Managing the Moral Self through Volunteering: Framing the Served and the Self

• In Event: 447 - Section on Social Psychology Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Altruism

Abstract

Volunteering is a common and important experience in the US. This study seeks to better understand what sustains and disrupts the commitment of volunteers by examining the identity and emotion dynamics experienced by direct service volunteers who work with people from marginalized groups. These groups include, for example, the poor, ill, criminal, at risk, or discriminated against. Volunteers who work for change engage in a variety of activities ranging from mentoring at-risk youth to teaching ill individuals how to navigate medical bureaucracy to providing emotional support to prisoners. Drawing on analysis of fifteen in-depth interviews with such people, this study examines how volunteers engage in identity work around morality by framing the people they serve as needy and worthy of volunteerism and the self as special, sympathizing, and empathizing. This study demonstrates the emotional underpinnings of the moral identity work that volunteers create through their charity work.

Author

• Carissa M. Froyum, University of Northern Iowa