Adolescents' and teachers' outlook on leisure activities: Personal values as a unifying framework

In this paper, we incorporate a personal values (Schwartz, 1992) perspective to explore adolescents' leisure activities. Focusing on prosocial and age-inappropriate activities (e.g., pornography, drinking), we explore adolescents' motivations to engage in these activities, and teachers' attitudes toward students' activities. In two studies we show that adolescents' engagement and teachers' attitudes are motivated in consistent patterns. For both adolescents' and teachers, these motivational patterns are negatively related for prosocial and age-inappropriate activities. In Study 1 (N = 262), adolescents' engagement in prosocial activities was positively predicted by self-transcendence, and negatively predicted by hedonism values. Engagement in age-inappropriate activities was positively predicted by hedonism and self-enhancement, and negatively predicted by self-transcendence and conservation values. In Study 2 (N = 141), teachers' attitudes toward students' prosocial activities were positively predicted by their self-transcendence, and negatively predicted by self-enhancement values. Teachers' attitudes toward students' age-inappropriate activities were positively predicted by self-enhancement values. In both studies, the level of religiosity moderated the relationships of self-enhancement values and age-inappropriate activities. Our findings provide insights for the motivational underpinnings of different leisure activities for both adolescents and their socialization agents. We also point to the potential interaction of these motivations with the level of religiosity in predicting behaviors and attitudes.