Adoptees' curiosity and information-seeking about birth parents in emerging adulthood: Context, motivation, and behavior

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The Adoption Curiosity Pathway (ACP) model was used to test the potential mediating effect of curiosity on adoption information-seeking in a sample of 143 emerging adult adoptees (mean age = 25.0 years) who were adopted as infants within the United States by parents of the same race. Adoptees were interviewed about their intentions and actions taken to gather new information about their birth mothers and fathers. As expected, level of curiosity was positively associated with information-seeking behavior. Moreover, level of curiosity was influenced by adoptees' perceptions of barriers and facilitators toward information-seeking. In fact, curiosity partially mediated the impact of internal and external barriers on information-seeking about birth mothers. Curiosity fully mediated the impact of external barriers and partially mediated external facilitators on birth father information-seeking. This study provides important support for the ACP, which describes context, motivation, and behavior relating to seeking new adoption-related information. © The Author(s) 2013.

Department(s)

Psychology

Publication Title

International Journal of Behavioral Development

Volume

37

Issue

5

First Page

441

Last Page

450

Publication Date

1-1-2013

DOI

10.1177/0165025413486420

ISSN

01650254

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