Can Personal Goals, Motives, and Coping Skills Account for Well-being in Later Life?
The broad aim of the current study was provide a better of accounting of differences in well-being between younger and older persons by focusing on the potential mediating role of four resources. Two of the resources under investigation reflected possible age differences in the motivation underlying goal selection and goal pursuit. The first of these addressed differences in happiness orientation or guiding beliefs about the type of personal goals and projects most likely to produce happiness (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005). The second motivational resource reflected autonomy or self-determination in the pursuit of chosen goals (Sheldon & Kasser, 2001). Two further resources were the way older people respond when the attainment of valued goals is frustrated or blocked (i.e., stressful events occur), both in terms of dispositional differences in coping style (Brandstadter & Renner, 1990) and in terms of situation-specific appraisals of personal efficacy for particular coping behaviou
