Individual differences in goal adjustment: convergence and divergence among three theoretical models.

Introduction: Individual differences in dealing with unattainable goals or resource-consumptive goal pursuit are conceptualized as goal adjustment processes in three theoretical approaches: accommodative coping (two-process model of developmental regulation), compensatory secondary coping (motivational theory of life-span development), and goal disengagement and goal reengagement (goal adjustment theory). The aim of this paper is to conceptually and empirically analyze convergences and divergences between the three approaches as well as their relationship with indicators of well-being and their intersections with cognitive emotion regulation. Methods: The empirical study is based on a cross-sectional online survey (N = 433; M = 28.9 years, SD = 8.4 years; 50% female). Results: The conceptual analysis yields clear convergences, but also differences. Empirically, clear but partially non-redundant relationships between the concepts are found in structural equation models. Accommodative coping showed the strongest correlations with measures of well-being and cognitive emotion regulation. When all goal adjustment measures are included simultaneously as predictors of well-being, accommodation remains as the strongest predictor (and partly goal reengagement as well), while goal disengagement shows opposing relationships with most measures of well-being. Discussion: We discuss the lessons learnt from these findings and conclude by proposing future avenues to examine goal adjustment processes.

Accommodative self-regulation: The sample case of imprisonment in young adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: The present study examined the role of self-esteem stabilization processes in response to restrictive developmental conditions in early adulthood. It did so by investigating accommodative adjustments among incarcerated young adults. It was argued that an adjustment of how an individual desires to be to how they actually perceive themselves (i.e., accommodative adjustment) can help to maintain a more stable self-esteem and buffers negative changes. METHOD: Within a longitudinal design with three measurements occasions data of N = 728 incarcerated men between the age of 14 and 24 were analyzed. Accommodative adjustments were assessed at two occasions as adaptations of the ideal self-concept ("I would like to be…") to the previous actual self-concept ("I am…"). In addition, assimilative adjustments were operationalized as adaptations of the actual self-concept to the previous ideal self-concept that means changing what individuals think of themselves in accordance to how they desire to be. RESULTS: Regression analysis showed that accommodative adjustments predicted self-esteem. Moreover, accommodative processes were particularly important when assimilative processes were less pronounced. CONCLUSION: Especially at the beginning of the incarceration period, accommodative adjustments of the self-concept buffer damaging effects of incarceration and support the (re-)stabilization of self-esteem.

You have to let go sometimes: advances in understanding goal disengagement.

While research on tenacious goal pursuit and persistence has evoked a myriad of research efforts, research on goal disengagement has rather been neglected and has been focusing mainly on positive consequences of individual differences in goal disengagement capacities. In recent years, however, research on goal disengagement has seen an upsurge in studies, specifically addressing the conceptualization of goal disengagement, the processes involved, and factors facilitating or undermining it. However, many questions remain unanswered or only partly answered providing numerous opportunities for further investigation. With this special issue of Motivation and Emotion, we aim to stimulate such progress in research on goal disengagement. To this end, this special issue includes empirical studies with cross-sectional, prospective, longitudinal, and experimental designs with a wide range of personal and experimentally induced goals as well as invited commentaries from scholars across different psychological sub disciplines. In this introductory essay, we provide a brief review of the current state of goal disengagement research. We also provide an overview about the contributions to this special issue with reflections related to the current state of research and areas where further advancement in conceptualization and empirical studies is needed.

Inducing and blocking the goal to belong in an experimental setting: goal disengagement research using Cyberball.

In the present research, the Cyberball ostracism paradigm was adapted for experimental goal disengagement (GD) research: the goal to belong to a particular group is first induced in participants (via social interaction) and then blocked (via social exclusion) to trigger GD processes. In an online group setting, we experimentally tested the procedure's suitability to investigate goal disengagement processes. A pilot study demonstrated successful induction of the goal to belong. In the main study (N = 180), exclusion from the group reduced participants' perceived goal attainability (indicating goal blockage) and desirability (indicating goal disengagement) and their well-being. Regarding the regulatory functions of GD, results were mixed. During work on individual tasks, goal desirability decreased further and well-being was largely restored. However, GD changes were correlated only with changes in negative affect (and not other well-being measures). Findings suggest the procedure's suitability for studying GD experimentally and employing it to investigate other measures of GD processes and their functionality in more detail.

