Abstract:This contribution to the
Frontiers
research topic collection on
African Cultural Models
considers dilemma tales: an African knowledge practice in which narrators present listeners with a difficult choice that usually has ethical or moral implications. We adapted the dilemma tale format to create research tasks. We then used these research tasks to investigate conceptions of care, support, and relationality among participants in Ghanaian, African American, and Europ… Show more
“…To test this idea, our research group has conducted a series of investigations using hypothetical dilemmas in which participants must allocate care given competing obligations to mother or spouse. Results confirm differences across settings, such that allocations of care to mother are smaller among participants in (USA) settings that emphasise psychological autonomy than in West African (Esiaka et al, 2020; Salter & Adams, 2012) and Chinese (Zhao et al, 2020) settings that emphasise hierarchical relationality, Equally important, results indicate that the difference between settings in prioritisation of care to mother is more a function of respect for parental authority than it is affect-based reciprocity (Esiaka, 2019).…”
Section: Naturalisation Of Modern/colonial Individualist Selfwayssupporting
confidence: 53%
“…This is particularly likely if the adult child comes to subordinate relationships with parents to more voluntary connections, like romantic constructions of mating relationship, that better enable pursuit of self-expansive happiness (Aron et al, 1991). This construction of the relationship can put elders at risk of abandonment as adult children shift care resources away from obligations to elderly parents and broader kin to invest more narrowly in nuclear family connections (Esiaka & Adams, 2020; Salter & Adams, 2012). The risk of abandonment is particularly pronounced in settings, like the West African communities that inform our work, where the absence of eldercare institutions increases parents’ reliance on support from children (Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2015).…”
Section: Imperialist Imposition and Pathologisationmentioning
Decolonial perspectives challenge the notion that standard knowledge in hegemonic psychology is productive of progress and enlightenment. They instead emphasise its association with the colonial violence that constitutes the darker underside of modern development. Our contribution to the special issue applies a decolonial perspective to theory and research on obligation to an elderly parent. Thinking from the standpoint of West African epistemic locations not only illuminates the culture-bound character of standard models but also reveals their foundations in modern individualist selfways. Although modern individualist selfways can liberate well-endowed people to pursue fulfilling relationships and avoid unsatisfying connections with burdensome obligations, these ways of being pose risks of abandonment for people—like many elders—whose requirements for care might constitute a constraint on others’ satisfaction. In contrast, the cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence that inform everyday life in many West African settings afford selfways that emphasise careful maintenance of existing connections. Although these selfways may place constraints on the self-expansive pursuit of satisfying relationships, they provide elders and other vulnerable people with some assurance of support.
“…To test this idea, our research group has conducted a series of investigations using hypothetical dilemmas in which participants must allocate care given competing obligations to mother or spouse. Results confirm differences across settings, such that allocations of care to mother are smaller among participants in (USA) settings that emphasise psychological autonomy than in West African (Esiaka et al, 2020; Salter & Adams, 2012) and Chinese (Zhao et al, 2020) settings that emphasise hierarchical relationality, Equally important, results indicate that the difference between settings in prioritisation of care to mother is more a function of respect for parental authority than it is affect-based reciprocity (Esiaka, 2019).…”
Section: Naturalisation Of Modern/colonial Individualist Selfwayssupporting
confidence: 53%
“…This is particularly likely if the adult child comes to subordinate relationships with parents to more voluntary connections, like romantic constructions of mating relationship, that better enable pursuit of self-expansive happiness (Aron et al, 1991). This construction of the relationship can put elders at risk of abandonment as adult children shift care resources away from obligations to elderly parents and broader kin to invest more narrowly in nuclear family connections (Esiaka & Adams, 2020; Salter & Adams, 2012). The risk of abandonment is particularly pronounced in settings, like the West African communities that inform our work, where the absence of eldercare institutions increases parents’ reliance on support from children (Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2015).…”
Section: Imperialist Imposition and Pathologisationmentioning
Decolonial perspectives challenge the notion that standard knowledge in hegemonic psychology is productive of progress and enlightenment. They instead emphasise its association with the colonial violence that constitutes the darker underside of modern development. Our contribution to the special issue applies a decolonial perspective to theory and research on obligation to an elderly parent. Thinking from the standpoint of West African epistemic locations not only illuminates the culture-bound character of standard models but also reveals their foundations in modern individualist selfways. Although modern individualist selfways can liberate well-endowed people to pursue fulfilling relationships and avoid unsatisfying connections with burdensome obligations, these ways of being pose risks of abandonment for people—like many elders—whose requirements for care might constitute a constraint on others’ satisfaction. In contrast, the cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence that inform everyday life in many West African settings afford selfways that emphasise careful maintenance of existing connections. Although these selfways may place constraints on the self-expansive pursuit of satisfying relationships, they provide elders and other vulnerable people with some assurance of support.
