Value Profiles during Middle childhood: Developmental Processes

• In Event: 3-136 - A Multicultural Perspective on Values and Positive Developmental Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Values are broad motivational goals that express what is important to people in their life, and guide belief, judgment and behavior (Sagiv & Roccas, 2000; Schwartz, 1992), even among young children (Abramson, Daniel, & Knafo-Noam, 2017). Values are systematically inter- related, holding dynamic associations of compatibility and conflict (Schwartz, 1992). Little is known about the development of value importance and inter-relations among values during middle childhood and their role in social behavior (Dӧring, Daniel, & Knafo-Noam, 2016). To understand the development of these inter-relations, we utilized Latent Transition analysis to identify value-priority profiles, follow profile membership over time, compare them between genders, and associate them with social behavior.
N = 676 Australian primary school children (50% female, age range 5-12, Mage = 7.56, SD = 1.74 at Time 1), reported their values using the Animated Values Instrument (AVI-r, Lee et al., 2017), twice, 2 years apart. We identified a four profile model that best fit the data at both Time 1 and Time 2, based on AIC, BIC, SABIC , parsimony and theoretical interpretability. The four value profiles identified (Figure 1) were Social Focus (SoF; care for others and for the social order), Self-Focus (SeF; Care for the self and pursuit of new and enjoyable experiences ), Growth-Focus (GF; Care for others and pursuit of new experiences and independence) and Undifferentiated (UD; moderate value importance). Prevalence of SoF and to a lesser extent GF increased over time, while prevalence of SeF and UD decreased over time. Younger girls were frequently members of the UD and SoF profile (58%, 32%, respectively), while older ones were frequently members of the SoF profile (68%). Younger boys were frequently members of the UD or SeF profiles (38%, 41%, respectively, while older ones were more frequently members of the SoF and GF profiles (33%, 29%, respectively). Within person value development over a period of two years was characterized by either (1) stability of value profile, (2) transfer to the SoF or GF profiles, especially among older children or (3) away from the UD or SeF profiles (Figure 2a-b).
We predicted social behavior (prosocial and aggression) as reported by peer nominations at Time 2, by likelihood of membership in four transition groups, controlling for age. The transition groups included likelihood of membership in the SoF profile Time 2, conditional on membership in the different profiles at Time 1. Members of the SoF profile at both time points were more likely to behave prosocially and less likely to behave aggressively than non group members (b = .51, p < .001, b = -.33, p = .01, respectively). Members of the GF profile at Time 1 and SoF profile at Time 2 were more likely to behave prosocially (b = .58, p = .03). We discuss the implications of the study for motivation and behavior of young children.

Authors

• Ella Daniel, Tel-Aviv University
  Presenting Author

• Maya Benish-Weisman, University of Haifa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joanne Sneddon, University of Western Australia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Lee, University of Western Australia
  Non-Presenting Author