A Closer Look at Life Goals Across Adulthood: Applying a Developmental Perspective to Content, Dynamics, and Outcomes of Goal Importance and Goal Attainability

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A Closer Look at Life Goals Across Adulthood: Applying a Developmental
Perspective to Content, Dynamics, and Outcomes of Goal Importance and Goal
Attainability
JANINA LARISSA BÜHLER*, REBEKKA WEIDMANN , JANA NIKITIN and ALEXANDER GROB
Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Abstract: It is well established that goals energize and direct behaviour across the lifespan. To better understand how
goals are embedded in people’s lives across adulthood, the present research examined life goals’content (health, per-
sonal growth, prosocial engagement, social relations, status, work), dynamics (interplay between goal importance
and goal attainability), and outcomes (subjective well-being) from a developmental perspective. We argue that people
rate those goals as important and attainable that enable them to master developmental tasks, that they adapt their
goals to personal capacities, and that goals predict subjective well-being after 2 and 4 years. The sample included
973 individuals (18–92 years old, M = 43.00 years) of whom 637 participated 2 years later and 573 participated
4 years later. Goal importance and well-being were assessed at all occasions and goal attainability at the first two
occasions. Results indicated that age was negatively associated with importance and attainability of personal-
growth, status, and work goals but positively associated with importance and attainability of prosocial-engagement
goals. The association between goal importance and attainability was largely bidirectional over time; and goal at-
tainability, rather than goal importance, was positively linked to later well-being. Implications of these findings are
discussed in light of adult lifespan development. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology
Key words: life-goal importance; life-goal attainability; subjective well-being; adult-age differences; dual-process
framework
Mature striving is linked to long-range goals. (Gordon W.
Allport, 1955)
As people move through their adult years, they meet various
challenges regarding their identity, social relations, and occu-
pational pathways (Erikson, 1968). To successfully manage
these challenges, people develop, maintain, and adjust their
goals (e.g. Austin & Vancouver, 1996). Defined as ‘desired
states that people seek to obtain, maintain, or avoid’
(Emmons, 1996, p. 314), goals are not set in stone but instead
are adjusted to circumstances that emerge across the lifespan
(Freund & Riediger, 2006). Accordingly, goals have been
referred to as personality in context (Little, 1989) or charac-
teristic adaptations (McAdams, 2015), expressing the idea
that, in interaction with physical, cultural, or social contexts,
people actively shape their development by allocating
resources to specific life goals (Wiese & Freund, 2005). This,
in turn, highlights the importance of contextualizing goals
within broader life conditions, such as age-related concerns.
In the present research, we built on this argument and stud-
ied (i) age effects on the domains that people rate as important
and perceive as attainable (i.e. goal content) from the perspec-
tive of their compatibility with developmental tasks (Erikson,
1968; Havighurst, 1972); (ii) the longitudinal association
between goal importance and goal attainability (i.e. goal
dynamics) from the perspective of adaptations to personal
capacities (Baltes, 1987, 1997; Brandtstädter & Greve, 1994;
Heckhausen, 1999); and (iii) the long-term consequences
of goal importance and goal attainability for subjective well-
being (i.e. goal outcomes) from the perspective of motivational
underpinnings of subjective well-being across adulthood
(Diener, 1994; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999).
To our knowledge, the present study is the first to system-
atically assess major life goals’content, dynamics, and out-
comes over time in a sample that covers the entire adult
lifespan (i.e. age 18–92 years). Knowing how life goals’im-
portance and attainability are distinct in different life do-
mains across adulthood, how life goals are adjusted to
personal capacities, and how goals are differentially linked
to subjective well-being complements and expands on cur-
rent research in both the goal and the lifespan literature.
Content of goals: Age differences in goal importance and
goal attainability
Conceived as motivated agents (McAdams, 2015), individuals
strive to develop themselves and are inclined to expand who
they are. From this humanistic perspective (Maslow, 1954;
Rogers, 1995), people expand their potential by setting a
*Correspondence to: Janina Larissa Bühler, Department of Psychology, Uni-
versity of Basel, Missionsstrasse 62, 4055 Basel, Switzerland.
E-mail: janina.buehler@unibas.ch
This article earned Open Materials badge through Open Practices
Disclosure from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.
The materials are permanently and openly accessible at https://osf.io/
s2w3n/. Author’s disclosure form may also be found at the Supporting
Information in the online version.
European Journal of Personality,Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.2194
Handling editor: Cornelia Wrzus
Received 28 July 2018
Revised 22 January 2019, Accepted 22 January 2019
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology

motivational agenda, which moves them toward internal rep-
resentations of desired future outcomes or events, represented
in life goals (Austin & Vancouver, 1996). In the present study,
we focused on major life goals (such as starting a family)
rather than on more specific strivings (such as dating a partic-
ular person) because major life goals set the compass that di-
rects and guides the life course (Emmons, 1986) and,
accordingly, shape personality development (McAdams,
2015).
Life goals as an example of a type of characteristic adapta-
tion (McAdams, 2015) do not emerge in a contextual vacuum.
Instead, they vary with changing circumstances, role expecta-
tions, and maturation over the life course (Elder, 1995;
McAdams & Pals, 2006; Roberts & Wood, 2006). Conse-
quently, life goals represent what individuals are planning
and working on while they find themselves in a certain life
period (Brunstein, Dangelmayer, & Schultheiss, 1996; Cantor
& Kihlstrom, 1987). According to Erikson (1968)
and Havighurst (1972), each life period includes
developmental tasks that arise at a certain time in personal de-
velopment and that contain age-graded normative expecta-
tions, which entail specific roles, positions, and obligations,
reflecting an interplay between social demands and expecta-
tions, biological development and maturation, and personality
(also Freund & Baltes, 2005; Hutteman, Hennecke, Orth,
Reitz, & Specht, 2014; Little, Salmela-Aro, & Phillips, 2007;
Nurmi, 1992). We, consequently, argue that developmental
tasks will be reflected in an age-dependent relative importance
that people allocate to certain life-goal domains.
More specifically, developmental tasks in young adulthood
(roughly ages 18–40 years; Staudinger & Bluck, 2001) are
characterized by a focus on growth (i.e. developmental gains;
Heckhausen, Dixon, & Baltes, 1989) that enables young adults
to gain information and to explore who they are. This growth
orientation enables young adults to acquire new skills and to
reach their full potential (Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006;
Havighurst, 1972). Moreover, it is usually in young adulthood
that people enter the workforce, establish long-lasting friend-
ships, and commit to their first long-term romantic relation-
ship, which makes topics of work and social relations salient
for the young adult (Havighurst, 1972; Nurmi, 1992). Thus,
we expect young adults’developmental tasks to be reflected
in the importance of personal-growth, social-relation, and
work goals. Moreover, previous research has shown that
extrinsic life goals (i.e. life goals directed at obtaining external
rewards such as money, fame, and praise) tend to be expressed
more in young adulthood than in other age groups (Deci &
Ryan, 2000), which leads us to predict the importance of
extrinsic goals (i.e. status goals) to be negatively linked to age.
In contrast to the proving grounds of young adulthood, in
middle age (roughly ages 41–60 years; Staudinger & Bluck,
2001), adults pursue goals that secure, consolidate, and stabi-
lize what has been established and that orient them toward
the future of subsequent generations (Erikson, 1968;
McAdams, 2015). For instance, middle-aged adults tend to
value goals related to family and raising children, work,
prosocial engagement, and passing traditions on to the next
generation (Freund & Riediger, 2006; Havighurst, 1972;
Neugarten & Datan, 1996). Accordingly, we expect
middle-aged adults to give importance to prosocial-
engagement, social-relation, and work goals.
The developmental tasks of older adults (roughly age
61 years and above; Staudinger & Bluck, 2001) are centred
around the maintenance of a functional level in domains such
as health or leisure (Ebner et al., 2006; Heckhausen et al.,
1989), orienting older adults toward avoiding losses rather
than acquiring potential gains (Freund, 2008; Ogilvie, Rose,
& Heppen, 2001). In addition, given that the future tends to
be perceived as limited in late adulthood, older adults usually
follow goals that are present oriented, such as deepening
close relationships (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles,
1999). Finally, older compared with younger adults tend to
be more altruistic, for example, in more strongly valuing con-
tributions to the public good and being more likely to donate
money to a good cause (Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014).
We therefore expect older adults to rate goals of health,
prosocial engagement, and social relations as important.
Taken together, life stages with their normative expecta-
tions and structural opportunities yield developmental tasks
that lay the ground for allocating differential importance to
certain life goals (Hutteman et al., 2014). Building on this ra-
tionale, we predict that age shapes the relevance assigned to
life goals: Importance of personal-growth, status, and work
goals should be negatively associated with age, whereas im-
portance of health and prosocial-engagement goals should be
positively associated with age. As outlined, people of each
life stage are inclined to value social-relation goals. Hence,
we do not expect age differences in the importance ascribed
to social-relation goals, although the motivation to value
these goals might differ across age: The growth focus among
young adults might shift to a focus on established and se-
cured aspects of life in middle adulthood and to momentary
rewards in older age. Despite these different motivations, so-
cial relationships are considered essential for individuals to
thrive across the lifespan (e.g. Deci & Ryan, 2008) and
should therefore reflect an important goal in each age group.
As well as goal importance, we investigated goal attain-
ability,defined as the subjective perception of ‘opportunity,
control, and support’of goal pursuit (Brunstein, 1993, p.
1062). Given that goal importance and goal attainability dy-
namically interact with each other (Brandtstädter &
Rothermund, 2002), we expect goal attainability to vary with
age in a similar manner to goal importance. We predict that
age effects on goal attainability should show the same age-
related pattern as age effects on goal importance: Attainabil-
ity of personal-growth, status, and work goals should be neg-
atively associated with age; attainability of health and
prosocial-engagement goals should be positively associated
with age; and attainability of social-relation goals should
not be affected by age. One can expect a differential effect
in the health domain, because—although health goals be-
come more important with increasing age—older adults of-
ten have to deal with physical health issues, health
impairment, and cognitive decline, which limit the resources
they can devote to attaining their goals (Reynolds & Finkel,
2016). Yet we expect age to be positively related to health-
goal attainability for the following reason: If people experi-
ence a discrepancy between their goals and the likelihood
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

of achieving these goals, they start to cope with this discrep-
ancy (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002; refer to the next
section). Assuming that health goals become more
important with increasing age at the same time that resources
are shrinking, older adults might, for instance, rescale their
aspirations in the health domain, develop more feasible
health goals, and invest in these newly developed goals
(Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002). These adjustment
strategies likely render it possible not only to value health
goals as important with increasing age but also to perceive
them as attainable.
Goal dynamics: Association between goal importance
and goal attainability over time
As indicated above, goals vary not only in their importance
but also with regard to their perceived attainability (Atkinson,
1964; Tomasik, Knecht, & Freund, 2017). Self-regulation the-
ories of development posit that people strive for control over
their lives by balancing the importance and attainability of
their goals (Baltes, 1987, 1997; Brandtstädter & Greve,
1994; Heckhausen, Schulz, & Wrosch, 1998). More specifi-
cally, the dual-process framework (Brandtstädter &
Rothermund, 2002) proposes two modes of coping with the
dynamics between the pursuit and the adjustment of goals,
namely, the assimilation mode and the accommodation mode.
Both modes illustrate two types of adaptive processes, which
are complementary in that both intend to resolve a goal dis-
crepancy, but they function in opposite ways (Brandtstädter,
1989; Brandtstädter & Renner, 1990; Brandtstädter &
Rothermund, 2002; Rothermund & Brandtstädter, 2003).
The assimilation mode implies a purposeful and inten-
tional change of individuals’own behaviour or their life cir-
cumstances. That is, when important goals appear less
attainable, people tend to invest more heavily in the goal pur-
suit and to intentionally modify the situation (assimilation
mode or primary control strategies; Brandtstädter &
Rothermund, 2002; Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995;
Heckhausen et al., 1998; Rothermund & Brandtstädter,
2003; Wrosch, Heckhausen, & Lachman, 2000). This is typ-
ically the case in young adulthood when enough resources
are available to acquire new skills, to improve existing func-
tions, and to seek environments that offer access to new re-
sources (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002; Ebner et al.,
2006). For instance, a 19-year-old woman might have the
goal of becoming a successful professional swimmer, so
she practices on a nearly daily basis to achieve this goal. Dur-
ing competitions, however, she rarely wins a medal. She re-
alizes that her important goal appears to be becoming less
attainable. As a consequence, she begins to practice with a
new trainer to learn a modified swimming technique, and
she joins a more competitive swimming group. She invests
more heavily in her goal in that she has purposefully and in-
tentionally changed her behaviour and life circumstances.
As evident from the above, these assimilative efforts re-
quire available resources, such as the perception of having
enough time, of receiving social and/or financial support,
and of being in good physical and/or mental shape
(Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002). As people age,
however, these internal and external resources may shrink
(Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002; Freund, 2008), and
the ratio of expected gains to expected losses of resources be-
comes less favourable (Ogilvie et al., 2001). It is, thus, the
adjustment of goals to these constraints and the lowering of
aspirations that contribute to the maintenance of high goal at-
tainability and to control in older adulthood (i.e. accommo-
dation mode or secondary control strategies; Brandtstädter
& Rothermund, 2002; Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995;
Heckhausen et al., 1998; Rothermund & Brandtstädter,
2003; Wrosch et al., 2000). This mode typically implies
eliminating blocked goals, rescaling aspirations, or funnel-
ling energies and investment into new, more feasible goals.
For instance, a 72-year-old man might have the goal of being
actively engaged in the political work of his community. For
the last 20 years, he has participated in weekly meetings of
his local government, given public speeches, and met various
stakeholders and politicians to discuss current topics. Within
the last 2 years, however, his ability to effortlessly give long
speeches and travel long distances has decreased. While re-
maining actively engaged in community work, he has
rescaled this goal. Now, he provides his expertise and knowl-
edge from the back office through being a wise mentor for
the next generation’s politicians and a close advisor in
speech writing.
As outlined, the balance between the assimilative and
accommodative modes depends on the conditions and re-
sources that individuals think are available in a specific life
condition. We argue that age might be a moderating factor
in this balance. We expect the associations between goal
importance and goal attainability to be positive but to vary
in how pronounced they are across adulthood. We assume
that young adults more intensely invest in important goals,
which will increase the perceived likelihood of attaining
these goals (i.e. assimilation mode). Consequently, we pre-
dict that it is in younger age that goal importance predicts
later goal attainability, and we expect this positive associa-
tion to be negatively associated with age. In contrast, we
hypothesize that older adults lower their aspirations and
mentally decrease the importance of those goals that are
no longer perceived as attainable (i.e. accommodation
mode). Consequently, we predict that it is in older age that
goal attainability predicts later goal importance, and we ex-
pect this positive association to be positively associated
with age. Given that any life domain that is open to be
modified can be addressed through these adaptive pro-
cesses (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002), we expect
our hypotheses to apply to each of the investigated life-
goal domains.
Goal outcomes: Goal importance and goal attainability as
predictors of subjective well-being
It is well established that the pursuit of personally meaning-
ful goals is advantageous for various indicators of subjec-
tive well-being (e.g. Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Maier,
1999; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2008; Emmons, 1996; Emmons
& King, 1988; C. Harris, Daniels, & Briner, 2003;
Schmuck, Kasser, & Ryan, 2000). However, the study of
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

