Intentionality and Time in Human Development and Aging: Compensation and Goal Adjustment in Changing Developmental Contexts

Abstract

Time is both an action resource and a source of meaning in human development over the life span. The fading of residual life time in old age thus poses particular adaptive challenges that call for selective, compensatory, and optimizing activities. Such activities depend not only on the causal implications of aging, but likewise on the practical conclusions that people draw from having a given age and a given position in the life cycle. The present chapter addresses the different ways in which time, as perceived or personalized time, affects the negotiation of gains and losses as well as the construal of meaning in later life. The main theoretical focus is on the adaptive interplay between between self-regulatory and compensatory activities and mechanisms through which personal goals are adjusted to changes in action resources that are linked to both ontogenetic and historical dimensions of time.

Developmental processes begin, unfold, and end in time. In developmental research, the time axis traditionally serves as an ordering device. Age-graded ontogenetic changes as well as age-linked developmental tasks are ordered along a biographical time dimension, whereas cultural changes, which affect members of different age cohorts at different points of their lifecycle, are charted on a historical time dimension. It is commonly assumed that age and time have no intrinsic explanatory power; when moving from description toward explanation, researchers try to identify causal factors that, on biographical and historical dimensions, are linked to the flow of time (such as age-graded changes in bodily maturation or socialization or history-graded changes in political or economic conditions of society).

Human development, however, is linked to time not only by a causal-physical nexus; it is the joint product of causality and intentionality. Intentionality, as it is expressed in life planning and the pursuit of goals over the life course, is intrinsically related to phenomenological, personalized time. In retrospect, personalized time is filled with changes and events that are more or less consistent with the person’s current preferences; in prospect, it constitutes an action space filled with risks, potentialities, and more or less attractive possible selves (Brandtstädter, 2001; Heckhausen, this volume; Roberts & Caspi, this volume).

The importance of time perspectives in action, motivation, and life planning has been recognized for a long time (e.g., Lewin, 1953; Nuttin, 1964). Time, and the coordination of physical and perceived time, is needed not only to pursue goals but also to orchestrate and harmonize our strivings: goals that are logically or practically incompatible when simultaneously pursued may become feasible when arranged in a temporal sequence. Gains and losses emerge in time, and their weight in personal planning and decision making underlies a temporal discounting. Furthermore, time is a compensatory resource: we need time to cope with loss, and even slow runners (or learners) may reach the goal when they are granted enough time. Our projects and life activities gain meaningful valence from intended future goals, and they may lose sense and meaning when these intentional links are disrupted (e.g., Klinger, 1977).

Time is thus both an action resource and a source of meaning. Temporal resources, however, are limited. Most important, our lifetime itself is limited; some of our goals and projects become unfeasible as we move through historical and ontogenetic time. In preventive and compensatory efforts, we invest time to expand our temporal resources or make more efficient use of them (M. Baltes & Carstensen, this volume; Baltes & Baltes, 1990). Social representations of “optimal development” or “successful aging,” ethical and religious systems, as well as philosophical teachings of wisdom often advance rules and recommendations as to how and for which purposes scarce lifetime resources should be used. Seneca’s treatise, On the Shortness of Life (De brevitate vitae) is a classical example. The fading of life time affects the construction of meaning; evaluating actions in terms of future personal consequences becomes questionable when no personal future remains. An individual’s life, as a singular, temporally closed biographical gestalt, can apparently be evaluated only with reference to values and meanings that transcend the limited horizon of one’s personal biography.

Centering on the notion of time, these introductory arguments indicate how causal and intentional aspects are intertwined in development and aging. The causal dynamics of development unfold in physical time; perceived temporal resources structure the ways that developing subjects shape and plan their personal development and aging within the constraints of causal contingencies. Development creates and shapes intentionality and intentional strivings, and developing intentionality in turn shapes the course of personal development: in that particular sense, human ontogeny is a self-referential process (Brandtstadter, 1998; Brandtstädter & Lerner, 1999).

These arguments also apply to the process of aging in its physical, social, and psychological aspects. Our behavior and development—as well as the selective, compensatory, and optimizing activities through which we try to adjust our behavior and development to normative projections (Baltes, 1997; Baltes & Baltes, 1990)—is shaped not only by the causal implications of having a particular age and a particular biographical history but also by the practical conclusions that we draw from having a given age, a given position in the life cycle, and particular physical and temporal resources. The processes of aging destroy action resources through time-contingent causal processes (such as functional losses due to changes in the processing speed and reliability of the neural network, in endocrine regulations, in functional reserves); death as a biological phenomenon occurs where these changes exceed critical margins. The adaptive challenges of age and aging, however, essentially arise from projecting these changes into temporally structured intentional spheres and relating them to strivings and desired developmental outcomes. When we ask, for example, why (or why not) some people become depressed in later life, we have to consider these projections and links.

In the following, we present theoretical arguments and research findings that bear on these issues. The theoretical approach that has guided our research focuses on the interplay of two processes—first, on intentional activities through which people shape their development in accordance with their goals and maintain desired self-attributes and, second, on mechanisms that coadjust personal goals and self-definitions to a changing field of resources and constraints (see also Brandtstädter & Greve, 1994; Brandtstädter, Wentura, & Rothermund, 1999).