Poster #121 - Adolescent Socio-moral Emotions and Prosocial Moral Reasoning in Volunteering Discourse: Importance of Maternal Moral Identity

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

For many adolescents, volunteering is a form of prosocial behavior in which youth can benefit members of the community. For adolescents who participate, it offers opportunities to enhance and develop skills and is linked with developing humanitarian values and moral reasoning. Participation may conflict with other desirable activities—creating a dilemma in which prosocial moral reasoning occurs (Eisenberg et. al, 2006). Higher levels reflect more humanitarian concerns, societal welfare, and justice. Whereas much of the research has investigated adolescents’ views of volunteering through interviews, revelations about the ways in which adolescents might think morally might also be revealed during conversations about prosocial and moral opportunities, such as discussions about choosing a volunteer activity. The present study investigates adolescents’ prosocial moral reasoning level within the context of mother-adolescent discourse and its link to adolescent socio-moral emotion and maternal moral identity.
Our objective was to examine adolescents’ prosocial moral reasoning about a volunteer activity they would enjoy and an activity they would avoid. Consistent with past studies, we hypothesized that adolescents’ socio-moral emotions would be related positively to reasoning about volunteering experiences. Further, mothers’ own moral identity is likely to be conveyed during conversations and witnessed in the nature of adolescents’ reasoning. The more central moral identity is to mothers, the more we expected adolescents’ socio-moral emotions to be linked with their moral reasoning.
Participants and Method
U.S. adolescents (n=99, 52 girls; Mage=14.27 years, SD=1.03) and their mothers (Mage=43.90 years, SD=5.81) discussed reasons for or against participation, benefits or costs, and learning opportunities for top-ranked and bottom-ranked activities. The video-taped conversations were transcribed verbatim and coded for adolescents’ comments reflecting types of prosocial moral reasoning (PMR), namely Hedonistic, Pragmatic, Needs-Oriented, Stereotyped, Self-Reflective Empathic Orientation, Internalized Moral Affect, and Principled Reasoning (Eisenberg et al., 1995). Mean inter-rater agreement was K=.89 (22% of transcripts). PMR composite scores were calculated for the top-ranked activity (Top-PROM) and bottom-ranked activity (Bottom-PROM; Carlo, 2010); higher scores represent higher levels.
Adolescents completed measures of empathic concern, perspective taking, empathic anger, guilt, and shame; mothers completed a measure assessing symbolization (moral actions) and internalization (centrality of moral traits to the self-concept). See Table 1 for descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations.
Results and Discussion
Results revealed that adolescents used higher levels of prosocial moral reasoning when discussing the top-ranked volunteer activities (Top-PROM; M=1.39, SD=.49) in comparison to bottom-ranked activities (Bottom-PROM; M=1.16, SD=.30), t(98)=4.37, p<.001. Pearson correlations showed that adolescent perspective taking was linked positively to the Top-PROM and Bottom-PROM. Bottom-PROM was linked negatively to empathic anger and positively to guilt. Mothers’ symbolization was related inversely to Bottom-PROM. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that mothers’ internalized moral identity moderated the relationship between empathic concern, empathic anger, and shame when predicting Bottom-PROM, whereas main effects were revealed with maternal symbolization (see Table 2). Top-PROM scores were unrelated to socio-moral or maternal identity. Discussion will focus on the importance of mothers’ own moral identity during discussion that facilitate adolescent moral reasoning when youth encounter a conflict of interest in choosing volunteer experiences.

Authors

• Mary Eberly Lewis, Oakland University
  Presenting Author

• Amber Michon, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah L. Pierotti, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah June Laible, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gustavo Carlo, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin Karahuta, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clare A. Van Norden, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author