Jutta Heckhausen

University of California, Irvine | UCI ·  Department of Psychology and Social Behavior

This article addresses the motivational processes that enable older adults to manage health-related threats and to protect their psychological and physical functioning. Based on the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development (MTD) [1], we describe how an age- and opportunity-adjusted use of control strategies can support the regulation of importa...

Entering college, students are required to adjust to a new academic and social environment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social interactions with peers and faculty were limited to online settings and access to campus resources was restricted. Hence, students who entered college in fall 2020 began their freshman year under particularly challenging...

Although university students tend to be optimistic about their future socioeconomic status (SES), little is known how their SES aspirations changed during the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using latent growth curve modeling techniques, we examined changes in subjective SES aspirations for students who began college before the pandemic (cohort 1...

Objective: Patients starting with physical rehabilitation often hold unrealistically high expectations for their recovery. Because of a lower-than-expected rate of recovery, such unrealistic goals have been linked to adverse effects on mental health. Additionally, overtraining due to overly ambitious goals can lead to suboptimal recovery. We invest...

This study applied a framework of shared and nonshared agency to investigate how social partners can help and hinder young adults’ career development. We also considered the extent to which motivational control could be promoted or burdened when young people seek help and encouragement from others in their careers. Based on the importance of shared...

This commentary discusses the theoretical roots of the concept of goal disengagement in the construct of secondary control, the motivational theory of lifespan development, the dual-process model, and the personality model of control. These approaches have proposed and shown that goal disengagement is adaptive when opportunities for goal attainment...

Academic achievement is an important developmental goal during adolescence. Two independent factors involved in academic motivation are implicit motives and explicit goals. In this study, we examined whether high school students’ ( N = 213) implicit achievement motive, explicit achievement goals, and their interactions were associated with academic...

In college, students often encounter situations in which they struggle to meet their academic goals in difficult courses. We integrate the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development and Situated Expectancy-Value Theory to investigate how motivational beliefs and experiences in a difficult course predict the use of goal engagement oriented and goa...

Prior research has investigated parental behavior and students’ motivation separately as predictors of adolescents’ academic achievement. The current study jointly examined the associations between parental behavior, adolescents’ motivation, and academic achievement. Using data collected from participants in youth programs (N = 220), we investigate...

This article discusses ways in which aging individuals respond to physical, social, and environmental changes and constraints by modifying their goals. We review aging-related trends, which we derive from several theoretical approaches, including goal systems theory, the motivational theory of life-span development and its action-phase model, and t...

Building on the seminal definition of “healthy aging” by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015; 2020), we present a model of motivation and healthy aging that is aimed at identifying the central psychological constructs and processes for understanding what older persons value, and how they can attain and maintain these valued aspects of their li...

We investigated motivational regulation involving adjustment of recovery goals in post‐stroke rehabilitation via standard in‐clinic physiotherapy and in‐home telerehabilitation (TR). We used a secondary dataset collected at 11 US sites as part of a clinical trial using video games and game control pads designed to induce certain arm movements requi...

Adolescents navigate the transition into young adulthood through their pursuit of developmental goals. While societal expectations and institutions provide normed paths to adulthood by shaping decisions on goal identification, individuals take various routes to attain adult-status through different goal prioritization. Using longitudinal data from...

The goals of this paper are to review theoretical and empirical research on motivation and healthy aging at work and to outline directions for future research and practical applications in this area. To achieve these goals, we first consider the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of healthy aging in the context of paid employment and life...

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 oppo...

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’...

Adjusting strategies to manage daily goal pursuit with new functional limitations may impact not only the affect of patients, but also that of their partners. Associations between patients’ control strategies and both partners’ affect were examined at the onset of patients’ incontinence following prostatectomy. Eight-day diary data from 180 heteros...

Why do people contribute to the well-being of others? What promotes or hinders their contribution? Framed by expectancy-value theory and the motivational theory of lifespan development, we use data from the Midlife in the United States National longitudinal study (MIDUS I, II, and III) to examine how individuals' perceived contributions to the well...

Retiring is associated with increased risk of cognitive decline (e.g., Bonsang et al., 2012; Wickrama et al., 2013). However, little is known about the moderating role of motivational and demographic factors that are implicated in adaptive development and the retirement transition process. We used data from the Midlife in the United States Study (n...