Observing parental behavior in challenging tasks: Its role for goal engagement and disengagement in children.

Children are constantly faced with challenges. They need to learn to persist but also to disengage from (still) unsolvable or too resource-consuming tasks. We examined the role of observing parental behavior in a challenging task for children's goal regulation behavior in the same task (modeling effect) and its transfer to another type of task (transfer effect). Goal regulation behavior was expressed as the number of task switches within the same type of task, with more task switches indicating increasingly disengaging behavior. In a correlational study (N = 42, Mage = 9.0 years, SD = 0.8) and an experimental study (N = 66, Mage = 9.2 years, SD = 1.4), children imitated their parents' behavior in the same type of task. Moreover, they generalized this behavior to another type of task when experiencing difficulties in goal pursuit in the correlational study as well as in the engagement condition of the experimental study, but not in the disengagement condition. The results suggest that children imitate and generalize their parents' persistent behavior but only selectively imitate their disengagement behavior.

Age differences in negotiations: Older adults achieve poorer joint outcomes in integrative negotiations.

In integrative as opposed to distributive negotiations, the interests of the negotiation partners can be simultaneously realized to some degree, which results in higher individual as well as joint outcomes. Perspective taking is important to detect and tap into this integrative potential. In negotiations, priority-related information exchange can be seen as a behavioral consequence of perspective taking. Based on findings on the development of perspective taking across the life span, we tested the hypothesis that there are age differences in integrative negotiations. In 2 quasi-experimental studies (Study 1 and 2), participants worked in face-to-face interacting dyads on an apartment rental negotiation. In Study 3, participants read a negotiation transcript that contained all priority-related information. Our results consistently revealed that younger dyads (17-35 years) achieved significantly higher joint outcomes than older dyads (65-85 years; in Study 1 and 2) or age-heterogeneous dyads (in Study 1) and that younger participants proposed more integrative agreements (in Study 3). Differences between younger and older dyads were mediated via information exchange about the negotiation partners' different priorities (Study 2) and via the extraction of relevant information about underlying different priorities (Study 3). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Long-term antecedents of constraints and mastery: Findings from the Health and Retirement Study.

Whereas it is well established that having a sense of control over one's life circumstances facilitates positive aging-related outcomes across adulthood and old age, far less is known about what factors contribute to perceived control and whether these factors differ across the adult life span. We used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7,624, M age at 2006 = 67.50 years, range 50-104, 59% women) to examine whether level of, and time-related change in, episodic memory, depressive symptoms, and health (functional limitations, self-rated health) predict levels of 2 distinct components of perceived control: constraints and mastery. We found that lower levels of memory, more depressive symptoms, and less positive self-rated health were each associated with higher levels of constraints. Increases in depressive symptoms and functional limitations were also associated with higher levels of constraints, whereas stability in memory was related to lower levels of constraints. Conversely, lower levels of, and declines in, depressive symptoms and functional limitations as well as higher self-rated health were associated with self-reported higher levels of mastery. We found some evidence to suggest that these effects differ across the adult life span. Our findings show that, across adulthood and old age, constraints and mastery are shaped by level of, and time-related changes in, key domains of functioning. These findings provide impetus for future research to target mechanisms and moderators of such associations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Activation, Inhibition, or Something Else: An Exploratory Study on Response Priming Using Moving Dots as Primes in Middle-Aged and Old Adults.

Response priming refers to the finding that a prime stimulus preceding a target stimulus influences the response to the following target stimulus. With young subjects, using moving dot stimuli as primes indicated faster responses to compatible targets (i.e., prime and target are associated with the same response) with short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In contrast, with longer SOAs, participants responded faster to incompatible targets. In the present study, we extended the evidence by comparing middle-aged (50-65 years) and old (66-87 years) adults. With two different motion types, the result found in young participants was replicated in the middle-aged adults. In contrast, old adults showed large positive compatibility effects with the short SOA but neither activation nor inhibition effects with the longer SOA. We discuss our findings in light of several theoretical accounts (i.e., inhibitory deficit, deautomatization, evaluation window account, attention, rapid decay).

