Proactive personality, Social well-being and civic participation in emerging adulthood

The phase of emerging adulthood is defined as a new life stage from late teens to early adulthood (Arnett, 2004). It is considered, by developmental research, a critical life-phase, whose positive outcome is related to the presence of resources such as social capital, civic engagement and civic participation (Masten et al., 2004; Hawkins et al., 2009). The study has analyzed the role of proactive personality, a stable disposition toward an agentic intervention in the environment and persevere until the individual is able bring about meaningful change, on two facets of positive development, namely Social well-being and civic participation in the stage of emerging adulthood. 388 undergraduates of University Campus of Rimini (mean age = 20.08; SD = 1.72, range 18-31; 19% males and 81% females) participated in the study. They filled in three self-report questionnaire, the Proactive Personality Scale (Bateman & Crant, 1993), the Civic Participation Questionnaire (Albanesi et al., 2007), the Social Well-being Questionnaire (Keyes, 1998). We found positive correlations between proactive personality, civic engagement and Social well-being. Hierarchical regression models highlighted that the two dimensions of proactive personality, proactive persistence in front of obstacles and proactive constructive environmental agency constitute the most important predictors of overall Social well-being, Social integration, Social contribution as its sub-components. They also give an important contribution to civic engagement after controlling for structural variables age, gender and degree course.