Value development in mid-adulthood: an exploration
Value development in mid-adulthood: an exploration

Summary/Abstract: Two approaches have dominated research on human value preferences during the last decades, namely the ones associated with the names Ronald Inglehart and Shalom Schwartz. Up to now, neither of these approaches has bothered much about how value preferences develop across the lifespan. Both Inglehart and Schwartz implicitly or explicitly seem to assume that in general terms value preferences of people are more or less stable from when individuals become of age. The current study explores the intraindividual development of value preferences among individuals from (late) adolescence to their mid-forties. The sample used for this comprehensive exploration is an unusual one. Data stem from a longitudinal study of West German adolescent peace movement activists and sympathizers who were first surveyed in 1985 during the high time of the East-West antagonism, which saw demonstrations of well over a million participants in the then capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn. Two hundred forty one of originally 1492 participants were followed for what are now well over 30 years; they were surveyed every 3½ years through 10 waves of data gathering. At the onset of the study, participants were on average 14 years old, though with a broad range from eight to twenty years of age.

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