Synonyms

Adaptation to disability and loss; Benefit finding; Flexibility; Goal adjustment; Goal pursuit; Resilience; Sources of meaning; Tenacity

Definition

Resilience and well-being across the life-span hinge on the balanced interplay between two adaptive processes: On activities through which individuals try to achieve goals and maintain a desired course of personal development (assimilative activities), as well as on the adjustment of personal goals to changing action resources (accommodative processes). The concepts of assimilative persistence (or tenacious goal pursuit) and accommodative flexibility (or flexible goal adjustment) refer to individual differences in these two modes of coping.

A person’s life course is generally a mixture of intended action outcomes and unintended events, of gains and losses; the balance of these factors varies on historical as well as in individual-ontogenetic dimensions of time. Given this general fact about personal development, notions of positive development and successful aging cannot be simply defined in terms of efficient goal pursuit and avoidance of loss. Rather, a comprehensive theoretical explication of these concepts also needs to consider how people cope with divergences between desired and factual developmental outcomes, how they adjust goals and ambitions to changing developmental resources and constraints, and how they can disengage without lasting grief or regret from desired life paths that have remained unaccomplished.

Among older adults, personal potentials of action and development are often constrained by functional losses, by a shrinking of social and material resources, and not to the least by the fading of time yet-to-be-lived. Contrary to expectations, however, longitudinal and metaanalytic studies have found considerable stability in measures of well-being and subjective life quality in the transition to old age (Brandtstädter et al. 1993; Diener et al. 1999). The apparent resiliency of the aging self against experiences of loss and constraint may be considered as a further example of the so-called paradoxes of satisfaction that have often been reported in research on well-being and happiness; it becomes less paradoxical when paying heed to the dynamics of changing and adjusting ambitions and to the interplay between goal pursuit and goal adjustment.

To integrate these aspects, the dual-process model of assimilative and accommodative coping (DPM) has been proposed (Brandtstädter 2006; Brandtstädter 2007; Brandtstädter and Greve 1994; Brandtstädter and Renner 1990; Brandtstädter et al. 1998). Both modes of coping reduce goal discrepancies and divergences between actual and desired conditions of personal development, but do so in different ways. In the assimilative mode, the individual tries to avoid or diminish goal discrepancies and developmental losses by instrumental, self-corrective, or compensatory activities. A second way of neutralizing discrepancies between actual and desired states consists in adjusting goals and ambitions to given situational conditions and constraints. These latter accommodative processes involve disengagement from blocked goals and the lowering of aspirations; they come into play when active-assimilative efforts become difficult or remain futile.

The frame of personal goals and ambitions on which people base their evaluation of self and personal development changes over the life course; according to the DPM, it tends to change in ways that help to maintain a positive outlook on self and personal development. In developmental settings and phases of life that involve changes in personal resources of control, the balanced interplay between assimilative and accommodative processes becomes a key criterion of resilience; old age is a prototypical example.

Outline of the Dual-Process Model

The model of assimilative and accommodative coping braids together action-theoretical and developmental perspectives. Both processes are basic to the life-long process of intentional self-development (Brandtstädter and Lerner 1999; Greve et al. 2005). In contrast to assimilative activities, however, accommodative processes need not, and often cannot, be intentionally activated. Although one may eventually be able to change personal preferences, ambitions, or beliefs by strategies of self-management (which would already count as assimilative activities), one cannot bring about such changes by a simple act of will. This draws attention to the automatic mechanisms that subserve accommodative processes.

Assimilative activities: Assimilative activities comprise all types of intentional behavior through which people try to achieve or maintain a desired course of personal development; in later life, maintenance of resources and valued competences through prevention or compensation of loss become increasingly important as targets of assimilative effort. In the assimilative mode, attention is focused on information that seems relevant for effective goal pursuit, and cognitions that support or help to maintain an intended course of action become more available: Attractive aspects of the goal as well as beliefs related to personal efficacy and the attainability of goals are emphasized, whereas stimuli or enticements that could distract from a chosen course of action are blunted out. When obstacles impede goal attainment, cognitive resources and action reserves are mobilized, which is often supported by a reactant increase in the valence of goals.