Fear of Crime in Old Age: A Sample Case of Resilience?

Objectives: Research on fear of crime (FOC) in adulthood has often shown a positive age relation, whereas the risk of criminal victimization decreases with age. The present study distinguishes three dimensions of FOC (affective, cognitive, and behavioral component) and attempts to investigate possible explanations for differential age correlations by referring to processes of adaptation and resilience. In particular, the functionality of FOC and its impact on the individual's well-being is assumed to be influenced by the individual's capacity to accommodate to adverse circumstances. Method: These hypotheses are investigated within a cross-sectional assessment using questionnaire data (1,792 participants between 18 and 98 years of age). Results: As predicted, age was a strong predictor of the behavioral but not affective and cognitive component of FOC. In particular, the results support a twofold adaptive function of accommodation: Accommodation facilitates cautious behavior with increasing age and, at the same time, dampens the impact of FOC on depressivity. Discussion: The adaptive role of cautious behavior in advanced age and accommodation is discussed within a developmental regulation framework.

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal.

Despite its assumed importance for emotional well-being, studies investigating the positivity effect (PE) in older adults' information processing rarely tested its relationship with immediate or general affective outcome measures like emotional reactivity or emotional well-being. Moreover, the arousal level of the to-be-processed emotional stimuli has rarely been taken into account as a moderator for the occurrence of the PE and its relationship with affective outcomes. Age group differences (young vs. old) in attention (i.e., fixation durations using eye tracking) and subjective emotional reactions (i.e., pleasantness ratings) were investigated in response to picture stimuli systematically varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (low vs. high). We examined whether there is a link between age group differences in fixation durations and affective outcomes (i.e., subjective emotional reactions as well as emotional well-being). Older compared to young adults fixated less on the most emotional part in negative but not in positive low-arousing pictures. This age difference did not occur under high arousal. While age group differences in fixation duration did not translate into age group differences in subjective emotional reactions, we found a positive relationship between fixation duration on negative low-arousing pictures and emotional well-being, i.e., negative affect. The present study replicated the well-known PE in attention and emotional reactivity. In line with the idea that the PE reflects top-down-driven processing of affective information, age group differences in fixation durations decreased under high arousal. The present findings are consistent with the idea that age-related changes in the processing of emotional information support older adults' general emotional well-being.

Modelling goal adjustment in social relationships: Two experimental studies with children and adults.

In two experiments, we investigated observational learning in social relationships as one possible pathway to the development of goal adjustment processes. In the first experiment, 56 children (M = 9.29 years) observed their parent as a model; in the second, 50 adults (M = 32.27 years) observed their romantic partner. Subjects were randomly assigned to three groups: goal engagement (GE), goal disengagement (GD), or control group (CO) and were asked to solve (unsolvable) puzzles. Before trying to solve the puzzles by themselves, subjects observed the instructed model, who was told to continue with the same puzzle (GE) or to switch to the next puzzle (GD). Results show that children in the GE group switched significantly less than in the GD or CO group. There was no difference between the GD group and CO group. Adults in the GE group switched significantly less than in the GD or CO group, whereas subjects in the GD group switched significantly more often than the CO group. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Previous research focused mainly on the functions of goal adjustment processes. It rarely considered processes and conditions that contribute to the development of goal engagement and goal disengagement. There are only two cross-sectional studies that directly investigate this topic. Previous research that claims observational learning as a pathway of learning emotion regulation or adjustment processes has (only) relied on correlational methods and, thus, do not allow any causal interpretations. Previous research, albeit claiming a life span focus, mostly investigated goal adjustment processes in one specific age group (mainly adults). There is no study that investigates the same processes in different age groups. What does this study add? In our two studies, we focus on the conditions of goal adjustment processes and sought to demonstrate one potential pathway of learning or changing the application of goal adjustment processes, namely observational learning. We employed an experimental design to study observational learning, instead of using a correlational design. The present studies are the first to apply an experimental design to investigate observational learning of adjustment processes. In our studies, we implemented the same design and studied the same process in different age groups. Thus, they expand knowledge beyond a particular age group and under a life span perspective.

Speaking about feelings: Further evidence for multidirectional age differences in anger and sadness.

