Emerging adulthood is a period of life during which individuals are faced with more transitions and life decisions than at any other stage of their lives. Such transitions require a substantial amount of individual effort, such as goal setting, planning, explorations, decision making, and commitments, through which young people handle their current life situation and direct their future lives.

The authors in this volume shed light on these key psychological mechanisms by which young people navigate their lives by focusing on the role that goal setting and expectations play in directing emerging adults in the movement across this developmental stage. Considering the complexities and distinctive developmental nautre of this stage, the authors discuss questions such as which goals support and direct development and which may lead to adverse outcomes, and when are continued efforts to attain an aspired goal constructive and when are disengagement and the setting of a new goal preferred.

Based on longitudinal data sets collected in different countries, the authors provide a discussion of these questions and offer new understandings in teh inevitable dilemmas young people face when required to balance between normative expectations and individual aspirations.

This is the 130th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. The mission of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in the field of child and adolescent development. Each volume focuses on a specific "new direction" or research topic, and is edited by an expert or experts on that topic.

Shmuel Shulman is professor of clinical and developmental psychology at the Department of Psychology, Bar Ilan University, Isreal. His major topics focus on close relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood with a major emphasis on the developmental course of romantic relationships and their adaptive and maladaptive expressions.

Jari-Erik Nurmi is professor of psychology at the University of Jyvaskla, Finland. He is also the director of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Learning and Motivation. His main research interests are motivation and learning and the role of motivation in life-span transitions.