A key feature of assimilative modes of coping is the tenacious adherence to goals. Assimilative efforts will have beneficial effects as long as personal goals are commensurate with action resources; in cases of mismatch, the intentional focus of assimilation may shift toward expanding action resources and acquiring new skills or knowledge that may be relevant to efficient goal pursuit, and eventually to activities of optimization or compensation. Optimizing and compensatory activities mark a late state of assimilative effort; they often draw on resources that are themselves subject to age-graded loss. Under conditions of progredient loss and constraint, assimilative efforts may first increase, but then drop gradually when the costs of further goal pursuit outweigh the benefits (Brandtstädter and Rothermund 2003; Brandtstädter and Wentura 1995).

According to prevailing clinical notions, feelings of helplessness and depression arise when goals and desired self-representations drift out of the feasible range; from the perspective of the dual-process model, however, this is the critical point where the system shifts toward accommodation.

Accommodative processes: The attractive valence of goals largely derives from their relation to other goals and values; eventually goals may remain attractive even when the individual sees no way to attain them. Maintaining a commitment to barren goals, however, becomes maladaptive when it impedes reorientation toward other more promising goals. Accommodative processes counteract such states of escalated commitment. While assimilative activities are driven by the hedonic difference between current situations and intended goal-states, the adaptive function of accommodative mode essentially consists in deconstructing this difference. Facets of accommodative coping include the downgrading of, and eventually disengagement from, blocked goals, as well as a rescaling of ambitions and self-evaluative standards – processes that promote the readiness to accept given circumstances and redirect action resources toward new goals. In sum, the key characteristic of the accommodative mode is the flexible adjustment of goals and ambitions to losses and constraints as they arise from age-graded as well as from historical changes, but likewise from critical life events that affect physical, social, and material resources.

As regards cognitive mechanisms, the accommodative mode involves an increased availability of cognitions that shed doubt on the attractiveness and attainability of the blocked goal, thus enhancing a positive reappraisal of the given situation. A heuristic-divergent, bottom-up mode of information processing supersedes the more top-down, convergent mindset that characterizes assimilation; the attentional field widens and becomes responsive again to stimuli and action tendencies that have been warded off in the assimilative phase.

Moderating conditions: Problems of depression and rumination indicate that the shift from assimilative to accommodative modes of coping is not always a smooth one. The DPM specifies personal and situational conditions that may selectively enhance or impede the two modes of coping. Generally, people find it more difficult to give up goals that are central to their identity and not easily substitutable by equivalent alternatives. A high degree of self-complexity, i.e. a diversified and multifocal structure of personal projects, can thus enhance accommodation. Furthermore, availability of cognitions that supports a positive reappraisal of initially aversive circumstances, as well as low beliefs of control over the critical situation, facilitate the accommodative process, but weaken the motivation to invest assimilative effort. People harboring strong self-beliefs of control are typically more enduring to reach a goal and to overcome obstacles; at the same time, however, they are more prone to unproductive persistence and more likely to miss alternative options. While partly converging with theoretical positions that emphasize the benefits of strong self-beliefs of control, the DPM also highlights potential negative effects. Such side-effects may also account for counterintuitive findings of positive correlations between measures of perceived control and depression (e.g., Coyne 1992).

Implications for Successful Aging

Although assimilative and accommodative processes are antagonistically related, they can synergistically complement each other in concrete episodes of coping: Problems such as bodily impairment, chronic illness, or bereavement constitute a multifaceted complex of problems that often call for different ways of coping. Under limited action resources, disengagement from some goals can also facilitate the maintenance of other, more central ones. Conflicts between assimilative and accommodative tendencies may occur when goal-related efforts reach capacity limits. Such critical constellations often arise in late life, when questions of how, and into which projects, scarce action resources and life-time reserves should be invested become an acute concern. When important goals are at stake, the wavering between holding on and letting go is experienced as stressful. The accommodative process, however, engages cognitive mechanisms that eventually dissolve such conflicts.

