Contextual Emotion Expression: Profiles of African American Report in the Family and on Campus

Background: African American culture has long been known for its emphasis on emotion expression (Boykin, 1986). However, African Americans have learned to restrict emotion publicly due to pervasive stereotypes (Consedine & Magai, 2002). It’s likely that such behavior is learned in the family, in which parents alert children to racial discrimination that is typically associated with context (Dunbar et al., 2017). Thus, African Americans are likely to vary emotion expression according to context. The current study explored emotion expression in the family and public context. Methods: 188 African American/Black college students from 3 different types of college campuses. The sample was 62.4% female, 35.4% male, and 2.2. genderqueer/gender non- conforming. Data were collected via an online survey with all self-report measures. Contextual differences in emotion expression were explored via latent profile analysis (LPA). Results: Five profiles emerged: More Positive and Negative Submissive Expression (n = 49; 26%), More Family Expression (n = 8; 5%), Low Family and Campus Expression (n = 24; 13%), More Campus Positive and Negative Dominant Expression (n = 45; 24%), and More Positive and Less Negative Dominant Expression (n = 63; 33%). Racial discrimination significantly predicted profile membership for the More Campus Positive and Negative Dominant Expression profile in particular. Conclusions: African American youth express emotion differently in the family context compared to campus, particularly in the face of racial discrimination. The patterns of emotion expression revealed here are helpful in terms of evaluating outcomes of African American’s emotion-related behavior as taught in the family.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1080/thumbnail.jp

Student Lifestyles and Emotional Well-Being at a Historically Black University

Quality of life, physical and mental health, and lifestyle behaviors were assessed in 500 graduate and undergraduate students at a Historically Black University. 82% of the sample rated their quality of life positively. 11.3% of the sample reported mild depression, while 4.9% and 1.1% of the sample reported moderate and severe depression respectively. 8.4% of the sample reported suicidal ideation within the past two weeks. Family, financial and academic stressors were found to be significant predictors of depressive symptoms. Implications for mental health care are discussed

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

Contamination and disgust: A cross-national comparison of Ghana and the United States

The emotion of disgust, with feelings of revulsion and behavioral withdrawal, make it a prime emotion to aid in the avoidance of sources of contamination, including sources of potential infectious disease. We tested the theory that living in a region with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases would promote higher levels of disgust and contamination sensitivity as a protective measure. A sample of undergraduates from Ghana (n = 103, 57 women), a country with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases, showed significantly higher scores on scales assessing disgust, contamination, and disease susceptibility than a sample of undergraduates from the United States (n = 96, 58 women), a country with lower levels of disease threat. Contamination sensitivity mediated the national differences in disgust. Disgust connoting contamination also produced larger cross-national effect sizes than other types of disgust. Finally, a factor analysis on the Ghanaian responses to one of the disgust scales did not resemble the usual three-factor solution found in West. Taken together, the results were consistent with the hypothesis that a region with a higher prevalence of infectious disease threats would produce greater sensitivity to disgust and contamination than seen in lower disease threat regions. This first study on disgust in Africa showed that disgust sensitivity could differ considerably from that in the West

The functions of emotion-referencing names in Ibibio

In certain societies including the Ibibio of Akwa Ibom State, South-Eastern Nigeria, naming is a distinctive system of communicative practice which is used to express emotion and construct the personhood and identity of the name-bearer. This article examines emotion-referencing names among the Ibibio and adopts an ethnographic approach to investigate the motivations for the name choice, their socio-onomastic significance and the extent of influence they have over their bearers’ ‘selves’. We find that emotion names are bestowed through a range of motivations such as being a reflection of familial problems, death-prevention, religiously inspired and namesaking. We conclude that regardless of these motivations or whether the name has a positive or negative VALENCE, for the Ibibio, emotion-referencing names appear to have a subtle psychological impact upon the name-bearers self-perception. Naming among the Ibibio, therefore, is not only a form of cultural identity but a prominent site to reflect on and interpret emotions

A tale of two Cedis: Making sense of a new currency in Ghana

Ghana (West Africa) underwent a currency change in July 2007. This paper explores the adaptation to the New Ghana Cedi one year post-redenomination using the theoretical framework of the Money Illusion Effect and the relearning-rescaling hypotheses. Study 1 revealed that the old and new currencies appeared to be valued similarly, based on the ratings of gains and losses in the old and new currencies. This result is consistent with the slogan of the Ghanaian redenomination public education campaign and suggests that people can be inoculated against the Money Illusion Effect through education. In study 2, attributes of the new currency were rated more positively than those of the old currency, suggesting a preference for the New Ghana Cedi.Ghana Africa Money Illusion Effect Currency change Adaptation