goals for well-being has not been without controversy, be-
cause their role is ambiguous (Brandtstädter &
Rothermund, 2002): While they motivate behaviour, give
structure, and provide meaning, goals might also be a
source of dissatisfaction when they are perceived as unat-
tainable (especially when the goal remains important and
no accommodative strategies have been applied). Thus,
the link between goals and subjective well-being in light
of both goal importance and goal attainability needs to be
carefully investigated.
In line with previous theory (Diener, 1984; Diener et al.,
1999; Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996), we understand subjec-
tive well-being as comprising a cognitive-evaluative compo-
nent (global life satisfaction and domain-specific
satisfaction) and an affective component (positive and nega-
tive affect). One way to investigate the consequences of life
goals for subjective well-being is, for instance, to differenti-
ate between intrinsically and extrinsically oriented goals
(Deci & Ryan, 2000). On the basis of past theory and re-
search (e.g. Kasser & Ryan, 1996), we define intrinsic goals
as goals directed at the fulfilment of innate psychological
needs such as relatedness, autonomy, and competence, in-
cluding goals for meaningful relationships, community con-
tributions, personal growth, and health. We conceptualize
extrinsic goals as those directed at the desire for fame, image,
and wealth, mapping on status goals. Work goals, finally,
most likely reflect a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic
goals.
Previous research suggests that intrinsic life goals are par-
ticularly conducive to well-being (e.g. Brunstein, 1993; Deci
& Ryan, 1985). Extrinsic goals, in contrast, tend to work
against people’s well-being given that these goals are fo-
cused on obtaining external rewards and approbation from
others, thereby giving the activity an instrumental character
to achieve an intended consequence (e.g. Deci & Ryan,
1985; Kasser & Ryan, 1993, 1996; Schmuck et al., 2000).
For the present research, we expect a positive association be-
tween goal importance and subjective well-being for the in-
trinsic goal domains and a negative association for the
extrinsic goal domains.
With respect to goal attainability as a predictor of subjec-
tive well-being, we base our hypotheses on findings from re-
search on locus of control (Rotter, 1966). While an internal
locus of control implies that a person holds the belief that
his or her own ability, effort, or actions determine what hap-
pens, an external locus of control reflects that fate, luck, or
outside forces are responsible for what happens (Rotter,
1966). People tend to be more satisfied if they perceive a goal
as attainable and feel a sense of control (e.g. Judge & Bono,
2001; Rodin, 1986; Rodin & Langer, 1977). Applying this to
the present research, we expect that people who perceive
their goals as attainable will indicate higher levels of subjec-
tive well-being. Here, we again differentiate between intrin-
sic and extrinsic goals. A previous finding demonstrated
that the importance and attainability of intrinsic goals are
positively linked to positive affect, while the importance
and attainability of extrinsic goals are negatively linked to
positive affect (Kasser & Ryan, 1996). No effects were found
for the link between goal importance/attainability of
intrinsic/extrinsic goals and negative affect in this study
(Kasser & Ryan, 1996). Although these findings provide in-
sights into the relevance of intrinsic and extrinsic goals for
the affective component of subjective well-being (as well
as, among others, vitality, depression, and physical symp-
toms), the study was limited in that other, more cognitive as-
pects of subjective well-being were not included (Kasser &
Ryan, 1996). In addition, the study covered a short time span
(a maximum of 7 days in Study 2), which highlights the need
for a more nuanced investigation of the longitudinal predic-
tion of the effects of goals on later subjective well-being.
This leads us to expand the long-term prediction of an effect
of goal attainability to diverse indicators of subjective well-
being.
Finally, in line with the life-course perspective of the
present study, we test whether age moderates the association
between goal importance and subjective well-being and/or
between goal attainability and subjective well-being. So far,
there is a limited amount of research on possible age-related
differences in the link between goal importance/goal attain-
ability and subjective well-being. In their study, Kasser and
Ryan (1996) found no support for a moderating effect be-
tween goal importance/goal attainability and the affective
component of well-being. However, these findings bear two
limitations. First, although the study sample included partic-
ipants with a wide age range (18–79 years), it was a small
sample of 100 adults, and age effects might have been
underestimated. Second, the cognitive-evaluative component
of subjective well-being was not included in the study.
Hence, we seek to shed further light on possible moderating
effects of age on the association between goal
importance/goal attainability and different indicators of sub-
jective well-being.
We have now established links between importance and
attainability of life goals with life satisfaction, positive af-
fect, and negative affect for the present investigation. Yet
we want to go one step further and focus on an additional
aspect of the cognitive-evaluative component of well-being:
Domain-specific satisfaction. Although past findings have
demonstrated a consistent association between certain life
goals and well-being, they often tend to overlook that the
link between goals and satisfaction can differ between life
domains (Diener, 1994; Vansteenkiste et al., 2007). In
other words, rating goals in the work domain as important
and perceiving them as attainable might have positive ram-
ifications for satisfaction in the work domain (e.g. Lent &
Brown, 2006; Maier & Brunstein, 2001; Roberson, 1990)
but not in the family domain. This is the case because
work goals lead to allocation of resources to the work do-
main but not to the relationship and family domains (e.g.
Wiese & Freund, 2005). Conversely, relationship goals
might be positively linked to satisfaction in the relationship
domain (e.g. Sanderson & Evans, 2001) but not to satisfac-
tion in the occupational domain.
Given that goals require the allocation of resources to
particular life domains at the expense of allocations to other
domains, we expect to find thematic associations between
the importance and attainability of goal domains and satis-
faction within given life domains (e.g. work goals
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

predicting satisfaction with work but not satisfaction with
social relationships). In terms of life domains, we focus
on (i) occupational performance, (ii) health, and (iii) inter-
personal relations as salient and important domains of an
adult’s life. For (i) occupational performance, we consider
that people of different ages are confronted with different
aspects of occupational performance and investigate both
satisfaction with education (likely to be present for young
adults) and satisfaction with work [likely to be (or to have
been) present for middle-aged and older adults]. For (ii)
health, we assess overall satisfaction with one’s health. Fi-
nally, for (iii) interpersonal relations, previous research
has shown that social contexts change over the lifespan
and, more specifically, that social networks decrease after
a person’s second decade of life (Wrzus, Hänel, Wagner,
& Neyer, 2013). However, findings of this study also sug-
gest taking a differentiated perspective on a person’s social
network given that friendship networks decrease across age
but family networks remain stable (Wrzus et al., 2013). We
thus acknowledge the manifold character of social contexts
and differentiate between three areas of interpersonal rela-
tionships, namely, satisfaction with family life, satisfaction
with one’s romantic relationship, and satisfaction with
friendships.
In line with the developmental focus of this paper, we
again test for moderating effects of age. We hypothesize
that goal–outcome associations are stronger for goal do-
mains that correspond to developmental tasks at a particular
age. This might be the case because focusing on goals that
correspond to developmental tasks enables people to fulfil
these tasks, which is likely experienced as rewarding. Con-
sequently, we expect that the link between work goals and
satisfaction in the work domain decreases with age, that the
link between health goals and satisfaction in the health do-
main increases with age, and that the link between social
goals and satisfaction in the social domain remains stable
across adulthood.
THE PRESENT STUDY
The aim of the present study is to position major life goals’
content, dynamics, and outcomes in the context of a lifespan
perspective. To that aim, we explore three major research
strands.
Effects of age on goal importance and goal attainability
(goal content)
Hypothesis 1a: Importance of work, status, and personal-growth
goals is negatively associated with age, and importance of health
and prosocial-engagement goals is positively associated with
age. We do not expect age effects on importance of social-
relation goals.
Hypothesis 1b: Attainability of work, status, and personal-
growth goals is negatively associated with age, and attainability
of health and prosocial-engagement goals is positively associ-
ated with age. We do not expect age effects on attainability of
social-relation goals.
The association between goal importance and goal
attainability over 2 years (goal dynamics)
Hypothesis 2a: Goal importance and goal attainability are recip-
rocally linked to each other; that is, goal importance predicts
later goal attainability, and goal attainability predicts later goal
importance.
Hypothesis 2b: We expect these associations to be moderated by
age in that (i) the association between goal importance and later
goal attainability is weaker with higher age, while (ii) the associ-
ation between goal attainability and later goal importance is
stronger with higher age.
Goal importance and goal attainability as predictors of
subjective well-being (goal outcomes)
Hypothesis 3a: Importance of intrinsic life goals is positively
linked to later subjective well-being (i.e. life satisfaction, and
positive and negative affect), and importance of extrinsic life
goals is negatively linked to later subjective well-being.
Hypothesis 3b: Attainability of intrinsic life goals is positively
related to later subjective well-being (i.e. life satisfaction, and
positive and negative affect), and attainability of extrinsic life
goals is negatively related to later subjective well-being.
Hypothesis 3c: For domain-specific satisfaction, we expect a the-
matic link between goal domains and their respective satisfac-
tion domains: Importance and attainability of work goals
predict satisfaction with the occupational domain; importance
and attainability of health goals predict health satisfaction; and
importance and attainability of social-relation goals predict satis-
faction in the social domain. These associations are stronger at
the age at which the goal is valued as more important and
attainable.
METHOD
Sample and general procedure
Data for the present study were obtained from the longitudi-
nal Co-Development in Personality (CoDiP)
1
study that was
conducted in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. Eth-
ical approval for the CoDiP study was received from the re-
gional ethics committee of Basel (approval number: 175/09)
at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Necessary supple-
mental materials (i.e. overview of study variables and data
analysis script) are stored at a public and open-access repos-
itory (accessible through the following link: https://osf.io/
s2w3n/).
Individuals from different age groups were recruited ei-
ther through university and vocational schools (young
adults) or through lectures given as part of a lifelong learn-
ing course aimed at seniors (older adults). Individuals were
asked to invite their parents and grandparents (in the case
of young adults) and their children and grandchildren (in
the case of older adults) to participate. Thus, the final
1
Thirteen published papers have been based on data from this research pro-
ject, but no study has investigated the hypotheses that are the focus of the
present study.
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

