The Need to Contribute During Adolescence

Abstract

As an intensely social species, humans demonstrate the propensity to contribute to other individuals and groups by providing support, resources, or helping to achieve a shared goal. Accumulating evidence suggests that contribution benefits the givers as well as the receivers. The need to contribute during adolescence, however, has been underappreciated compared with more individually focused psychological or social developmental needs. The need is particularly significant during the teenage years, when children’s social world expands and they become increasingly capable of making contributions of consequence. Moreover, contribution can both promote and be a key element of traditionally conceived fundamental needs of the adolescent period such as autonomy, identity, and intimacy. The neural and biological foundations of the adolescent need to contribute, as well as the ways in which social environments meet that need, are discussed. A scientific and practical investment in contribution would synergize with other recent efforts to reframe thinking about the adolescent period, providing potential returns to the field as well as to youths and their communities.

Computational and Motivational Mechanisms of Human Social Decision Making Involving Close Others

“…Parents and friends serve different functions in the lives of young adults (19,20) and social obligations are likely to vary as a result (e.g., "I feel indebted to my parent", "My friend shares the same interests as me"). Preferences for parents in situations with financial outcomes may thus be driven by a need to contribute or reciprocate (21). By contrast, the apparent lack of a parent or friend preference in decisions with social outcomes may be due to the fact that some individuals prefer spending time with their parent and others with their friend, leading to a net zero preference at the group level (20,22).…”

Characterizing the Network Architecture of Emotion Regulation Neurodevelopment

“…This speaks to the nature of both development and emotion regulation. First, adolescence is marked by tremendous flexibility across several domains (Blakemore & Mills, 2014;Fuligni, 2018;Hauser, Iannaccone, Walitza, Brandeis, & Brem, 2015;Pfeifer et al, 2009), including in connectome development (Kaufmann et al, 2017;Morgan, White, Bullmore, & Vértes, 2018). That is, brain networks exhibit temporarily less stable activity profiles, likely due to developmental demands from one's environment that require increased flexibility (Doremus-Fitzwater, Varlinskaya, & Spear, 2010;Spear, 2011).…”

Third‐Party Intervention in Peer Victimization: Self‐Evaluative Emotions and Appraisals of a Diverse Adolescent Sample

“…Appraisals may be based on moral principles of care and justice, or on pragmatic concerns, such as whether actions were helpful or accomplished intended goals. In adolescence, approval by peers and fulfilling a desired social role are also likely to provide important standards for appraisals (Albert, Chein, & Steinberg, 2013;Fuligni, 2019). Malti and Ongley's (2014) model is recursive in that evaluative emotions and appraisals that are experienced after an action affect subsequent behavior by creating anticipatory emotions and appraisals.…”

“…As in other narrative studies (Wainryb, & Recchia, 2012), youth sometimes spontaneously commented on whether they were being "good friends." Formal analyses from multiple theoretical perspectives suggest that having a meaningful social role like friend is a key element in positive adolescent development (see reviews, Ellis, Volk, Gonzalez, & Embry, 2015;Fuligni, 2019). These comments during pretesting implied a set of standards used to evaluate social actions.…”

“…This study attempted to advance our understanding of four hitherto neglected or conflated thirdparty interventions by investigating how teens feel about their actions and how they evaluate them with respect to perceived helpfulness (Bellmore et al, 2012;Camodeca & Goossens, 2005b), consistency with the role of friend (Ellis et al, 2015;Fuligni, 2019) and peer approval (Pozzoli & Gini, 2010;Rigby & Johnson, 2012). In addition to evaluating hypothesized differences in the levels of selfevaluative appraisals and emotions, interviews and ratings were used to gather initial information regarding (1) how often each intervention type occurs, and (2) the overall emotional context in which self-evaluative emotions are embedded.…”