Generative Behavior Checklist (GBC)

Abstract

The Generative Behavior Checklist (GBC) is a standardized, self-report psychometric instrument designed to assess the objective enactment of generativity—the psychosocial concern for establishing, guiding, and nurturing future generations—in adult populations. Developed by Dan P. McAdams and Ed de St. Aubin at Northwestern University in 1992, the GBC translates the theoretical constructs of generative action into an empirically measurable behavioral catalog. Comprising a total of 50 behavioral items—consisting of 40 target generative acts and 10 neutral distractor or filler items—the checklist asks respondents to evaluate their performance of specific social, pedagogical, creative, and civic activities over the preceding two-month interval. Responses are recorded on an authentic 3-point frequency metric ranging from 0 (not performed in the past 2 months), 1 (performed once in the past 2 months), to 2 (performed more than once in the past 2 months). Total generative behavior scores range from 0 to 80, derived strictly from the 40 scored items. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s α typically ranging between .82 and .88 across diverse community and lifespan samples) and acceptable temporal stability over test-retest intervals. Factor analytic studies support a coherent overarching generative action dimension alongside distinguishable behavioral facets, including pedagogical instruction, civic engagement, creative production, and interpersonal caregiving. The scale displays strong convergent validity with the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS), generative thematic coding in autobiographical narratives, altruism inventories, and broad measures of psychological well-being, while exhibiting robust discriminant validity from simple social desirability and unrelated leisure behaviors. The GBC remains a cornerstone instrument in lifespan developmental psychology, personality research, and family studies.

Keywords

Generative Behavior Checklist, GBC, generativity, Dan P. McAdams, adult development, midlife psychosocial development, Erik Erikson, prosocial behavior, behavioral assessment, psychological well-being, civic engagement, psychometrics

Authors

The Generative Behavior Checklist was conceptualized and developed by:

• Dan P. McAdams, Ph.D. — Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA. McAdams is internationally renowned for his pioneer work in narrative identity, personality psychology, and adult psychosocial development.
• Ed de St. Aubin, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Psychology at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Formerly a doctoral researcher and project collaborator at Northwestern University’s Foley Center for the Study of Lives, specializing in personal narrative, adult development, morality, and generative commitment across the lifespan.

Institutional Origin & Contact:
The Foley Center for the Study of Lives
School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
Website: http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Generative Behavior Checklist (GBC) is to operationalize and quantify the overt behavioral manifestations of generativity in adults. While Erik Erikson originally conceptualized generativity as the central psychosocial crisis of midlife—opposed to stagnation—early psychological literature frequently relied on abstract, impressionistic, or broad self-attitudinal measures that failed to disentangle subjective generative concern from actual behavioral enactment. McAdams and de St. Aubin recognized that an individual could harbor intense conscious aspirations to foster the next generation while engaging in negligible tangible generative action, or conversely, perform substantial generative acts out of institutional obligation, habit, or social role expectations without reporting high conscious concern.

The GBC was therefore engineered to provide a concrete, act-frequency inventory that registers the frequency with which adults perform explicit actions designed to generate, nurture, lead, teach, and sustain other human beings or positive social systems. By asking respondents about specific, verifiable behaviors undertaken within a clearly delimited historical window—the preceding two months—the checklist minimizes cognitive recall bias, suppresses self-idealization tendencies, and prevents the conflation of global self-concept with actual behavioral investment.

In research contexts, the GBC serves several distinct functions:

• Testing Multidimensional Models of Lifespan Development: It allows developmental psychologists to test the sequential and reciprocal pathways linking cultural demand, inner desires, conscious generative concerns (assessed via instruments like the Loyola Generativity Scale), generative commitments, and concrete behavioral acts.
• Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Comparisons: It facilitates empirical comparisons across young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late life to examine how the behavioral expression of generativity shifts from active parenting and occupational mentorship to civic engagement, artistic production, and community preservation.
• Personality and Well-Being Inquiries: It serves as a criterion variable or mediator in models examining how personality traits (such as the Five-Factor Model dimensions of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness) translate into positive developmental outcomes, meaning in life, ego-resilience, and subjective well-being.
• Applied and Clinical Settings: In adult coaching, family counseling, and vocational transition interventions, the GBC provides an objective baseline of a client’s prosocial investments, highlighting areas of psychosocial stagnation, role disengagement, or underutilized creative and pedagogical potential.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the GBC is generative behavior (or generative action), situated within the broader multidimensional framework of adult generativity. Generativity represents an adult’s dedication to fostering the growth, well-being, and development of the next generation, leaving positive contributions that outlast the self, and ensuring the continuity of human cultures, communities, and environments. McAdams and colleagues decompose generativity into seven interrelated facets: cultural demands, inner desires (symbolic immortality and communal need), generative concern, generative belief, generative commitment, generative action, and narrative accounting.

