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The present research aimed at answering the question why people differ in their way of attributing experienced social acceptance and rejection. Using a motivational approach, two scenario studies (Study 1, N=280; Study 2, N=232) and one study using actual social interactions (Study 3, N=128) supported the hypothesis that dispositional social approach motives are associated with attributions following social acceptance (β=.16-.23, p.13), whereas dispositional social avoidance motives are associated with attributions following social rejection (β=.23-.29, p.07). These studies demonstrate that social approach and avoidance motives are differentially predictive in social situations with positive compared to negative outcomes. Moreover, social motives play an important role in people's attributions following their experiences of social acceptance or rejection. Taken together, the three studies suggest that people's explanations of social acceptance and rejection differ as a function of what they generally want and fear in social interactions.

The question “Am I famous yet?” directs our attention to the outcome of the journey of being a psychological scientist. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to achieve the highest possible outcomes when pursuing a goal. However, for a researcher, fame is an outcome that is very vague, abstract, distal, and unlikely to be attained. Focusing on this outcome might undermine motivation and persistence in the difficult endeavor of doing excellent research and contributing to psychological knowledge. To become an excellent psychological scientist might be a better outcome to which to aspire. However, focusing on the outcome seems generally less adaptive than focusing on the process of goal pursuit. A focus on the process of research is more likely to lead to higher motivation and persistence, and it might increase performance. In sum, the question “Am I famous yet?” might be ill conceived and might be better replaced by the question “How do I make a contribution to psychological science?”

Background: Older adults are stereotypically considered to be risk averse compared to younger age groups, although meta-analyses on age and the influence of gain/loss framing on risky choices have not found empirical evidence for age differences in risk-taking. Objective: The current study extends the investigation of age differences in risk preference by including analyses on the effect of the probability of a risky option on choices in gain versus loss situations. Methods: Participants (n = 130 adults aged 19–80 years) chose between a certain option and a risky option of varying probability in gain- and loss-framed gambles with actual monetary outcomes. Results: Only younger adults displayed an overall framing effect. Younger and older adults responded differently to probability fluctuations depending on the framing condition. Older adults were more likely to choose the risky option as the likelihood of avoiding a larger loss increased and as the likelihood of a larger gain decreased. Younger adults responded with the opposite pattern: they were more likely to choose the risky option as the likelihood of a larger gain increased and as the likelihood of avoiding a (slightly) larger loss decreased. Conclusion: Results suggest that older adults are more willing to select a risky option when it increases the likelihood that larger losses be avoided, whereas younger adults are more willing to select a risky option when it allows for slightly larger gains. This finding supports expectations based on theoretical accounts of goal orientation shifting away from securing gains in younger adulthood towards maintenance and avoiding losses in older adulthood. Findings are also discussed in respect to the affective enhancement perspective and socioemotional selectivity theory.

This research is a first test of the backup plan paradox. We hypothesized that investing in a backup plan may facilitate the conditions that it was developed to address: Plan A's insufficiency. Five studies provide initial, primarily correlative support for the undermining effect of investing in a backup plan. Study 1 (n= 160) demonstrated that the more participants perceived they had invested in developing a backup plan (preparing a "crib sheet"), the more likely they were to use it, although greater investments were unrelated to backup plan utility. Studies 2-4 used a simulated negotiation task. Study 2 (n = 247) demonstrated that when goal-relevant resources are limited, investing in developing backup plans and perceiving them as highly instrumental can decrease goal performance through the indirect effect of increased means replacing. Study 3 (n = 248) replicated this effect when goal-relevant resources were plentiful. Study 4 (n = 204) used an experimental variant of the simulated negotiation task and demonstrated that simply having a backup plan is not detrimental, but perceiving backup plans to be highly instrumental decreased goal performance, again through the indirect effect of increased means replacing. Study 5 (n = 160) replicated findings from Studies 1-4 using a lab-based motor task (throwing a ball). Together, these results provide first evidence that backup plans can introduce costs that may jeopardize goal performance. (PsycINFO Database Record)

Abstract. Establishing new social relationships is important for mastering developmental transitions in young adulthood. In a 2-year longitudinal study with four measurement occasions (T1: n = 245, T2: n = 96, T3: n = 103, T4: n = 85), we investigated the role of social motives in college students’ mastery of the transition of moving out of the parental home, using loneliness as an indicator of poor adjustment to the transition. Students with strong social approach motivation reported stable and low levels of loneliness. In contrast, students with strong social avoidance motivation reported high levels of loneliness. However, this effect dissipated relatively quickly as most of the young adults adapted to the transition over a period of several weeks. The present study also provides evidence for an interaction between social approach and social avoidance motives: Social approach motives buffered the negative effect on social well-being of social avoidance motives. These results illustrate the importance of social approach and social avoidance motives and their interplay during developmental transitions.

