Adolescents' and Young Adults' Evaluations of Helping and Sacrificing for Others

Ninety adolescents and young adults (evenly divided by gender) were interviewed regarding their evaluations of helping and making a sacrifice to help in both distant and close relationships. Adolescents and young adults judged that it is important to help, satisfying to help, and wrong not to help, particularly when the recipients are in close relationships. With increasing age, helping behavior was viewed less as an obligation and more as a matter of personal choice with distant relationships. Female participants judged it more important to help, overall, than did male participants, but there were no gender differences for how satisfying it would be to help or whether it would be wrong not to help. Helping others and making sacrifices of personal goals to help others are valued in adolescence.