Moral Motivation through the Life Span is the fifty-first volume in the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation series, the longest continuously running symposium in the field of psychology. This work focuses on moral development theory and research, an area of academic study that began early in the twentieth century but has never before been addressed by the Symposium. What is morality, such theorists ask, and what exactly makes a moral person? The contributors to this volume are of diverse theoretical orientations and take different stances on a number of major themes: What motivates moral behavior? Are there certain universal moral values, or are such values always subjective? Does an individual's will or an individual's environment play a greater role in determining moral conduct? What influence can we attribute to spirituality? Finally, the contributors explore the practical applications of their research on moral motivation: What implications do such theories have for child-rearing or our educational system? How do we raise the next generation to be empathetic toward their fellow human beings? Nebraska-Lincoln and the recipient of a distinguished research award from the American Psychological Association and the John Templeton Foundation. Carolyn Pope Edwards is Willa Cather Professor and a professor of psychology and of family and consumer sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the coauthor of Ngecha: A Kenyan Community in a Time of Rapid Social Change (Nebraska 2004) and the co-editor of Bambini: The Italian Approach to Infant-Toddler Care.

In what ways do individuals influence the course of their lives? How do people construct a unique life path within the opportunities and constraints afforded by their world?
This volume examines how agency in the life course can be conceptualized and investigates the specific ways in which personal characteristics and contextual variables play a role in shaping individual lives. The contributors offer differing perspectives on agency, how its expression changes over a lifetime, and how it is constrained, channeled, or altered by cultural and social institutions.

Each chapter focuses on one aspect of individual agency that can have a cumulative influence on an individual's life. Following an overview of the subject by Lisa J. Crockett, Jochen Brandtstadter and Klaus Rothermund provide a life-span model of agency focused on "intentional self-development" and goal accommodation. Ellen Skinner and Kathleen Edge discuss the development of coping, a potential underpinning of agency. In a concluding essay, Michael J. Shanahan and Glen H. Elder Jr. examine agency within a life-course framework, showing that the impact of individual agency on people's lives depends on the opportunities and constraints present during a particular historical era.