The importance of goals for understanding behavior and performance over time and across situations, for a sense of purpose and psychological well-being, has been acknowledged in the areas of motivation and lifespan development for more than a quarter-century (Baltes & Baltes, 1990). More recently, the field of motivated cognition has pointed to the role of the cognitive representation of goals for self-regulation, affect, and goal achievement (Fujita & Carnevale, 2012). Owing to the decline in the perceived availability of goal-relevant resources across adulthood, I argue that the representation of goals and their effects on behavior, performance, and well-being changes across adulthood. More specifically, I propose that goal representations change dynamically as a response to—and help managing—the developmental gains and losses regarding (i) the orientation toward achieving gains, maintaining performance, or avoiding losses, and (ii) the focus on the means or the outcome of goal pursuit.

Goals and motives are subject to human development. Generally, personal goals reflect age-graded developmental tasks, expectations about what constitutes an “on time” development, as well as the availability of resources (e.g., cognitive and physical abilities, remaining life time) across adulthood. As a consequence, older adults pursue goals to prevent resource losses as opposed to promote resource gains, restrict their goal pursuit to fewer important life domains, focus more strongly on the process as opposed to the outcomes of goal pursuit, and report an improved capability to disengage from unattainable goals. Together, these changes indicate that older adults maintain or even increase their self-regulatory competence across the life span, potentially due to a lifelong experience with personal goals and in order to manage the opportunities and challenges encountered over the course of their lives.

We address how to conceptualize and measure intentional self-regulation (ISR) among adolescents from four cultures by assessing whether ISR (conceptualized by the SOC model of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation) is represented by three factors (as with adult samples) or as one “adolescence-specific” factor. A total of 4,057 14- and 18-year-old youth in Canada, Germany, Iceland, and the US participated. Confirmatory factor analyses did not confirm a tripartite model of SOC in any sample, whereas a single (nine-item) composite fit in all samples. A partial weak factorial invariance model showed a roughly equivalent meaning of the nine-item composite among German, Icelandic, and US youth. We discuss the need for further examination of the relative importance of items among Canadian youth, and possible problems using reverse-coded items with adolescents. The similarities that were observed across age and cultural groups suggest that a single factor structure of SOC, as measured by nine items, may be robust for youth in Western cultural settings and that SOC processes are not fully developed until adulthood.

With increasing age, the ratio of gains to losses becomes more negative, which is reflected in expectations that positive events occur with a high likelihood in young adulthood, whereas negative events occur with a high likelihood in old age. Little is known about expectations of social events. Given that younger adults are motivated to establish new social relations, they should be vigilant towards signals of opportunities for socializing, such as smiling faces. Older adults, who are particularly motivated to avoid negative encounters, should be vigilant towards negative social signals, such as angry faces. Thus, younger adults should overestimate the occurrence of positive social signals, whereas older adults should overestimate the occurrence of negative social signals. Two studies (Study 1: n = 91 younger and n = 89 older adults; Study 2: n = 50 younger and n = 50 older adults) partly supported these hypotheses using frequency estimates of happy and angry faces. Although both younger and older adults overestimated the frequency of angry compared to happy faces, the difference was significantly more pronounced for older adults.

The current study tested assumptions derived from the whole-trait theory (Fleeson, 2012), which proposes a connection between personality and motivation. We hypothesized that individual differences in social approach and avoidance motives are associated with personality as observed by others. In addition, we expected that observed personality links social approach and avoidance motives to interpersonal outcomes. The sample was composed of 83 young adults (25.3% males, Mage = 21.66 years) who had recently moved into a shared apartment. Roommates (N = 83; 50.6% males, Mage = 22.83 years) evaluated the newcomers on Extraversion, Agreeableness, and likeability. Approach motives had an indirect positive effect on likeability through other-reported Extraversion and Agreeableness. Although avoidance motives had some negative effects on likeability mediated through low Extraversion, they were positively associated with Agreeableness. These results demonstrate the complexity of social approach and avoidance motives. Moreover, they highlight the importance of motivational factors for observed personality.