sample of the study included family members of three age
groups (young, middle-aged, and older adults) who partic-
ipated at three measurement occasions (referred to as Time
1, Time 2, and Time 3) with intervals of 2 years. At all
three measurement occasions, participants provided self-
reports on goal importance and subjective well-being (i.e.
life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and
domain-specific satisfaction). Goal attainability was
assessed at Time 1 and Time 2.
Participants
At Time 1, the sample included 973 individuals above age
18 years from 341 families, of whom 637 participated at
Time 2 and 573 participated at Time 3. The age of partici-
pants at Time 1 ranged from 18 to 92 years (M= 43.00 years;
SD = 22.08) with 57.6% identifying as female and 42.4% as
male. To test for attrition effects, we compared participants
who participated after Time 1 (continuers) with those who
participated only at Time 1 (noncontinuers). Continuers,
compared with noncontinuers, were more often female
(62.7% vs. 53.8%), were older (M= 44.52 vs.
M= 39.45 years), t(972) = 3.33, p= .001, and indicated
lower scores in importance of work goals (M= 3.30 vs.
M= 3.40), t(955) = 2.66, p= .01, and lower scores in im-
portance of status goals (M= 2.06 vs. M= 2.22),
t(969) = 4.53, p<.001. Continuers, compared with
noncontinuers, also reported lower scores in attainability of
status goals (M= 2.33 vs. M= 2.47), t(965) = 3.31,
p= .001, positive affect (M= 3.60 vs. M= 3.68),
t(972) = 2.30, p= .02, and negative affect (M= 1.72 vs.
M= 1.83), t(971) = 2.67, p= .01. No other differences
were statistically significant (all ps≥.05).
Within the sample of continuers, we further compared
participants who continued to Time 3 (long-term continuers)
with those who participated at Time 1 and Time 2 (short-term
continuers). Long-term continuers, compared with short-term
continuers, were more often female (64.6% vs. 45.5%) and
were significantly more satisfied with their life at Time 1
(M= 3.99 vs. M= 3.80), t(688) = 2.84, p= .01, and at Time
2(M= 4.01 vs. M= 3.84), t(628) = 2.45, p= .02. Long-term
continuers were also more satisfied with their work domain at
Time 1 (M= 7.52 vs. M= 6.87), t(357) = 4.47, p<.001,
with their work domain at Time 2 (M= 7.52 vs. M= 6.87),
t(415) = 2.43, p= .02, and with their health domain at Time
2(M= 7.52 vs. M= 6.87), t(628) = 2.82, p= .01. No other
differences were statistically significant (all ps≥.05).
Measures
Life goals
Life goals were assessed with an adapted version of the As-
piration Index (Deci & Ryan, 1997; Kasser & Ryan, 1993)
in its German version (Klusmann, Trautwein, & Lüdtke,
2005). The Aspiration Index measures individuals’aspira-
tions concerning the importance and attainability of seven
broad goal domains. The domains cover four intrinsic aspi-
rations (i.e. health, community, personal growth, and social
relations) and three extrinsic aspirations (i.e. fame, image,
and wealth). In addition to the original seven domains, we
assessed goals covering family, generativity, and work
(e.g. ‘to have an intact family life’for family goals, ‘to
campaign for the general welfare’for generativity goals,
and ‘to be successful in my job’for work goals). For each
of the 10 life-goal domains, participants rated four items
(Table S1). Goal importance was measured with ‘How
important is this to you?’, and goal attainability was
measured with ‘How likely is it that this will happen in
your future?’The 4-point assessment scales ranged from 1
(not at all important)to4(very important) for goal impor-
tance and from 1 (very unlikely)to4(very likely) for goal
attainability.
Factor analysing across life goals
To reduce the number of life goals and to extract higher-
order patterns that illustrate the relations among the goal
variables, we applied exploratory factor analysis for goal
importance and goal attainability at Time 1 and Time 2.
Factors were treated as orthogonal (i.e. varimax rotation).
For goal importance, H. F. Kaiser’s (1960) eigenvalue-
greater-than-1 rule suggested two factors, Cattell’s (1966)
scree plot suggested three factors, and parallel analysis sug-
gested four factors. We examined the goodness-of-fit indi-
ces for each of these solutions. For the two-factor
solution, both the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) and the root
mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) indicated a
poor model fit of this structure (TLI = 0.749 and
RMSEA = 0.117 at Time 1, TLI = 0.662 and
RMSEA = 0.140 at Time 2). For the three-factor solution,
the goodness-of-fit indices indicated a better model fit
(TLI = 0.875 and RMSEA = 0.082 at Time 1, TLI = 0.886
and RMSEA = 0.082 at Time 2), as they did for the four-
factor solution (TLI = 0.898 and RMSEA = 0.074 at Time
1, TLI = 0.926 and RMSEA = 0.066 at Time 2). On the ba-
sis of these model fits, we have chosen the model with the
best fit indices, the one with the four-factor solution. Table
S2 presents the standardized loadings extracted from the
factor analysis at Time 1 and Time 2. In addition, to main-
tain the developmental-task focus of this study and on the
basis of their factor loadings, we next treated health and
personal-growth goals as their own life-goal domains,
which brought a final solution of six life-goal domains. As
a result of this procedure, health goals were conceived as
a single category (Life-Goal Domain 1) separate from
personal-growth goals (Life-Goal Domain 2). Community
and generativity goals were grouped under prosocial-
engagement goals (Life-Goal Domain 3) and family and
relationship goals under social-relation goals (Life-Goal
Domain 4). Wealth, fame, and image goals were grouped
under status goals (Life-Goal Domain 5), and work goals
remained in their own category (Life-Goal Domain 6).
We applied the same procedure for goal attainability,
which also showed the best model fit for the four-factor solu-
tion (TLI = 0.933 and RMSEA = 0.072 at Time 1,
TLI = 0.921 and RMSEA = 0.081 at Time 2). The standard-
ized loadings of these factor analyses are also provided in Ta-
ble S2. To obtain the same developmental-task domains for
goal attainability as we had for goal importance, we treated
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

health and personal-growth goals as their own life-goal do-
mains. The other life goals were interpreted as shown in the
factor solution, resulting in the same six categories for goal
attainability as for goal importance. Internal consistency of
importance and attainability of life-goal domains ranged
from Cronbach’sα= .70 to .90. Personal growth had a lower
internal consistency of α= .50 for importance and of α= .56
for attainability.
Life satisfaction
To measure global cognitive-evaluative judgements of sub-
jective well-being, participants were asked to rate their life
satisfaction, assessed with the German translation of the Sat-
isfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Grif-
fin, 1985; Glaesmer, Grande, Braehler, & Roth, 2011). The
questionnaire included five items (e.g. ‘The conditions of
my life are excellent.’) that were rated on a 5-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)to5(strongly
agree). The scale had an internal consistency of α= .84.
Positive and negative affect
The affective component of well-being was assessed with the
German translation of the Positive and Negative Affect
Schedule (Krohne, Egloff, Kohlmann, & Tausch, 1996; Wat-
son, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Participants rated their gen-
eral feelings and emotions on the basis of 10 items for
positive affect (e.g. ‘active’,‘interested’, and ‘enthusiastic’)
and 10 items for negative affect (e.g. ‘distressed’,‘hostile’,
and ‘afraid’). Items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale rang-
ing from 1 (not at all)to5(extremely). Cronbach’s alpha for
positive affect was α= .84 and for negative affect α= .83,
suggesting good internal consistency.
Domain-specific satisfaction
Domain-specific satisfaction was assessed with 11 items on
the basis of the German Socio-Economic Panel and the
Swiss Household Panel. Participants rated their satisfaction
with work and education (occupational domain), with their
health (health domain), and with family life, their romantic
relationship, and friendships (social domain). Satisfaction
for each domain was rated with one item on an 11-point
Likert scale ranging from 0 (completely unsatisfied)to10
(completely satisfied). Given that not all domains were rel-
evant for each participant (e.g. satisfaction with work was
applicable only if the participant was actively involved in
the labour market, or satisfaction with romantic relationship
only if committed to a romantic partner), sample sizes var-
ied from domain to domain.
Data analysis approach
Given that our sample included participants from the same
family (i.e. young-adult children, parents, and grandparents),
we first tested for interrelations between family members on
the key variables. Intraclass correlation coefficients ranging
between 0.14 (life satisfaction) and 0.55 (importance of
social-relation goals) supported the assumption of noninde-
pendence of data. Consequently, to conduct statistical analy-
ses, we used a multilevel modelling approach that takes
nonindependence of data into account.
2
We applied a two-
level approach, in which Level 2 represents the family and
Level 1 the individual. Controlling for variation between
families on Level 2, Level 1 represents individuals’varia-
tions on the relevant key variables. Given that variations be-
tween families were not the focus of the present paper, we
present results on Level 1. Multilevel analyses were con-
ducted by using the lme4 package in R (Bates, Maechler,
Bolker, & Walker, 2015), and figures were created by mak-
ing use of the effects package (Fox et al., 2018) and the
ggplot package in R (Wickham, 2016). Johnson–Neyman
analyses to explore the regions of significance for the age
moderations were conducted by using the jtools package in
R (Long, 2018). For all analyses, age was used as continuous
variable. Life-goal predictors, age, and outcomes were grand
mean centred. Missing values were handled with the maxi-
mum likelihood estimation approach.
For the hypotheses on goal content (Hypotheses 1a and
1b), we applied multilevel regression analyses in two sepa-
rate models. In the first model, the dependent variable was
goal importance; in the second model, the dependent variable
was goal attainability. In both models, the predictor was age
(continuous linear effects and squared effects). Results repre-
sent effects at Time 1.
3
For the hypotheses on goal dynamics (Hypotheses 2a and
2b), we applied multilevel regression analyses in two sepa-
rate models for goal importance and goal attainability. In
the first model, we tested the stability of the variable of inter-
est (i.e. earlier goal importance on later goal importance as
well as earlier goal attainability on later goal attainability).
2
Please note that we additionally sought to address Hypotheses 2 and 3 with
a latent-variable approach by making use of moderated multilevel structural
equation modelling (MSEM) with the lavaan package in R (Rosseel, 2012).
However, we were not able to run these models because the lavaan package
so far does not allow one to include an interaction term between a manifest
variable (i.e. age) and a latent variable (e.g. goal importance). Thus, we ap-
plied MSEM without age moderation for our test of Hypotheses 2 and 3
(which, consequently, meant that we were not able to test age moderations).
Figures S1 and S2 depict the model structure that was tested for these hy-
potheses. Goodness-of-fit indices of various models were examined with
the fit indices of the comparative fit index and the RMSEA. The model is
considered to fit the data well if comparative fit index is above 0.95 and
RMSEA is below 0.08 (Schermelleh-Engel, Moosbrugger, & Müller,
2003). The resulting goodness-of-fit indices of all models tested are shown
in Table S3. As evident from this table, the results revealed unsatisfactory
fit indices. To improve the model fits, we sought to set loadings equal (e.g.
Item 1 of health-goal importance at Time 1 and Item 1 of health-goal impor-
tance at Time 2). To that aim, we calculated the respective measurement in-
variance for all models. These results are presented in Tables S4 and S5. As
shown in these tables, configural, metric, and scalar invariance suggested in-
variance across measurement occasions (except for metric invariance of so-
cial-relation goal attainability and work-goal attainability), suggesting
setting loadings equal. However, we again ran into problems of unacceptable
model fit indices (Tables S4 and S5), which kept us from setting loadings
equal in the MSEMs. Given these caveats regarding (i) statistical package
constraints, (ii) model specification, and (iii) unacceptable model fits, we
did not test our hypotheses with an MSEM approach. Hence, the results
shown in this manuscript are based on analyses employing manifest
variables.
3
To ascertain the robustness of our findings, we tested the same hypotheses
by making use of Time 2 data (N= 637). Replication analyses are presented
in Table S6. For linear age effects, the results revealed that linear age effects
on goal importance and goal attainability were replicated (except for a non-
significant linear age effect on health-goal importance). For squared age ef-
fects, the findings replicated the positive age effect on the attainability of
prosocial-engagement goals. None of the other squared effects were signifi-
cantly replicated (all ps>.05).
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

In the second model, we regressed goal importance at Time 1
on goal attainability at Time 2, and vice versa, controlling for
the 2-year stability of the later variable. In both models, we
included the interaction effect of goal importance and age
as well as the interaction effect of goal attainability and age
in the model.
For the hypotheses on goal outcomes (Hypotheses 3a, 3b,
and 3c), we conducted multilevel regression analyses for
each outcome variable in separate models. The dependent
variables were life satisfaction, positive affect, negative af-
fect, and domain-specific satisfaction (i.e. work, education,
health, family, relationship, and friendship satisfaction). We
calculated models for outcomes at Time 2 and Time 3, con-
trolling for the stability of the outcome. In each model, the
predictors were goal importance at Time 1, goal attainability
at Time 1, the interaction between goal importance and age,
and the interaction between goal attainability and age.
4
We are aware of the problems associated with multiple
testing and note that the present study includes a consider-
able number of analyses. However, rather than lowering the
plevel and narrowing the confidence interval (CI), we have
decided to report all analyses at the conventional plevel of
5% and at a CI of 95% and to interpret those results that
show a consistent and robust pattern (Perneger, 1998).
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics and preliminary analyses
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of goal im-
portance, goal attainability, and well-being at Time 1, as well
as their intercorrelations. As evident from this table, with one
exception, all goal domains were intercorrelated with each
other in both their importance and their attainability. The ex-
ception was status goals, which showed fewer correlations
for both importance and attainability. The table also reveals
that most goal domains were positively related to indicators
of subjective well-being with the exception of status goals
and work goals, for which fewer correlations were observed.
Means and standard deviations of goal importance and goal
attainability at Time 2 as well as means and standard devia-
tions of well-being at Time 2 and Time 3 are provided in Ta-
ble S7.
Content of goals: Age effects on goal importance and goal
attainability
Linear and squared age effects on goal importance and goal
attainability are presented in Table 2. Age exhibited signifi-
cant effects on goal importance in all life-goal domains:
Age had a negative linear effect on importance of personal-
growth, social-relation, status, and work goals, whereas it
had a positive linear effect on importance of health and
prosocial-engagement goals. Further, age had a positive
squared effect on status goals, while it exhibited a negative
squared effect on work goals. No other significant squared
effects were observed (all ps>.05). Figure 1 illustrates the
linear and squared age effects on goal importance. Except
for the negative age effect on social-relation goals, the pres-
ent results support Hypothesis 1a.
For goal attainability, age exhibited fewer effects: Age
had a negative linear effect on the attainability of personal-
growth, status, and work goals and a positive effect on the at-
tainability of prosocial-engagement goals. Further, age ex-
hibited a negative squared effect on personal-growth,
prosocial-engagement, status, and work goals. Neither linear
nor squared age effects were observed for attainability of
social-relation and health goals. Figure 2 illustrates the linear
and squared effects that age exhibited on goal attainability.
Except for the nonsignificant effect on health goals, these
findings support Hypothesis 1b.
Goal dynamics: Association between goal importance
and goal attainability over time
Next, we tested the reciprocal association between goal im-
portance and goal attainability over a time span of 2 years,
which is shown in Table 3. Goal importance and goal attain-
ability were fairly stable in all life-goal domains across the
two measurement occasions. In addition, goal importance
and goal attainability predicted each other significantly over
time: Earlier goal attainability positively predicted later goal
importance in the life-goal domains of health, personal
growth, and social relations. For the inverse direction—ear-
lier goal importance on later goal attainability—all associa-
tions were significant in a positive direction.
Age moderations. We observed two significant age
moderations, both within the status-goal category. First, age
moderated the link between earlier status-goal importance
and later status-goal importance (b= 0.003, p= .02, 95%
CI [0.001, 0.005]). The Johnson–Neyman analysis
(Johnson & Fay, 1950) to obtain areas of significance
revealed that it was within participants’entire age range
that slopes of status-goal importance were significant (at
p= .05). The magnitude of these slopes, however, was
slightly stronger with higher age, that is, when age was
4
Although not in the scope of the present investigation, one might assume
interaction effects between goal importance and goal attainability in the pre-
diction of later subjective well-being. We see this particularly likely because
important goals, for which no substitute is available, may persist in binding
attention (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002). This attention to blocked
goals, in turn, likely causes rumination and may thus be negatively linked
to well-being. Hence, one could expect (i) goals to be positively linked to
well-being if they are both important and attainable, (ii) goals to be nega-
tively linked to well-being if important goals are not attainable or if attain-
able goals are not important, and (iii) goals to be unrelated to well-being if
they are neither important nor attainable. To test these assumptions, we in-
cluded the interaction effects between goal importance and goal attainability
in all models that predicted subjective well-being (i.e. for life satisfaction,
positive affect, negative affect, work satisfaction, educational satisfaction,
family satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, friendship satisfaction, and
health satisfaction). From all investigated models (54 models for well-being
at Time 2 and 54 models for well-being at Time 3), we found six significant
effects. More specifically, interaction effects between goal importance and
goal attainability were found in the prediction of status goals on positive af-
fect at Time 2 (b= 0.13, p= .03, 95% CI [0.002, 0.25]), of social-relation
goals on work satisfaction at Time 3 (b=1.84, p= .03, 95% CI [3.59,
0.36]), of status goals on work satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.67,
p= .04, 95% CI [1.37, 0.05]), of personal-growth goals on health satis-
faction at Time 3 (b= 1.46, p= .006, 95% CI [0.38, 2.52]), of social-relation
goals on family satisfaction at Time 3 (b=1.21, p= .02, 95% CI [2.24,
0.13]), and of health goals on family satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.77,
p= .04, 95% CI [1.58, 0.04]).
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

