personal goals and well-being: how do young people navigate their lives?

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Salmela-Aro, K. (2010). Personal goals and well-being: How do young people navigate their lives? In S. Shulman & J.-E. Nurmi (Eds.), The role of goals in navigating individual lives during emerging adulthood. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 130, 13–26.

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Personal Goals and Well-Being: How Do Young People Navigate Their Lives?Katariina Salmela-Aro

Abstract

This chapter examines development through different life transitions, such as educational transitions and transition to parenthood during adolescence to adulthood in the context of the life-span model of personal goals. According to the life-span model of motivation, four key mechanisms—channeling, choice, co-regulation, and compensation—play a key role in how young people navi-gate their life. The aim is to describe how the conceptualized key factors are helpful in understanding the changes from adolescence to emerging adulthood and later in the life course and related well-being. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, no. 130, Winter 2010 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. • DOI: 10.1002/cd.278

14 EMERGING ADULTHOOD AND INDIVIDUAL GOALS

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT • DOI: 10.1002/cd

It has been suggested that young people direct their future lives and manage their development (Brandtstädter, 1989) in the context of var-ious socially and culturally defi ned developmental tasks and life tran-

sitions by constructing personal goals (Cantor, Norem, Niedenthal, Langston, & Brower, 1987; Emmons, 1991; Heckhausen, 1999; Little, Salmela-Aro, & Phillips, 2007; Nurmi, 1989, 1991). The construction of personal goals that optimize young people’s potential to deal successfully with their forthcoming life-span transitions (Baltes, 1997) requires negoti-ating their individual motivation and the opportunities, challenges, and constraints typical of the transition in question. According to the life span model of motivation (Nurmi, 2004; Salmela-Aro, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2007), young people’s socialization and self-development can be described in terms of four key mechanisms—the Four Cs (Salmela-Aro, 2009): channeling, choice, coregulation, and compensation. In the following, I fi rst describe each of the four key mechanisms of the life-span model of motivation. Next, I present empirical fi ndings in support of these four key mechanisms during the various transitions from adolescence to adulthood.

Life-Span Model of Motivation

According to the life-span model of motivation, young people grow up in a succession of personal needs and environments that channel their devel-opmental trajectories. A variety of sociocultural factors, such as cultural beliefs, institutional structures, and historical events, defi ne an “opportu-nity space” that affects their motivation, thinking, and behavior. The age-graded environments young people face play an important role in channeling the kinds of personal goals they construct (Nurmi, 2004). For example, schooling and educational systems present age-related tracks that infl uence young people’s behavior and decisions. In addition, the three basic needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence (Deci & Ryan, 2000) lay a foundation for their behavior and related personal goals (Salmela-Aro, Vuori, & Koivisto, 2007).

Second, young people are not passive targets of environmental infl u-ences; rather, they make choices concerning their developmental environ-ments and future life paths (Baltes, 1997; Brandtstädter, 1989). Many psychological factors, such as personal goals, are responsible for this mechanism. Developmental regulation is organized in action phases (Heckhausen, 1999), which are timed by the structure of opportunities for attaining developmental goals.

Third, young people regulate their behavior and try to achieve their goals and related commitments by co-regulating their motivation together with others: goals are shared. Besides personal agency, co-agency, or rela-tional agency (Edwards, 2006), plays a key role in successful develop-ment. For example, adolescents co-regulate their goals with peers, parents,

PERSONAL GOALS AND WELL-BEING 15


and teachers, and consequently during adolescence educational goals are often shared with peers (Eccles, 2004; Kiuru, Nurmi, Aunola, & Salmela-Aro, 2009).

Finally, young people not only end up facing certain role transitions, but they also receive feedback about their successes and failures in dealing with these. This feedback on developmental outcomes requires them, par-ticularly later on in adulthood, to compensate, that is, adjust their goals, plans, and thinking to cope successfully with the future challenges pre-sented by their developmental trajectories (Baltes, 1997; Heckhausen, 1999; Salmela-Aro & Suikkari, 2008).