Procrastination, defined as the subjectively aversive inability to initiate or complete the pursuit of a given goal, is a common phenomenon in academic contexts. This theoretical paper presents a dynamic model that centers on the role of goal focus in influencing procrastination during goal pursuit. Our central hypothesis is that focusing on the means of goal pursuit (i.e., adopting a process focus) reduces procrastination, particularly when fear of failure is high. Focusing on the means should decrease the salience of performance outcomes and thereby reduce fear of failure. This, in turn, should facilitate the initiation and maintenance of goal pursuit. In contrast, when means are perceived as unpleasant (high task aversiveness), focusing more on the outcome of goal pursuit (i.e., adopting an outcome focus) should reduce procrastination by directing attention away from the means while highlighting the importance of goal achievement. Furthermore, the model takes account of dynamic contextual factors, particularly the distance to a given deadline.

Processing the motivational relevance of a visual scene and reacting accordingly is crucial for survival. Previous work suggests that the emotional content of naturalistic scenes affects response speed, such that unpleasant content slows responses whereas pleasant content accelerates responses. It is unclear whether these effects reflect motor-cognitive processes, such as attentional orienting, or vary with the function/outcome of the motor response itself. Four experiments manipulated participants’ ability to terminate the picture (offset control) and, thereby, the response’s function and motivational value. Attentive orienting was manipulated via picture repetition, which diminishes orienting. A total of N = 81 participants completed versions of a go/no-go task, discriminating between distorted versus intact pictures that were drawn from six content categories varying in positive, negative, or neutral valence. While all participants responded faster with repetition, only participants without offset control exhibited slower responses to unpleasant and accelerated responses to pleasant content. Emotional engagement, measured by the late positive potential, was not modulated by attentional orienting (repetitions). This lack of modulation indicates that the interaction between repetition and offset control is not due to altered emotional engagement. Together, results suggest that response time changes as a function of emotional content and their sensitivity to attention orienting depends on the motivational function of the motor response.

Tasks of increasing difficulty require increasing levels of cognitive engagement from participants. The costs associated with cognitive engagement rise with age in response to normative cognitive decline. Additionally, previous studies have shown an interaction between age and task difficulty, with age differences in effort expenditure increasing along with task demands. Motivational accounts of effort allocation predict the opposite relationship, where increased task difficulty in the face of declining cognitive abilities result in disengagement among older adults, comparatively lowering their effort expenditure relative to younger adults that remain committed to the task. The current study quantitatively reviews the available literature on age and effort expenditure across tasks of increasing difficulty. An initial meta-analysis found no age differences in effort across task difficulty, but inspection of the significantly heterogeneous effect sizes indicated that measurement domain might account for some of the variance found between the effect sizes. A second, post-hoc meta-analysis was conducted, recoding effect sizes giving preference to subjective measures. Subsequent moderator variable analyses found that the combined effect of age and domain of effort measurement explained a sufficient portion of the variance across effect sizes. When using physiological measures, effort was not found to differ across task difficulty for either age group. Alternatively, when measured subjectively, effort was reported to greatly increase (>1 standard deviation) with difficulty, with a larger increase in younger adults. Results are discussed in terms of effort mobilization across adulthood and the importance of measurement domain in the interpretation of results.

As life-span developmental psychologists, our research programs focus on the description, explanation, and optimization of human behavior and development (e.g., Baltes, Reese, & Nesselroade, 1977; Lerner, 2012). Traditionally, this work adopts an action-theoretical accounting of the basic processes for human development (Brandtstadter & Lerner, 1999) arguing that in addition to biological and environmental factors, people are the active producers of their own development (Lerner & Busch-Rossnagel, 1981), creating their futures through setting and striving for goals. For decades, life-span developmental psychologists and life course sociologists have fruitfully conversed and collaborated to push their fields forward, developing research projects, applied programs, and supporting policies that have improved lives and our understanding of how they unfold. We hope that our comments on the commendable target article by Bernardi, Huinink, and Settersten (2018; this issue) contribute to this decades-long productive conversation across academic disciplines. Our goal here is to complicate a portion of the target article that focuses on interdependencies across life domains (e.g., work, family, education). We do so by introducing a new “wrinkle:” life-span developmental psychology’s perspectives on successful aging (e.g., Freund, 2008). In short, we argue that the lack of social norms that characterize aging populations provide older adults with a (1) significant challenge to their self-regulatory capacity, but also (2) a significant opportunity — that is arguably unique across the life span — to actively define and select domains in life to support their successful aging. Therefore, the interdependency of life domains in older adulthood may represent a special case that expands and further enriches the Life Course Cube model (Bernardi, Huinink, & Settersten, this issue).

