Alexandra M. Freund

Life-management strategies of selection, optimization, and compensation: measurement by self-report and construct validity.

The authors examined the usefulness of a self-report measure for elective selection, loss-based selection. optimization, and compensation (SOC) as strategies of life management. The expected 4-factor solution was obtained in 2 independent samples (N = 218, 14-87 years; N = 181, 18-89 years) exhibiting high retest stability across 4 weeks (r(tt) = .74-82). As expected, middle-aged adults showed higher endorsement of SOC than younger and older adults. Moreover, SOC showed meaningful convergent and divergent associations to other psychological constructs (e.g., thinking styles, NEO) and evinced positive correlations with measures of well-being which were maintained after other personality and motivational constructs were controlled for. Initial evidence on behavioral associations involving SOC obtained in other studies is summarized.

Selection, optimization, and compensation as strategies of life management : Correlations with subjective indicators of successful Aging

The usefulness of self-reported processes of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) for predicting on a correlational level the subjective indicators of successful aging was examined. The sample of Berlin residents was a subset of the participants of the Berlin Aging Study. Three domains (marked by 6 variables) served as outcome measures of successful aging: subjective well-being, positive emotions, and absence of feelings of loneliness. Results confirm the central hypothesis of the SOC model: People who reported using SOC-related life-management behaviors (which were unrelated in content to the outcome measures) had higher scores on the 3 indicators of successful aging. The relationships obtained were robust even after controlling for other measures of successful mastery such as personal life investment, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, control beliefs, intelligence, subjective health, or age.

Developmental changes in personal goal orientation from young to late adulthood: from striving for gains to maintenance and prevention of losses.

Using a multimethod approach, the authors conducted 4 studies to test life span hypotheses about goal orientations across adulthood. Confirming expectations, in Studies 1 and 2 younger adults reported a primary growth orientation in their goals, whereas older adults reported a stronger orientation toward maintenance and loss prevention. Orientation toward prevention of loss correlated negatively with well-being in younger adults. In older adults, orientation toward maintenance was positively associated with well-being. Studies 3 and 4 extend findings of a self-reported shift in goal orientation to the level of behavioral choice involving cognitive and physical fitness goals. Studies 3 and 4 also examine the role of expected resource demands. The shift in goal orientation is discussed as an adaptive mechanism to manage changing opportunities and constraints across adulthood.

Walking While Memorizing: Age-Related Differences in Compensatory Behavior

This study investigated predictions of the life-span theory of selection, optimization, and compensation, focusing on different patterns of task priority during dual-task performance in younger and older adults. Cognitive (memorizing) and sensorimotor (walking a narrow track) performance were measured singly, concurrently, and when task difficulty was manipulated. Use of external aids was measured to provide another index of task priority. Before dual-task testing, participants received extensive training with each component task and external aid. Age differences in dual-task costs were greater in memory performance than in walking, suggesting that older adults prioritized walking over memory. Further, when given a choice of compensatory external aids to use, older adults optimized walking, whereas younger adults optimized memory performance. The results have broad implications for systemic theories of cognitive and sensorimotor aging, and the costs and benefits of assistive devices and environmental support for older populations.

Interference and Facilitation among Personal Goals: Differential Associations with Subjective Well-Being and Persistent Goal Pursuit

Three studies demonstrate that mutual facilitation and interference among personal goals are distinct characteristics rather than mutually exclusive opposites and have different functions for psychological well-being and goal pursuit. The three studies vary in design (cross-sectional, short-termlongitudinal) and follow a multimethod approach using questionnaires, diaries, and objective behavioral information. Results show that interference among goals (resulting from resource constraints and incompatible goal attainment strategies) is negatively associated with trait and state well-being, whereas mutual facilitation among goals (resulting from instrumental goal relations and overlapping goal attainment strategies) is positively associated with involvement in goal pursuit.

Age-differential motivational consequences of optimization versus compensation focus in younger and older adults

Four studies investigated age-related differences in goal focus in younger and older adults. Studies 1 and 2 confirmed the hypothesis that younger adults are more persistent when the same sensorimotor task offers possibility for optimizing performance than when the task requires counteracting a loss in performance (compensation). In contrast, older adults were more persistent in the compensation than in the optimization condition. Study 3 showed that the age-differential effects of goal focus on persistence were not simply due to perceiving the 2 conditions as easy versus difficult. Study 4 ruled out that the age differences were due to differences in the 2 tasks themselves. Taken together, the studies underscore the importance of situating motivational research into a life span context.

