Development of Control Striving Across the Lifespan: A Fundamental Phenomenon of Motivational Development

This chapter explores the relationship between motivation and development from two perspectives: the development of motivation, on the one hand, and motivational influences on development, on the other. Whether it is a question of the development of motivation or the motivation of development, the regulation of human behavior shifts in accordance with lifespan developmental change in the individual's potential to control the environment. The lifespan theory of control (J. Heckhausen, 1999; J. Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995; Schulz & J. Heckhausen, 1996) identifies constructs and articulates hypotheses specifying how individuals respond to the waxing and waning of their potential for effective control at different stages of life and in different areas of functioning, and thus provides a useful conceptual framework for the investigation of development and motivation.

The starting point and conceptual core of the lifespan theory of control is the functional primacy of primary control (J. Heckhausen, 1999; J. Heckhausen & Schulz, 1999a). The striving to exert control on the environment (primary control striving) is hypothesized to be a universal and fundamental characteristic of human motivation that evolved over a long phylogeny of behavioral regulation. A preference for self-produced effects on the environment over effects produced by others has been found in various mammals (see overview in J. Heckhausen, 2000a; White, 1959), and may even determine the behavior of all those nonmammalian species with a locomotor system that enables them to influence their environment.