The life-span model of motivation suggests that personal goals that match the developmental tasks of a particular stage of life are adaptive in directing one’s life and, therefore, contribute to one’s sense of well-being (Nurmi, 1991). Both cross-sectional research (Emmons, 1991) and longi-tudinal studies (Salmela-Aro, & Nurmi, 1997) have shown that emerging adults who report interpersonal and family-related goals focusing on the key developmental tasks of this period of life show a higher level of well-being than others. However, although thinking about self- and identity-related issues has been assumed to be a natural part of adolescence and also emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1959), such goals might also be associated with low well-being (Luyckx et al., 2008; Salmela-Aro, 1992). It has been found, for example, that people who report self-focused goals also show low levels of well-being (Salmela-Aro, Nurmi, Saisto, & Halmesmäki, 2000, 2001) and life satisfaction (Wurf & Markus, 1991). Particularly negative self goals, such as struggling by oneself, are related to low level of well-being. The life-span model of motivation suggests, fur-ther, that adjustment of one’s personal goals according to one’s experience of a particular life transition should contribute to individuals’ well-being, whereas inability to adjust previous goals is likely to lead to depressive symptoms.

Adolescents’ Motivational Orientations and Well-Being

Adoles cence is a life phase during which individuals are faced with many age-graded developmental tasks, challenges, transitions, and demands (Heckhausen, 1999; Nurmi, 2004). However, adolescents are not only infl uenced by their environment, but also choose and direct their own development and related environments. It has been shown that personal goals refl ect (Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1997) developmental tasks (Erikson, 1959; Havighurst, 1948), needs (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007), role transitions (Elder, 1998), and institutional tracks (Mayer, 1986). Adolescents’ per-sonal goals might thus be mainly related to education, occupation, and social and self-related issues. However, little is known about how personal goal variables combine to form meaningful patterns, and how these



patterns are associated with adolescent development and well-being. To fi ll this gap, we (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007) conducted a study among mid-dle adolescents (M age = 15), the aim of which was to examine the extent to which channeling and choice of appropriate goals during adolescence is a marker of well-being.

By adopting the person-centered approach, we investigated the kinds of motivational orientations that can be identifi ed on the basis of adoles-cents’ personal goals and how these orientations differ in their effects on well-being. According to this view, the main motivational orientations in connection with personal goals should refl ect developmental tasks and basic needs. In terms of basic needs, need of relatedness refers to social goals, whereas need of competence refers to achievement-related goals. Besides developmental tasks and basic needs, personal goals might also echo differ-ent time perspectives (Kauffman & Husman, 2004; Nuttin & Lens, 1985): past, present, or future. Together with self-related goals, they might thus refl ect past orientation, such as pondering on self-related goals (Nolen-Hoeksema, Parker, & Larson, 1994; Salmela-Aro, 1992), present orienta-tion, for example in relation to schooling or leisure-time-related goals, or future orientation regarding future education and work-related goals.

Moreover, there is evidence of gender differences in personal goals. It has been shown that girls more often produce interpersonal-, family- (Greene, & DeBacker, 2004), and education-related (Nurmi, 1991) goals than boys, who place greater emphasis on material values (Cross & Markus, 1991).

To examine the processes of channeling and making choices, we examined what kinds of motivational orientations can be found among adolescents and how they contribute to their well-being. Five hundred sixty-one ninth grade students (277 boys and 284 girls, M age = 15) from all the junior high schools in two medium-sized cities in Finland (eleven schools) completed a questionnaire concerning their personal goals and subjective well-being (see Salmela-Aro et al., 2007). They were asked to produce three personal goals that were content-analyzed as follows: future occupation and education, school, property, friends, family, leisure, self, and other. Content-analysis reliability, measured as the percentage of agreement between the two independent raters, was 97 percent.