The GBC is explicitly configured to measure generative action. This component represents the behavioral output or expressive manifestation of generativity. Within the 40 scored items of the GBC, generative action is represented across several core psychosocial domains:

• Pedagogical and Mentoring Actions: Behaviors that involve teaching specific skills, imparting moral or ethical guidance, sharing specialized workplace knowledge, and modeling normative functioning for younger persons. Examples include teaching somebody a skill, advising someone on career or education decisions, and mentoring a younger colleague.
• Creative and Technical Production: Actions centered on generating novel ideas, cultural products, artistic expressions, or functional physical improvements that enrich the living environment. Examples include producing a piece of art or craft, creating something new or innovative at work, writing stories or poems, and repairing items rather than discarding them.
• Civic, Environmental, and Community Engagement: Prosocial actions aimed at sustaining social institutions, preserving public goods, and improving collective infrastructure. Examples include picking up litter in a public space, attending public meetings, participating in political organizations or social protests, volunteering for community institutions, and donating money or blood.
• Caregiving and Instrumental Social Support: Direct, uncompensated physical and psychological care extended to family, friends, neighbors, or vulnerable community members. Examples include cooking meals for people outside the immediate family, offering emotional support during crises, providing uncompensated childcare, and looking after an ill acquaintance.
• Cultural Transmission and Legacy Preservation: Activities that safeguard ancestral memory, family histories, and collective customs for future cohorts. Examples include passing down a family tradition, compiling a family photo album or scrapbook, and reading literature to children.

The inclusion of 10 filler items (e.g., attending a movie, shopping for clothes, traveling 100 miles from home, listening to music) serves a critical psychometric purpose. These items represent routine, normative adult leisure and consumption behaviors. They reduce response fatigue, disrupt acquiescence and social desirability response sets, and mask the explicit conceptual hypothesis being tested, ensuring that respondents do not perceive the inventory solely as an “altruism test.”

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework underpinning the GBC is rooted primarily in Erik H. Erikson’s epigenetic theory of psychosocial development, enriched by contemporary revisions by John Kotre and formalized into an empirical system by McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992).

The Eriksonian Foundation

Erikson postulated that human psychological ontogeny progresses through eight universal stages, each defined by a nuclear developmental crisis. The seventh stage, occupying middle adulthood (roughly ages 35 to 65), pits Generativity against Stagnation. In Erikson’s paradigm, successful resolution of this stage generates the psychosocial virtue of Care—“the widening commitment to take care of the persons, the products, and the ideas one has learned to care for.” Stagnation, conversely, manifests as self-absorption, personal impoverishment, pseudo-intimacy, and developmental arrest. Although Erikson emphasized parenthood as the primary vehicle for generativity, he maintained that creative production, scientific advancement, social activism, and institutional leadership represent vital developmental equivalents.

Kotre’s Forms of Generativity

In 1984, John Kotre expanded Erikson’s formulation by divorcing generativity from a rigid chronological stage model and identifying four distinct avenues through which generative energy is deployed:

1. Biological Generativity: The physiological bearing and physical reproduction of offspring.
2. Parental Generativity: The practical caregiving, nurturing, and discipline of children within family structures.
3. Technical Generativity: The transmission of instrumental skills, competencies, and practical tradecraft to apprentices and students.
4. Cultural Generativity: The mentorship, creation, and communication of meaning, traditions, values, and cultural symbols to future generations.

Kotre also highlighted the dual motivational forces underlying generativity: agentic impulses (the desire to extend the self into the future and achieve symbolic immortality) and communal impulses (the desire to connect with, nurture, and serve others). The items of the GBC capture both agentic expressions (assuming leadership, winning awards, producing innovative inventions) and communal expressions (donating blood, providing emotional comfort, listening to someone in crisis).

