Values and identity in prosocial and at-risk youth: The role of value endorsement, value salience, and moral identity in behavior

This study compares and seeks an integrated understanding of both the moral identity and social-cognitive value theories of prosocial behavior. It not only demonstrates the areas of convergence and divergence between these theories' predictions, but also offers a further comparison of at-risk and exemplary prosocial youth with respect to prosocial values. Comparisons were conducted between 31 community-nominated adolescent male "care exemplars" and 24 at-risk comparison adolescents (ages 15-18) with respect to measures of the self-importance of moral identity, value endorsement and perceptions of parental value endorsement (Portrait Values Questionnaire), and value salience (measured by a novel coding of value-oriented self-descriptions). It was found that adolescent exemplars reported a greater self-importance of moral identity than comparisons. Nonsignificant trends in the predicted direction were found on a number of other hypotheses with respect to self- and perceived parent value endorsement and self-oriented value saliency. However, contrary to predictions, the two groups did not differ significantly in their perceptions of parent-child value similarity, nor did they differ in their generation of prosocial value-oriented descriptions of parents. Interrelationships between value-oriented responses offer some support for Schwartz's (1992) theory of human values. Further, this study contributes to moral identity theory through an analysis of the role of value salience and endorsement. Findings suggest that the self-importance of moral identity mediates the role of values in predicting prosocial behavior.