Stressful events compromise control strivings during a major life transition

Association Between Future Orientation and Anxiety in University Students During COVID-19 Outbreak: The Chain Mediating Role of Optimization in Primary-Secondary Control and Resilience

The unfamiliar and menacing epidemic has undoubtedly increased the anxiety of students. Therefore, the strategies to reduce anxiety are urgently required. The present study principally investigated a protective mechanism of future orientation in anxiety during the low-risk period of COVID-19 outbreak. The study was conducted in 528 non-infected students (range = 16-24 years) recruited from five universities in China. The participants completed questionnaires between January 22, 2021, and January 24, 2021. Chain intermediary analyses were performed after controlling for gender and age. Results indicated that future orientation lowers anxiety through (a) optimization in primary and secondary control, (b) resilience, and (c) chain mediating path of optimization in primary and secondary control coupled with resilience. We investigated how individuals deal with risk factors after encountering adversity and how their psychological flexibility stimulates and promotes them to achieve a well-adapted developmental state. This study provided reference suggestions on reducing anxiety levels during an emergency.

Invited Commentary: Societal Constraints and Individual Agency: Navigating Educational Transitions for Upward Mobility

This article discusses three empirical studies of the role of individual agency in educational transitions in the conceptual framework of the motivational theory of lifespan development that integrates life-course sociological and life-span psychological perspectives. The educational systems in the U.K., the US, and Switzerland set up specific opportunities and constraints in their primary to secondary and secondary to tertiary educational tracks. Individual agency plays out in different ways in these country- and transition-specific fields of action and accordingly enables or hinders individual youths' upward mobility. Early transitions into segregated secondary school systems are dominated by the influence of teachers and parents and tend to maintain social inequality. Later transitions into tertiary education are more open to individual agency that can substantially contribute to overcoming social inequalities in college admission. Finally, once enrolled in university, students have comparatively better opportunities to overcome disadvantages of their parents' socio-economic status and educational background.

Agency and Motivation in Adulthood and Old Age

This review addresses conceptual and empirical research about how individual agency and motivation influences development during adulthood and old age. The major life-span approaches to individual agency and developmental regulation are discussed, with a focus on the motivational theory of life-span development. Developmental agency unfolds through action cycles of pursuing long-term goals for optimal development. Individuals differ in their capacity to regulate their goal engagements effectively within the age-graded structure of opportunities and constraints in their life courses. We discuss a set of research examples about specific developmental challenges, such as transition to adulthood, biological aging, illness, and societal transformation, and show how individuals, as agents in their own development, navigate change for better or worse. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Motivation-focused thinking: Buffering against stress-related physical symptoms and depressive symptomology

Developmental transitions are experienced throughout the life course and necessitate adapting to consequential and unpredictable changes that can undermine health. Our six-month study (n = 239) explored whether selective secondary control striving (motivation-focused thinking) protects against the elevated levels of stress and depressive symptoms increasingly common to young adults navigating the challenging school-to-university transition. Path analyses supplemented with tests of moderated mediation revealed that, for young adults who face challenging obstacles to goal attainment, selective secondary control indirectly reduced long-term stress-related physical and depressive symptoms through selective primary control and previously unexamined measures of discrete emotions. Results advance the existing literature by demonstrating that (a) selective secondary control has health benefits for vulnerable young adults and (b) these benefits are largely a consequence of the process variables proposed in Heckhausen et al.'s (2010) theory.

Conflicted goal engagement: undermining physical activity and health in late life

OBJECTIVES

Pursuing health goals in very old age is a challenging task that may be undermined by conflicted goal engagement involving mismatched primary (behavior-focused) and secondary (motivation-focused) control striving. Our study explored whether one potentially detrimental combination of control strategies (low primary control/high secondary control) compromised 3-year indicators of everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation.

METHOD

We analyzed data from a representative sample of very old adults (n = 107) using simple slope regression analyses that tested the conditional effects of control striving on everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation.

RESULTS

We found a conflicted engagement effect wherein primary control predicted our outcomes only when secondary control was high. The lowest levels of everyday physical activity and blood oxygen saturation were found for older adults high in secondary control but low in primary control. A supplemental mediation analysis suggested everyday physical activity was the mechanism through which conflicted engagement undermined blood oxygen saturation.

DISCUSSION

Employing health maintenance strategies that promote motivation-focused thinking but discourage goal-directed behaviors (conflicted engagement) may compromise physical activity and health among very old adults. Further research is needed to determine whether control-enhancing interventions promote harmonious goal engagement and better health among these high-risk individuals.

Emotional benefits of mindfulness-based stress reduction in older adults: the moderating roles of age and depressive symptom severity

OBJECTIVES

To examine the effects of age and depressive symptom severity on changes in positive affect among older adults randomly assigned to a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or a Waitlist Control group. Drawing from the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, we hypothesized that lower levels of depressive symptom severity and older age would be associated with greater positive affect in response to the MBSR intervention.