Applying person-oriented approach, latent-class analysis in which the goal-content variables were taken as the criteria was used to fi nd out what groups of adolescents would be identifi ed on the basis of their personal goals. The solution that best described the data was the three-class solu-tion. The three motivational orientations were labeled: future competence, present relatedness, and past self-relatedness.

First, 43 percent of the adolescents fell into the future competence category. They had more future education-, work-, and property-related goals than those in the other two groups. Second, 30 percent of the partic-ipants displayed a present-relatedness motivational orientation: they had



more friend-, leisure-, family-, and school-related goals than those in the other two groups. Finally, 27 percent of the adolescents were categorized as past self-related: they had more self-related goals than those in the other two groups. An example of their goal was to “become more happy as a person.” The boys were more often future competence oriented, whereas the girls were more often in the present- or self-related orientation group.

Next, the motivational orientations were compared according to sev-eral indicators of well-being. These results showed that those in the past self-related group more often showed school-related burnout, stress symp-toms, and depressive symptoms; those in the present-related group had the highest life satisfaction, and those with a future-competence orienta-tion had the highest self-esteem.

Based on the results, it can be suggested that these motivation orien-tations refl ect developmental tasks and the three basic needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Education- and work-related goals refer to competence, friend- and leisure-related goals refer to relatedness, and self-related goals might refer to negative aspects of auton-omy, struggling with self-related issues (Luyckx et al., 2008). Motivational orientations also seem to differ in terms of their time perspective: self-related rumination and related goals refer to orientation toward the past; leisure-, friend-, and school-related goals to the present; and education- and work-related goals to the future (Nuttin & Lens, 1985; Simons, Vansteenkiste, Lens, & Lacante, 2004).

Moreover, gender differences emerged. Girls seem to be more oriented towards social or self-related issues, whereas boys are more concerned about achievement and property (Cross & Markus, 1991; Greene & DeBacker, 2004).

The Role of Co-Regulation During Adolescence: Are Goals Shared?

Adolescents also co-regulate their behavior by trying to achieve their goals and related commitments together with others (see Figure 2.1): goals are shared. Besides personal agency, co-agency or relational agency (Edwards, 2006) plays a key role in successful development. Besides parents and schools, the role of peers increases during adolescence (Salmela-Aro, 2009; see Figure 1). Personal goals are often shared with peers. It has been suggested that peers play a particularly important role in educational goals and trajectories (Eccles, 2004): lives are linked (Elder, 1998).

When the adolescents were asked to state their education goal-related social ties, they mentioned parents, most often their mother, followed by father and friends (Salmela-Aro & Little, 2007). The father was mentioned more by boys and those with higher familial socioeconomic status (SES); girls more often mentioned their mother. The results also showed that goal-related social ties predicted the transition from comprehensive school



to educational track. Weak ties, such as teachers, predicted the transition to a vocational track, whereas higher familial SES and having a larger number of social ties predicted transition to an academic track when grade point average was controlled for (Salmela-Aro, 2007). Supportive weak ties might thus help those at risk to beat the odds.

To examine the role of peers in adolescents’ goals, we asked our sam-ple of adolescents for peer nominations. On the basis of this knowledge it is possible to analyze the role peers play in adolescents’ goals and aspira-tions. Our aim was to examine whether the members of adolescents’ peer groups share similar educational aspirations and whether their goals con-verge across time. We carried out multilevel growth curve modeling for educational aspirations (see Kiuru et al., 2009). The results showed that adolescents who belonged to the same peer group at the end of compre-hensive school shared similar educational aspirations and trajectories later on. Peer group members also resembled each other in their broader aca-demic orientation, that is, how well they performed at school, whether they expected to enter upper secondary high school or enter vocational school, and whether they in fact did so. Finally, the results showed that family background factors shared by peer group members predicted the academic trajectories typical of the peer group: peer groups, whose mem-bers typically came from a nuclear family and had a high SES background, were likely to have a higher academic orientation than the other kinds of peer groups. These results showed that the pathway from educational expectations to educational trajectory was shared by the members of the peer group. Moreover, the two major social contexts, SES and peer group, seemed to be linked. Adolescents whose time was spent in the same peer group came from similar SES backgrounds, and this similarity contributed to their goals and aspirations. These results provided longitudinal evi-dence for the role of co-regulation. Peer groups play a key role in educa-tional goals and trajectories. Finally, the fi nal mechanism, compensation, is not as relevant during adolescence as the other three mechanisms.