1SD above the sample mean (66.63 years; b= 0.80,
p<.001, 95% CI [0.72, 0.88]), compared with when age
reflected the sample mean (44.75 years; b= 0.74, p<.001,
95% CI [0.69, 0.79]) or was 1 SD below the sample mean
(22.88 years; b= 0.68, p<.001, 95% CI [0.61, 0.75]).
5
Second, age moderated the link between earlier status-
goal importance and later status-goal attainability
(b= 0.006, p= .01, 95% CI [0.001, 0.01]). We found that
among participants older than 29.33 years, higher importance
of status goals predicted higher attainability of status goals;
this effect was more pronounced the older participants were.
These results mainly support Hypothesis 2, arguing for a
positive association between goal importance and goal at-
tainability over an interval of 2 years. This association was
more pronounced for the predictive effects of earlier goal im-
portance on later goal attainability (than vice versa) and was
largely independent of age.
Goal outcomes: Goal importance and goal attainability as
predictors of subjective well-being
Addressing the predictive validity of goal importance and
goal attainability on subjective well-being, we tested predic-
tive effects on later subjective well-being (i.e. life
satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and domain-
specific satisfaction) after intervals of 2 and 4 years. Here,
we provide tables for the prediction of well-being at Time
2, while tables for the prediction of well-being at Time 3
are shown in Tables S8, S9, and S10.
Life satisfaction
The first section of Table 4 shows the predictive effects of
goal importance and goal attainability on life satisfaction at
Time 2, controlling for life satisfaction at Time 1. While no
main effect was observed of earlier goal importance on later
life satisfaction, earlier goal attainability showed significant
predictive validity: Attainability of health, personal-growth,
prosocial-engagement, and social-relation goals was posi-
tively associated with life satisfaction at Time 2. For life sat-
isfaction at Time 3, earlier attainability of personal-growth
goals (b= 0.24, p<.001, 95% CI [0.12, 0.36]) and social-
relation goals (b= 0.20, p= .001, 95% CI [0.08, 0.31])
remained a significant positive predictor, while attainability
of health and prosocial-engagement goals was no longer sig-
nificantly predictive (Table S8).
Age moderations. We observed one significant age
moderation for the association between earlier goal
importance/goal attainability and later life satisfaction: Age
moderated the link between earlier work-goal importance
and life satisfaction at Time 2 (b=0.004, p= .04, 95%
CI [0.008, 0.001]). We found that among participants
younger than 21.85 years, higher importance of work goals
5
Please note that the overall sample mean indicated in the Abstract and
Method section (M= 43.00 years) is slightly higher than the sample mean
for testing Hypothesis 2 indicated here. This is due to the lower sample size
for testing Hypothesis 2 (N= 637) compared with the overall sample size
(N= 973) referred to in the Abstract and the description of the methods.
Table 1. Means and standard deviations of goal importance, goal attainability, and subjective well-being at Time 1 and their intercorrelations
Variable MSD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Goal importance
1 Health 3.63 0.40
2 Personal growth 3.51 0.39 .28
3 Prosocial engagement 3.11 0.49 .25 .34
4 Social relations 3.71 0.35 .36 .33 .33
5 Status 2.11 0.51 .17 .17 .03 .17
6 Work 3.33 0.57 .17 .27 .06 .27 .40
Goal attainability
7 Health 3.00 0.50 .38 .12 .10 .13 .16 .17
8 Personal growth 3.18 0.42 .14 .44 .18 .18 .05 .20 .38
9 Prosocial engagement 2.89 0.46 .14 .20 .60 .26 .04 .07 .34 .44
10 Social relations 3.33 0.44 .24 .19 .27 .55 .08 .16 .36 .44 .43
11 Status 2.38 0.63 .07 .03 .00 .11 .29 .19 .21 .26 .30 .23
12 Work 3.03 0.58 .10 .17 .10 .12 .18 .61 .29 .43 .31 .35 .42
Subjective well-being
13 Life satisfaction 3.94 0.69 .15 .12 .14 .20 .04 .09 .29 .39 .25 .41 .14 .29
14 Positive affect 3.62 0.55 .19 .27 .17 .16 .13 .25 .32 .46 .31 .33 .24 .34 .41
15 Negative affect 1.75 0.57 .05 .02 .05 .01 .26 .09 .13 .25 .16 .18 .03 .13 .43 .17
16 Work satisfaction 7.29 2.11 .12 .09 .11 .11 .03 .22 .19 .21 .21 .20 .15 .37 .38 .33 .23
17 Education satisfaction 7.37 2.05 .04 .08 .06 .09 .05 .16 .09 .23 .15 .18 .11 .28 .33 .26 .18 .53
18 Health satisfaction 7.50 2.15 .11 .08 .02 .06 .05 .17 .42 .19 .10 .18 .08 .15 .28 .28 .15 .18 .12
19 Family satisfaction 7.96 2.03 .14 .07 .13 .26 .02 .03 .10 .19 .15 .41 .06 .08 .44 .24 .22 .26 .18 .19
20 Friendship satisfaction 8.10 1.92 .08 .04 .14 .22 .01 .03 .18 .20 .19 .36 .11 .12 .40 .23 .22 .26 .17 .18 .35
21 Relationship satisfaction 8.23 2.02 .09 .04 .06 .31 .04 .08 .09 .18 .11 .51 .08 .14 .32 .10 .16 .09 .18 .18 .47 .31
Note:N= 973. Correlation coefficients in bold are significant (p<.05). Life-goal domains were as follows: health goals, personal-growth goals, prosocial-en-
gagement goals (community and generativity goals), social-relation goals (family and relationship goals), status goals, and work goals. Goal importance and goal
attainability were assessed on a 4-point Likert scale (from 1 to 4); life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale
(from 1 to 5); and domain-specific satisfaction was assessed on an 11-point Likert scale (from 0 to 10).
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

predicted higher life satisfaction and that this effect was more
pronounced the younger participants were.
Positive affect
As shown in the second section of Table 4, positive affect at
Time 2 was negatively predicted by earlier importance of
personal-growth goals and social-relation goals, while it
was positively predicted by attainability of all life-goal do-
mains. For positive affect at Time 3, importance of
prosocial-engagement goals (b= 0.10, p= .03, 95% CI
[0.01, 0.21]) as well as attainability of personal-growth goals
(b= 0.12, p= .03, 95% CI [0.02, 0.23]) and social-relation
goals (b= 0.14, p= .01, 95% CI [0.02, 0.24]) were signifi-
cant positive predictors (Table S8).
Age moderations. We observed five significant age
moderations for the association between earlier goal
importance/goal attainability and later positive affect. First,
age moderated the link between the importance of personal-
growth goals and positive affect at Time 2 (b= 0.005,
p= .02, 95% CI [0.001, 0.01]). It was among participants
younger than 49.19 years that higher importance of
personal-growth goals predicted lower positive affect and
Figure 1. Effects of age on goal importance in six life-goal domains. Areas in light blue display the 95% confidence intervals. For Models A, B, C, and D, linear
effects fit the data sufficiently, while for Models E and F, the combined model of linear and squared effects fit the data better. [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Table 2. Linear and squared effects of age on goal importance and goal attainability at Time 1
Variable
Linear effects Squared effects
bSE 95% CI pbSE95% CI p
Goal importance
Health 0.02 0.006 [0.01, 0.03] .003 0.003 0.003 [0.003, 0.008] .32
Personal growth 0.02 0.005 [0.03, 0.01] <.001 0.002 0.003 [0.007, 0.004] .59
Prosocial engagement 0.04 0.007 [0.02, 0.05] <.001 0.001 0.003 [0.009, 0.006] .69
Social relations 0.03 0.005 [0.03, 0.02] <.001 0.002 0.003 [0.007, 0.002] .47
Status 0.07 0.006 [0.09, 0.06] <.001 0.01 0.003 [0.003, 0.018] .004
Work 0.11 0.008 [0.12, 0.09] <.001 0.001 0.004 [0.02, 0.002] .02
Goal attainability
Health 0.01 0.007 [0.02, 0.01] .29 0.00001 0.003 [0.007, 0.008] .97
Personal growth 0.02 0.001 [0.03, 0.01] .003 0.008 0.003 [0.01, 0.002] .01
Prosocial engagement 0.02 0.006 [0.01, 0.04] <.001 0.01 0.003 [0.02, 0.01] <.001
Social relations 0.01 0.006 [0.02, 0.01] .08 0.004 0.003 [0.01, 0.002] .19
Status 0.05 0.008 [0.06, 0.02] <.001 0.02 0.004 [0.03, 0.01] <.001
Work 0.06 0.008 [0.07, 0.04] <.001 0.02 0.004 [0.02, 0.01] <.001
Note:N= 973. CI, confidence interval. Significant results (p<.05) are shown in bold. Age is scaled in decades. For goal importance, testing Model 1 (only linear
effects) against Model 2 (linear and squared effects), the combined model fit the data significantly better in the domains of status goals, χ
2
(1, 973) = 8.13,
p= .004, and work goals, χ
2
(1, 973) = 5.61, p= .02. For goal attainability, testing Model 1 (only linear effects) against Model 2 (linear and squared effects),
results revealed that Model 2 fit the data significantly better than did Model 1 in the domains of personal growth, χ
2
(1, 973) = 6.38, p= .01, prosocial engage-
ment, χ
2
(1, 973) = 15.76, p<.001, status, χ
2
(1, 973) = 9.93, p= .002, and work, χ
2
(1, 973) = 11.21, p<.001.
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

