A longitudinal, mixed methods study exploring the impact of civic engagement on psychosocial outcomes across early to mid adulthood.

Civic engagement during emerging adulthood plays a pivotal role in fostering a sense of community responsibility, providing a sense of societal purpose, and contributes to improved psychological adjustment. In this mixed-method longitudinal study, we further explored how civic engagement and psychological adjustment codevelop across emerging adulthood. Participants were drawn from The Future's Study, a Canadian longitudinal study capturing the transition to adulthood in Southwestern Ontario. The sample was predominantly White (81%), female identifying (71%), and largely affluent with 5.8% reporting lower than average family income. At ages 23, 26, and 32, participants completed measures of civic engagement, depression, and optimism; at age 26, participants had the opportunity to also complete a life story interview where they were asked to recount a key community scene from their lives and reflect on its impact. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models illustrated that civic engagement across ages 23-32 reduced loneliness concurrently and longitudinally. No cross-lagged associations were found for depression or optimism. Four themes illuminated the role of civic engagement in buffering against loneliness during emerging adulthood and into midlife: community unites people through a shared vision, fosters meaningful and long-lasting connections, solidifies the importance of leaving a legacy for future generations, and contributes to personal growth via insight into others' lives, which illuminated an awareness of one's own social advantages and privilege. These results illustrate that the pathway between increased civic engagement and reduced loneliness may be due, in part, to intrinsic and collective motives that tie together personal growth, identity, and generativity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Trajectories of Youth's Helping From Adolescence into Adulthood: The Importance of Social Relations and Values.

Helping behaviors (e.g., helping a sick friend, volunteering) are important forms of community involvement and likely change with age and life context. Yet, trajectories of community helping from adolescence through early adulthood have rarely been examined. It is also unclear how the roles of family, friends, and social attitudes might foster the development of helping behaviors across these years. We report on a study of community helping in a Canadian youth sample, across five intervals over a 15-year span, beginning at age 17 (N = 416). Helping displayed a quadratic trend, decreasing into the mid-20s, and then rebounding somewhat by 32. Social responsibility and salience of friends' prosocial moral values positively predicted age 17 community helping, whereas parents' moral values predicted less decrease in helping over this timeline. These findings add to an understanding of moral influences and social responsibility, in the potential shaping of youths' community helping behaviors.

Harm to others reduces the sunk-cost effect.

The sunk-cost effect (SCE) is the tendency to continue investing in something that is not working out because of previous investments that cannot be recovered. In three experiments, we examine the SCE when continued investment violates the ethic of care by harming others. In Experiment 1, the SCE was smaller if the sunk-cost decision resulted in harmful consequences towards others (an interaction between sunk cost and the ethic of care). In Experiment 2, participants considered vignettes from their own or another person's perspective. We observed an interpersonal SCE - people showed the SCE when taking the perspective of others. We did not replicate the interaction found in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we used statistically more powerful analyses - Bayesian sequential hypothesis testing - to examine the interaction between sunk cost and the ethic of care. We found evidence in favor of the interaction; the SCE was smaller if the sunk-cost decision harmed others. We suggest that violating one's ethic of care de-biases decision-making by overshadowing sunk costs. These findings may help explain decision-making in real-world situations involving large investments.

An introduction to exemplar research: a definition, rationale, and conceptual issues.

The exemplar methodology represents a useful yet underutilized approach to studying developmental constructs. It features an approach to research whereby individuals, entities, or programs that exemplify the construct of interest in a particularly intense or highly developed manner compose the study sample. Accordingly, it reveals what the upper ends of development look like in practice. Utilizing the exemplar methodology allows researchers to glimpse not only what is but also what is possible with regard to the development of a particular characteristic. The present chapter includes a definition of the exemplar methodology, a discussion of some of key conceptual issues to consider when employing it in empirical studies, and a brief overview of the other chapters featured in this volume.

The making of an environmental activist: a developmental psychological perspective.

This chapter reviews the research on environmental exemplars, or activists. General themes that have been identified in the literature include early experiences in nature, the influence of other people and organizations, opportunities for environmental education, environmental self and identity formation, and generativity. With these themes in hand, we construct a developmental model suggesting a possible trajectory toward environmental activism. We also discuss possible implications of these findings with reference to the current state of our planet and what may be done to reverse current trends.

