Development of Social Value Orientations: Socialization and Life-Cycle Effects

Why do older people have more prosocial value orientations than youngsters? The 'prosocial-growth hypothesis' (Van Lange, Otten, De Bruin & Joireman, 1997) suggests that people become more prosocial as they grow older. In contrast, the alternative 'prosocial generation hypothesis' states that older people are more prosocial because they were raised in a more religious social context. By adding historical data on the formative socialization context to a cross-sectional survey, this article shows that more than 85% of the correlation of birth year with social value orientations is the result of generational differences, for instance with regard to religious socialization at the micro-level. Life cycle-effects account for 15% of the relation: the longer people are married, the more prosocial they are.