This study investigated age differences in anger and sadness in a sample of 82 younger (Mage = 26, SDage = 4.05) and 80 older (Mage = 70, SDage = 3.95) adults. Participants were instructed to first relive a personal memory that was characterized by either anger or sadness and to subsequently think aloud about this memory. Across different emotional response systems (i.e., subjective feelings, verbal expressions, facial behaviors, physiological arousal), older adults reacted with less anger than did their younger counterparts, whereas age differences in sadness were less pronounced. Together the findings corroborate the idea that age differences in negative emotional reactivity are multidirectional and suggest that a discrete emotions approach may complement dimensional approaches to emotional aging. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Emotional Stroop as an Emotion Regulation Task.

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The present studies investigate age differences observed when performing the emotional Stroop task considered as an expression of emotion regulation. Previous studies employing this task showed mixed findings regarding age differences, with a lack of evidence for positivity effects. However, moderating factors such as arousal or dispositional (emotion) regulation strategies were mostly not taken into account. Moreover, relations between Stroop effects and emotional reactions were not examined. METHODS: In two studies (Study 1/2: nyoung = 26/41; nold = 19/39), an emotional Stroop task was employed and valence (negative, neutral, positive [Study 2 only]) and arousal of the word stimuli were varied. Additionally, flexible goal adjustment (FGA), positive and negative affect in the last 12 months, and change in momentary affect (Study 2 only) were measured. RESULTS: Study 1 showed larger emotional Stroop effects (ESE) in older than younger adults with medium arousing negative words. We also found correlations between FGA (positive correlation) as well as negative affect (negative correlation) and the ESE with medium arousing negative words. Study 2 corroborates these findings by exhibiting positive change in momentary affect with larger ESEs for medium arousing negative words in the older age group. CONCLUSIONS: The findings emphasize the importance of including arousal level and dispositional regulation measures (such as FGA) as moderating factors in age differences and within-group differences in emotion regulation. Although we did not find evidence for a positivity effect, processing in the emotional Stroop task was related to positive change in momentary affect and less negative affect in the older age group. Taken together, our experiments demonstrate that the emotional Stroop task is suited as a measure for emotion induction and related emotion regulation mechanisms.

Emotional aging: a discrete emotions perspective.

Perhaps the most important single finding in the field of emotional aging has been that the overall quality of affective experience steadily improves during adulthood and can be maintained into old age. Recent lifespan developmental theories have provided motivation- and experience-based explanations for this phenomenon. These theories suggest that, as individuals grow older, they become increasingly motivated and able to regulate their emotions, which could result in reduced negativity and enhanced positivity. The objective of this paper is to expand existing theories and empirical research on emotional aging by presenting a discrete emotions perspective. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we focus on a discussion of the literature examining age differences in anger and sadness. These two negative emotions have typically been subsumed under the singular concept of negative affect. From a discrete emotions perspective, however, they are highly distinct and show multidirectional age differences. We propose that such contrasting age differences in specific negative emotions have important implications for our understanding of long-term patterns of affective well-being across the adult lifespan.

Fear of crime in old age: precautious behaviour and its relation to situational fear.

This study aimed to provide further insight into the question of why older adults show a higher precautionary behaviour regarding crime (behavioural fear), although they do not estimate their victimisation risk as higher than young adults and they do not experience fear more often. In two cross-sectional studies, the hypothesis was tested that the age-related increase in precautionary behaviour is an expression of higher dispositional fear with age. The vignette technique was employed to induce situational fear of crime across various situations as a proxy for dispositional fear. In contrast to the hypothesis, in Study 1 (young: 18-30 years, N = 179 vs. middle-aged: 50-64 years, N = 106), only younger adults reported higher situational fear in two vignettes. In Study 2 (young: 18-30 years, N = 129 vs. young-old: 65-84 years, N = 114), younger adults indicated higher situational fear again; however, young-old adults reported higher situational fear in other vignettes. The findings suggest that there is no general increase in the intensity of situational fear of crime with age and thus no age-related change in dispositional fear. Moreover, situational fear did not serve as mediator in the relationship between age and precautionary behaviour. Alternative accounts for the increase in behavioural fear of crime are discussed as well as emotion regulation mechanisms in response to the induction method.