Life Span theory posits that sociohistorical contexts shape individual development. In line with this proposition, cohort differences favoring later-born cohorts have been widely documented for cognition and health. However, little is known about historical change in how key resources of psychosocial functioning such as control beliefs develop in o...

Overcommitted individuals cannot withdraw from work obligations. We examine whether work goal engagement attenuates the negative effects of overcommitment on work and health outcomes. For overcommitted professionals it should matter whether they dedicate time and energy to work goals they feel bound to or to goals they do not feel attached to (unen...

Although aging workforces result in numerous practical challenges for organizations and societies, little research has focused on successful aging at work. The limited existent research has generated rather diverse conceptualizations of successful aging at work, which are often broad and difficult to operationalize in practice. Therefore, to advanc...

This article addresses the ongoing debate on the role of agency and structure in shaping the transition from school to work. Drawing on theories of life-course sociology and life-span psychology an integrated social-ecological developmental approach is presented, conceptualizing individual agency as a relational and intentional process that evolves...

Active engagement with multiple life domains (cross-domain engagement) is associated with adaptation throughout the adult life span. However, less is known about the role of cross-domain engagement during significant life course transitions that can challenge motivational resources, such as the shift to retirement. Based on the motivational theory...

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...

Menschen gestalten ihre eigene berufliche Entwicklung oftmals sehr erfolgreich. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir das Konzept der persönlichen beruflichen Ziele vor. Dazu gehen wir zunächst auf die Rolle der Ziele in Beruf und Freizeit ein. Anschließend erläutern wir, wie das Zusammenspiel zentraler Merkmale persönlicher Ziele mit dem Wohlbefinden erkl...

Motivation treatments to enhance goal engagement can improve academic outcomes for college students with single academic risk factors (Hamm et al., 2016), but their efficacy remains unexamined for students with multiple risk factors in online learning environments. In a pre-post, randomized treatment study (n = 628), a theory-based goal engagement...

This review addresses conceptual and empirical research about how indi- vidual agency and motivation influences development during adulthood and old age. The major life-span approaches to individual agency and develop- mental regulation are discussed, with a focus on the motivational theory of life-span development. Developmental agency unfolds thr...

The human lifespan provides an age-based timetable for the regulation of development. Individuals pursue different goals at different ages, and their behavior is restricted by biological and societal structures. Motivational and behavioral models of developmental regulation form the framework for research on the central processes of agency over the...

From its earliest development on human behavior is characterized by a striving for control. As humans develop, this striving becomes more concrete, goal-oriented, and reflective. Children’s daily interaction partners play a crucial role in the development of fundamental motivational preferences and behavioral regulation. The behavioral emotions of...

Human behavior is generally characterized by its striving for efficacy and organized into phases of goal engagement and disengagement. People’s motivation to pursue a particular goal depends on situational incentives and personal preferences as well as interactions between these two factors. Ideally, the motivational and volitional regulations of b...

Die zwei universellen Charakteristiken menschlichen Handelns sind das Streben nach Wirksamkeit und die Organisation des Handelns in Phasen von Zielengagement und Zieldistanzierung. Die Motivation einer Person, ein bestimmtes Ziel zu verfolgen, hängt von situativen Anreizen, persönlichen Präferenzen und deren Wechselwirkung ab. Motivationale und vol...

Der menschliche Lebenslauf bietet dem entwicklungsregulativen Handeln des Einzelnen ein alterszeitlich strukturiertes Handlungsfeld. Individuen streben altersgradierte Lebensziele an und handeln dabei orientiert an und eingeschränkt durch biologische und gesellschaftliche Gelegenheitsstrukturen. Motivations- und Handlungsmodelle der Entwicklungsreg...

Das Streben nach Wirksamkeit beginnt mit den ersten Verhaltensregungen und wird bald differenzierter, zielgerichteter und reflektierter. Tägliche Interaktionspartner des Kindes spielen eine wichtige Rolle bei der Herausbildung von grundlegenden motivationalen Präferenzen und der Regulation von Handeln. Handlungsbezogene Emotionen werden selbstbewer...

This third edition provides translations of all chapters of the most recent fifth German edition of Motivation and Action, including several entirely new chapters. It provides comprehensive coverage of the history of motivation, and introduces up-to-date theories and new research findings. Early sections provide a broad introduction to, and deep un...

Dieser Lehrbuch-Klassiker liefert einen umfassenden und lebendigen Überblick über die Motivationspsychologie - alle prüfungsrelevanten Modelle, Theorien und der Stand der Forschung in einem Buch. Der Inhalt Einflüsse von Person und Situation, Leistungs-, Macht- und Anschlussmotivation, implizite/explizite Motive, Flow-Erleben, Volition und Handlun...

Although an active pursuit of health goals is typically adaptive, there may be circumstances in very late life when it is not. Our 10-year study of community-dwelling individuals (n = 220, 79- 98 years-old) examined whether investing substantial effort into personal health (high selective primary control) in the absence of help-seeking strategies (...

Youth's career attainment is associated with socioeconomic background, but may also be related to their beliefs about causes of success. Relationships between 17-year-olds' socioeconomic status (SES) and causal beliefs about success, and whether these beliefs predict career attainment after completing a vocational or university degree were examined...

It is well documented that well-being typically evinces precipitous decrements at the end of life. However, research has primarily taken a postdictive approach by knowing the outcome (date of death) and aligning, in retrospect, how well-being has changed for people with documented death events. In the present study, we made use of a predictive appr...

Perceived control is a key component of successful aging and may serve as a protective factor against age-related declines in central domains of functioning. However, it is a largely open question whether and how perceived control changes from midadulthood to very old age and how such change is shaped by health and social contexts. To examine these...

Although theory-driven control striving treatments may sustain motivation for individuals navigating life course transitions, their efficacy during these challenging junctures remains unexamined. In a pre-post randomized field study (n = 316), a novel control striving treatment based on Heckhausen et al.’s (Psychol Rev 117:32–60, 2010) motivational...

Associations between youths' reported relationships with their parents, beliefs about how success is attained, educational aspirations, and university completion were examined. Data come from the German Socioeconomic Panel. At age 17, youth (n = 3284) reported on their relationships with their parents, beliefs about success, and educational aspirat...

Social inequality is rising around the globe with devastating consequences for individuals and societies. Modern societies allow social mobility but vary greatly in the extent and means by which it is hampered or facilitated at different points in the life course. Motivational and lifespan developmental psychology view individuals as agents of thei...

Adaptive life-span development involves individuals' simultaneous coordination of motivational engagement across multiple domains of life. The present study tests this proposition using data from the Midlife in the United States National Longitudinal Study of Health and Well-Being (MIDUS I and II). Results from multilevel model analyses indicate th...

Previous research shows the substantial influence parents have on their children. Many parents invest considerable effort in maintaining this influence during college. Shared agency describes the extent to which parents and children share similar academic goals and jointly engage in obtaining these goals (Chang, Heckhausen, Greenberger, & Chen, 201...

Individuals’ motivational self-regulatory system is challenged as they cross the transition from school to work. Using data from a longitudinal study of participants approaching and crossing university graduation (n = 140), we examine the ways in which individuals’ motivational strategies reflect and direct their career-related opportunity field. O...

Longitudinal surveys are essential for studying developmental change across the lifespan and have been instrumental in contributing to a better understanding of how people change from childhood through adolescence, adulthood, and into old age. This chapter reviews some of the strengths of longitudinal surveys for studying the adaptation and self-re...

The present study addresses older adults' developmental regulation when faced with progressive and irreversible vision loss. We used the motivational theory of life span development as a conceptual framework and examined changes in older adults' striving for control over everyday goal achievement, and their association with affective well-being, in...

Unemployment is a major challenge to individuals' development. An important personal resource to ameliorate the negative impact of unemployment may be perceived control, a general-purpose belief system. Little is known, however, about how perceived control itself changes with the experience of unemployment and what the antecedents, correlates, and...

Life span developmental psychology is the study of individual development from conception until death. The hallmark of this approach is the coconstruction of biology, society, and the individual to produce development. Individuals actively regulate their development according to opportunities and constraints in their social ecology. Life span devel...

Losing a spouse is among the most devastating events that may occur in people's lives. We use longitudinal data from 1,224 participants in the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine (a) how life satisfaction changes with the experience of spousal loss; (b) whether socio-demographic factors and social and health resources moderate spous...

In this chapter, the authors merge lifespan motivational theory with empirical studies to illustrate how societal opportunities and constraints to social mobility influence individual’s striving to attain socioeconomic status. The authors begin by outlining key propositions of the motivational theory of lifespan development. They then discuss curre...

High school students with high long-term educational expectations attain higher levels of education than those with lower expectations. Less studied is the role of students' short-term college enrollment expectations for the year after high school graduation. The purpose of the current study was to examine the costs and benefits of ambitious short-...

A special section of the International Journal of Behavioral Development (IJBD) devoted to the topic ‘Motivational Self-Regulation Across the Lifespan.’

We discuss the major processes involved in individuals’ motivation and self-regulation of goal striving throughout the life course. While much is regulated based on the biological and societal scaffolding of lifespan development, certain challenges to motivation and self-regulation are more substantial and need to be regulated by the individual, pr...

Developmental transitions are experienced throughout the life course and necessitate adapting to consequential and unpredictable changes that can undermine health (Adlaf et al., 2001; Perry, 2003). Our six-month study (n = 239) explored whether selective secondary control striving (motivation-focused thinking) protects against the elevated levels o...

When patients recover from disease-related functional limitations, support received from partners may not always match patients' changing independence goals. The lines of defense (LoD) model proposes a hierarchy of independence goals (LoDs), ranging from minimising discomfort by disengagement (lowest LoD) to protection of self-reliance (highest LoD...

Previous research shows the substantial influence parents have on their children. Many parents invest effort in maintaining this influence during college, especially regarding academic goal setting and pursuit. Shared agency is the extent that parents and children share similar academic goals and engage in obtaining these goals (Chang, Heckhausen,...

Individuals attempt to regulate their own development, in part through their selective channeling of motivational resources toward specific goal pursuits (Heckhausen, Wrosch & Schulz, 2010). The present study assesses this principle of the motivational theory of lifespan development, by examining (1) how domain-general, domain-specific and work-spe...

Following tumor surgery, urinary incontinence challenges prostate cancer patients' functional health. Adjustments of functional goals (lines of defense [LoDs]) were examined during rehabilitation from incontinence. A conceptual model proposing stepwise and distinct upward adjustments of LoDs, ranging from minimizing discomfort (lowest LoD) to prote...

Abstract In the last decade, girls have attained similar achievement levels in mathematics and natural sciences as boys. Girls also value mathematics or sciences as highly as boys do. However, women are still not attaining equivalent career success in professional fields associated with mathematics and natural sciences, such as engineering and comp...

Sensitivität in frühen Mutter-Kind-Interaktionen wird als prompte und (entwicklungs-)angemessene Reaktion auf kindliche Signale definiert und gilt weithin als entscheidend für die Entwicklung sozio-emotionaler, kognitiver und sprachlicher Kompetenzen (u.a. De Wolff & van Ijzendoorn 1997). Als Determinanten sensitiver Mutter-Kind-Interaktionen sin...

Recent research has repeatedly demonstrated that well-being typically evinces precipitous deterioration close to the end of life. However, the determinants of individual differences in these terminal declines are not well understood. In this study, we examine the role of perceived personal control as a potential buffer against steep terminal declin...

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) co...

As older individuals face challenges of progressive disease and increasing disability and approach the end of their lives, their capacity for controlling their environment and own health and functioning declines. The Lines-of-Defense Model is based on the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development and proposes that individuals can adjust their co...

Developmental transitions are imbued with ubiquitous uncertainties that undermine goal striving in many otherwise committed individuals. Our seven-month study examined whether cognitive selective secondary control strategies (motivation-focused thinking) facilitate the enactment of achievement goals among young adults experiencing the landmark scho...

Objective: Drawing from Heckhausen and Schulz's Motivational Theory of Life-span Development, this study examined perceived control as a moderator of the protective relationship between downward social comparison and subjective well-being among older adults. Methods: Community-dwelling older adults (N = 97, 63% female, ages 79-97) were interview...

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 soci...

Individual agents are most effective in shaping their development if their goal engagement is congruent with their control opportunities. This proposition is examined using the Midlife in the United States longitudinal study. We find that individuals whose high levels of work-related primary control striving are congruent with their work-related pe...

The biopsychosocial model of health views health and illness in old age as resulting not only from biological and physical factors but also from the cumulative effects of a lifetime of psychological, social, and behavioral processes. This model recognizes the biological trajectory of decline throughout the adult lifespan and the fact that physical...

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 differenti...

How can individuals regulate their own development to live happy, healthy, and productive lives? Major theories of developmental regulation across the life span have been proposed (e.g., dual-process model of assimilation and accommodation; motivational theory of life-span development; model of selection, optimization, and compensation), but they h...

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...

A successful entry into work is one of the key developmental tasks in young adulthood. The present 4-wave longitudinal study examined the interplay between occupational motivation (i.e., goal engagement and goal disengagement) and well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life, satisfaction with work, satisfaction with partnership, positive affect, depre...

The present research reveals the bi-directional relationship between career-related control beliefs and strivings, and their predictive relationship with hours of gainful employment. Three waves of data of a longitudinal study of 532 graduating high school seniors from four ethnically diverse schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were...

Das Leben jedes Menschen ist ein nicht abreißender Strom von Aktivitäten. Darunter fallen nicht nur die vielerlei Arten von Handlungen oder Mitteilungen. Auch Erleben — geistige Aktivität in Form von Wahrnehmungen, Gedanken, Gefühlen und Vorstellungen — gehört dazu, wenn es auch nicht von außen beobachtbar ist und nicht unmittelbar auf die Außenwel...

This paper investigates how individuals deal with demands of social and economic change in the domains of work and family when opportunities for their mastery are unfavorable. Theoretical considerations and empirical research suggest that with unattainable goals and unmanageable demands motivational disengagement and self-protective cognitions brin...

This short-term longitudinal study examined whether the social resources of important nonparental adults (VIPs) perceived by youth during their senior year of high school had a significant relation to their educational and socioemotional adjustment 1 year later. One month before their high school graduation, a multiethnic sample of youths (N=754) r...

The current study examined how goal engagement and two coping strategies (self-blame and denial) hypothesized to prevent successful disengagement relate to affective well-being among adults with a functional disability. Ninety-nine community-dwelling adults (23 to 76 years old, 66 men) with spinal cord injury participated in structured interviews a...

The present longitudinal study of 143 older adults (73-98 years) with serious health problems (arthritis, heart disease, heart attack, stroke) examined the effects of goal engagement, disengagement, and self-protection control strategies on self-rated physical health (condition severity, functional status) and subjective well-being (life satisfacti...

Alles über Motivation! DAS Standardwerk der Motivationspsychologie in komplett überarbeiteter 4. Auflage: Umfassend & aktualisiert - Alle Bereiche der Motivationsforschung: Eigenschaftstheorien, situative Einflüsse, Leistungs-/Machtmotivation, implizite/explizite Motive, Flow-Erleben, Motivationsentwicklung u.v.m. - Integration von volitionaler und...

This article had four goals. First, the authors identified a set of general challenges and questions that a life-span theory of development should address. Second, they presented a comprehensive account of their Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development. They integrated the model of optimization in primary and secondary control and the action-ph...

This study proposed and confirmed three ways in which college students can perceive shared agency and two ways in which they can perceive non-shared agency with parents when pursuing educational goals in college. Differences and similarities were examined among participants from four ethnic backgrounds (N = 515; 67% female): East Asian American, So...

The regulation of human development requires the selection of developmental goals and focused investment of resources in their pursuit. Societally institutionalized and normative conceptions about developmental tasks and deadlines regulate some of this selectivity, but in modern societies with their substantial social mobility an important part is...

People vary in the importance they ascribe to, and efforts they invest in, maintaining positive relationships with others. Research has linked such variation in interpersonal control strivings to the quality of social exchanges experienced, but little work has examined the predictors of interpersonal control strivings. Given the importance of close...

This 1-year longitudinal study investigated the effects of adolescents' depressed mood on perceived parental and peer warmth during the transition to young adulthood. We hypothesized that ethnicity would moderate such effects. As part of a larger study, 511 adolescents (154 European, 205 Hispanic, and 152 Asian Americans) participated in this resea...

The transition from school to work is a central developmental task with long-term implications for the financial and social status of individuals. We argue that dynamic adjustments of aspirations play a decisive role for a successful outcome of the school to work transition, particularly in the context of the German vocational training system. Late...

As people move into advanced old age, they face increasing levels of age-related activity restriction. It becomes important that older adults adjust their goal-striving to age-related control restrictions in order to optimize physical and psychological well-being in this advanced and final stage of life. Older adults may use a variety of different...