Background: Dieters often show weight cycling, i.e. prior successful weight loss is followed by weight gain. The current study examined how goal progress during a diet (i.e. weight loss) impacts subsequent weight loss depending on whether success is identified on the process level or the outcome level of dieting. Methods: A short-term longitudinal study examined lagged effects of weight loss and identifications of success in one week on weight loss in the subsequent week. Across 6 weeks, N = 126 overweight women reported their weekly weight and the degree to which they considered themselves as successful regarding the process of dieting (e.g. changing eating behavior) and the desired dieting outcomes (e.g. improving appearance). Results: Successful weight loss in one week negatively affected weight loss in the subsequent week. However, identifying success on the process level reduced this negative effect. Discussion: Although people might feel generally that goal progress licenses subsequent goal-inconsistent behavior, identifying successful goal-pursuit on the process rather than the outcome level of a goal may counteract the subsequent loss of dieting motivation.

The dissemination and control of information are indispensable ingredients of violent conflict, with all parties involved in a conflict or at war seeking to frame the discussion on their own terms. Those attempts at information control often involve the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation (i.e., information that is incorrect by accident or intent, respectively). We review the way in which misinformation can facilitate violent conflicts and, conversely, how the successful refutation of misinformation can contribute to peace. We illustrate the relevant cognitive principles by examining two case studies. The first, a retrospective case, involves the Iraq War of 2003 and the "War on Terror." The second, a prospective case, points to likely future sources of conflict arising from climate change and its likely consequences.

An 11-month longitudinal study (T1: N = 520, M age = 19 years) investigated the role of gender-related self-concept and goal clarity during the transition period surrounding graduation from upper secondary school in Switzerland. The first assessment took place a few months before graduation and assessed participants' gender-related self-concept (instrumentality, expressivity), gender-role attitudes, goal clarity, and job-related aspirations. Despite the high level of education, gender-related differences in attitudes and self-concept showed that boys endorsed more traditional gender-role attitudes than girls. Relationships between gender-related self-concept and attitudes showed different patterns for girls and boys. Regarding adaptation to the transition, gender-related self-concept predicted change in career-related goal clarity, which, in turn, predicted an increase in life satisfaction over time. Our results highlight the important role of instrumentality, expressivity, and career-related goal clarity...

As humans age, they become more selective regarding their personal goals [1] and social partners [2]. Whereas the selectivity in goals has been attributed to losses in resources (e.g., physical strength) [3], the increasing focus on emotionally meaningful partners is, according to socioemotional selectivity theory, driven by the awareness of one's decreasing future lifetime [2]. Similar to humans, aging monkeys show physical losses [4] and reductions in social activity [2, 5-7]. To disentangle a general resource loss and the awareness of decreasing time, we combined field experiments with behavioral observations in a large age-heterogeneous population of Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) at La Forêt des Singes. Novel object tests revealed a loss of interest in the nonsocial environment in early adulthood, which was modulated by the availability of a food reward. Experiments using vocal and visual representations of social partners indicated that monkeys maintained an interest in social stimuli and a preferential interest in friends and socially important individuals into old age. Old females engaged in fewer social interactions, although other group members continued to invest in relationships with them. Consequently, reductions in sociality were not due to a decrease in social interest. In conclusion, some of the motivational shifts observed in aging humans, particularly the increasing focus on social over nonsocial stimuli, may occur in the absence of a limited time perspective and are most likely deeply rooted in primate evolution. Our findings highlight the value of nonhuman primates as valuable models for understanding human aging [8, 9].

