Motivation and well-being across the lifespan: A cross-sectional examination

Research focusing on motivation has consistently identified changes in motivational emphases as individuals age. However, whether these same patterns exist with respect to more domain-general conceptualizations of these motives has not yet been examined. Furthermore, researchers have not determined whether these differences in motivations across age groups are associated with differences in different measures of well-being. Using three cross-sectional samples, we examine the relative importance individuals place on different motivational domains across different age groups. In Studies 1a and 1b, we show that age is negatively associated with growth motive importance, but is unassociated with security, control, or epistemic motive importance. In Study 2, we show that older adults who do not show this de-emphasis of growth motives have significantly lower life satisfaction and lower self-reported flourishing relative to those older adults who do demonstrate the typical reduced emphasis. Implications for these findings for happiness across age groups are discussed.