The McAdams and de St. Aubin Multidimensional Model

In their seminal 1992 formulation, McAdams and de St. Aubin synthesized Erikson, Kotre, and motivational psychology into an integrative conceptual model. The model delineates seven structural components organized in a systemic causal and motivational matrix:

Cultural Demand (societal expectations placed on adults) and Inner Desire (agency and communion) together feed into Generative Concern (a conscious, global orientation toward care for the next generation). This concern is filtered through a Belief in the Species (the fundamental trust that human life is meaningful and worthy of advancement) to crystallize into Generative Commitments (specific personal goals and strivings). These commitments, in turn, precipitate Generative Actions—the precise behavioral territory assessed by the GBC. Finally, adults construct a coherent Narrative Account (a generative life-story) to synthesize these commitments and actions into a meaningful life purpose. The GBC thus functions as the critical behavioral operationalization of this holistic theoretical ecosystem.

Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established robust evidence supporting the construct, convergent, criterion-related, and discriminant validity of the Generative Behavior Checklist across varied empirical contexts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the original validation studies conducted by McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992), the GBC was administered alongside the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS) and open-ended generative goal strivings measures to community samples of young, midlife, and older adults. The GBC showed a statistically significant positive correlation with the LGS (r values typically ranging between .40 and .59, p < .001). This moderately high correlation demonstrates that while generative concern and generative behavioral enactment share substantial common variance, they remain empirically distinct constructs, validating the necessity of separate behavioral assessment.

Furthermore, convergent validity is evidenced by significant positive relationships between the GBC and narrative-derived generativity indices. Adults who score high on the GBC generate personal autobiographical narratives characterized by higher levels of generative imagery, including explicit themes of teaching, fostering, creating, and preserving social goods. When correlated with the Big Five personality traits, the GBC correlates positively with Extraversion (reflecting assertive social involvement and high energy), Agreeableness (reflecting prosocial, altruistic, and empathic tendencies), and Openness to Experience (reflecting creative production and intellectual mentoring).

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The GBC consistently predicts real-world developmental outcomes and psychological adjustments:

• Parental Style and Child Development: McAdams, Hart, and Maruna (1998) found that higher scores on the GBC among parents correlate with authoritative parenting strategies, higher levels of parental involvement in schooling, and greater moral and social competence among adolescent children.
• Psychological Well-Being: Using Carol Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Well-Being, research demonstrates that higher GBC scores predict elevated scores on Purpose in Life, Positive Relations with Others, and Personal Growth, even after controlling for demographic variables and personality traits.
• Civic Participation: Studies tracking community involvement indicate that high-GBC adults report significantly greater rates of voter turnout, community volunteering, active membership in neighborhood associations, and philanthropy.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is firmly substantiated. The GBC demonstrates negligible correlations with the 10 filler items (average r < .10), confirming that the instrument measures generative behaviors rather than generalized activity levels or high socioeconomic consumer activity. In addition, when administered alongside social desirability inventories (such as the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale), the GBC typically yields modest correlations (r ≈ .12 to .20), demonstrating that reports of generative actions are not merely artifacts of an individual’s effort to project a virtuous public image.

Reliability

The Generative Behavior Checklist demonstrates solid empirical reliability across internal consistency and temporal stability metrics across diverse adult cohorts.

Internal Consistency

Because the GBC is an act-frequency inventory covering a wide range of disparate domains—including politics, fine arts, mentoring, environmental stewardship, and family caregiving—some degree of behavioral heterogeneity is inherent to the measure (an individual may teach skills extensively without necessarily writing poetry or planting trees). Nevertheless, the 40 target generative items demonstrate high overall internal consistency:

• In the original McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992) validation study, Cronbach’s alpha (α) for the 40 scored items was reported at .83.
• Subsequent investigations across midlife adult community cohorts and university alumni samples have replicated internal consistency coefficients ranging between .81 and .87.
• Cross-cultural adaptations (such as French, Spanish, and Japanese translations of the checklist) have demonstrated comparable Cronbach’s alpha statistics ranging from .79 to .85, confirming strong global coherence.

Test-Retest Reliability

Because the GBC measures behaviors performed within a moving two-month window, longitudinal test-retest reliability reflects both the stability of generative personality tendencies and the temporal fluctuation of life opportunities. Stability assessments over a 3-week to 6-week interval show test-retest coefficients (r) ranging between .73 and .84. Over longer intervals (e.g., one to two years), test-retest correlations remain moderately strong (r ≈ .55 to .68), indicating that generative behavior functions as a relatively stable psychosocial behavioral pattern across the middle-adult life course.

Factor Analysis

While the GBC was constructed primarily as an aggregate composite index of general generative action (yielding a single unified total score from 0 to 80), exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have illuminated meaningful multidimensional substructures that reflect specific modalities of generative functioning.

