Machismo and Caballerismo Linked with Perceived Social Discrimination and Powerlessness in U.S. Latino Men

Concepts from the Threat Appraisal and Coping Theory, Precarious Manhood Theory, and Ambivalent Sexism suggest that U.S. Latino men who perceive social discrimination and powerlessness may respond with machismo beliefs that serve as coping responses to empower themselves and reassert their manhood. Machismo beliefs include both aggressive “traditional machismo” and gentlemanly family-focused “caballerismo.” Because past research has revealed that individuals respond to social abuse with anger, prompting them to feel empowered but less empathetic, we hypothesized that Latino men who perceive social discrimination combined with a sense of powerlessness would report more traditional machismo and less caballerismo. We also hypothesized that this three-variable sequence would be stronger for men with high rather than low in Latino identity, since discrimination would be a more personal threat to their identity and manhood. Participants included 1,530 U.S. Latinos who completed online surveys to report demographics (age, education, employment, sexual orientation, partner status, household size), perceived social discrimination, powerlessness, traditional machismo, caballerismo, and Latino identity. Mediational analyses confirmed the three-variable sequence in which powerlessness mediated associations between social discrimination and (more) aggressive machismo, and (less) gentlemanly caballerismo. Also as hypothesized, moderated mediational analysis revealed that these three-variable sequences were stronger for men with high rather than low Latino identity. With recent increases in social discrimination against U.S. Latinos, present results caution that men may respond to these challenges with increased aggressive patterns of traditional machismo.

Cultural Orientation, Parental Emotion Socialization, and Adolescents’ Socio-Emotional Functioning Across Three Asian Cultures: India, China, and Singapore

Limited research has examined parental emotion socialization across Asian cultural contexts. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of family change and self-construal, this study examined cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence, parental emotion socialization processes, and their relations with adolescents’ psychological adjustment across three Asian cultural contexts—rural families in South India, suburban families in China, and families in Singapore. Participants included 300 Indian adolescents ( Mage = 15.58 years; 57.3% male) and their parents, 310 Chinese adolescents ( Mage = 13.04 years; 46.3% female) and their parents, and 241 Singaporean adolescents ( Mage = 14.44 years; 48.3% female) and their parents. Both adolescents and parents completed self-report measures of cultural orientation and emotion socialization, and adolescents completed a measure of their psychological adjustment. We first established construct validation for two emotion socialization processes and found that the factor structure for parental reactions varied across Asian contexts and parent versus adolescent reports, while the factor structure for parental emotion expressivity varied only across informants. Second, we tested whether the two parental emotion socialization processes mediated the association between cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence and adolescent behavior problems, and found differential relations across the three Asian contexts. Our data supported the model of family change and showed that across the Asian societies, the variations in independence-interdependence orientation provide different models of parental emotion socialization with nuances in meaning and function, as revealed by the construct validation of parental reactions and emotional expressivity and their implications for adolescents’ socio-emotional functioning.

Collective Psychological Ownership and Territorial Compensation in Australia and South Africa

Collective psychological ownership as a sense that a territory belongs to a group might explain attitudes of the White majority toward territorial compensation for Indigenous Peoples in settler societies. Ownership can be inferred from different general principles and we considered three key principles: autochthony (entitlements from first arrival), investment (entitlements from working the land), and formation (primacy of the territory in forming the collective identity). In two studies, among White Australians (Study 1, N = 475), and White South Africans (Study 2, N = 879), we investigated how support for these general principles was related to perceived ingroup (Anglo-Celtic/White South African) and outgroup (Indigenous Australian/Black South African) territorial ownership, and indirectly, to attitudes toward territorial compensation for the Indigenous outgroup. Endorsement of autochthony was related to stronger support for territorial compensation through higher perceived outgroup ownership, whereas investment was related to lower support through higher perceived ingroup ownership. Agreement with the formation principle was related to stronger support for compensation through higher outgroup ownership, and simultaneously to lower support through higher ingroup ownership.

Social Axioms Mediate Gender Differences in Gender Ideologies Among Guatemalan University Students

Gender role ideologies are embedded in cultural values and assumptions about life. Women’s greater endorsement of egalitarian beliefs may stem from gender differences in world views as indexed by social axioms. The purpose of this study was to examine potential mediators of gender differences in gender ideologies among university students in Guatemala, a country where traditional views are prevalent. Participants, 2,134 university students from nine campuses in different regions of Guatemala (43% male, 85% emerging adults), completed a Social Axioms Scale, along with three culturally relevant measures of gender ideology: the Historic-Sociocultural Premises Scale (HSCP) and the Machismo Measure that taps both traditional machismo and caballerismo (gentlemanliness). Consistent with previous research in other countries, men held more traditional attitudes about gender and the family than did women on all measures. Gender differences on all scales were mediated by cynicism and religiosity. Fate control mediated the gender differences in traditional machismo and the HSCP. These findings suggest that Guatemalan women and men through socialization, cultural demands, and life experiences develop gender-specific ways of viewing the world, and their attitudes about gender roles are shaped by those worldviews. The achievement of gender equality, a U.N. sustainable development goal, may require attention to the underlying world views of women and men.

Does Perceived Governance Quality Improve Toward the North and South Poles for Eco-Cultural Reasons?

Good government is vital to human society. But what proximal and distal factors influence this collective goodness perception? Here, we investigate how and why multi-component evaluations by many institutional observers of public governance vary along the north-south rather than east-west axis of the Earth. Across 190 countries, we show that governance quality improves from the equator toward the North and South Poles in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. By contrast, governance quality hardly varies from east to west. National wealth, surfacing as the main driver of good government, is spatially distributed along latitude and longitude in the same striking way. In broader detail, governance quality is psychologically accounted for by cultural, economic, and pathogenic explanations, all nested within a climate-based explanation. Taken in total, the results suggest a chain of increasingly distal explanations of the equator-to-pole improvements in perceived governance quality.

