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.