Beliefs about aging influence how we interpret and respond to changes within and around us. Essentialist beliefs about aging are defined as views that link chronological age with inherent and immutable properties underlying aging-related changes. These beliefs may influence the experience of aging-related changes and shape people's outlook of the future. We hypothesized that people who endorse essentialist beliefs about aging report a more limited future time perspective. Two studies provided correlational (Study 1, N = 250; 18-77 years) and experimental (Study 2, N = 103; 20-77 years) evidence that essentialist beliefs about aging affect people's future time perspective. In addition, Study 2 and Study 3 (N = 174; 34-67 years) tested the underlying mechanism and provided evidence that perception of aging-related threat explains the effect of essentialist beliefs on a reduced future time perspective. These findings highlight the fundamental role of essentialist beliefs about aging for the perception of time horizons in the context of aging. (PsycINFO Database Record

Two studies tested the hypotheses (1) that focusing on the process of goal pursuit is associated with lower levels of procrastination and (2) that this relationship is moderated by fear of failure and task aversiveness. Study 1 used a between-subjects design with hypothetical scenarios (N = 92). Study 2 used a 5-week longitudinal within-subject design in a real-life context (N = 50). Both studies found converging evidence for the main-effect hypothesis, that is, process focus is negatively associated with procrastination in the academic context (e.g., studying for an exam). Process focus was also negatively related to task aversiveness and fear of failure. However, findings regarding moderation effects of fear of failure and task aversiveness were mixed. Taken together, findings support the hypothesis that the cognitive representation of a goal primarily in terms of its means (i.e., process focus) versus its outcome is related to less procrastination: Focusing on the process of a task can help to reduce procrastination.

The present research focuses on 2 factors that might help or hurt women to cope with the uncertainties associated with developmental transitions in modern societies (i.e., starting one's first job, graduating from high school, reentry to work after parental leave). We investigate (a) the role of openness to experience in coping with challenging transitions and (b) the (mal)adaptive consequences of adopting a traditional gender ideology. Starting with the assumption that transitional uncertainty has different consequences for women high or low in openness to experience, a first experiment (N = 61; 18-30 years) demonstrated that self-efficacy and well-being decrease after being confronted with transitional uncertainty among women low in openness. Two longitudinal studies investigated the (mal)adaptive consequences of adopting a traditional gender ideology for women high or low in openness in dealing with challenging transitions. Study 2 examined whether endorsing or rejecting traditional gender role beliefs might help female (but not male) students to maintain a sense of self-efficacy and subjective well-being during the transition of graduating from high school (N = 520, 17-22 years). Study 3 (N = 297; 20-53 years) tested the same model for women in middle adulthood during the transition from parental leave to reentry into work life. For both studies, latent growth analyses showed that endorsing traditional gender role beliefs contributed to self-efficacy and subjective well-being among women low in openness. By contrast, for women high in openness, rejecting traditional gender role beliefs had a positive effect on their relative level of self-efficacy and subjective well-being. Functions of ideologies in the context of challenging transitions are discussed.

The present study investigated the relationships between fear of failure, disorganization, and affective well-being while preparing for a college exam. The study comprised a sample of N = 280 students and used a longitudinal crosslagged design. The results of structural equation modeling partly supported the hypotheses. Fear of failure was found to be related to disorganization in the cross-sectional but not in the longitudinal data. As expected, fear of failure negatively predicted change in affective well-being. Affective well-being predicted change in disorganization during exam preparation and exam performance. Contrary to our expectations, however, disorganization did not predict exam performance over and above affective well-being. Implications for further studies investigating the role of well-being in the learning context are discussed.

This study (N = 520 high-school students) investigates the influence of parental work involvement on adolescents’ own plans regarding their future work involvement. As expected, adolescents’ perceptions of parental work behavior affected their plans for own work involvement. Same-sex parents served as main role models for the adolescents’ own plans, whereas opposite-sex parents served as models for the preferred degree of work participation for the adolescents’ future life partners. Interestingly, ideals of how much one’s own parents should have worked were substantially more important than the actual parental work involvement during their childhood. Adolescents, then, are influenced by their parents as role models but they reflect and modify these models according to their beliefs regarding an ideal balance of work and family.

Sehnsucht, the longing or yearning for ideal yet seemingly unreachable states of life, is a salient topic in German culture and has proven useful for understanding self-regulation across adulthood in a German sample (e.g., Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007). The current study tested whether findings for German samples could be generalized to the more individualistic and agentic U.S. American culture. Four samples of U.S. American and German participants (total N = 1,276) age 18 to 81 years reported and rated their 2 most important life longings and completed measures of subjective well-being and health. Measurement equivalence was established at the level of factor loadings for central life longing characteristics. German and U.S. American participants did not differ in self-reported ease of identifying personal life longings or their intensity. In comparison to Germans, however, U.S. Americans associated life longings less with utopian, unattainable states and reported less salience of the concept in everyday life. Associations with measures of adaptation suggest that life longings can be both functional and dysfunctional for development in both cultures.