Environmentalism as a context for expressing identity and generativity: patterns among activists and uninvolved youth and midlife adults.

Previous qualitative studies have identified themes of generativity and identity development in the interviews of environmental activists (Chan, 2009; Horwitz, 1996), suggesting their importance as motives for environmental behavior. The purpose of our study was to extend this work by identifying positive relationships between identity maturity, generativity, and environmentalism using quantitative methodologies. To explore these relationships, we designed quasi-experimental and correlational studies. We recruited 54 environmental activists and 56 comparison individuals, half of whom were youth (mean age = 22 years) and the other half midlife adults (mean age = 43 years). Sixty-three percent of our sample was female. Participants completed several environmental, generativity, and identity questionnaires. We found that activists and comparison individuals differed on the identity maturity, generativity, and environmental measures overall. Further, greater identity maturity and generativity were associated with higher environmental engagement. And generativity was found to mediate the relation between identity maturity and environmentalism. Our findings suggest that engaging in generative behaviors may be an important part of the process in forming an environmental identity and engaging in environmental actions.

A model of moral identity: applications for education.

The purpose of this chapter is to build an intellectual bridge between moral psychology and education. Our hope is that the findings from moral psychology will inform and explain best practices in moral education. With that end in mind, we briefly and selectively review the moral education and character education literature highlighting some of the challenges these domains have faced. Next, we review the moral identity literature and offer our own model of moral identity formation emphasizing the "characteristic adaptations" (i.e., moral orientation, moral self, moral emotions, and social relationships and opportunities) of the model. Finally, we illustrate and explain how some of these "characteristic adaptations" have been or could be used in the development of successful moral education programs, and provide specific examples for application of our model in the domain of sex education.

The association of personality and the likelihood of serious unintentional injury during childhood.

In this study a survival analysis was conducted to examine whether childhood personality was associated with the likelihood and the timing of an unintentional injury requiring hospitalization or medical attention before the age of 13. Maternal ratings of childhood personality (at 5 or 6 years of age) were used to derive resiliency, undercontrol, and overcontrol prototypical profile scores for a diverse sample of 1,013 child participants from the child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. A significant inverse association was found between likelihood of childhood unintentional injury and the overcontrolled prototype score. The findings are interpreted in light of their implications for researchers and health care practitioners interested in improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents.

The association of neighborhood poverty with personality change in childhood.

The child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (n.d.) was analyzed to examine the relation of undesirable personality change in early childhood to neighborhood economic deprivation. Participants in the survey who had complete data at Time 1 (3-4 years of age) and Time 2 (5-6 years of age) and who remained in the same neighborhood during both time periods were included in the analyses. The results indicated that neighborhood economic disadvantage was associated with undesirable personality change even after controlling for family-level variables such as maternal education, family income, and cognitive and emotional support in the home environment for children. The association of personality change with neighborhood economic deprivation was not mediated by maternal depression, Head Start participation, cognitive and emotional support in the home, or maternal trust in the neighborhood. The authors discuss recommendations for future investigations.

Searching for self and relationships online.

The purpose of this project was to study how Internet use relates to psychological well-being, relationships, the self and identity. University students (N = 203) completed a battery of questionnaires including measures of time spent online, "pathological" Internet use, Internet motivation, loneliness, relationship quality, self-concept clarity, and ego identity. Results showed positive relationships between measures of Internet use and loneliness. As well, face-to-face relationships were rated higher on both positive and negative quality dimensions relative to online relationships. Finally, Internet use was negatively correlated with self-concept clarity, and associated with moratorium identity status. These results suggest that the Internet may be an important aid for young adults as they searched for an adult identity.

Extraordinary moral commitment: young adults involved in social organizations.

The personality of exemplary young adults was studied in an effort to paint a portrait of moral excellence that expanded upon the traditional emphasis on moral reasoning maturity. These young adults were nominated based on their extraordinary moral commitment towards various social organizations. The sample included 40 moral exemplars and 40 matched comparison individuals who responded to a battery of questionnaires and participated in a semistructured interview. It was found that moral exemplars, in contrast to comparison individuals, were more agreeable, more advanced in their faith and moral reasoning development, further along in forming an adult identity, and more willing to enter into close relationships. These findings are discussed in the context of describing moral excellence from a multifaceted, personality perspective.