The intergenerational similarity of social value orientations in adolescents and emerging adults: Variable-centered and person-centered approaches

Abstract

The current study examined the intergenerational similarity of middle adolescents’ and emerging adults’ social value orientations (SVO) using different variable-centered and person-centered approaches and whether perceived parental autonomy support and conditional regard would play a role in similarity. The sample consisted of 218 middle adolescents (ages 14–15, eighth and ninth grades) and 219 emerging adults (ages 19–25, attending university) and their mothers and fathers in a metropolitan area of Ankara, Turkey ( N = 437 triads). Our findings revealed that mother-father similarity was higher than parent-child similarity. Results indicated more similarities between emerging adults-parents than adolescents-parents, and autonomy support contributed to the similarity. Higher levels of maternal and paternal SVO has linked with prosociality of offsprings. Besides, when mothers and fathers were incongruent in reporting SVO, the emerging adults’ probability of having prosocial SVO was lower.

Dual process in parent–adolescent moral socialization: The moderating role of maternal warmth and involvement

“…This finding suggests perhaps a more direct route of value transmission from mothers' explicit moral identity to adolescents' own developing explicit moral identity, as opposed to the more complex associations between mothers' implicit moral identity and adolescents' observed prosociality that may be dependent on contextual aspects of the mother–child relationship. These findings largely echo existing work showing moderate, significant correlations in self‐reported prosocial orientations between adolescents and their parents (Soenens et al, 2007; Speicher, 1994; Yaban & Sayil, 2021). It is possible that when mothers explicitly state their moral values publicly and in the presence of their children, children come to learn that those are more socially acceptable values.…”

“…A general conclusion is that agents of socialization, such as parents, successfully promote their children's internalization of moral values (their acceptance of these values as internally motivated and as reflecting their own viewpoint) in two ways: by rewarding and modeling moral behaviors and by talking with their children about the importance of moral values. Work supporting this premise shows that adolescent children of parents who volunteer and donate are likely to do the same (Ottoni‐Wilhelm et al, 2014), even as adults (Mustillo et al, 2004), and that parents and their children tend to share similar prosocial orientations (Headey et al, 2014; Soenens et al, 2007; Yaban & Sayil, 2021). Parenting behavior that produces these positive outcomes is motivated or guided by the parent's moral identity, that is, by the extent to which parents see morality as a central part of their self‐concept.…”