that this effect was more pronounced the younger
participants were.
Second, age moderated the link between the importance
of personal-growth goals and positive affect at Time 3
(b=0.007, p= .01, 95% CI [0.011, 0.002]; with a co-
efficient of the main effect of b= 0.06, refer to Table S8). We
observed that among participants younger than 33.21 years,
higher importance of personal-growth goals predicted higher
positive affect; this effect was more pronounced the younger
participants were. We also observed significant slopes among
participants older than 85.29 years: Higher importance of
personal-growth goals predicted lower positive affect; this
effect was more pronounced the older participants were.
Third, age moderated the link between the importance of
prosocial-engagement goals and positive affect at Time 3
(b=0.006, p= .005, 95% CI [0.01, 0.002]; with a co-
efficient of the main effect of b= 0.10, refer to Table S8). It
was among participants younger than 44.08 years that higher
importance of prosocial-engagement goals predicted higher
positive affect and that this effect was more pronounced the
younger participants were.
Fourth, age moderated the link between the attainability
of personal-growth goals and positive affect at Time 3
(b= 0.005, p= .03, 95% CI [0.001, 0.01]; with a coefficient
of the main effect of b= 0.12, refer to Table S8). We found
that among participants older than 40.91 years, higher attain-
ability of personal-growth goals predicted higher positive af-
fect; this effect was more pronounced the older participants
were.
Finally, age moderated the link between the attainability
of social-relation goals and positive affect at Time 3
(b=0.005, p= .01, 95% CI [0.01, 0.001]; with a coef-
ficient of the main effect of b= 0.14, refer to Table S8). It
was among participants younger than 48.67 years that higher
attainability of social-relation goals predicted higher positive
affect and that this effect was more pronounced the younger
participants were.
Negative affect
As shown in the third section of Table 4, negative affect at
Time 2 was positively predicted by earlier importance of
personal-growth goals and prosocial-engagement goals and
negatively predicted by earlier attainability of health,
personal-growth, prosocial-engagement, and social-relation
goals. For negative affect at Time 3, goal importance was
not predictive, but attainability of personal-growth goals
(b=0.09, p= .03, 95% CI [0.18, 0.01]) yielded a sig-
nificant negative effect (Table 8).
Age moderations. We observed one significant age
moderation for the association between earlier goal
importance/goal attainability and later negative affect: Age
moderated the link between the importance of status goals
and negative affect at Time 3 (b=0.004, p= .02, 95%
CI [0.007, 0.001]; with a coefficient of the main effect
of b=0.05, refer to Table S8). We observed that among
participants older than 62.70 years, higher importance of
status goals predicted lower negative affect; this effect was
more pronounced the older participants were.
Satisfaction with occupational domain
Tables 5 and 6 display the predictive effects of goal impor-
tance and goal attainability on domain-specific satisfaction
at Time 2. For the occupational domain at Time 2 (Table 5
), work satisfaction was not predicted by goal importance
in any goal domain, but work satisfaction was positively pre-
dicted by earlier attainability of personal-growth and work
goals. Educational satisfaction was also not predicted by goal
importance, but it was positively predicted by attainability of
status goals. For satisfaction with the occupational domain at
Figure 2. Effects of age on goal attainability in six life-goal domains. Areas in light blue display the 95% confidence intervals. For Models A and D, linear
effects fit the data sufficiently, while for Models B, C, E, and F, the combined model of linear and squared effects fit the data better. [Colour figure can be
viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Table 3. Multilevel regression analyses predicting goal importance and goal attainability at Time 2 (T2) from goal importance and goal attainability at Time 1 (T1)
Life-goal domain
Stability effects Attainability ↔Importance
Importance T1 →Importance T2 Attainability T1 →Attainability T2 Attainability T1 →Importance T2 Importance T1 →Attainability T2
bSE 95% CI pbSE95% CI pbSE95% CI pbSE95% CI p
Health 0.58 0.03 [0.52, 0.64] <.001 0.66 0.03 [0.59, 0.72] <.001 0.10 0.03 [0.04, 0.15] <.001 0.10 0.04 [0.02, 0.18] .02
Personal growth 0.61 0.03 [0.54, 0.68] <.001 0.52 0.04 [0.45, 0.59] <.001 0.11 0.04 [0.04, 0.18] .002 0.12 0.04 [0.04, 0.21] .005
Prosocial engagement 0.70 0.03 [0.65, 0.77] <.001 0.55 0.03 [0.48, 0.62] <.001 0.01 0.04 [0.08, 0.07] .92 0.13 0.04 [0.05, 0.21] .001
Social relations 0.75 0.04 [0.67, 0.82] <.001 0.70 0.03 [0.64, 0.76] <.001 0.08 0.03 [0.02, 0.15] .01 0.10 0.05 [0.02, 0.21] .02
Status 0.73 0.03 [0.68, 0.79] <.001 0.48 0.04 [0.40, 0.55] <.001 0.02 0.02 [0.03, 0.05] .41 0.18 0.05 [0.08, 0.28] <.001
Work 0.55 0.05 [0.46, 0.63] <.001 0.57 0.04 [0.49, 0.66] <.001 0.08 0.05 [0.01, 0.18] .10 0.19 0.05 [0.09, 0.29] <.001
Note:N= 637. CI, confidence interval. Significant results (p<.05) are presented in bold. In each model, predictors were goal importance and/or goal attainability, age, and interaction effects with age. In predicting later goal
importance or goal attainability, we controlled for the stability of the respective outcome measure. For stability effects of goal importance, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .34, R
2
personal growth
=
.36, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .48, R
2
social relations
= .44, R
2
status
= .59, and R
2
work
= .33. For stability effects of goal attainability, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .28, R
2
personal growth
= .36, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .32, R
2
social relations
= .48, R
2
status
= .23, and R
2
work
= .29. For the predictive effect of earlier goal attainability on later goal importance, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .36, R
2
personal growth
= .37, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .48, R
2
social relations
= .45, R
2
status
= .59, and R
2
work
= .33. For the predictive effect of earlier goal importance on later goal attainability, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .43, R
2
personal growth
= .29, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .33, R
2
social relations
= .48, R
2
status
= .25, and R
2
work
= .31.
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Time 3, goal importance was again not predictive, but attain-
ability of health goals (b= 0.82, p<.001, 95% CI [0.43,
1.24]) and attainability of personal-growth goals (b= 0.60,
p= .02, 95% CI [0.04, 1.14]) were significant positive pre-
dictors of later work satisfaction (Table S9). Attainability
of these two goal domains was also positively predictive of
educational satisfaction at Time 3 (health goals: b= 0.94,
p= .002, 95% CI [0.34, 1.53]; and personal-growth goals:
b= 0.80, p= .04, 95% CI [0.05, 1.64]).
Age moderations. Testing moderating effects of age for the
association between earlier goal importance/goal attainability
and later occupational satisfaction (i.e. work satisfaction and
educational satisfaction), we found no significant effect (all
ps>.05).
Satisfaction with the health domain
For the health domain at Time 2 (Table 5), health satisfaction
was negatively predicted by importance of personal-growth
goals and positively predicted by attainability of health,
personal-growth, and social-relation goals. For health satis-
faction at Time 3, attainability of health goals remained a sig-
nificant predictor (b= 0.88, p<.001, 95% CI [0.49, 1.25]),
while the other effects were no longer significant (Table S9).
Age moderations. Two significant age moderations
emerged for the association between earlier goal
importance/goal attainability and later satisfaction in the
health domain. First, age moderated the link between
prosocial-engagement goal importance and health
satisfaction at Time 2 (b= 0.02, p= .02, 95% CI [0.004,
0.04]). It was among participants older than 84.15 years
that higher importance of prosocial-engagement goals
predicted higher health satisfaction and that this effect was
more pronounced the older participants were.
Second, age moderated the association between health-goal
attainability and health satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.02,
p= .004, 95% CI [0.008, 0.04]; with a coefficient of the main
effect of b= 0.88, refer to Table S9). We observed that among
participants older than 27.52 years, higher attainability of
health goals predicted higher health satisfaction; this effect
was more pronounced the older participants were.
Satisfaction with social domain
For satisfaction with the social domain at Time 2 (Table 6),
we found no main effects of goal importance on satisfaction
in any social domain (i.e. satisfaction with family life, roman-
tic relationship, and friendships), but we observed significant
age moderations, signifying that goal importance predicted
satisfaction with the social domain in specific age ranges (re-
fer to the next section on age moderations for more details).
Goal attainability was predictive for satisfaction in all
three social domains: First, for satisfaction with family life,
attainability of social-relation goals was a significant positive
predictor; second, for satisfaction with the romantic relation-
ship, attainability of personal-growth goals and attainability
of social-relation goals were positive significant predictors;
third, for satisfaction with friendships, attainability of
personal-growth goals and attainability of social-relation
goals were positively predictive. It was also for the social do-
main at Time 3 that goal importance was not a strong predic-
tor of later satisfaction (except for a positive link between
importance of prosocial-engagement goals and relationship
satisfaction; b= 0.50, p= .02, 95% CI [0.02, 0.94]). Goal at-
tainability was no longer predictive of family and relation-
ship satisfaction; but attainability of prosocial-engagement
goals (b= 0.40, p= .03, 95% CI [0.07, 0.73]), attainability
of social-relation goals (b= 0.42, p= .03, 95% CI [0.27,
0.78]), and attainability of work goals (b= 0.34, p= .04,
95% CI [0.02, 0.64]) were significant positive predictors of
later friendship satisfaction (Table S10).
Age moderations. We observed several significant age
moderations for the association between earlier goal
importance/goal attainability and later satisfaction in the
Table 4. Multilevel regression analyses predicting subjective well-being at Time 2 from goal importance and goal attainability at Time 1
Variable
Life satisfaction Positive affect Negative affect
bSE 95% CI pbSE95% CI pbSE95% CI p
Goal importance
Health 0.10 0.05 [0.21, 0.01] .06 0.01 0.05 [0.09, 0.10] .78 0.03 0.04 [0.07, 0.12] .57
Personal growth 0.09 0.06 [0.20, 0.03] .12 0.13 0.05 [0.23, 0.03] .01 0.15 0.05 [0.05, 0.25] .001
Prosocial engagement 0.09 0.05 [0.20, 0.02] .08 0.07 0.05 [0.15, 0.03] .17 0.09 0.04 [0.01, 0.18] .04
Social relations 0.09 0.07 [0.23, 0.05] .21 0.14 0.06 [0.27, 0.01] .03 0.10 0.06 [0.01, 0.21] .11
Status 0.02 0.04 [0.06, 0.10] .64 0.03 0.04 [0.11, 0.05] .42 0.04 0.04 [0.03, 0.11] .28
Work 0.06 0.05 [0.03, 0.15] .24 0.01 0.04 [0.06, 0.19] .79 0.01 0.04 [0.07, 0.10] .78
Goal attainability
Health 0.15 0.05 [0.07, 0.24] .001 0.11 0.04 [0.03, 0.19] .01 0.11 0.04 [0.19, 0.04] .002
Personal growth 0.18 0.06 [0.05, 0.28] .002 0.18 0.05 [0.07, 0.27] <.001 0.19 0.04 [0.28, 0.10] <.001
Prosocial engagement 0.12 0.06 [0.01, 0.23] .04 0.14 0.05 [0.05, 0.24] .01 0.12 0.05 [0.22, 0.03] .01
Social relations 0.20 0.06 [0.07, 0.33] <.001 0.20 0.05 [0.09, 0.31] <.001 0.16 0.05 [0.25, 0.07] <.001
Work 0.06 0.05 [0.03, 0.15] .20 0.16 0.04 [0.07, 0.24] <.001 0.001 0.04 [0.08, 0.08] .97
Status 0.03 0.03 [0.05, 0.09] .41 0.08 0.03 [0.02, 0.14] .01 0.02 0.03 [0.07, 0.04] .53
Note:N= 637. CI, confidence interval. Significant results (p<.05) are presented in bold. In each model, predictors were goal importance, goal attainability, age,
and interaction effects with age. Results are controlled for the stability of the outcome measure. For life satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed
effects was R
2
= .51 for each model. For positive affect, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
= .48 for each model. For negative affect, ex-
plained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .44, R
2
personal growth
= .45, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .44, R
2
social relations
= .44, R
2
status
= .43, and R
2
work
= .43.
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

social domain. First, for family satisfaction, age moderated
the link between the attainability of personal-growth goals
and family satisfaction at Time 2 (b= 0.02, p= .02, 95%
CI [0.002, 0.03]). We found that among participants older
than 46.66 years, higher attainability of personal-growth
goals predicted higher family satisfaction and that this
effect was more pronounced the older participants were.
Age also moderated the link between work-goal
attainability and family satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.02,
p= .04, 95% CI [0.03, 0.001]). The Johnson–Neyman
analysis, however, indicated that slopes would be
significant outside the participants’observed age range.
Second, for romantic relationship satisfaction, age moder-
ated the link between the attainability of social-relation goals
and relationship satisfaction at Time 2 (b=0.03,p= .03,
95% CI [0.002, 0.05]). It was among participants older than
36.12 years that higher attainability of social-relation goals
predicted higher relationship satisfaction and that this effect
was more pronounced the older participants were. Age also
moderated the link between work-goal attainability and
relationship satisfaction at Time 2 (b=0.02,p= .04, 95% CI
[0.005, 0.04]). We found that among participants older than
42.18 years, higher attainability of work goals predicted higher
relationship satisfaction and that this effect was more
pronounced the older participants were. In addition, age mod-
erated the link between health-goal attainability and relation-
ship satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.03, p= .01, 95% CI
[0.04, 0.005]; with a coefficient of the main effect of
b= 0.09, refer to Table S10). We observed that among partic-
ipants younger than 38.44 years, higher attainability of health
goals predicted higher relationship satisfaction and that this
effect was more pronounced the younger participants were.
Finally, for friendship satisfaction, age moderated the
link between earlier growth-goal attainability and friendship
satisfaction at Time 2 (b= 0.02, p= .02, 95% CI [0.003,
0.04]). It was among participants older than 36.60 years that
higher attainability of personal-growth goals predicted higher
friendship satisfaction and that this effect was more pro-
nounced the older participants were. Furthermore, age mod-
erated the link between prosocial-engagement goal
attainability and friendship satisfaction at Time 2 (b= 0.02,
p= .03, 95% CI [0.002, 0.03]). We observed that among par-
ticipants older than 78.49 years, higher attainability of
prosocial-engagement goals predicted higher friendship sat-
isfaction; this effect was more pronounced the older partici-
pants were.
6
Age also moderated the link between work-
goal attainability and friendship satisfaction at Time 2
(b= 0.02, p= .01, 95% CI [0.005, 0.03]). We found that
among participants older than 52.93 years, higher attainabil-
ity of work goals predicted higher friendship satisfaction and
that this effect was more pronounced the older participants
were. Finally, age moderated the link between work-goal at-
tainability and friendship satisfaction at Time 3 (b=0.02,
p= .01, 95% CI [0.03, 0.005]; with a coefficient of the
main effect of b= 0.34, refer to Table S10). We found that
among participants younger than 44.14 years, higher attain-
ability of work goals predicted higher friendship satisfaction;
this effect was more pronounced the younger participants
were.
Overall, the present results mainly support Hypothesis 3,
revealing (i) a positive link between earlier intrinsic life goals
—particularly their attainability—and later subjective well-
6
Please note that one might think that the slope should be negative here
(given the negative bprovided in Table 6 for the association between attain-
ability of prosocial-engagement goals and friendship satisfaction at Time 2;
b=0.03). However, when calculating the slope for the significant age
range (i.e. for participants older than 78.49 years), we found the slope to
be positive.
Table 5. Multilevel regression analyses predicting domain-specific satisfaction (work satisfaction, educational satisfaction, and health
satisfaction) at Time 2 from goal importance and goal attainability at Time 1
Variable
Work satisfaction Educational satisfaction Health satisfaction
bSE 95% CI pbSE95% CI pbSE 95% CI p
Goal importance
Health 0.10 0.34 [0.80, 0.59] .77 0.01 0.28 [0.54, 0.49] .98 0.11 0.21 [0.50, 0.32] .59
Personal growth 0.68 0.38 [1.43, 0.08] .08 0.32 0.31 [0.94, 0.31] .29 0.46 0.23 [0.93, 0.03] .04
Prosocial engagement 0.20 0.33 [0.92, 0.51] .54 0.32 0.27 [0.87, 0.24] .25 0.07 0.20 [0.48, 0.30] .72
Social relations 0.02 0.46 [0.79, 1.03] .96 0.20 0.38 [0.55, 0.97] .59 0.24 0.27 [0.75, 0.35] .38
Status 0.17 0.28 [0.46, 0.75] .55 0.34 0.24 [0.78, 0.11] .15 0.02 0.17 [0.40, 0.31] .89
Work 0.05 0.33 [0.70, 0.50] .87 0.01 0.28 [0.56, 0.55] .97 0.05 0.19 [0.31, 0.38] .79
Goal attainability
Health 0.46 0.29 [0.17, 1.02] .13 0.32 0.24 [0.12, 0.79] .19 0.49 0.18 [0.11, 0.81] .01
Personal growth 0.87 0.35 [0.18, 1.59] .01 0.26 0.28 [0.26, 0.83] .36 0.40 0.20 [0.01, 0.84] .04
Prosocial engagement 0.46 0.36 [0.27, 1.19] .21 0.12 0.29 [0.42, 0.73] .69 0.35 0.35 [0.11, 0.75] .11
Social relations 0.32 0.38 [0.44, 1.04] .40 0.08 0.30 [0.51, 0.72] .78 0.59 0.21 [0.13, 1.05] .01
Status 0.01 0.20 [0.43, 0.35] .96 0.35 0.16 [0.01, 0.64] .03 0.18 0.13 [0.06, 0.42] .16
Work 0.91 0.31 [0.24, 1.55] .004 0.46 0.28 [0.11, 0.96] .08 0.21 0.18 [0.19, 0.58] .26
Note:N
work
= 294; N
education
= 331; N
health
= 624. CI, confidence interval. Significant results (p<.05) are presented in bold. In each model, predictors were goal
importance, goal attainability, age, and interaction effects with age. Results are controlled for the stability of the outcome measure. For work satisfaction, ex-
plained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .21, R
2
personal growth
= .22, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .20, R
2
social relations
= .21, R
2
status
= .20, and R
2
work
= .24.
For educational satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .15, R
2
personal growth
= .15, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .15, R
2
social relations
= .16,
R
2
status
= .17, and R
2
work
= .16. For health satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .36, R
2
personal growth
= .35, R
2
prosocial engage-
ment
= .36, R
2
social relations
= .36, R
2
status
= .35, and R
2
work
= .36.
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Table 6. Multilevel regression analyses predicting domain-specific satisfaction (family satisfaction, romantic relationship satisfaction, and friendship satisfaction) at Time 2 from goal importance and
goal attainability at Time 1
Variable
Family satisfaction Romantic relationship satisfaction Friendship satisfaction
bSE 95% CI pbSE95% CI pbSE95% CI p
Goal importance
Health 0.07 0.18 [0.42, 0.28] .69 0.13 0.23 [0.28, 0.62] .58 0.18 0.18 [0.19, 0.57] .32
Personal growth 0.24 0.19 [0.64, 0.14] .20 0.17 0.25 [0.49, 0.28] .49 0.27 0.19 [0.68, 0.11] .16
Prosocial engagement 0.11 0.17 [0.23, 0.44] .50 0.13 0.23 [0.32, 0.59] .59 0.05 0.78 [0.28, 0.39] .17
Social relations 0.06 0.23 [0.40, 0.55] .80 0.25 0.32 [0.35, 0.85] .44 0.07 0.24 [0.38, 0.49] .76
Status 0.11 0.14 [0.40, 0.18] .45 0.07 0.19 [0.49, 0.32] .73 0.19 0.15 [0.49, 0.10] .20
Work 0.12 0.16 [0.17, 0.45] .46 0.20 0.23 [0.64, 0.25] .39 0.20 0.16 [0.53, 0.15] .22
Goal attainability
Health 0.16 0.14 [0.11, 0.45] .25 0.17 0.20 [0.21, 0.57] .41 0.06 0.15 [0.25, 0.34] .66
Personal growth 0.27 0.17 [0.09, 0.61] .12 0.91 0.23 [0.32, 0.23] <.001 0.48 0.18 [0.08, 0.83] .01
Prosocial engagement 0.21 0.21 [0.15, 0.61] .25 0.25 0.24 [0.27, 0.71] .29 0.03 0.19 [0.39, 0.34] .86
Social relations 0.73 0.73 [0.37, 1.09] <.001 0.81 0.28 [0.24, 1.35] .004 0.49 0.19 [0.16, 0.84] .01
Status 0.02 0.11 [0.23, 0.18] .82 0.04 0.15 [0.33, 0.23] .77 0.03 0.11 [0.22, 0.24] .79
Work 0.02 0.16 [0.32, 0.27] .91 0.41 0.21 [0.01, 0.82] .06 0.09 0.16 [0.21, 0.40] .58
Note:N
family
= 615; N
romantic relationship
=418;N
friendship
= 622. CI, confidence interval. Significant results (p<.05) are presented in bold. In each model, predictors were goal importance, goal attainability, age, and interaction
effects with age. Results are controlled for the stability of the outcome measure. For family satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .35, R
2
personal growth
= .35, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .35, R
2
social
relations
= .37, R
2
status
= .34, and R
2
work
= .34. For relationship satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .31, R
2
personal growth
= .35, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .28, R
2
social relations
= .31, R
2
status
= .28, and
R
2
work
= .30. For friendship satisfaction, explained variance associated with fixed effects was R
2
health
= .29, R
2
personal growth
= .35, R
2
prosocial engagement
= .28, R
2
social relations
= .29, R
2
status
= .28, and R
2
work
= .28.
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

