Linking Goals and Aging: Experimental and Lifespan Approaches

Abstract

By nature, human beings are goal-oriented. Goals and goal-related processes motivate, organize, and direct behavior at all ages (Chapman & Skinner, 1985 ; Heckhausen, 1999 ). Across the lifespan, goals provide the individual with standards and ideal outcomes to consider in evaluating personal functioning in a variety of different domains (Carver & Scheier, 1990 ). Nevertheless, the majority of work conducted on goal theory has focused on educational (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1996 ) and work (Locke & Latham, 2002 ) settings, settings that rarely include older adults. In the 1990 book by Locke and Latham that laid out a theory of goal setting and task performance, for example, there was no mention of older adults as a special case for study. Since then, scholars have begun to consider how goals might apply to older adults, particularly in the context of cognition (especially memory), a life domain that is highly relevant to older individuals. The purpose of this chapter is to review the literature considering how goals may be related to cognition as people age. In linking goals and aging, this chapter will seek to understand how cognitive task performance is affected by specifi c “task goals” (i.e., situational “desire to do …” goals) at different ages. However, it will also consider goals in the more general context of everyday life, to consider ways in which such “life goals,” (i.e., continuing “desire to be …” goals) may interact with specifi c situational task goals in their impact on cognitive activities across the lifespan.

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