The development of moral motivation across the adult lifespan

Abstract

What explains the behaviour of moral exemplars, individuals who dedicate themselves, in long-term service, to others' betterment? Such exemplars actualize their self-interest (agency) by promoting the interests of others (communion), whereas most people engage agency to attain more agency. In two studies we determine how these profiles develop across adulthood. Young adult exemplars and matched comparison participants described their personal goals and completed a semi-structured interview. Agentic and communal motives were coded from these materials and compared to the motivational profiles of older exemplars and comparisons. We found that (a) young adults actively separated their agency from their communion (suggesting a heightened motivational tension during this developmental period), and (b) younger exemplars used their agency to further agency and communion equally, whereas younger comparisons used their agency to further more agency. These findings explicate the nature of moral motivational development across the adult lifespan.

Keywords:

• Motivation
• Agency
• Communion
• Moral exemplars
• Development
• Identity

Notes

This research was facilitated by a fellowship awarded to WLD and a research grant to LJW, both from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The data for the older adult samples in Studies 1 and 2 were previously reported by Frimer, Walker, Dunlop, Lee, and Riches (2011) and Frimer, Walker, Lee, Riches, and Dunlop (2012), respectively, but were analysed in different ways and addressed other issues.

¹ Individuals who embody this stance are largely empathic and actionless. For this reason, this end-state of unmitigated communion will not be considered further here.

² Erikson (1968) wrote primarily about adolescence rather than early adulthood. More recently, however, the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood have become more permeable (Arnett, 2007).

³ For discussion of the appropriateness of considering the relation among variables within persons, see Frimer et al. (2011) and Magnusson (1999).

⁴ These numbers reflect cases in which participants specified a goal and the rationale(s) behind the goal. On average, participants produced an additional 2.1 goals (SD = 1.8) that were neither instrumental nor terminal in nature. As such, they were excluded from all analyses.