3 years apart, of a panel study of successful aging (N = 585). Psychosocial well-being outcomes measured include life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and depressive symptomatology.

Results: Ordinal logistic regression results indicate that altruistic attitudes, volunteering, and informal helping behaviors make unique contributions to the maintenance of life satisfaction, positive affect and other well being outcomes considered in this research. Predictors explain variance primarily in the positive indicators of psychological well-being, but are not significantly associated with the negative outcomes. Female gender and functional limitations are also associated with diminished psychological well-being.

Discussion: Our findings underscore the value of altruistic attitudes as important additional predictors, along with prosocial behaviors in fostering life satisfaction and positive affect in old age.