Figure 2.1. Co-Regulation of Motivation During Adolescence

Youngpeople

Home

SchoolPeers

Motivation



Personal Goals During Emerging Adulthood

Emerging adulthood is a period of life when many changes take place, such as establishing an identity, experimenting with intimacy, forming sta-ble intimate relationships and starting a family, making career decisions, and achieving independence from parents (Arnett, 2000). Traditional pathways into adult life are said to become more destandardized, more heterogenous and differentiated, as individuals gain greater control over their lives (Shanahan, 2000). Nowadays education is more extended and entry into family formation and parenthood postponed until the late twen-ties and early thirties.

During emerging adulthood, emerging adults continue to experiment, but they are also required to make some initial choices and commitments. Consequently, during emerging adulthood two key processes, channeling and choice, can be expected to be associated with well-being. According to the results of the Helsinki Longitudinal Student (HELS) Study on the tran-sition to university and on later life, in which 297 fi rst-year university stu-dents were examined several times over eighteen years, showed that during emerging adulthood the contents of personal goals change along with changing demands, tasks, and role transitions (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007).

Changes in personal goals during emerging adulthood were found to refl ect the demands of this particular life transition they were experiencing. First, on average the number of education-related goals showed an acceler-ating decrease over time. Although there were no individual differences in the initial level of education-related goals, the rate of deceleration was dif-ferent among the participants. Similarly, the number of friendship-related goals decreased over time through the third decade, and though there was individual variation in the level of friendship-related goals, the decrease was similar for all the young adults. Second, the number of work-related goals fi rst increased during the third decade, and then leveled off. Again despite individual variation in the level of these goals, the changes in them were similar for all the young adults. Similarly, the number of family-related goals showed an increase throughout the third decade. The results showed further that there was individual variation in both the level of fam-ily-related goals and their increase. In addition, the number of health-related goals increased throughout the third decade. Although no individual differences were found in the change in health-related goals, individuals differed in their overall level of these goals. These results show that the challenges and demands of the early university years typically include adoption of the student role and the building of relationships with fellow students. Later on, as these emerging adults progress in their studies and graduate from university, there is a transition out of these roles and entry into the roles of adult worker, spouse, and parent (Grob, Krings, & Bangerter, 2001). The results of the HELS Study showed that these changes in normative demands and role transitions channel emerging adults’



personal goals, and changes in these goals, during the third decade of life. However, personal choices also played some role as heterogeneity was found in the changes in the emerging adults’ personal goals.

Personal goals also contributed to well-being during emerging adult-hood. Family-related goals were related to a decrease in depressive symp-toms across the transition to adulthood, and depressive symptoms and self-focused goals were related to each other (Salmela-Aro, & Nurmi, 1997). These results support the life-span model of motivation: goals that are in accordance with age-graded challenges and demands lead to or are related to well-being.

Goals also predicted life events, particularly in the interpersonal domain (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007). The more family-related goals the emerging adults initially had, the earlier they married or cohabited during emerging adulthood. The results showed further that the more family-related goals the emerging adults had, the earlier and more likely they were to have children later on. In addition, reporting child-related goals increased the likelihood of having a child in the family within the next few years. In the future studies, more research is particularly needed to exam-ine co-regulation and compensation during emerging adulthood. I will next focus on these mechanisms during transition to parenthood.

