McAdams, D. P. & de St. Aubin, E. (1992). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), 1003–1015.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The standard measure of legacy motivation in personality psychology, by the author of the narrative-identity work the record holds (LIT-595). Its “inner desire” names symbolic immortality as a motive for care. For QUESTION-301.
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
Kruse and Schmitt (NOTE-1261) restate the 1992 model in full: cultural demand and inner desire (a need to be needed, and a need for symbolic immortality, investing in “things that outlive the self”) lead to concern and commitment, which become action through “belief in the species”, and are narrated in a generativity script. They quote its definition of belief in the species and its finding (p. 1008) that having children is tied more closely to men’s generative concern than women’s, and use its scale in an intervention. Missing still: the LGS items, scoring and psychometrics, the behavioural-acts checklist, the narrative coding of autobiographies, the samples and every statistic. Sandoval-Obando et al. 2026 supplies the scale’s format.
Sandoval-Obando et al. (NOTE-1260) give the LGS’s format: 20 items, answered on a 4-point scale from “never applies to me” to “very often applies to me”, covering concern for future generations, productivity, community involvement and personal impact. They attribute to the 1992 paper (p. 1008) a two-factor structure of 17 positive items and 3 “Generative Doubts” items, which the record could not check, and quote its abstract on the scale’s “strong positive associations with reports of actual generative acts”. In Chilean teachers they find three factors, including a “Generative Legacy” factor apart from generative action. Missing still: the item wordings, the 1992 samples, reliabilities and validity correlations, the acts checklist and the autobiography coding.