Motivation and Self-Regulation Across the Life Span

Jutta Heckhausen grew up in Germany and did her graduate work and Ph.D. at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland where she studied the way in which infants' development is promoted by interaction and joint activities with their mothers. In 1984, Dr Heckhausen joined the Center for Life-Span Psychology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where she became a senior scientist with her own research group. In the 1980s and 90s, she expanded her research area to include development in adulthood and old age, formulated the life-span theory of control with her collaborator Dr Richard Schulz, and launched a research program to test its propositions and applicability to developmental regulation in adulthood. In 1995-1996, she was a fellow at the Center for Social and Behavioral Science at Stanford. In 2000, Dr Heckhausen joined the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine and constituted the research laboratory on Life-Span Development and Motivation. Her current research focuses on motivation and agency in life-span development, particularly during developmental transitions.