From Heroism Motivation to Civic Engagement: The Role of Self-Construals

Heroism is an expression of self-actualization and a pinnacle social state that is of fundamental interest to humanistic psychology. Heroes help individuals understand the values and norms within society and prompt individuals to do what they can for those who need help. We examine the relationship between the motivation to act heroically and civic engagement and explore how self-construals offer insights into this relationship. In two studies, we found that heroism motivation was a significant and consistent predictor of civic engagement. Furthermore, we found that the association between heroism motivation and civic engagement was explained by self-construals. More specifically, we found that heroism motivation was indirectly related to civic engagement when people adopted an interdependent self-construal (but not an independent self-construal). The findings from the present research contribute to our understanding of how the motivation to behave heroically affects civic engagement and demonstrate the importance of self-construals for the link between these types of motivation and behavior.