being; (ii) a thematic predictive validity for domain-specific
satisfaction; and that (iii) moderations with age occurred
mainly with regard to goal attainability, rather than goal im-
portance. Overall, we found the following pattern for age
moderations: When cut-offs for significant slopes were
within the age group of young adults, we observed that
slopes were more pronounced the younger participants were.
When cut-offs for significant slopes were within the age
group of older adults, conversely, we found this association
to be more pronounced the older participants were. For cut-
offs within the age group of middle-aged adults, we did not
find a clear picture: While some associations were more pro-
nounced the older participants were (e.g. the link between
health-goal attainability and health satisfaction at Time 3);
other associations were more pronounced the younger partic-
ipants were (e.g. the link between social-relation goal attain-
ability and positive affect at Time 3).
DISCUSSION
The purpose of the present study was to position life goals—
as a motivational aspect of personality—in the context of
adult development. We approached this aim through three
complementary research avenues. First, we examined the
content of what people across adulthood rate as important
and perceive as attainable. Second, we analysed the recipro-
cal dynamics between goal importance and goal attainability
over 2 years. Third, we studied the predictive power of goal
importance and goal attainability on later subjective well-
being (i.e. life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect,
and domain-specific satisfaction). Briefly, we found that (i)
life goals mapped fairly well onto developmental tasks en-
countered in the respective life stage; (ii) goal importance
and goal attainability were reciprocally linked to each other
across age with goal importance exhibiting a stronger and
more robust effect on goal attainability than vice versa; (iii)
goal attainability, compared with goal importance, had a
more pronounced effect on later subjective well-being, which
was a largely age-independent effect
7
; and (iv) associations
between life goals and domain-specific satisfaction reflected
thematic links: Satisfaction was higher in the domains in
which individuals thought that they could achieve their
goals.
Content of goals: Age differences in goal importance and
goal attainability
Baltes (1987) differentiated between three factors that may
have an influence on goal content: Nonnormative factors,
normative history-graded factors, and normative age-graded
factors. Focusing on the latter of these aspects, and in line
with Hypothesis 1a, the present findings revealed that age
predicted which goals people rate as important: With higher
age, participants rated goals of personal growth, status, and
work as less important, while they rated goals of health and
prosocial engagement as more important. Participants also
rated social-relation goals as less important with higher age,
which was not in line with our hypothesis and will be
discussed later. With regard to goal attainability and in line
with Hypothesis 1b, participants perceived goals of personal
growth, status, and work as less attainable later in life, while
they valued goals of prosocial engagement as more attain-
able. No significant effects were found for the predicted ef-
fects on health-goal attainability, and no effects were found
for the attainability of social-relation goals, indicating that
people of all ages perceived their health goals and their
social-relation goals as equally attainable.
Our findings correspond to the findings of Nurmi’s
(1992) study of three age groups that was conducted 25 years
ago in Finland: Goals reflect what is possible and normative
for people of different ages given their physical, cognitive,
and social resources. Goals also reflect what is desirable for
people of different ages, underscoring the role of age-related
norms that make certain life tasks salient. Hence, the present
results underline the integral part that age plays in the life
goals that people value as important and perceive as attain-
able, situating the present findings in the context of
developmental-task theory and supporting the concept of
the postulated social-biological, age-based tasks (Hutteman
et al., 2014). Our findings also highlight the concept of a so-
cial clock (Heckhausen, 1999; Neugarten, 1972), which
means that norms and demands provide a temporal and con-
textual setting on which to orient one’s goal pursuit in each
life stage (Freund & Baltes, 2005). Overall, we maintain that
the development over the adult lifespan is not a passive pro-
cess but an active and dynamic interaction between the per-
son and the norms, constraints, and tasks imposed by an
age-graded environment (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Stau-
dinger, 1998).
Prosocial-engagement, health, and social-relation goals
across adulthood
While the findings for the domains of personal-growth, work,
and status goals align with our predictions, the results for the
domains of prosocial-engagement, health, and social-relation
goals need some further discussion.
First, for the domain of prosocial engagement, the results
showed differential age effects for goal importance and goal
attainability, which was against our prediction: For the im-
portance of prosocial-engagement goals, we found linear
age effects, indicating that prosocial-engagement goals were
rated as more important with higher age. In other words,
prosocial-engagement goals represent an important psycho-
logical life theme, which enters the repertoire of people’s
motivational strivings and remains present into late adult-
hood, a finding that corresponds to previous findings on the
role of generativity in older age (McAdams, St, Aubin, & Lo-
gan, 1993). For the attainability of prosocial-engagement
goals, however, we found a combination of linear and
squared effects to most accurately fit the data. That is, the at-
tainability of prosocial-engagement goals increases
7
Age moderations emerged in approximately 8% of the cases: For Hypothe-
sis 2, we tested 24 moderation effects and found two effects to be significant
(8.33%). For Hypothesis 3, we tested 216 moderation effects and found 19
effects to be significant (8.79%).
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

throughout young adulthood, peaks in middle adulthood, and
declines toward late adulthood.
Reasons for why middle-aged people are considered to be
at the peak of their subjectively perceived influence on soci-
ety (Erikson, 1968; Havighurst, 1972) may be manifold. It is
reasonable to assume that although older people rate
prosocial-engagement goals as important and tend to aspire
to reach such goals, they perceive limited resources for
achieving these goals. Experiencing a discrepancy between
goal importance and goal attainability will likely lead to cop-
ing mechanisms (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002).
Hence, in the course of late adulthood, individuals disengage
from the active roles that they have occupied, such as worker
or parent of young children (Gall, Evans, & Howard, 1997),
and start to find new roles, such as grandparent or responsi-
ble civil community member (Nimrod & Shrira, 2016). Al-
though these roles might contribute to nourishing older
adults’strivings for prosocial engagement, older adults might
feel their likelihood of attaining their prosocial-engagement
goals is limited, which might explain the lower attainability
of prosocial-engagement goals in late adulthood. Middle-
aged adults, in contrast, might have more resources and pos-
sibilities to fulfil their prosocial-engagement goals, in their
community (e.g. through doing volunteer work), in their
family (e.g. through passing traditions on to their young chil-
dren), or, particularly, in their work environment (e.g.
through being a role model for the upcoming generation).
On the basis of the present results, we thus conclude that
prosocial engagement is a topic of increasing importance
throughout adulthood but that middle-aged adults are most
likely to perceive their prosocial-engagement goals as
attainable.
Second, it was in the life-goal domain of health that age
was positively linked to goal importance, whereas age was
not related to goal attainability. Within late adulthood, adults
are usually confronted with decreasing physical and mental
health and have to deal with the necessary adjustment to
these limitations (for an overview, see Kaiser, 2009). It is
in line with this reasoning that health goals were rated as
more important with higher age, assuming that with having
explicit health goals, older adults seek to maintain and/or im-
prove their functional capacities for as long as possible
(Ebner et al., 2006). Perceived attainability of health goals,
however, was unrelated to age. Although this finding is con-
trary to Hypothesis 1b, in which we expected positive age ef-
fects on health-goal attainability, the finding also implies that
adults of all ages perceive their health goals as equally attain-
able, a finding that highlights a potential protective factor for
late adulthood and may complement theories of successful
aging and sources of resilience in later life (Ryff, 1995; Ryff,
Singer, Love, & Essex, 1998; Schulz & Heckhausen, 1996;
Staudinger, Marsiske, & Baltes, 1995). More specifically, it
is reasonable to assume that older adults who rate their health
goals as important might adjust their concrete behaviour or
life circumstances if their resources are still high (i.e. assim-
ilative mode) or they may rescale their aspirations and their
concrete health-goal content (i.e. accommodation mode) to
align their goal importance and goal attainability
(Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002). Both mechanisms
would be illustrative of adaptive processes for coping with
the discrepancy between goal importance and goal attainabil-
ity. The concrete mechanisms underlying this finding remain
to be explored in future studies (such as shown for the pro-
tective effects of health engagement control strategies among
older individuals; Wrosch, Schulz, & Heckhausen, 2002).
The third finding that did not align with our hypotheses
refers to the importance of social-relation goals. Contrary to
our argument that social-relation goals reflect an innate need
and should therefore be valued as equally important across
the adult lifespan, our results showed that social-relation
goals were less important with higher age. Although this
finding does not correspond to self-determination theory,
which argues for relatedness being an equally important need
across the adult lifespan (Deci & Ryan, 2000), it does paral-
lel developmental-task theory (Havighurst, 1972), which
posits that social-relation goals reflect strivings of major im-
portance for young adults. This aspect is further supported by
a meta-analysis on age-related changes in social networks
(Wrzus et al., 2013), showing that it is throughout adulthood
that the social network, reflecting all social relationships of a
person, decreases. Similarly, recent findings (Wrzus, Wag-
ner, & Riediger, 2016) have shown that young adults, com-
pared with middle-aged adults, are more often surrounded
by family and friends. However, findings from this meta-
analysis have also demonstrated that social networks need
to be understood from a differentiated perspective (Wrzus
et al., 2013): Whereas some social networks decrease with
age (mostly friendship networks), family networks and rela-
tionships with a few close others are not affected by age. It
remains to be seen what underlying factors drive the steady
decrease of some social networks across the adult lifespan
and what factors are responsible for the stability of other so-
cial networks. With corroborating findings from the present
study, it is reasonable to assume that lower strivings for so-
cial relations might constitute one such underlying factor.
Future studies investigating the potentially mediating role
of social-relation strivings in the link between age and size
of social networks are needed to test this assumption. To ac-
knowledge the differentiated role that social relationships
might play across the adult lifespan, such research would
benefit from decomposing the overall social-relation domain
into more specific social-relation goals (such as relationships
with acquaintances, friends, family members, and close
others).
Aside from a decreasing social network, one could also
argue that reasons for the lower importance of social-relation
goals might be found in the different goal orientations that
people of different age groups adhere to (Ebner et al.,
2006): Whereas young adults are inclined to pursue goals
with a growth orientation, middle-aged and older adults are
more prone to pursue their goals with a focus on maintenance
and loss prevention. Applied to the present findings, one
could argue that older adults value the relationships they
have but are not likely to assign high importance scores to
goals of the social domain. This is the case because, by their
very definition, goals are salient if change is sought to moti-
vate behaviour, as in the case of social-relation goals through
expanding the social network, finding a new partner, or
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