The main argument of this review is that motivational development associated with normal aging affects decision making. With increasing age, the ratio of gains to losses becomes more and more unfavorable. Reflecting the increasing losses in resources, goal orientation changes from a predominant orientation towards gains in young adulthood to an increasingly stronger orientation towards the prevention of loss in older adulthood. As goals serve as reference points for the evaluation of decision outcomes, this change in goal orientation across adulthood might also affect decision making. The decision-making literature has recognized that choices are influenced by goal orientation. However, little research has been conducted on how goals influence the decision-making process in general and with regard to aging in particular. To date, findings on decision making and aging remain inconsistent and are in need of a developmental framework. With regard to applications, a better understanding of the aging decision maker can provide insight into how to improve communication efforts about issues like advance care planning, medical treatment, and housing options.

Objectives: Unhealthy diet and physical inactivity are main causes of many diseases and hence, the development of effective interventions is warranted. However, targeting both health behaviors simultaneously might overburden participants. Thus, the aim of the study was to (a) investigate the relationship between these two health behaviors, (b) assess the perceived intergoal conflict and coherence, and (c) test the effects of stage-matched and mismatched interventions on perceived intergoal conflict and coherence. Methods: Based on the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA; Schwarzer, 2008), which describes behavior change as a process with qualitatively different stages, an internet-based health prevention program was tested. The quasi-experimental study with two different interventions included N = 1260 and a longitudinal subsample with n = 300 participants. Results: Results showed that both health behaviors are correlated, and that participants perceived more intergoal facilitation than conflicts. Perceived conflict varied between participants in the different HAPA stages. Stagematched interventions successfully reduced intergoal conflict. Conclusion: Health promotion programs that simultaneously target physical activity and dietary behavior seem not to overburden participants. On the contrary, participants report high levels of intergoal coherence between the two goals. Nonetheless, intergoal conflicts do play a role in the early stages of behavior change and intention formation. Health promotion programs should take these results into consideration when more than one health behavior is to be targeted.

This study investigated age-related differences between younger (M = 25.52 years) and older (M = 70.51 years) adults in avoidance motivation and the influence of avoidance motivation on gaze preferences for happy, neutral, and angry faces. In line with the hypothesis of reduced negativity effect later in life, older adults avoided angry faces and (to a lesser degree) preferred happy faces more than younger adults did. This effect cannot be explained by age-related changes in dispositional motivation. Irrespective of age, avoidance motivation predicted gaze behavior towards emotional faces. The study demonstrates the importance of interindividual differences beyond young adulthood.

The literature documents a motivational shift in goal orientation such that younger adults focus more on striving for gains than maintenance of functioning or avoidance of losses. With increasing age, adults become more maintenance-oriented and, in old adulthood, more loss-avoidance oriented. This motivational shift might be due to the increasing threat of losses, particularly in old age. Alternatively, it might be the accumulation of resources such as material wealth that leads adults to become more protective of what they have achieved. The current study explored the effects of perceived resource accumulation and (threat of) losses on goal orientation in 16 life domains in N = 174 young, middle-aged, and older adults. These domains were supposed to vary in cumulativeness (resources can be accumulated or not) and threat of losses (resources can be lost or not) to maximize the chance of dissociating the effects of perceived accumulation and (threat of) losses. Based on participants’ ratings, 4 of the 16 domains were selected for the subsequent analyses. Results replicated the finding that older adults generally report stronger maintenance and loss-prevention orientation than younger adults. Perceived resource accumulation positively related to maintenance orientation, particularly in old age. Moreover, higher perceived resource accumulation was associated with weaker loss-prevention orientation in young adulthood but stronger loss-prevention orientation in older adults. These findings suggest that resource accumulation may play a crucial role in motivational shifts across adulthood. In contrast, resource loss might play a less important role than previously assumed.

The present paper deals with three positive facets of the work–family interplay, i.e., transfer of competencies, transfer of positive mood, and cross-domain compensation. The latter refers to the experience that engagement in one domain helps dealing with failures in the other domain. In two correlational studies (N1 = 107 working mothers, N2 = 146 working men and women), cross-domain compensation predicted domain-specific well-being even when we controlled for work–family conflicts and the two other positive facets (viz., transfer of competencies and positive mood). In an additional experiment (N3 = 63 working men and women), which exclusively focused on compensation, participants were asked to remember a job-related failure. Then they were instructed to think about a positive job-related experience (i.e., intradomain compensation) or family-related experience (i.e., cross-domain compensation). Compared to a control group, both experimental groups showed faster emotional recovery, with cross-domain compensation being a slightly more effective strategy at the beginning of that recovery.