Dispositional differences: Individuals differ in the degree to which they prefer, or tend to use, assimilative or accommodative ways of coping and life-management. To assess such interindividual differences, two scales are used: Tenacious Goal Pursuit (TGP) as a measure of assimilative persistence and Flexible Goal Adjustment (FGA) as a measure of accommodative flexibility. TGP and FGA constitute largely independent facets of coping competence, showing slightly negative or close to zero intercorrelations in most studies. Across all age levels, however, both scales show substantial positive correlations with measures of subjective life quality such as satisfaction, optimism, self-esteem, or emotional stability (Brandtstädter 2006; Brandtstädter and Renner 1990). Assimilative persistence and accommodative flexibility apparently improve the affect balance in different ways; while TGP seems to enhance positive affect, FGA dampens negative affect (Coffey et al. 2014; Heyl et al. 2007).

At the same time, however, TGP and FGA show opposed regressions on the age variable, which points to an increasing dominance of accommodative over assimilative modes of coping in late adulthood. Considering the fading of action resources and the cumulation of irreversible losses in later life, this pattern conforms to theoretical predictions. A broad array of findings attests to the particular importance of accommodative flexibility for coping with age-typical problems. In moderated regression analyses, FGA has been found to dampen the negative emotional impact of losses and constraints; such buffering effects have emerged with regard to bodily impairments, health problems, losses in sensory functions, chronic pain, and problems of bereavement (e.g., Boerner 2004; Darlington et al. 2007; Kranz et al. 2010; Seltzer et al. 2004; Van Damme et al. 2008). Flexible individuals adjust their desired self more stringently to their actual self, and negative experiences in specific areas of life compromise the overall sense of well-being to a lesser degree among individuals scoring high in FGA.

A tendency to find benefits in adversity has been reported for cancer patients, accident victims, and other disadvantaged groups (Affleck and Tennen 1996). The DPM, however, does not imply a general tendency toward benefit finding. Positive reappraisals of an aversive situation would inhibit active problem-solving efforts; accordingly, the DPM proposes that palliative cognitions are more strongly expressed in the accommodative mode when aversive circumstances seem irreversible. In line with these assumptions, higher scores in the FGA were found to predict an increased availability of uplifting thoughts when subjects are confronted with threatening scenarios. Furthermore, flexible individuals are less negatively affected by the prospect of fading life-time reserves, and connotations of being old become more positive with advancing age (Rothermund et al. 1995; Wentura et al. 1995).

Although accommodative processes are triggered by a loss of control over particular goals, they can contribute to maintaining self-beliefs of control in later life. Notions of self-efficacy and control imply confidence in the attainability of personally important goals; when such goals are no longer attainable, reducing their importance can thus help to preserve a general sense of efficacy. Considering the age-related increase of accommodative tendencies, this rationale can account in part for the stability of self-percepts of control in later life, which has repeatedly been reported (e.g., Grob et al. 1999).

Over the life span, flexible goal adjustment also enhances developmental transitions and role changes, which often require a restructuring of goals and life plans. For example, people scoring high in FGA have fewer difficulties to adjust their goals and maintain personal well-being after retirement; this holds in particular when goal changes are in accordance with the demands of the new situation (cf. Nurmi and Salmela-Aro 2002; Trépanier et al. 2001).

Further implications of the DPM for positive development and successful aging concern issues of depression, rumination, and regret.

Depression and rumination: People harboring strong self-beliefs of personal control and efficacy are more persistent in their efforts to cope with stressful events, and are less vulnerable to depression; the positive relationship of the TGP scale with measures of well-being converges with this well-established assumption. The DPM suggests that another important risk factor that contributes to strength and duration of depressive episodes is the inability or reluctance to let go of barren goals and life projects. At the same time, however, the model highlights possible adaptive functions of depressive mood states: The behavioral inhibition that typically accompanies them can weaken unproductive persistence and the escalating of commitment. Furthermore, a mindset of depressive realism tones down positively biased assessments of personal efficacy and of the benefits of goal attainment, biases which support assimilative persistence. From this theoretical perspective, depressive reactions not only indicate problems of shifting from assimilative to accommodative modes of coping, but at the same time can mediate this shift.