seeking a new social environment. Consequently, if change
in a particular life-goal domain is not sought, goals of this
domain might be less salient. Hence, one cannot conclude
from the present findings that the social-relation domain is
no longer important for older adults. It might instead be the
case that older adults maintain and value their social status
quo, and our participants may not have reported goals that
would imply effort or investment in changing their current
social situation. Thus, rather than inferring that social-
relation goals are no longer meaningful with higher age, it
is much more reasonable to assume that adults from middle
and late adulthood are already socially embedded and have
existing relationships: Their social relations are an integral
part of their life but do not require striving toward. Yet it
needs to be stressed that given the family design of this
study, our older participants were embedded in a family set-
ting. The findings might emerge differently if a wider and
more diverse range of older adults is considered, such as
older adults without a family or a partner, who might be more
likely to strive for social relations. In addition, one needs to
consider that we gave participants predetermined goal do-
mains; their goal importance might have been different if
they had been free to describe and rank their goals.
We also investigated goal attainability in the social-
relation domain. Our findings revealed that although social-
relation goals were rated as less important with age, age
was not related to attainability of social-relation goals. It is
beyond the scope of the present study to explain why
social-relation goals were perceived as equally attainable
across age groups, but it is possible that age was not the driv-
ing force for the perceived likelihood of reaching social-
relation goals. Rather than age-graded norms and demands,
it is reasonable to intuit that internal factors might be relevant
for whether a person perceives social-relation goals as attain-
able, such as a person’s internal working model (e.g. attach-
ment), which remains relatively stable across age (Freund &
Nikitin, 2012; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Similarly, more
dispositional personality aspects, such as personality traits,
might play an important role. For instance, personality traits
have been shown to relate to the quality of social relation-
ships (e.g. Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998), to the initial level
and changes in social well-being (e.g. Hill, Turiano,
Mroczek, & Roberts, 2012), to relationship satisfaction
(e.g. Dyrenforth, Kashy, Donnellan, & Lucas, 2010;
Weidmann, Ledermann, & Grob, 2016), or to friendship de-
velopment (e.g. K. Harris & Vazire, 2016). It is, thus, reason-
able to assume that rather than age, more internal factors
(such as personality traits or attachment styles) play a signif-
icant role in whether people feel their social-relation goals
are attainable. Future studies are needed to disentangle the
interplay between age, various internal factors, and social-
relation goals in more detail.
Goal dynamics: Association between goal importance
and goal attainability over time
Both goal importance and goal attainability showed 2-year
stabilities of moderate size that are comparable or slightly
higher than previously reported in longitudinal studies
(Lüdtke, Trautwein, & Husemann, 2009; Roberts,
O’Donnell, & Robins, 2004). But goal importance and goal
attainability are also dynamic constructs that adapt over time
and alter along with changing life circumstances and key de-
velopmental tasks (Freund & Ebner, 2005). It has been sug-
gested that one’s goal pursuit needs to be stable to be
attainable but flexible at the same time to adjust to new cir-
cumstances (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002), which is
referred to as the stability–flexibility dilemma (e.g. Bak &
Brandtstädter, 1998). Given the present findings, we con-
clude that both the stability component and the flexibility
component were present. More specially, we found a positive
link between earlier goal importance and later goal attainabil-
ity in all six life-goal domains, even when controlling for the
stability of goal attainability. In other words, people who rate
their goals as important and are motivated to accomplish
these goals perceive these goals as more attainable (Koo &
Fishbach, 2008).
However, the inverse link of goal attainability on later
goal importance was less consistent across life-goal domains.
Goal attainability was predictive of importance of health,
personal-growth, and social-relation goals but not of
prosocial-engagement, status, and work goals. It is possible
that goal attainability might not have been the leading mech-
anism for later goal importance in these domains for two rea-
sons: First, in the case of work goals, work importance is
emphasized by society during major parts of the lifespan,
which makes work an important and socially desirable en-
deavour for most people. Thus, work goals need, in some
sense, to be important irrespective of whether these goals
are perceived as attainable. Second, in the case of
prosocial-engagement and status goals, these life-goal do-
mains might also reflect the personality of the individual
who pursues them rather than the goals’attainability. The
perceived importance of these goals might therefore be
fuelled less by their attainability than by their pursuer’s
ideals and values, that is, by other aspects of that individual’s
personality. Future research is needed to shed light on these
preliminary explanations for why goal attainability was not
consistently predictive of later goal importance, above and
beyond previous goal importance.
In summary, we maintain that goal importance and goal
attainably are fairly stable across time and share a longitudi-
nal association, which is bidirectional for most goal domains.
Except for a moderating age effect in the status-goal domain,
we found no moderating effect on the association of age,
which leads us to assume similar goal dynamics for people
across adulthood. The bidirectionality might help people ex-
hibit high control over their development and supports the
dual-process framework of an assimilative mode and accom-
modative mode (e.g. Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002;
Brandtstädter, Wentura, & Rothermund, 1999): If people rate
a certain life goal as important, they invest more in this goal,
which makes the goal more likely to be perceived as attain-
able. In contrast, if a goal appears less attainable, people de-
value the importance of this life goal. We thus maintain that
goal dynamics help people adjust goals to personal and con-
textual resources and that this dynamic is largely age
independent.
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Goal outcomes: Goal importance and goal attainability as
predictors of subjective well-being
Life goals guide and motivate a person’s behaviour, which is
likely to relate to that person’s well-being (Deci & Ryan,
2000). In the present study, we tested the predictive effects
of goal importance and goal attainability on cognitive-
evaluative (i.e. life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfac-
tion) and on affective components of subjective well-being
(i.e. positive and negative affect). We tested these effects
for both 2-year and 4-year intervals.
Effects of life goals on life satisfaction
We found no main associations between goal importance and
later life satisfaction. This finding speaks against Hypothe-
sis 3a, which predicted positive associations between goal
importance and life satisfaction for intrinsic life-goal do-
mains and negative associations between goal importance
and life satisfaction for extrinsic life-goal domains. Rather
than goal importance, it was goal attainability that predicted
later life satisfaction: Goal attainability was a significant pre-
dictor of life satisfaction after 2 years in the health, personal-
growth, prosocial-engagement, and social-relation domains
and a significant predictor after 4 years in the personal-
growth and social-relation domains. In contrast to the nonsig-
nificant goal domains of work and status, these goal domains
are likely to be intrinsic in nature and to fulfil innate needs
(Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). This is particularly true for the
two goal domains that showed predictive validity after
4 years, with personal-growth goals referring to the need
for competence and autonomy and social-relation goals refer-
ring to the need for relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). It
is also in line with recent findings on the effect of active so-
cial pursuits on later well-being (Rohrer, Richter, Brümmer,
Wagner, & Schmukle, 2018) that social relationships matter
for people’s evaluation of their lives. We, thus, maintain that
it is the attainability of intrinsic life-goal domains (rather than
the importance of intrinsic life-goal domains) that is condu-
cive to later life satisfaction and that these benefits hold
across adulthood, as the effects were largely independent of
age.
Effects of life goals on positive and negative affect
It was also for the affective components of well-being (i.e.
positive and negative affect) that links with goal attainability,
rather than links with goal importance, were present. For pos-
itive affect, goal attainability in all life-goal domains was a
significant positive predictor after 2 years, but only attain-
ability of personal-growth and social-relation goals was pre-
dictive after 4 years. For negative affect, attainability was a
significant negative predictor after 2 years in the health,
personal-growth, prosocial-engagement, and social-relation
domains, and attainability of personal-growth goals was a
significant predictor after 4 years. Again, the goal domains
of personal growth and social relations map onto fulfilling in-
nate needs (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). Thus, similar to the
findings on the cognitive-evaluative component of well-
being, goal attainability of intrinsic life goals was a consis-
tent predictor for affect, particularly for the 4-year prediction.
These findings suggest that intrinsic aspects of the personal-
development and social domain are important not only for
the cognitive evaluation of one’s life but also for the emo-
tional realm.
It was for life satisfaction and positive affect that perceiv-
ing intrinsic life goals as attainable had an effect over 2 and
4 years. For negative affect, conversely, attainability of
personal-growth goals had relevance after 2 years but not af-
ter 4 years, indicating some temporary character in this goal–
affect link. Reasons for this might be found in results of twin
studies, which suggest that negative affect tends to be rela-
tively heritable, while positive affect does not show a signif-
icant heritable component but rather a shared environmental
influence (Zheng, Plomin, & von Stumm, 2016). Accord-
ingly, developmental tasks and their corresponding life goals
might have a long-lasting impact on positive affect but less
on negative affect. Following this logic, for negative affect,
people would sooner return to their set point (for research
on set point theory, see, for example, Brickman, Coates, &
Janoff-Bulman, 1978; Fujita & Diener, 2005), which lessens
the long-term effect of life goals on negative affect.
To summarize, the present findings partially support our
hypotheses (Hypotheses 3a and 3b), indicating that the at-
tainability of intrinsic goals was positively linked to later
well-being. Goal attainability might be conducive for subjec-
tive well-being given that it reflects a person’s feeling of con-
trol and perceived sphere of influence (Rotter, 1966). It has
been argued that people are more satisfied if they feel they
have this internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966), and that a
greater feeling of goal attainability might yield more oppor-
tunities for goal achievement (Brunstein, 1993). Put differ-
ently, if people have no perceived control over the
attainability of their goals, they might likely be dissatisfied.
This is also in line with theories of learned helplessness, pos-
iting that the perceived loss of control over important goals is
detrimental to well-being and a risk factor for depression
(e.g. Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Seligman,
1975). Following the postulates of the dual-process frame-
work (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002), it is reasonable
to assume that people who feel their goals are not attainable
might have experienced difficulties in switching from the as-
similative to the accommodative mode when they realized a
discrepancy between goal importance and goal attainability.
Consequently, one could argue that low well-being is likely
to be experienced if difficulties in this switching process have
occurred and the ascribed importance to blocked goals
persists.
Effects of life goals on domain-specific satisfaction
In a test of our final hypothesis (Hypothesis 3c), we investi-
gated the thematic associations between life goals and
domain-specific satisfaction. For the first domain-specific
satisfaction category—occupational satisfaction—it was
again goal attainability rather than goal importance that was
predictive. Most consistently, attainability of health and
personal-growth goals showed a positive link to work and
education satisfaction after 4 years. Work goals, as we hy-
pothesized, were highly relevant for work satisfaction after
2 years but lost their predictive validity after 4 years. This
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

finding illustrates that work goals tend to be meaningful and
important, but they do not foster a person’s satisfaction over
a longer period. The same applies to the attainability of status
goals, which was predictive of education satisfaction after
2 years but not for a longer period of time. As argued by
Niemiec, Ryan, and Deci (2009), extrinsic goals (which
would include status goals) might be satisfying because they
imply certain positive consequences of the activity rather
than satisfaction with the activity itself. Applied to the pres-
ent case, perceiving status goals as attainable might be re-
lated to higher engagement and commitment to the
educational path, eventually expecting a successful career,
which is linked to more progress and to higher satisfaction
with one’s education. The downside of this pursuit, however,
might come after time, when extrinsic goals alone are no lon-
ger motivating and fail to nourish basic needs.
Goals that consistently predicted satisfaction after 2 and
4 years in the occupational domain were health and
personal-growth goals. At first glance, these goals seem not
to have much in common or to be obviously relevant for oc-
cupational satisfaction. Yet perceiving personal-growth goals
as attainable might nurture innate needs of autonomy and
competence, which likely nourishes satisfaction. Health
goals, on the other hand, might more frequently be pursued
by people who are high in conscientiousness, a trait that, in
turn, has been shown to relate to success and satisfaction in
the occupational domain (e.g. Ozer & Benet-Martinez,
2006).
For the second domain-specific category, health satisfac-
tion, importance of personal-growth goals was negatively
predictive, while attainability was positively predictive for
health, personal-growth, and social-relation goals across
2 years. Attainability of health goals was the only goal do-
main that remained a significant predictor across 4 years.
People who perceive their health goals as attainable might al-
locate more time and effort to their health, eventually leading
to higher satisfaction with their health. These results—simi-
lar to findings in the social domain—suggest that content-
specific goals are relevant for one’s content-specific
satisfaction.
For the third domain-specific category, social satisfac-
tion, it was again goal attainability rather than goal impor-
tance that played a significant part in predicting later
satisfaction: Attainability of personal-growth goals was a sig-
nificant predictor for satisfaction after 2 years in two social
areas (i.e. romantic relationships and friendships), and attain-
ability of social-relation goals was a significant predictor for
satisfaction after 2 years in all three social areas (i.e. family,
romantic relationships, and friendships). Given that no other
domains were relevant, these results speak to the importance
of content specificity for satisfaction in the social domain.
That is, people who perceive their personal development
and, particularly, their social relations as attainable are more
satisfied with their social life. This corresponds to research
on romantic relationships and emphasizes that relational
goals are likely to positively relate to close relationships
(e.g. Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000). Relationship pro-
cesses, such as partner affirmation (Drigotas, Rusbult,
Wieselquist, & Whitton, 1999) or fulfilment of relatedness
needs (Hadden, Smith, & Knee, 2014), illustrate day-to-day
aspects that might account for this link. Moreover, if people
feel they can develop who they are, they tend to be satisfied
with their social relationships, which is in line with research
from the close relationship literature (Drigotas et al., 1999).
Yet when it comes to predictive effects after 4 years, attain-
ability of social-relation and personal-growth goals remained
a significant predictor for satisfaction with friendships but
was not predictive of family satisfaction and relationship sat-
isfaction. Future research is needed to address how these life
goals differently apply to and relate to satisfaction with
friendships after 4 years, compared with satisfaction with
family life and romantic relationships.
Following the logic that age would moderate the effects
in the domain and life stage during which the respective de-
velopmental tasks are most salient (e.g. health in older age),
we expected age to moderate effects in the occupation and
health domains but not in the social domain. (i) For the occu-
pational domain, we observed no significant age modera-
tions, indicating that the link between goal importance/goal
attainability and occupational satisfaction was independent
of age. (ii) For satisfaction with the health domain, the asso-
ciation between prosocial-engagement goal importance and
health satisfaction at Time 2 as well as the association be-
tween health-goal attainability and health satisfaction at
Time 3 was moderated by age. It was with higher age that
rating prosocial-engagement goals as important and perceiv-
ing health goals as attainable were linked to later satisfaction
with one’s health. (iii) For the social domain, significant age
moderations emerged, revealing two implications: First, the
domain-specific link between goals and social satisfaction
was—against our hypothesis—the one that was most depen-
dent on age. Second, it was more the association with goal at-
tainability than the association with goal importance that was
moderated by age. These moderations need further investiga-
tion in future studies to test why the social domain seems to
be the most age-dependent domain.
In sum, the present findings have shown that the attain-
ability of personally important goals in one domain likely re-
lates to the satisfaction with this domain. At the same time,
the results seem to suggest that personally meaningful goals
in one domain do not come at cost to another domain. For in-
stance, people who value their work goals as important are
not, as might have been supposed, less satisfied with their so-
cial relationships. Although these cross-domain effects were
not in the scope of the present investigation, they reveal
meaningful impetus for future studies. One could assume that
(i) cross-domain costs rarely arise or (ii) costs occur only if
the concrete goal pursuit is examined, such as time invest-
ment in goals or allocation of resources in attaining these
goals. Future research is needed to more thoroughly investi-
gate these within-domain benefits and potential cross-domain
costs with regard to different indicators of goals (i.e. goal im-
portance, goal attainability, and goal investment).
It also needs to be addressed in future studies why age
had an (linear and/or squared) effect on mean-level differ-
ences of goal importance and goal attainability but only
partly contributed to the association between goal impor-
tance and goal attainability on the one hand (Hypothesis 2)
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

