Conception and experience of well-being in two Ghanaian samples: Implications for Positive Psychology

We conducted two studies to explore Ghanaian understandings of well-being through a situation sampling method in which participants described situations that increased and decreased their well-being. Participants in Study 1 were 80 community members (Mean Age = 41.962; SD=13.900; 40 women, 40 men) who responded in the context of interviews through the medium of local languages. Coding analyses revealed that these situation descriptions emphasized sustainability-oriented themes of materiality (tangible support, economic hardship) and peace of mind (presence or absence of worry or strife) with greater frequency than growth-oriented themes of psychologization (growth, meaning, achievement) and affect (happiness, sadness). Participants in Study 2 were 125 students (Mean Age = 21.592; SD=2.759; 68 women, 57 men) at three universities in Ghana who responded via questionnaire in the medium of English. In contrast to the community sample, coding analyses revealed that the students’ situations emphasized growth-oriented themes of affect and psychologization with greater frequency than sustainability-oriented themes of materiality and peace of mind. We interpret these results within a theoretical framework that emphasizes the cultural-psychological foundations of well-being, and we consider implications for hegemonic perspectives of positive psychology

Cultural Models of Well-Being Implicit in Four Ghanaian Languages

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.This contribution to the collection of articles on “African Cultural Models” considers the topic of well-being. Reflecting modern individualist selfways of North American and European worlds, normative conceptions of well-being in hegemonic psychological science tend to valorize self-acceptance, personal growth, and autonomy. In contrast, given the embedded interdependence of everyday life in many West African worlds, one can hypothesize that cultural models of well-being in many Ghanaian settings will place greater emphasis on sustainability-oriented themes of material sufficiency and successful navigation of normative obligations. To explore this hypothesis, we interviewed local cultural experts who function as custodians of religion and an important source of support for well-being in many Ghanaian settings. We asked participants to identify and explain models of well-being implicit in four Ghanaian languages (Akan, Dagbani, Ewe, and Ga). Participants were 19 men and 15 women (age range 32–92 years; Mean = 59.83; SD: 14.01). Results reveal some features of local models, including good health and positive affective states, that appear to resonate with standard understandings of well-being in hegemonic psychological science. However, results also provide evidence for other features of local models – specifically, good living (including moral living, material success, and proper relationality) and peace of mind – associated with a sustainability or maintenance orientation to well-being.Volkswagen Foundation, Germany (94667

Emotion Norms, Display Rules, and Regulation in the Akan Society of Ghana: An Exploration Using Proverbs

Proverbs are widely used by the Akan of West Africa. The current study thematically analyzed an Akan proverb compendium for proverbs containing emotion references. Of the identified proverbs, a focus on negative emotions was most typical. Emotion-focused proverbs highlighted four emotion regulation strategies: change in cognition, response modulation, situation modification, and situation selection. A subset of proverbs addressed emotion display rules restricting the expression of emotions such as pride, and emotional contagion associated with emotions such as shame. Additional themes including: social context influences on the expression and experience of emotion; expectations of emotion limits; as well as the nature of emotions were present in the proverb collection. In general, Akan emotion-related proverbs stress individual-level responsibility for affect regulation in interpersonal interactions and societal contexts

Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths.

Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report experiencing such events while others do not? We argue that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models that represent the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that allows a person to become "absorbed" in experiences. In four studies with over 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which cultural settings, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits.Templeton Foundatio

Culture and Somatic Focused Attention

150 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005.In a two-study investigation, cross-cultural differences between Ghanaian and American university students in somatic-focused attention were explored. Study 1 showed that Ghanaian participants paid more attention to their body and less to emotions than did American participants. However, these differences were not explained by differences in individualism/collectivism, self construal, or perceived level of embodiment. In Study 2, Ghanaian participants used fewer emotion words than American participants while recalling significant emotion events. However, there was no difference in body words used. Cultural priming did not appear to have a significant effect on the tendency to use emotion or body words. Together, these findings provide some empirical support for cultural differences in the experience and verbal expression of emotions.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

The Changing Face of Money: Preferences for Different Payment Forms in Ghana and Zambia

Mobile Money (MM) is now a popular medium of exchange and store of value in parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia. As payment modalities emerge, consumer preferences for different payment tools evolve. Our study examines the preference for, and use of MM and other payment forms in both Ghana and Zambia. Our multi-method investigation indicates that while MM preference and awareness is high, scope of use is low in Ghana and Zambia. Cash remains the predominant mode of business transaction in both countries. Increased merchant acceptability is needed to improve the MM ecology in these countrie

Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures.

How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, animals and other entities - for example, 'Do beetles get hungry? Remember things? Feel love?' - we reconstructed concepts of mental life from the bottom up among adults (N = 711) and children (ages 6-12 years, N = 693) in the USA, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu. This revealed a cross-cultural and developmental continuity: in all sites, among both adults and children, cognitive abilities travelled separately from bodily sensations, suggesting that a mind-body distinction is common across diverse cultures and present by middle childhood. Yet there were substantial cultural and developmental differences in the status of social-emotional abilities - as part of the body, part of the mind or a third category unto themselves. Such differences may have far-reaching social consequences, whereas the similarities identify aspects of human understanding that may be universal.Templeto

Detained Settlements: the Infrastructures and Temporalities of Digital Financial Transactions Between the United States and Cuba

n this article, I trace how payment and money transfer systems in Cuba have expanded from underground courier services to digital platforms such as Airbnb and Bitcoin wallets. I focus here on payments being halted and deferred because of U.S. embargo restrictions that prevent correspondent relationships with Cuban retail banks and constantly flag transactions initiated in Cuba. Cubans and visitors to Cuba operating on these digital platforms are therefore exposed to new risks and forms of precarity. In the absence of a robust payment infrastructure, electronic transactions between the two countries have to be propped up and secured by networks of cash circulation. A social infrastructure of trust and informal networks emerges through which digital payment rails get repurposed to settle accounts, particularly when electronic payments get detained. This complicates the premise that cashless futures make payments more inclusive, efficient, secure, or in some cases decentralized, by showing how the histories of U.S. sanctions impede and cripple the ways electronic payment infrastructures work in practice, creating forms of exclusion for those located in “prohibited” regions of the globe

Examining relations between performance on non‐verbal executive function and verbal self‐regulation tasks in demographically‐diverse populations

Self-regulation is a widely studied construct, generally assumed to be cognitively supported by executive functions (EFs). There is a lack of clarity and consensus over the roles of specific components of EFs in self-regulation. The current study examines the relations between performance on (a) a self-regulation task (Heads, Toes, Knees Shoulders Task) and (b) two EF tasks (Knox Cube and Beads Tasks) that measure different components of updating: working memory and short-term memory, respectively. We compared 107 8- to 13-year-old children (64 females) across demographically-diverse populations in four low and middle-income countries, including: Tanna, Vanuatu; Keningau, Malaysia; Saltpond, Ghana; and Natal, Brazil. The communities we studied vary in market integration/urbanicity as well as level of access, structure, and quality of schooling. We found that performance on the visuospatial working memory task (Knox Cube) and the visuospatial short-term memory task (Beads) are each independently associated with performance on the self-regulation task, even when controlling for schooling and location effects. These effects were robust across demographically-diverse populations of children in low-and middle-income countries. We conclude that this study found evidence supporting visuospatial working memory and visuospatial short-term memory as distinct cognitive processes which each support the development of self-regulation