What makes Emerging Adults Altruistic, Empathic & Helping: Do Religiosity and Moral identity Symbolization plays a role?
Keywords:
Religiosity, Moral Identity Symbolization, Emerging Adults, Self-reported Altruism, Other Oriented Empathy, HelpfulnessAbstract
The present research was planned to explore whether religiosity and moral identity symbolization has any impact on self-reported altruism, other-oriented empathy and helpfulness. The sample consisted of 500 emerging adults (females) with age ranging from 18- 24 Years. Convenient sampling method was used for data collection. Religiosity Scale devised by Bhushan (1970) was used to assess the religiosity. The moral identity symbolization dimension of Moral Identity Inventory (Aquino & Reed, 2002) was used to measure moral identity symbolization. Self-reported altruism, other-oriented empathy and helpfulness was measured by Prosocial Personality Battery introduced by Penner, Fritzsche, Craiger, & Freifeld, (1995). The data was analysed by 2×2 analysis of variance. After computation of results it was found that religiosity and moral identity symbolization interacted with each other to produce combined effect on self-reported altruism and helpfulness. Moreover, participants high and low on moral identity symbolization differed significantly from each other with regard to mean scores of self- reported altruism and helpfulness. Religiosity also has significant effect on prosociality.
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