METHODS

Data were collected from a sample of community-dwelling English-speaking adults (n = 200) aged ≥ 65, randomly assigned to an eight-week MBSR program or a Waitlist Control group. Our main outcome variable was a five-item measure of positive affect, which was measured at study entry as well as eight weeks and six months later.

RESULTS

At the six-month follow-up, we observed group by baseline depressive symptom severity (β = -.17, p = .02) and group by baseline depressive symptom severity by age (β = -.14, p = .05) interactions. Among MBSR participants, greater baseline depressive symptom severity was also associated with less improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up (β = -.30, p = .003). Findings were qualified by a significant depressive symptom severity by age interaction (β = -.25, p = .01), such that MBSR participants who were 70 and over with lower baseline depressive symptom severity having the greatest improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up.

CONCLUSION

MBSR improves positive affect for older adults with lower depressive symptom severity, perhaps because it capitalizes on naturalistic changes in control strategies.

Subjective well-being in times of social change: congruence of control strategies and perceived control

This paper investigates the association between perceptions of broader changes in the social-ecological context and individuals' subjective well-being (SWB). Macro-level societal changes such as globalization or demographic change give rise to new demands for individual functioning at work and/or in the family. Such new demands associated with social change are stressful and likely to be related to lower levels of SWB. Being active agents, individuals attempt to deal with social change and its increasing demands to protect their SWB. The present study investigates which kinds of control strategies are most effective in protecting one's SWB. Specifically, we predicted that control strategies of goal engagement will be most effective under conditions of perceived high control, and control strategies of goal disengagement will be most effective under conditions of perceived low control. In a large sample of 2537 German adults, work- and family-related demands associated with social change were found to be negatively linked to SWB. Moreover and in line with the motivational theory of lifespan development, control strategies of goal engagement and disengagement were beneficial for SWB to the extent that they matched the perceived control of the demands associated with social change.

Striving for educational and career goals during the transition after high school: what is beneficial?

The present study takes a motivational perspective that views youths' educational and career engagement as influential and potentially competing for the same motivational resources in the transition to adulthood. We investigated whether motivational engagement with educational and career goals in the year after high-school graduation was differentially associated with educational, career-related and subjective well-being outcomes 2 and 4 years after school graduation. Our longitudinal study of a multi-ethnic sample of Los Angeles high-school graduates followed participants 2 years (N = 561; 61.5 % female) and 4 years (N = 364; 59.8 % female) after high school graduation. The findings indicate that motivational engagement with educational goals after high school graduation predicted educational attainments and psychological well-being at follow-up 2 and 4 years after graduation, and occupational progress at 4 years after graduation. Work hours assessed shortly after high school graduation were associated with poorer educational outcomes both at 2 and 4 years after high school. Occupational goal engagement was not associated with better outcomes, but predicted less educational attainment 4 years after graduating. Thus, educational goal engagement predicted favorable outcomes, whereas career-related goal engagement for the most part was neutral with some select associations with negative educational outcomes. A strong motivational commitment to educational goals, but not to career goals, is an important component of a successful transition to adulthood.

Understanding retirement: the promise of life-span developmental frameworks

The impending retirement of large population cohorts creates a pressing need for practical interventions to optimize outcomes at the individual and societal level. This necessitates comprehensive theoretical models that acknowledge the multi-layered nature of the retirement process and shed light on the dynamic mechanisms that drive longitudinal patterns of adjustment. The present commentary highlights ways in which contemporary life-span developmental frameworks can inform retirement research, drawing on the specific examples of Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model, Baltes and Baltes Selective Optimization with Compensation Framework, Schulz and Heckhausen's Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, and Carstensen's Socioemotional Selectivity Theory. Ultimately, a life-span developmental perspective on retirement offers not only new interpretations of known phenomena but may also help to identify novel directions for future research as well as promising pathways for interventions.

Happiness as a Motivator

What motivates individuals to invest time and effort and overcome obstacles (i.e., strive for primary control) when pursuing important goals? We propose that positive affect predicts primary control striving for career and educational goals, and we explore the mediating role of control beliefs. In Study 1, positive affect predicted primary control striving for career goals in a two-wave longitudinal study of a U.S. sample. In Study 2, positive affect predicted primary control striving for career and educational goals and objective career outcomes in a six-wave longitudinal study of a German sample. Control beliefs partially mediated the longitudinal associations with primary control striving. Thus, when individuals experience positive affect, they become more motivated to invest time and effort, and overcome obstacles when pursuing their goals, in part because they believe they have more control over attaining their goals.

Control strivings in attaining peer-group membership and forming romantic relationships among adolescents with and without visual impairment

This study compared control striving with regard to two developmental goals in adolescents with visual impairment and sighted peers. A matched-pair design was used with 158 adolescents with visual impairment and 158 sighted peers by using age, gender, habitation (living with ones’ parents vs. other forms of living), and socioeconomic status as matching variables. Adolescents with visual impairment did not differ from sighted peers in control striving with regard to peer-group membership, but they were less active in forming romantic relationships. In addition, there was no difference between the groups in the associations between control strivings and age, gender, goal importance, locus of control, and social support.