Understanding Developmental Regulation in Adolescence: The Use of the Selection, Optimization,and Compensation Model

Scholarship pertinent to the nature of human plasticity and the contemporary theoretical stress on developmental systems theories suggest that the regulation of dynamic person-context relations should be the key focus of inquiry in the study of adolescent development. An exemplar of a theory congruent with this relational conception of adolescent development is the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation (SOC) model offered by Baltes, Baltes, and colleagues. The model may be a value-added contribution to the adolescent literature in several respects: through illustrating the centrality of selection, optimization, and compensation processes in conceptualizing the regulation of the person-context relations that characterize development in adolescence; by integrating key themes within the adolescent development theoretical and empirical literatures; and through suggesting ideas for extending these literatures in new and useful ways, including needed directions for research and applications to policies and programs that are aimed at enhancing adaptive regulation in adolescence. We illustrate these value-added contributions of the SOC model by focusing on theory and research pertinent to arguably the central construct in the study of adolescence, identity. In addition, we discuss the implications of the SOC model for using developmental systems theory to understand the relation between individual development and social constraints or opportunities. The methodological features of research using the SOC model are noted, and its implications for both the development of the person and for the maintenance and perpetuation of civil society are presented.

Goal progress makes one happy, or does it? Longitudinal findings from the work domain

In a 3-year longitudinal study with a sample of N = 82 young professionals (44% male; age range: 28-39 years), self-reported progress in the pursuit of personal goals was associated with affective well-being, work satisfaction, and subjective developmental success in the work domain. Goal progress, however, did not predict an increase in affective well-being and work satisfaction. Four constructs - goal difficulty, current work involvement, positive fantasies, and goal progress in the private domain - were selected to analyse their potentially moderating effect on the link between goal progress and well-being increases. Goal difficulty evinced the clearest moderating effects. Goal. difficulty predicted change in all outcome criteria, that is, only adults who perceived their goals as difficult to reach also reported a change in positive and negative affect, job satisfaction, and subjective developmental success over a period of 3 years.

Successful Aging as Management of Resources: The Role of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation

One of the central tenets of life-span psychology is that the process of development entails gains and losses that occur over the entire life span. Thus, Paul and Margret Baltes (1990) conceptualized successful aging as a lifelong process of maximizing gains and minimizing losses by means of three processes: selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC). This article reviews empirical studies that have investigated the use of SOC during adulthood with different methodological approaches and have found evidence for the importance of SOC for successfully managing ones resources. The article highlights the importance of prioritizing goals (selection) according to their importance for increasing gains (optimization) and avoiding losses (compensation) in consideration of currently available resources. Age-related changes in resource availability and time perspective can also result in a shift in goal orientation towards gains or losses and in goal focus on the process or the outcome of goal pursuit. Taken together, the action-theoretical approach to the SOC framework suggests that selection, optimization, and compensation can be seen as key concepts for understanding successful aging.

Changes in the sensitivity to appetitive and aversive arousal across adulthood.

In 2 cross-sectional studies, the authors examined age-related differences in the evaluation of emotional stimuli in 2 community samples, with participants ranging in age from young to older adulthood (18-81 years old). Pictures of the International Affective Picture System were used in Study 1, and written verbs were used in Study 2. Participants rated these stimuli along the 2 major affective dimensions of hedonic valence and emotional arousal, thus yielding a 2-dimensional affective space for each participant. Young adults showed the expected pattern of 2 distinct clusters of stimuli in this space, representing increasing pleasantness (appetitive activation) and unpleasantness (aversive activation) with increasing emotional arousal. In contrast, for older adults, emotional valence and arousal ratings were linearly related: Low-arousing stimuli were rated as most pleasant, and high-arousing stimuli were rated as most unpleasant. When regressed on age, these changes revealed a gradual decrease of appetitive activation (i.e., the relationship between pleasure and arousal) across adulthood and a linear increase in aversive activation (i.e., the relationship between displeasure and arousal). These results extend previous work on emotional development, adding information as to the role of emotional intensity for affective experience in different age groups.