Transition to Parenthood

Transition to parenthood is one of the key transitions leading to adult-hood. During the transition to parenthood people make various initial choices and commitments, and again, the two key processes, channeling and choice, are associated with well-being. However, there is a conceptual difference in that the transition to parenthood is shared by the couple, and thus alongside individual choices, co-regulation plays a key role. More-over, the fourth key process, compensation, also plays a role in well-being during the transition to parenthood.

To examine these processes, 348 females and 277 males fi lled in ques-tionnaires (e.g., personal goals) during early pregnancy, late pregnancy, and three months after childbirth and two years later. During life transi-tions people’s personal goals are affected by changing demands. The results (Salmela-Aro et al., 2000) showed that women who were facing the transition to parenthood reconstructed their goals to match the specifi c stages of this transition: changes in stage-specifi c challenges during the transition to parenthood were refl ected in changes in goal contents. Women who were facing the transition to motherhood compensated and thus adjusted their goals to match the particular stage of this transition: achievement-related goals declined after early pregnancy and birth-related goals decreased after childbirth. In turn, family- and motherhood-related goals increased after early pregnancy. These results showed that change in the life context during the transition to parenthood channels changes in



women’s personal goals. However, in addition to channeling, a key role was also played by women’s active goal choice and goal compensation in matching their personal goals to their specifi c stages of this life transition.

Moreover, the results (Salmela-Aro et al., 2001) showed that if the women entering motherhood adjusted their goals in accordance with the demands of their current life situation and those of the transition, it led to high well-being. These results showed that an increase in child- and preg-nancy-related goals during pregnancy and an increase in family-related goals after childbirth were related to a decrease in depressive symptoms. In turn, an increase in self-related goals after childbirth was related to an increase in depressive symptoms.

Moreover, during the transition to parenthood the third mechanism, co-agency or co-regulation, plays a key role. The results showed that well-being as well as personal goals was shared by the couple (Salmela-Aro, Aunola, Saisto, Halmesmäki & Nurmi, 2006; Salmela-Aro et al., 2000). The results showed that goals related to family, achievement, property, and motherhood/fatherhood were associated and shared with the couple dur-ing the transition to parenthood (Salmela-Aro et al., 2000). Moreover, dur-ing transition to parenthood, results indicated that changes in depressive symptoms and marital satisfaction during pregnancy were characteristic of the spousal relationship, whereas changes after birth were characteristic of both the relationship and the individual spouses (Salmela-Aro et al., 2006). Couples with initially high marital satisfaction reported a later decrease, whereas those with initially low satisfaction reported an increase. These results indicate the importance of co-regulation during transition to parenthood.

Letting Go of Your Dreams: Goal Compensation During Infertility Treatment

As individuals mature they are required to address failure more than when they were adolescents. Individuals seek to compensate for experiences of failure and to adjust to the constraints of a given developmental ecology (Heckhausen, 1999). Success or failure appears to function as a timing scaffold for investment in goal striving by individuals as they approach a specifi c goal. However, people do not always achieve their goals. When goals do not go well, the person is likely to suffer (King, & Burton, 2003, for a review). The distress that is likely to ensue when valued goals are lost is well-documented (King & Burton, 2003). According to the incen-tive-disengagement theory of depression (Klinger, 1977), goal failure or the loss of incentives is related to distress and depressive affect. In addi-tion, thinking about goals that are no longer attainable is related to psy-chological distress. However, lack of success may serve as a signal for the activation of compensation and compensatory strategies, such as goal dis-engagement and self-protection.



The transition to parenthood is not always successful. Infertility is one of life’s great catastrophes, and it happens to approximately one in ten couples. Individuals must compensate and cope with failure—the fourth key mechanism of the life-span model of motivation. We examined (Salmela-Aro & Suikkari, 2008) ninety-two females and eighty-two males six times during treatment for infertility: during their fi rst visit to the infertility clinic, on the evening before the oocyte recovery stage, on the evening of embryo transfer, on the evening of the pregnancy test, and two and six months after treatment. On each occasion they appraised their child-related goal. The results showed that women’s and men’s goal appraisals changed in tandem with the outcome of the treatment. More-over, those whose treatment had been unsuccessful adjusted their negative goal appraisals later on.