How do changes in life expectancy and longevity affect life-span development? This paper argues that historical increases in life expectancy primarily have an impact on the later and less on the earlier parts of the life span. Increased life expectancy is both a challenge and an opportunity for positive development. A perspective is outlined according to which self-regulation is a key factor for successful aging. Assuming a compensatory relationship of social norms/expectations and self-regulation for developmental regulation, processes such as setting, pursuing, and disengaging from personal goals should be particularly important in old age, a life phase that is characterized by being less normatively structured than younger phases. This argument is elaborated in the domains of social relations, leisure, and work.

Sehnsucht (life longings) refers to thoughts and feelings about missing something in life that would make it complete or perfect. Using a life-span–theoretical approach, we posit that life longings have important developmental functions, including giving directionality for life planning and helping to cope with loss and important, yet unattainable wishes by pursuing them in one's imagination. This article presents a life-span–theoretical conceptualization of Sehnsucht recently introduced by Paul B. Baltes and colleagues (Baltes, in press; Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2008) and reviews first empirical research conducted in this framework. The review addresses lay conceptions of Sehnsucht and the construct's distinction from already existing, well-articulated constructs (goals, regrets, ideal self), the functions of life longings for development, and age-related differences across adulthood.

Across adulthood, people face increasingly more risky medical problems and decisions. However, little is known about changes in medical risk taking across adulthood. Therefore, the current cross-sectional study investigated age-related differences in medical risk taking with N = 317 adults aged 20-77 years using newly developed scenarios to assess medical risk taking, and additional measures designed to evaluate risk-taking behavior in the medical domain. Greater expected benefits on the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale-Medical (DOSPERT-M) predicted more active risk taking, whereas higher perceived risk predicted less active risk taking. Next, we examined differences in active and passive risk taking, where passive risk taking refers to risk taking that is associated with inaction. Age was associated with less passive risk taking, but not with active risk taking, risk perception, or expected benefits on the DOSPERT-M. Participants were overall more likely to opt for taking medical action than not, even more so for a scenario about a vaccine for a deadly flu than for a scenario about a chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Overall, participants were more likely to accept medication (vaccine or chemotherapy) for their child than for themselves. Increasing age was associated with a lower likelihood of accepting the treatment or vaccine for oneself. Taken together, our study provides important insights about changes in medical risk taking across adulthood when people face an increasing number of complex and risky medical decisions.

Summary Going beyond the relation of work and family, the present three‐wave longitudinal study spanning one year assessed different forms of conflict and facilitation between leisure and the life domains work and family and their relation to subjective well‐being. A sample of N = 277 employed men and women reported their perceived conflict and facilitation between leisure, work, and family and subjective well‐being. Results suggest that leisure is a source of facilitation for work and family, and, at the same time, a major recipient of conflict from work and family. Moreover, leisure conflict was negatively correlated and leisure facilitation was positively associated with concurrent subjective well‐being. Both conflict and facilitation between all three life domains remained highly stable over the course of one year. Only few and non‐systematic lagged effects were found, indicating that the variance of the stability of the constructs and their relations over time leave little room for longitudinal predictions. Taken together, the study demonstrates that, similar to work–family relations, conflict and facilitation with the leisure domain are also associated with subjective well‐being and remain highly stable over the course of a year in the lives of young and middle‐aged adults. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Achievement goal research consistently reveals that mastery-avoidance goals (i.e., striving to avoid losses) are maladaptive, especially in comparison to mastery-approach goals (i.e., striving for gains). Nearly all of it has been done with children or young adults, however. Lifespan theories of motivation posit that people in late adulthood are more likely than young adults to strive toward maintenance and loss-prevention rather than gains, and also that they sometimes profit from pursuing those goals. Integrating the two approaches, this experiment compared young and older adults’ experience and performance on a laboratory task when pursuing either mastery-approach or mastery-avoidance goals. Results show that young adults perceived the mastery-approach goal to be more attainable and therefore felt less pressure, enjoyed the task more, and performed better with it, whereas older adults showed this pattern with the mastery-avoidance goal. This matching effect replicates recent research on adult development and has broader implications for achievement goal theory and avoidance motivation in general.