Relatively Happy: The Role of the Positive-to-Negative Affect Ratio in Japanese and Belgian Couples

Satisfied couples in European-American cultural contexts experience higher ratios of positive to negative affect during interactions than their less satisfied counterparts. The current research tests the possibility that this finding is culture-bound. It compares proportions of positive to negative affect during couple interactions in two different cultural contexts: Belgium and Japan. Whereas Belgian relationship goals (e.g., mutual affirmation and self-esteem) call for the experience of positive affect, Japanese relationship goals (e.g., harmony and self-adjustment) call for the avoidance of negative affect. We propose that these differences result in different affect ratios in close relationships. To test this idea, we tracked positive and negative feelings during couple interactions. Fifty-eight Belgian and 80 Japanese romantic couples took part in a lab interaction study, in which they discussed a topic of disagreement. Using a video-mediated recall, participants rated their positive and negative feelings during the interaction; relationship satisfaction was assessed before the interaction. As expected, Belgian couples’ positive-to-negative affect ratios were more positive than those of Japanese couples. Furthermore, in both cultures relationship satisfaction was positively associated with more positive affect ratios, but this effect was significantly stronger for Belgian than Japanese couples. Finally, mediation analyses showed that higher affect ratios were achieved in culturally different and meaningful ways: satisfied Belgian couples showed higher ratios primarily through higher levels of positive feelings, whereas satisfied Japanese couples showed higher ratios primarily through lower levels of negative feelings.

A Conceptual Model of Protective Factors Within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture That Build Strength

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian population have endured immense hardship since the colonization of Australia characterized by the loss of lands, language, leadership, and family that contributes to the health and social inequities experienced today. Culture plays a significant role in shaping the health and wellbeing of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, however the processes and mechanisms of cultural connection, how it builds strength and offers protection in times of hardship is less clear. This scoping review used the voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians from qualitative research papers to hear what cultural factors are protective and the ways they offer this. Quantitative research papers were then explored to understand if connection to culture lead to better health or social outcomes. Four aspects of culture were integrated into a conceptual model—cultural activities, country, connection, and identity. The eight quantitative papers assessed connection to culture poorly making it difficult to definitively determine if a strong cultural connection leads to better outcomes. Practice implications and future directions led by this conceptual model are provided.

On “Nationology”: The Gravitational Field of National Culture

Nations have been questioned as meaningful units for analyzing culture due to their allegedly limited variance-capturing power and large internal heterogeneity. Against this skepticism, we argue that culture is by definition a collective phenomenon and focusing on individual differences contradicts the very concept of culture. Through the “miracle of aggregation,” we can eliminate random noise and arbitrary variation at the individual level in order to distill the central cultural tendencies of nations. Accordingly, we depict national culture as a gravitational field that socializes individuals into the orbit of a nation’s central cultural tendency. Even though individuals are also exposed to other gravitational forces, subcultures in turn gravitate within the limited orbit of their national culture. Using data from the World Values Survey, we show that individual values cluster in concentric circles around their nation’s cultural gravity center. We reveal the miracle of aggregation by demonstrating that nations capture the bulk of the variation in the individuals’ cultural values once they are aggregated into lower-level territorial units such as towns and sub-national regions. We visualize the gravitational force of national cultures by plotting various intra-national groups from five large countries that form distinct national clusters. Contrary to many scholars’ intuitions, alternative social aggregates, such as ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, as well as diverse socio-demographic categories, add negligible explained variance to that already captured by nations.

Integrating Cultural Beliefs About Illness in Counseling With Refugees: A Phenomenological Study

Researchers have suggested that people with refugee status have heightened rates of western-defined psychiatric symptoms. Following this evidence, treatments have been adapted with the intent to foster culturally competent service provision for members of refugee communities. Absent in this research is attention to how clinicians address diverse beliefs about illness constructed within the cultures of refugee individuals. As such, even adapted treatments may not readily integrate beliefs about illness espoused in these communities into counseling. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the meaning mental health care providers ascribe to integrating refugee individuals’ cultural beliefs about illness and treatment into counseling. Interviews ( N = 8) were analyzed accordant with descriptive phenomenology. Four themes were identified: (a) Presenting Concerns, Stigma, and Expectations, (b) Centering Diverse Explanations of Distress, (c) Shifting the Work to Connect, and (d) Language as Barrier and Opportunity. The themes represent the meaning that participants ascribed to focusing on what their clients from refugee communities bring to treatment and the value of centering their explanations of distress. Further, they expressed the clinical value of changing how they work and the difficulty as well as benefit of language in treatment. The value of integrating diverse illness beliefs into counseling from a multiculturally oriented perspective is discussed.

Barriers and Supports Experienced by Pacific Peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Mental Health Services

As with minority groups internationally, Pacific peoples in New Zealand (Pasifika) experience higher rates of mental health problems than the general population, and are less likely to access mental health services. This study investigated the barriers and supports for Pasifika accessing and using mental health services with participation of 25 Pasifika (10 service-providers, 11 ex-service-users, and 4 ex-service-users/providers) in order to gain their key informant perspectives. A Pasifika-appropriate Talanoa approach was used to guide the data-collection process and the qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Barriers included stigma among Pasifika regarding mental health problems, commitment to finding solutions within the family, and both mistrust and lack of knowledge of services. