Developmental regulation before and after a developmental deadline: the sample case of "biological clock" for childbearing.

This quasi-experimental research investigates developmental regulation around a critical life-span transition, the "biological clock" for childbearing. The action-phase model of developmental regulation proposes contrasting control orientations in individuals approaching versus those having passed a developmental deadline. Individuals in an urgency phase close to the deadline should be invested in goal pursuit, whereas those who have passed the deadline without attaining the goal should focus on goal disengagement and self-protection. In 2 studies, women at different ages and with or without children were compared with regard to various indicators of primary and secondary control striving for goal attainment versus goal disengagement and self-protection. Findings support the action-phase model of developmental regulation. Patterns of control striving congruent with the participants' status as pre- versus postdeadline were associated with superior psychological well-being.

Perceived control over development and subjective well-being: differential benefits across adulthood.

The relationship between perceived control over development (PCD) and subjective well-being (SWB) across adulthood was examined in 3 studies. In Study 1, with 480 adults aged between 20 and 90 years, PCD was closely related to SWB. Chronological age moderated the associations between PCD and SWB beyond individual differences in health, intelligence, social support, and socioeconomic status. In the longitudinal Study 2, with 42 older adults, strong PCD was associated with increased positive affect only when desirable events had occurred previously. In Study 3, older adults experienced greater satisfaction when attributing attainment of developmental goals to their ability, whereas younger adults were more satisfied when attributing such successes to their own efforts. Findings point to adaptive adjustments of control perceptions to age-related actual control potentials across adulthood.

Primary and secondary control strategies for managing health and financial stress across adulthood.

The study examined the relation among three types of control strategies (persistence, positive reappraisals, lowering aspirations) and subjective well-being across adulthood (N = 3,490). Specifically, the authors investigated whether age-adapted endorsement of control strategies is conducive to subjective well-being if individuals experience health or financial stress. The results reveal an overall enhanced reliance on control strategies in older as compared with younger adults. In addition, persistence showed a stronger positive relation to subjective well-being in young adulthood as compared with old age. In midlife and old age, positive reappraisals had a stronger positive relation to subjective well-being than persistence. Lowering aspirations was negatively related to subjective well-being, independent of age. Age differences in the relation of control strategies to subjective well-being were particularly salient in individuals who faced either health or financial stress.

The primacy of primary control is a human universal: a reply to Gould's (1999) critique of the life-span theory of control.

This reply to S. J. Gould's (1999) critique of J. Heckhausen and R. Schulz's (1995) life-span theory of control addresses four issues: (1) the universal claim that primary control holds functional primacy over secondary control, (2) the status of secondary control as a confederate to primary control, (3) empirical evidence and paradigms for investigating universality and cultural variations, and (4) the capacity of the human control system to manage both gains and losses in control throughout the life span and aging-related decline in particular. Theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence from evolutionary, comparative, developmental, and cultural psychology are presented to support the authors' view that primary control striving holds functional primacy throughout the life span and across cultural and historical settings. Recommendations for empirically investigating the variations in the way primary control striving is expressed in different cultures are outlined.

Aging, culture and control: setting a new research agenda.

In the context of reviewing the current status of research on aging and control, we put forth five propositions: (1) Striving for primary control is a human universal invariant across historical time and diverse cultural settings; (2) the expression of control striving is in part shaped by culture; (3) the field needs to move away from the study of perceived control and its correlates to the study of motivational aspects of control; (4) control should be studied in a life span context and the focus should be on key transitions that redefine opportunities for control striving; and (5) inasmuch as primary control striving is such a central element of human functioning, research on its demise at the end of life should receive high priority.

More or less "me" in past, present, and future: perceived lifetime personality during adulthood.

This article examines whether adults perceive different levels of their own personality traits at different target ages, and what the differences are. Using abbreviated versions of assessments of the 5-factor model of personality (NEO-FFI, P.T. Costa & R.R. McCrae, 1989) and of well-being (C. D. Ryff, 1989), 398 heterogeneous participants (age 26-64) described their own personality (a) in the present, (b) when they were 20-25 years old, (c) when they will be 65-70 years old, and (d) in the ideal. Participants' responses across the 3 target ages indicated moderate change across adulthood and more variability than is typically observed in longitudinal studies of adult personality development. Anticipated late adulthood personality contained more losses than gains, although all target ages showed some gains. Participants' perceptions were characterized by early adulthood exploration, middle adulthood productivity, and later adulthood comfortableness. Additionally, older adults reported slightly lower ideals but in other ways responded very similarly to younger and middle-aged adults.

Developmental regulation across adulthood: primary and secondary control of age-related challenges.

This study addresses developmental regulation in adults at different ages. A conceptual model of optimization in primary and secondary control across the life span (OPS model) is presented, and predictions about age differences in developmental regulation are derived. Developmental goals, expectations about goal attainment and control, control strategies, life satisfaction, and age identification were assessed in a sample of 510 young, middle-aged, and old adults. At increasing age, the participants expressed (a) greater awareness of a reduced potential for growth and control. (b) increased focus on age-appropriate goals for primary control striving, (c) more goals directed at the avoidance of developmental losses and fewer goals aimed at developmental gains, and (d) a stronger tendency for compensatory secondary control, as shown in greater goal flexibility, more satisfaction with present life, and identification with younger age groups.

Perceived problems for self and others: self-protection by social downgrading throughout adulthood.

In this study the authors investigated social downgrading as reflected in the difference between perceptions about the self and about "most people my age." A large cross-national probability sample of adults at different age levels throughout adulthood provided ratings of perceived problems expected for the self and for "most other people my age" with regard to 12 domains of life (e.g., health, marriage, and job). Results showed that with regard to all domains, younger, middle-aged, and older adults believed other people's problems to be more serious than their own problems in these domains. Social downgrading was particularly pronounced for those domains for which a given participant experienced problems himself or herself. This self-protection tendency under threat was particularly pronounced in the older adults. The function and adaptive values for social downgrading across adulthood and old age are discussed.

A life span model of successful aging.

To lay the foundation for our model, we first describe existing conceptions of successful aging, underlying assumptions of development, and criteria for success. The model presented extends the discourse on this topic in three directions: (a) It frames the discussion of successful aging in the broader context of life course development; (b) it accounts for both normative and nonnormative (i.e., exceptional) success; and (c) it integrates motivational processes into a theory of successful aging. Successful aging is equated with the development and maintenance of primary control throughout the life course, which is achieved through control-related processes that optimize selection and failure compensation functions. Selection processes regulate the choice of action goals so that diversity is maintained and positive and negative trade-offs between performance domains and life stages are taken into account. Compensation mechanisms serve to maintain, enhance, and remediate competencies and motivational resources after failure experiences. Both compensation and selection processes are motivated by desires for primary control and can be characterized in terms of primary and secondary control processes.

A life-span theory of control.

A life-span theory of development is presented that is based on the concepts of primary and secondary control. Primary control refers to behaviors directed at the external environment and involves attempts to change the world to fit the needs and desires of the individual. Secondary control is targeted at internal processes and serves to minimize losses in, maintain, and expand existing levels of primary control. Secondary control helps the individual to cope with failure and fosters primary control by channeling motivational resources toward selected action goals throughout the life course. Primary control has functional primacy over secondary control. An analysis of extensive and diverse literatures spanning infancy through old age shows that trade-offs between primary and secondary control undergo systematic shifts across the life course in response to the opportunities and constraints encountered.

Perceiving middle-aged adults: effects of stereotype-congruent and incongruent information.

Normative beliefs about mid-life involve stereotypic expectations about age-appropriate development and behavior. This study examined the effects of violations of the stereotypic clock on interpersonal judgments. Each subject read descriptions of persons who, given their position in life, appeared to be 30, 45, or 60 years old. In the experimental condition but not in the control condition, stereotypic expectations about mid-life were activated by explicitly stating that the person was 45 years old. As predicted, subjects judged stereotype-incongruent persons against the background of stereotypic age-related expectations. Subjects evaluated unusually advanced persons (women in particular) more positively, and unusually delayed persons more negatively than stereotype-congruent persons. Stereotype-incongruent persons were rated as less typical, elicited greater surprise, and afforded more extensive causal explanations than stereotype-congruent persons.

Personality development across the adult life span: subjective conceptions vs cross-sectional contrasts.

This research examined possible contributions of subjective conceptions about development to the study of long-term personality stability and change. Young, middle-aged, and old adult subjects rated 100 trait-descriptive adjectives with respect to perceived stability and change across seven decades of adulthood, their desirability, self-descriptiveness, and personal controllability. Subjective conceptions indicated growth during early and middle adulthood, followed by decline in old age. These conceptions were optimistic. They involved more growth than decline, and desirable traits were seen as more descriptive of self and more controllable than were undesirable traits. Older subjects were more optimistic about late-life development than were young or middle-aged subjects. In contrast, cross-sectional comparisons of self-descriptions indicated stability. Potential threats to the validity of both approaches are discussed, and it is concluded that the use of both measurement procedures will be beneficial for research on personality stability and change.

Perceived controllability of expected psychological change across adulthood and old age.

This cross-sectional study focuses on adults' beliefs about the controllability of developmental change in adulthood and old age. Young (n = 33; age range 20-36 years), middle-aged (n = 35; age range 40-55 years), and older (n = 32; age range 60-85 years) adults rated an extensive list of psychological attributes in terms of the degree of expected developmental increase across the adult life span (ages 20-90), the perceived controllability of these changes, their desirability, and their expected age-related timing. The findings indicate a substantial degree of similarity in young, middle-aged, and old adults' overall beliefs about controllability. The three adult age groups agreed in perceiving developmental changes in adulthood as fairly controllable, and with regard to their relative controllability (rank ordering of change-sensitive attributes). Changes expected to occur later in life were consensually perceived to be less desirable, and less desirable changes were perceived as less controllable. However, there were clear age-related differences involving both the age timing of expected changes and the age of respondents. A comparison between the three subject age groups revealed twofold differences: First, the relationship between desirability and perceived controllability was found to increase with subjects' age; second, Q-technique factor analysis showed that large subgroups of the young and the middle-aged adults, but not the old adults, tended to perceive psychological attributes associated with late onset decline as relatively lower in controllability.