Self-regulation refers to the extent to which people influence, modify, or control their own behavior (including thoughts and feelings) according to goals or standards. Goals are a key concept in models of self-regulation as they direct and guide cognition and behavior over time and across situations and thereby help to organize and structure perception, thought, and behavior into meaningful action units. However, the setting and pursuit of goals also requires self-regulation. Although the self-regulatory function of goals does not seem to change with age, the way goals are set and pursued does. The current article elaborates these processes in the framework of the model of selection, optimization, and compensation. Adapting to life-span changes in the availability of resources that are necessary for goal achievement, adults shift their primary goal orientation from the attainment of gains to the maintenance of functioning and the avoidance of losses. Moreover, goal focus appears to shift from a stronger focus on the outcomes of goal attainment to a stronger focus on the process of goal pursuit. These shifts in goal orientation and goal focus help self-regulation when faced with developmental goals and contexts requiring the optimization of functioning and performance in young adulthood, and the compensation of impending or actual decline and losses in later phases of adulthood.

In contrast to the PASTOR model by Kalisch et al. we point to the potential negative long-term effects of positive (re)appraisals of events for resilience. This perspective posits that emotional reactions to events provide important guidelines as to which events, environments, or social relations should be sought out and which ones should be avoided in the future.

This study investigated the effects of habitual social approach and avoidance motivation on the classification of facial expressions of different visual clarity. Participants (N = 78) categorized partially masked emotional faces expressing either anger or happiness as positive or negative. Participants generally tended to interpret the facial expressions in a positive way. This positivity effect was reduced when persons were highly avoidance motivated. Social avoidance motivation predicted fewer positive and more negative interpretations in the least visible condition that provided extremely little information on the facial expression. Thus, people high in social avoidance motivation are likely to have anticipated angry faces as the facial stimuli offered only minimal information. The results for social approach motivation did not reach statistical significance. To conclude, it seems that persons who are most afraid of having negative social interactions (i.e., those high in social avoidance motivation), anticipate and interpret social information in the most negative way, which could lead to the reinforcement of the avoidance motivation.

Using a short-term longitudinal design, the authors investigated implications of 2 facets of motivational selectivity--restricting (to few goals) and focusing (on central and similar goals)--for goal-pursuit investment. Participants were 20-69 years old (Time 1, N = 177; Time 2, N = 160). Results show that motivational selectivity in terms of focusing (but not in terms of restricting) is associated with an enhanced involvement in goal pursuit (assessed 3 months later), irrespective of age. Structural equation models demonstrated that this association is completely mediated by the degree of mutual facilitation among goals. Furthermore, motivational selectivity increases from middle to older adulthood. This contributes to the maintenance of high goal involvement into later adulthood, despite aging-related increases in resource limitations.

Zusammenfassung. Zur Beantwortung der Frage, wie Ziele die Entwicklung beeinflussen, werden grob zwei Ebenen von Zielen unterschieden: Altersbezogene Erwartungen (Ebene 1) und persönliche Ziele (Ebene 2). Altersbezogene Erwartungen reflektieren Gelegenheitsstrukturen und Informationen über zielrelevante Ressourcen sowie die zeitliche Strukturierung und Sequenzierung von Zielen. Diese Erwartungen beeinflussen sowohl das individuelle Verhalten als auch die persönlichen Ziele. Persönliche Ziele beeinflussen die Entwicklung, indem sie Verhalten über die Zeit und Situationen hinweg organisieren und damit sowohl die Richtung als auch das Funktionsniveau von Entwicklung mitbestimmen. Hierbei spielen insbesondere die Auswahl von persönlichen Zielen in Abhängigkeit von Ressourcen und dem sozialen Kontext, die Investition von Ressourcen in die Zielverfolgung und -aufrechterhaltung angesichts von Rückschlägen und Verlusten eine zentrale Rolle.

In a 3-year longitudinal study, we found in a sample of young professionals (N=82; 44% male; age range: 28 to 39 years) that self-reported behaviors reflecting selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) predicted global and work-specific subjective well-being (multiple correlations ranged from R=.22 to R=.44). In addition to optimization (i.e., implementing goal-relevant means), it was especially the degree of compensation (i.e., investing goal-relevant means to counteract losses) that predicted how emotionally balanced individuals felt and how satisfied they were with their work situation 3 years later. These longitudinal predictions were quite robust when controlling for personality variables (NEO). Results are consistent with previous cross-sectional findings and demonstrate how the SOC framework might be successfully applied to the domain of vocational behavior.