UCLA

Research illustrates how the way people seek to control personal goal attainment via different control strategies (e.g., primary and secondary) can influence the onset of adulthood depression. Research exploring these relationships is extensive but limited in exploring how they may differ across stages of adult development and has not considered certain subtypes of control strategies. Using a nationally representative sample from the Midlife in the United States study, we explored how different control strategies relate to depression across adulthood and examined whether age moderated this relationship. The results revealed that specific control strategies, such as compensatory primary control, acted as protective factors against depression, while others, like compensatory secondary control (goal adjustment), were found to be associated with increased depressive symptomology. Further, the moderation analysis demonstrated that the ability to maintain a motivational commitment to a goal was predictive of lower depression in young and middle adulthood, whereas a higher ability to disengage from unattainable goals was predictive of higher depression in young adulthood. We discuss the implications that these findings have in furthering our understanding of control strategies and depression, and how they may be used in applied settings such as in psychotherapy.