Amidst trends that emphasize languishing patterns in teen mental health, there is a bright spot: social science research indicates that adolescents who develop relationships with adult mentors demonstrate increased signs of flourishing. This social science research on mentors, though limited to school performance outcome goals, offers a lifeline…

A growth mixture modeling (GMM) analysis of neutralization scores in 1,830 youth across six waves of data revealed evidence of a three-class model in which moral neutralization either increased (low accelerating), decreased (high decelerating), or remained the same (moderate stable) over time. Controlling for age, sex, race, group assignment, and…

Previous research has found that when children engage in social and moral transgressions, they take steps to either remedy or explain their behavior. However, no prior systematic investigation has examined the strategies children employ to 'correct' their behavior in future situations. The present study employed a domain theory lens to investigate…

This article takes up three interrelated elements of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy into an initial conceptual framework for moral education and explores a practical application of this framework to a lesson plan. The three elements are moral vocabulary, moral perception, and the quality of our states of consciousness. The framework constituted…

Generativity, defined as care and concern for future generations as a legacy of the self, is central to developmental success in midlife, though recent research suggests that it is also an important aspect of positive development to younger adults and adolescents. Following previous studies using midlife samples, in the current study we…

This paper aims at connecting Self-Determination Theory (SDT) with research on moral identity. It is argued that SDT provides a unique and integrative framework for addressing important questions that have guided research on moral identity for many years: What is a moral identity? How is it linked to moral action? How do moral identities develop?…

This article examines relationships between children and youths' judgments and their justifications of truth telling and verbal deception, in situational and cultural contexts. Han Chinese, Euro-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians, seven- to 17-years of age were presented competitive scenarios in which protagonists told either lies to protect, or…

How young people spend time out of school is important for their character development. In this article we explore the relationships between adolescents' leisure time and other aspects of their lives, with a particular focus on religion. Using a data set generated by secondary school students in Peru and El Salvador (n = 6085) for a public health…

The VIA Classification of Strengths and Virtues attempts to provide a comprehensive model of character based on 24 character strengths. The present study is the largest study to date exploring the structure of the 24 strengths in youth. One sample (N = 23,850) completed the VIA-Youth, a teen measure of the VIA Classification. Based on a random…

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by intense changes, which impact the interaction between individuals and their environments. Moral reasoning (MR) is an important skill during adolescence because it guides social decisions between right and wrong. Identifying the cognitive underpinnings of MR is essential to understanding the…

In the USA, civic involvement in adolescence includes political and nonpolitical activities. Given that identities can motivate behavior, how do political and moral identities relate to civic activity choices? In this study, high school students ("N" = 1578) were surveyed about their political and nonpolitical civic actions and their…

Which moral principles should guide us in evaluating sexual contacts of adolescents? This paper tries to answer this question by taking two steps. First, the implications of a liberal sexual ethics for adolescence are spelled out, assessed and refuted. The core principle of the liberal ethical view, the principle of valid consent, takes competence…

This study focused on value transmission in the family and assessed adolescents' acceptance of the values their parents want to transmit to them (socialisation values), identifying some factors that may affect the level of acceptance. Specifically, actual value agreement between parents, parental agreement as perceived by adolescents, parent-child…

The assumptions of Kohlberg, Turiel and Shweder regarding the features of moral reasoning were compared empirically. The moral reasoning of Finnish Evangelical Lutheran, Conservative Laestadian and non-religious adolescents was studied using Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview and Turiel Rule Transgression Interview methods. Religiosity and choice…

The present study, which sought to analyse adolescent sportsmen's representations of responsibility, was mainly guided by the philosophical literature on this topic. A body of literature suggests that the contextual factors of sport practice, particularly regarding the rules that regulate play, may have a key role in the building of such…