and their predictions of later subjective well-being on the
other (Hypothesis 3). From the present findings, it is, so
far, to conclude that the content of goals is sensitive to age,
while the dynamic interplay between goal importance and
goal attainability as well as goals’predictive power on later
life outcomes are less sensitive to age.
Strengths and limitations
One of the strengths of the present research is the sample
covering major parts of the adult lifespan, which enabled us
to test the concept of developmental tasks in a large age-
heterogeneous sample. Second, our study spans multiple
measurement points, providing us with an insight into the
longitudinal interplay between goal importance, goal attain-
ability, and subjective well-being. Third, most research in-
vestigating the links between goals and satisfaction in the
social domain (e.g. relationship satisfaction) has focused on
relationship-specific goals. We extended past research by in-
cluding goals across important life domains as predictors of
satisfaction in social and other domains. Fourth, as well as
clustering life goals into extrinsic and intrinsic goal compo-
nents, as has often been done when using the Aspiration In-
dex (e.g. Kasser & Ryan, 1996), we factor analysed goals
and grouped them into six thematic domains to obtain a more
fine-grained picture of life goals and their predictive validity
on outcomes.
Some limitations should be borne in mind when
interpreting the results. First, even though our sample was
large and age heterogeneous, it represents a convenience
sample with rather cognitively fit older adults. In addition,
people from different cultural, socio-economic, and educa-
tional backgrounds might evaluate life goals and their attain-
ability differently.
Second, we exclusively refer to self-report measures. Fu-
ture research would benefit from including multi-method ap-
proaches by gathering additional information, such as
observational data, other-reports, objective major life events
occurring in a given life stage, or experience sampling and
combining these data with self-reports.
Third, owing to the model misfits mentioned in Footnote
2, it is a limitation of this study that analyses were conducted
by making use of manifest variables rather than latent vari-
ables. Hence, future studies would benefit from (i) improving
their measurement of the study’s key variables, which (ii)
would make it possible to create latent variables. This, in
turn, would allow to apply an MSEM approach to account
for measurement errors and to calculate cross-lagged models
with multiple outcomes (e.g. life satisfaction at Time 2 and
life satisfaction at Time 3 predicted by goal importance and
goal attainability at Time 1).
Fourth, we assessed people’s life goals in that we explic-
itly asked participants about the importance and attainability
of various life-goal domains. In doing so, we might have lim-
ited participants’option to mention life-goal domains that
were not captured by the pre-existing goal domains. Hence,
age-related differences in goal domains are only applicable
to the goal domains that we asked for, and age-related effects
occurring in other domains might have been masked. In a
similar vein, our framing of goals was on a more abstract
(e.g. ‘pursuing one’s own occupational career’) than concrete
(e.g. ‘becoming a successful medical doctor in the area of
cardiology’) phrasing level (Little, 1989). An abstract phras-
ing might leave more room for individual interpretation,
which might imply different meanings for different people
and hence suggest different implications for a person’s con-
crete assimilation and accommodation mode (Brandtstädter
& Rothermund, 2002) as well as subjective well-being.
Fifth, we did not prompt participants to prioritize certain
life goals in their evaluations. In everyday life, people might
experience conflict between their life goals, such as between
the work and family domains (Wiese & Freund, 2005). This
conflict might be particularly prominent and relevant in the
so-called rush hour of life (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000),
which characterizes young adulthood as a life stage in which
several life goals are pursued simultaneously. Future re-
search might more closely look at the hierarchy of goals that
a person holds and how this prioritization might change
across the lifespan and is differently related to well-being.
Sixth, taking into account ontogenetic and historical
contextualism, we cannot preclude that our findings would
be better explained by cohort than age (e.g. Grob, Krings,
& Bangerter, 2001; Staudinger & Bluck, 2001).
Finally, it was beyond the scope of the present study to
answer questions pertaining to explanatory mechanisms:
Why are goal importance and goal attainability reciprocally
linked to each other and what mechanisms, for instance,
translate social-relation goals into satisfaction with the social
domain? Investigating such processes might further provide
an understanding of how life goals are embedded in people’s
everyday life across adulthood.
Future steps
Limitations reveal impetus for future research. While our
study included goal importance and goal attainability, it can-
not speak to concrete goal progress, which would add to the
characteristics of goal-appraisal dimensions (Brunstein et al.,
1999). In this attempt, future studies might also employ a
microfocus on goal processes. Studying daily or weekly life-
goal processes could provide a deeper insight into the concrete
implementation and progress of life goals in daily life.
A second approach worth studying is to include implicit
goals and motives (e.g. Schultheiss, 2001) so as to thor-
oughly understand the role of motivational processes across
adulthood and in the realms of different life domains. It could
be argued that the pursuit of explicit goals that are not in
alignment with implicit goals is unlikely to nourish well-
being (Brunstein, Schultheiss, & Grässman, 1998).
A third point of further inquiry is to measure goal-relevant
support that is provided by close others. It has been argued
that these social resources stimulate the setting of life goals
and assist with the achievement of these goals (e.g. Brunstein
et al., 1996; Diener & Fujita, 1995; Fitzsimons, Finkel, &
VanDellen, 2015). In particular, as close others might foster
or hinder one’s personal development across the lifespan
(e.g. Bühler, Weidmann, Kumashiro, & Grob, 2018; Drigotas,
2002), future studies might include emotional and
A closer look at life goals across adulthood
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

instrumental support that is provided by a person’s social net-
work for approaching a certain goal and might investigate
how this support changes across the lifespan.
Fourth and finally, future research might benefit from
asking participants in an open format for their life goals
(for a similar approach, see Massey, Gebhardt, & Garnefski,
2009). For instance, within the domain of work, results might
vary depending on whether, for instance, work goals refer to
‘getting promoted’compared with ‘working less’. Future re-
search might investigate how these open-format goals are re-
lated to age and promote later satisfaction within a given
domain.
Conclusion
As Allport (1955) put it, mature striving is linked to long-
range goals. With the aim of positioning life goals in the con-
text of adult development, we applied a developmental per-
spective to goal content, the dynamics of goal importance
and goal attainability, and goal outcomes. Given the results,
we conclude that age matters for life goals in the following
ways: First, people rate those life goals as important and at-
tainable that correspond to the developmental tasks of their
current life stage. Second, goal-related regulatory dynamics
(such as balancing goal importance and goal attainability)
seem to support people in the pursuit of their personal life
goals across the entirety of adulthood and, consequently, to
actively shape personality development. Finally, major life
goals—particularly their attainability—seem to be of long-
term importance for cognitive and affective components of
well-being and show thematic predictive validity for
domain-specific satisfaction across the adult lifespan.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank Ruben Arslan, Robert P. Burriss, Andrea
Meyer, and Anita Todd for their valuable comments on drafts
of this paper. The author(s) disclose receipt of the following
financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article: This research was supported by the grant
P0BSP1_168915 (grantee: Janina L. Bühler) from the Swiss
National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer
Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen
Forschung) and by grants CRSI11_130432 and
CRSII1_147614 (principal investigator [PI]: Alexander
Grob, University of Basel; co-PIs: Franciska Krings, Univer-
sity of Lausanne; Mike Martin, University of Zurich; Bettina
Wiese, RWTH Aachen University) from the Swiss National
Science Foundation.
SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in
the Supporting Information section at the end of the article.
Table S1. Items for Assessing Goal Importance and Goal At-
tainability in Life-Goal Domains
Table S2. Standardized Factor Loadings Extracted From Ex-
ploratory Factor Analyses Across Life-Goal Domains for
Goal Importance and Goal Attainability at Time 1 and Time
2
Table S3. Overview of Goodness-of-Fit Indices for Multi-
level Structural Equation Analyses in Testing Hypotheses 2
and 3
Table S4. Measurement Invariance in Goal Importance
Across Time 1 and Time 2
Table S5. Measurement Invariance in Goal Attainability
Across Time 1 and Time 2
Table S6. Linear and Squared Effects of Age on Goal Impor-
tance and Goal Attainability at Time 2
Table S7. Means and Standard Deviations of Goal Impor-
tance and Goal Attainability at Time 2 and Subjective
Well-Being at Time 2 and Time 3
Table S8. Multilevel Regression Analyses Predicting Subjec-
tive Well-Being at Time 3 From Goal Importance and Goal
Attainability at Time 1
Table S9. Multilevel Regression Analyses Predicting Do-
main-Specific Satisfaction (Work Satisfaction, Educational
Satisfaction, and Health Satisfaction) at Time 3 from Goal
Importance and Goal Attainability at Time 1
Table S10. Multilevel Regression Analyses Predicting Do-
main-Specific Satisfaction (Family Satisfaction, Romantic
Relationship Satisfaction, and Friendship Satisfaction) at
Time 3 from Goal Importance and Goal Attainability at Time
1
Figure S1. Multilevel structural equation model of the dy-
namic association between goal importance and goal attain-
ability (Hypothesis 2) exemplified for work goals.
Abbreviations: gwoimp1T1 = work-goal importance at Time
1 (Item 1); gwoimp1T2 = work-goal importance at Time 2
(Item 1); gwoatt1T1 = work-goal attainability at Time 1
(Item 1); gwoatt1T2 = work-goal attainability at Time 2
(Item 1); rT1 = concurrent correlation between goal impor-
tance and goal attainability at Time 1; rT2 = concurrent cor-
relation between goal-importance residual and goal-
attainability residual at Time 2. I →I = stability effect of goal
importance from Time 1 to Time 2; A →A = stability effect
of goal attainability from Time 1 to Time 2; I →A = effect of
goal importance at Time 1 on goal attainability at Time 2,
controlling for the stability of goal attainability. A →I = effect
of goal attainability at Time 1 on goal importance at Time 2,
controlling for the stability of goal importance. Other abbre-
viations can be interpreted following the format of
gwoimp1T1 and gwoatt1T1, where the first number refers
to the item number and the second number refers to time.
Level 2 represents the family level and Level 1 the individual
level.
Figure S2. Multilevel structural equation model of the predic-
tive effect of the association between goal importance and
goal attainability at Time 1 on outcomes at Time 2 and Time
3 (Hypothesis 3) exemplified for the association between
work goals and life satisfaction. Abbreviations.
gwoimp1T1 = work-goal importance at Time 1 (Item 1);
gwoatt1T1 = work-goal attainability at Time 1 (Item 1);
swlsls1T2 = life satisfaction at Time 2 (Item 1);
swlsls1T3 = life satisfaction at Time 3 (Item 1);
J. L. Bühler et al.
© 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology Eur. J. Pers. (2019)
DOI: 10.1002/per

rT1 = concurrent correlation between goal importance and
goal attainability at Time 1. I →LST2 = predictive effect of
goal importance on life satisfaction at Time 2, controlling
for the stability of life satisfaction (from Time 1 to Time 2);
A→LST2 = predictive effect of goal attainability on life sat-
isfaction at Time 2, controlling for the stability of life satisfac-
tion (from Time 1 to Time 2); I →LST3 = predictive effect of
goal importance on life satisfaction at Time 3, controlling for
the stability of life satisfaction (from Time 1 to Time 3); A →
LST3 = predictive effect of goal attainability on life satisfac-
tion at Time 2, controlling for the stability of life satisfaction
(from Time 1 to Time 3); LST2 →LST3 = stability effect of
life satisfaction from Time 2 to Time 3. Other abbreviations
can be interpreted following the format of gwoimp1T1 and
gwoatt1T1, where the first number refers to the item number
and the second number refers to time. Level 2 represents the
family level and Level 1 the individual level.
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