Values and Behaviors: A Developmental Perspective on the Origins of Character

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Values, abstract important goals, motivate behavior and enable evaluating peers, role models, and the self (Schwartz, 1992). Recent research shows the presence and motivational structure of values already in middle childhood, but little is known about how, and in which developmental period, values come to guide behaviors. This symposium presents different perspectives on how values and behaviors become associated through development.
Taking a longitudinal perspective, Presentation 1 shows that children’s Self-transcendence values predict change in prosocial behavior more than vice versa, suggesting that values have a causal role in moral behavior already in middle childhood.
Presentation 2 demonstrates that associations between children’s values and peer-reported prosocial and aggressive behavior depend on how important the value is to children. Specifically, the associations are much stronger at the extremes of the value importance distribution.
Presentation 3 longitudinally demonstrates the role of peers in children’s and adolescents’ values. Moreover, peers’ potential effect on children’s and adolescents’ values suggests that peers may affect behavior through values.
Finally, Presentation 4 presents two studies on the association between personality traits, viewed as aggregated behavioral patterns (e.g., agreeableness) and values (benevolence, power). In both studies the systematic value-trait association increases with age, indicating an increased integration of traits and values in adolescent personality.
Showing that values and behaviors are not only associated but become increasingly aligned, the studies have implications for understanding the development of character, “a set of psychological characteristics that motivate or enable individuals to function as competent moral agents” (Seider, Jayawickreme & Lerner, 2017).

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Ariel Knafo-Noam, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Individual Presentations

• Values and Sharing Behavior in Middle Childhood: A Longitudinal Study - Presenting Author: Anat Chomsky, Tel Aviv University; Non-Presenting Author: Ella Daniel, Tel Aviv University

• Does value importance impact value-behaviour relations in children? - Presenting Author: Julie Lee, University of Western Australia; Non-Presenting Author: Joanne Sneddon, University of Western Australia; Non-Presenting Author: Trish Collins, Edith Cowan University

• The Contribution of Peer Values to Children’s Values and Behavior - Presenting Author: Maya Benish-Weisman, University of Haifa; Non-Presenting Author: Shaul Oreg, Hebrew University; Non-Presenting Author: Yair Berson, Bar Ilan University

• Integrating Traits and Values in Adolescent Personality: Two Developmental Studies - Presenting Author: Ariel Knafo-Noam, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Non-Presenting Author: Dana Katsoty, Hebrew University; Non-Presenting Author: Noam Markovitch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Non-Presenting Author: Lior Abramson, Columbia University; Non-Presenting Author: Louise Twito, Hebrew University