Similar arguments apply to processes of rumination, which often are part of the depressive syndrome. Ruminative thinking eventually helps to find solutions to given problems; when it yields no results, however, attainability beliefs should be weakened and accommodative tendencies be activated. The TGP and FGA scales predict corresponding differences in ruminative styles; among people disposed toward assimilative persistence, ruminative thought primarily revolves around possible problem solutions, whereas it seems more strongly oriented toward positive reappraisal and benefit finding among flexible individuals (see Brandtstädter 2007; Brandtstädter and Rothermund 2002).

Counterfactual emotions, regret: Feelings of anger, disappointment, or regret typically occur when one believes that a given undesired course of events was avoidable; thus, they can help to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Moreover, anticipated regret can shield goal pursuit against situational enticements; such anticipations typically tend to overpredict the strength and duration of regret (Gilbert and Wilson 2000). From the perspective of the DPM, this bias can be explained as a joint result of the tendency to accentuate the aversiveness of failure during goal pursuit, and of processes that reduce attractiveness of goals after such failure.

Feelings of disappointment and regret indicate a persisting attachment to opportunities and goals that have remained unachieved; they tend to lose their adaptive value in late life when repairing past mistakes becomes more difficult. In the process of life-review, accommodative flexibility can thus help coming to terms with untoward biographical outcomes. In line with this assumption, the FGA scale has been found to dampen ruminative regret; this effect is particularly strong when mistakes seem irreversible (cf. Brandtstädter 2006; Brandtstädter and Rothermund 2002).

Accommodating Meaning Perspectives and Final Decentration

Our activities gain motivating meaning from future-related projects; we generally assume that we will experience the outcomes of our actions and decisions. When this basic assumption becomes questionable, personal goals and existential orientations should be profoundly affected. Loss of future meaning can breed feelings of depression and void; accommodating personal goals and life-plans to fading life-time reserves prevents such consequences. More specifically, the experience of a shrinking personal future should induce tendencies to de-emphasize, and eventually disengage from, goals centering primarily on future benefits. At the same time, it can promote an orientation towards more intrinsic, time-transcendent sources of meaning; moral or religious ideals, as well as altruistic and socio-emotional strivings, may be considered as examples.

Questionnaire studies in fact suggest that in the transition to old age, strivings of power, achievement, and competence are increasingly outranked by goals related to spirituality, altruism, and intimacy. Accommodation-theoretical perspectives suggest that the shift toward intrinsic, value-related goals primarily depend on an increasing awareness of life’s finitude. This is substantiated by experiments with younger samples where mortality was made salient by a questionnaire that addressed issues of death and dying (e.g., how one would deal with a serious illness). Effects on subsequently assessed value orientations were largely similar to age-related effects, suggesting a weakening of individualistic and egocentric strivings; at the same time, tendencies of assimilative-offensive coping were significantly reduced (cf. Brandtstädter 2007; Brandtstädter et al. 2010). It is of note that clinical studies with patients suffering a terminal illness have reported a similar change toward unselfish, altruistic goals (e.g., Coward 2000).

A growing awareness of life’s finitude in later life thus seems to enhance an orientation toward timeless, self-transcendent values; this particular accommodative process has been denoted as “final decentration” (Brandtstädter et al. 2010). An orientation toward time-transcendent contexts of meaning and the dampening of a sense of self-importance are often considered to be hallmarks of wisdom. Philosophical as well as psychological definitions have emphasized sensitivity for the limitations of knowledge and its importance for finding the right balance between engagement and disengagement (e.g., Baltes and Staudinger 2000; Wink and Helson 1997) – or, as one could also put it, between assimilative and accommodative modes of life-management and coping.

Conclusion

The model of assimilative and accommodative coping suggests that resiliency and well-being in later adulthood basically depend on the interplay of two adaptive processes: On activities that aim at preventing losses and maintaining a desired course of personal development, as well as on the flexible adjustment of personal goals and ambitions to situational constraints. These adaptive processes are functionally antagonistic, but not mutually exclusive; rather, they constitute complementary modes of maintaining self-continuity and self-esteem. The model applies to the entire life span; it specifies moderating conditions affecting the two basic processes of coping and the balance between them, thus providing a basis for explaining individual differences in coping with developmental transitions, functional losses, and critical life events. The explanatory range of the model extends to phenomena of benefit finding, rumination, regret, as well as to issues of wisdom and self-transcendence.

Cross-References