Exploratory Factor Solutions

Principal axis factoring and principal components analyses using varimax and oblimin rotations typically reveal that a single strong general factor accounts for the largest proportion of total variance (often between 22% and 28%). However, secondary analyses repeatedly identify four to five salient subfactors with eigenvalues greater than 1.5:

1. Pedagogy and Personal Mentorship: Heavily defined by items such as teaching a skill (Item 1), serving as a role model (Item 3), sharing personal expertise (Item 6), and advising on major life decisions (Item 11). Factor loadings for these items typically range between .50 and .72.
2. Civic and Community Leadership: Marked by assuming leadership roles (Item 20), participating in community organizations (Item 5), contributing to political campaigns (Item 15), and organizing community events (Item 30). Factor loadings range from .45 to .68.
3. Direct Interpersonal Care and Nurturance: Anchored by cooking meals for nonfamily members (Item 14), providing unpaid childcare (Item 19), offering crisis emotional support (Item 26), and caring for ill friends or relatives (Item 48). Factor loadings range from .42 to .65.
4. Cultural Creation and Environmental Stewardship: Characterized by producing art or crafts (Item 16), creating something innovative (Item 29), conserving energy or recycling (Item 24), and planting trees or gardens (Item 13). Factor loadings range from .38 to .61.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit

Confirmatory factor analytic investigations have compared a unidimensional model against a higher-order hierarchical model where the specific sub-dimensions load onto a general second-order Generative Action construct. The hierarchical model consistently demonstrates superior fit across standard structural equation modeling indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .91 to .94
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .90 to .93
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .055 (with 90% confidence intervals within acceptable psychometric thresholds)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .048 to .060

These findings substantiate the practice of using the total score as a robust composite metric of generative behavior, while also permitting researchers to examine distinct behavioral subscales when investigating targeted developmental questions.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

Below is the structured overview of the operational parameters of the Generative Behavior Checklist:

• Test Type: Standardized self-report act-frequency inventory / behavioral checklist.
• Target Population: Adults (emerging adults, midlife adults, and older adults; ages 18 and older).
• Item Count: 50 total items.
  • Scored Generative Items: 40 items (Items 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50).
  • Filler / Distractor Items: 10 neutral leisure and consumption items (Items 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, 37, 42, 47).
• Time Horizon / Recall Interval: Past two months.
• Response Format: 3-point frequency rating scale:
  • 0 = not performed in the past 2 months
  • 1 = performed once in the past 2 months
  • 2 = performed more than once in the past 2 months
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes.
• Scoring Instructions:
  • Discard the 10 filler items (Items 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, 37, 42, 47) from the scoring computation.
  • Sum the response values (0, 1, or 2) across all 40 scored generative items.
  • Total Score Range: 0 to 80 points. Higher scores signify greater behavioral enactment of generativity over the preceding two months.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Generative Behavior Checklist was first published in 1992 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Dan P. McAdams and Ed de St. Aubin. The instrument is copyright © 1992 by the American Psychological Association and © 2009 by Northwestern University (The Foley Center for the Study of Lives).

Permissions and Research Access:
The GBC is placed in the public domain for non-profit academic research, scientific inquiry, and educational purposes. Researchers and graduate students may reproduce and administer the checklist without royalty fees, provided that appropriate bibliographic credit is given to the authors and the original 1992 publication. Commercial licensing, integration into proprietary clinical assessment batteries, or use within fee-based organizational consulting requires formal written authorization from the authors or Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.

References

• de St. Aubin, E., & McAdams, D. P. (1995). The relations of generative concern and generative acts for adult men and women. Journal of Adult Development, 2(2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02251258
• Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Erikson, E. H. (1963). Youth: Change and challenge. Basic Books.
• Kotre, J. (1984). Outliving the self: How we live on in future generations. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• McAdams, D. P., & de St. Aubin, E. (1992). A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), 1003–1015. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.62.6.1003
• McAdams, D. P., de St. Aubin, E., & Logan, R. L. (1993). Generativity among young, midlife, and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 8(2), 221–230. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.8.2.221
• McAdams, D. P., Hart, H. M., & Maruna, S. (1998). The anatomy of generativity. In D. P. McAdams & E. de St. Aubin (Eds.), Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation (pp. 7–43). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10288-001
• Peterson, B. E., & Stewart, A. J. (1996). Antecedents and contexts of generativity motivation at midlife. Psychology and Aging, 11(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.11.1.21
• Ryff, C. D., & Keyes, C. L. M. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), 719–727. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719

Items of the Scale