A motivation-enhancing treatment to sustain goal engagement during life course transitions

Although theory-driven control striving treatments may sustain motivation for individuals navigating life course transitions, their efficacy during these challenging junctures remains unexamined. In a pre-post randomized field study (n = 316), a novel control striving treatment based on Heckhausen et al.’s (Psychol Rev 117:32–60, 2010) motivational theory of life-span development was administered to young adults making the landmark transition to university. For students who faced obstacles to goal attainment, the motivation-enhancing selective secondary control (SSC) striving treatment (vs. no-treatment) increased performance by 8 % in a two-semester course (74.85 % vs. 66.68 %). Consistent with theory, the SSC treatment-performance linkage was mediated by selective secondary and selective primary control in a hypothesized causal sequence. Findings advance the literature by showing control striving treatments can improve performance for some young adults in transition by promoting adaptive changes in theoretically-derived psychological process variables.