ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews theories and research about differences in one's serving society or prosociality due to one's emerging adulthood and other background characteristics possibly associated with emerging adulthood. Social responsibility refers to taking responsibility for society, in terms of caring about public affairs, exerting oneself for the public good, and so on. When the system is the individual, the view leads to voluntaristic theory that the individual's action is the result of the person's recognition, consideration, and discretion regarding four pivotal factors namely: realization, optimization, conformity, and consistency. The emerging adult at the age of 18 to 29 years is likely to have lower social responsibility, community participation, social contribution, and prosociality generally than is the older person according to voluntaristic theory. Age is undeniably a confounding factor for any difference due to emerging adulthood, simply because of overlap between age and emerging adulthood.