The results showed that after learning the outcome of the treatment, child-related goal attainability increased among those who had become pregnant and decreased among those who had not become pregnant. Simi-larly, child-related goal importance and positive affects increased among those with a positive treatment outcome and decreased among those with a negative treatment outcome. Child goal-related negative appraisals, in turn, showed a different pattern. Among those with a negative treatment result, child-related goal stress and negative affects increased at the time of learning the result of the treatment, but later on decreased. In turn, among those with a positive treatment outcome child-related goal stress and neg-ative affects decreased after the treatment. These results showed that the outcome of the treatment affected couples’ goal appraisals at the time and also that couples adjusted their negative goal appraisals later on. These fi ndings of the infertility study support the theoretical claim that develop-mental regulation is organized in action phases (Heckhausen, 1999), which are timed by the structure of opportunities for attaining develop-mental goals. Success or failure appears to function as a timing scaffold for investment in goal striving as people approach a specifi c goal. Having unsuccessful infertility treatment may serve as a signal for the deployment of active compensatory strategies such as goal disengagement and self-protection.

Among those whose infertility treatment was unsuccessful, protecting their well-being by child goal disengagement seemed to be a helpful strategy. The results showed that when explaining depressive symptoms six months after infertility treatment among those whose treatment was unsuccessful, entering the child-related goal variables, goal importance and attainment, either before the treatment or at the time of the pregnancy test, did not add to the prediction of depressive symptoms when the ear-lier level of depressive symptoms was controlled for (Salmela-Aro, & Suik-kari, 2008). However, entering the child-related goal variables at six months after treatment added signifi cantly to the prediction of depressive symptoms. The greater the importance of the child-related goal and the



less child-related goal attainment reported by those whose treatment was unsuccessful, the more depressive symptoms they experienced at the same point of time. Thus it seems that among those with unsuccessful treat-ment, goal disengagement seems to be a protective strategy for well-being. These results suggest that letting go of your dreams might be an adaptive strategy for well-being and support the incentive-disengagement theory of depression (Klinger, 1977). Adjusting one’s goals to match one’s present life situation, chosen future trajectory, or outcomes of previous effort is related to well-being. However, more research is needed to identify the mechanisms of change.

Conclusions and Future Challenges

In this chapter, development through different life transitions during ado-lescence to adulthood was described in the context of the life-span model of personal goals according to which four key mechanisms—channeling, choice, co-regulation, and compensation—play a key role. The aim was to describe how the conceptualized key factors are helpful in understanding the changes from adolescence to emerging adulthood and later in the life course.

The life-span model of motivation suggests that age-graded demands and opportunities channel the kinds of personal goals people construct; that such goals play an important role in the ways in which people choose and make commitments to their own development; that people co-regu-late their goals, and fi nally compensate for failure by adjusting their per-sonal goals on the basis of previous role transitions; and that such goal adjustment has consequences for their well-being (Nurmi, 2004; Salmela-Aro, 2009). In addition, it is plausible to suggest that as individuals mature they are required to address failure more than when they were adolescents. By including this idea, the model also makes developmental sense.

Life transitions, such as the transition to tertiary education or from adolescence to emerging adulthood may be turning points that offer new options. Transitions are also suitable occasions for intervention programs, such as focusing on the development of functional personal goals and related well-being later on (Salmela-Aro, Mutanen, Koivisto, & Vuori, 2010). Moreover, the years of emerging adulthood are the most volitional years of life, and thus personal goals might play a key role in successful development and related well-being.

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KATARIINA SALMELA-ARO is professor and chair of the Personality and Work Psychology Sector, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Psychology and a member of the Centre of Excellence in Learning and Motivation Research. She is general secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Development.

personal goals and well-being: how do young people navigate their lives?

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