“…Dilemma . Participants read the following dilemma, which we adapted from previous research (Esiaka et al., 2020; Salter & Adams, 2012; Wu et al., 2016): A person is in a boat with the person's mother and spouse when the boat turns over. The person has the opportunity to save only one.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Theory and research that takes individualist lifeways as a default standard is likely to offer prescriptions that reinforce individualist lifestyles and their associated modern/colonial harm. Of particular relevance for the current work is the possibility that modern/colonial individualist lifeways promote a growth orientation to love and psychologization of care that trades the security of collective belonging for a risky and often self‐defeating emphasis on self‐expansion and personal fulfillment (Esiaka et al., 2020; Thomas & Cole, 2009; Wardlow & Hirsch, 2006).…”
Section: Modernity/coloniality Of Individualist Lifewaysmentioning
A manifestation of coloniality in psychological science concerns the modern individualist lifeways that inform mainstream research. We report results of a multi‐method research project that investigated implications of these ways of being for the experience of love in Ghanaian settings. In particular, we investigated the hypothesis that engagement with Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCCs)—an important carrier of individualist lifeways in many West African settings—would be associated with a growth orientation to love as a means for mutual self‐expansion and fulfillment. In Study 1 (n = 61), growth themes and a conception of love as feeling were more evident, but sustainability themes and a conception of love as doing less evident, in interview responses of participants who reported engagement with PCCs versus Traditional Western Mission Churches (TWMCs). In Study 2 (n = 1120), family obligation, relationship harmony, and (among participants who reported daily church attendance) perception of a social norm to prioritize mother over spouse were weaker for members of PCCs than TWMCs. Results help to reveal the colonial dark side of the modern individualist lifeways that mainstream research tends to regard as a just‐natural standard.
“…Rather than a sense of freedom to create and dissolve relationships as a function of personal satisfaction, people must manage existing connections to maintain communal harmony and social order. In this view, the experience of obligation is an inevitable fact of social life and even something compatible with personal inclinations rather than an onerous burden (Vasudev and Hummel, 1987 ; Miller, 1994 ; Buchtel et al, 2018 ; Goyal et al, 2019 ; Esiaka et al, 2020 ). The implication is that in cultural worlds of embedded interdependence, people may experience similar or greater motivation for action that follows from the social obligation to the broader community as for action that follows from a personal desire to help particular others.…”
Why do people comply with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health guidance? This study considers cultural-psychological foundations of variation in beliefs about motivations for such compliance. Specifically, we focused on beliefs about two sources of prosocial motivation: desire to protect others and obligation to society. Across two studies, we observed that the relative emphasis on the desire to protect others (vs. the obligation to the community) as an explanation for compliance was greater in the United States settings associated with cultural ecologies of abstracted independence than in Chinese settings associated with cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence. We observed these patterns for explanations of psychological experience of both others (Study 1) and self (Study 2), and for compliance with mandates for both social distancing and face masks (Study 2). Discussion of results considers both practical implications for motivating compliance with public health guidance and theoretical implications for denaturalizing prevailing accounts of prosocial motivation.
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