Introduction

Individual motivation and related personal goals play an important role in individuals' lives. People steer their development (Brandtstädter, 1984; Lerner, 1984) by setting personal goals and making responses to developmental challenges (Nurmi, 1993, 1997). They search for personally meaningful and motivating life-trajectories by constructing goals which are based on their interests and motives, but which simultaneously reflect various options available in their environments. Consequently, individuals' goals may reflect both age-graded transitions involving normative demands and developmental tasks typical of their environments (Nurmi, 1992, 1993), and differences in individuals' motives related to personality traits.

Individuals' goals can be represented at various goal levels with different future time perspectives. Heckhausen (1999, p. 105) suggests that a developmental goal on a general level is comparable to “motive” as defined by McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell (1953), “unity theme” (Murray, 1938), or “life theme” (Bühler, 1933). A more specific level from the point of view of an individual's engagement or disengagement and life-span coverage is involved in such constructs as “current concerns” (Klinger, 1975), “identity goals” (Gollwitzer, 1987), “personal projects” (Little, 1983), “personal strivings” (Emmons, 1986), “personal goals” (Staub, 1980), and “life tasks” (Cantor and Kihlström, 1987), “possible selves” (Markus and Nurius, 1986), and developmental goals (Heckhausen, 1999).

We defined the concept of ‘personal goal’ as a construct which stems from a comparison between individuals' motives and their expectations of the opportunities for future actualization (Markus and Wurf, 1987; Nurmi, 1989; Nuttin, 1984).