ABSTRACT

Adolescents’ and young adults’ values and related beliefs have been of great interest across the social sciences, despite ebbs and flows in the popularity of values as a concept in these disciplines. The growing capacity of adolescents to think abstractly and the centrality of identity development to adolescence and young adulthood make values fundamental to understanding these stages in the life course. Young people’s values, or abstract evaluative beliefs that indicate good vs. bad or right vs. wrong, are most often assessed by asking research participants to rank or rate the importance of various behaviors (e.g., being honest, independent) or end states (e.g., wealth, inner peace) (Marini 2000; Hitlin and Piliavin 2004). Thus, they capture not only what young people think is right and wrong, but particularly in societies in which people have considerable freedom in shaping their futures, they also represent means and ends for constructing a life. Much scholarly attention has also focused on value-related goals, normative beliefs, and concerns of adolescents and young adults, which we include in this overview when they closely relate to its central themes. Two key objectives underlie research on young people’s values and related beliefs.

First, they are used as a barometer for society and where it is headed. We ask whether the values of today’s youth are different from ours or our parents and what that says for society’s future. To use adolescents’ values as a sign of what is to come as new generations fill out the adult population requires an assumption that values be relatively stable throughout adulthood. Indeed, most research implicitly if not explicitly assumes that values are quite stable after crystallizing at some point in adolescence (Marini 2000; Hitlin and Piliavin 2004). Given the volume of research making this assumption, surprisingly little research

directly tests it. Some evidence of relative stability exists, yet scholars also acknowledge that values change somewhat with new roles and other experiences. The lack of empirical attention to this issue leaves room for claims of stability and malleability to coexist. Even if relatively stable, the transition to adulthood, with its many changes in roles, relationship networks, and institutional ties, may be a time of greater change in values than other periods of the life course. Despite heavy reliance on this assumption, the timing of

‘crystallization’ of values, if it does occur, is still unclear. As discussed at the end of this chapter, it may also be changing historically. A second major objective of research on adolescents’ and young adults’ values and

related beliefs is to understand behavior. Values are conceptualized as motivational beliefs and thought to work in conjunction with other factors in influencing behavior. Other things being equal, individuals behave in ways that are consistent with their values. A specific model of the value-behavior relationship is rarely offered, and specifying such a model is not usually a primary goal of adolescence research per se. When process is given any attention, values are usually thought to shape attitudes or other constructs that have more proximal effects on behavior. There is perhaps more attention to how values are related to behavior in adolescence and

early adulthood than at other life stages because decisions made during this period are believed to greatly affect the pathways individuals take with respect to education, work, and family. Secondary school and the years immediately following are a time of planning, and values guide thinking about the type of job one might want, whether and when to partner and have children, to leave or stay in the community in which one grew up, and a host of other related issues. The weight of these decisions, combined with the assumption that values are stable after adolescence, sustain much research on values for these age groups. The remainder of this overview is organized into four parts. First, we consider research

on historical trends in young people’s values and related beliefs. Second, we examine work that is concerned with the major social sources of influence on values. Third, we summarize themes in value-behavior scholarship. And finally, we consider the limitations of scholarship in this area and suggest directions for future work.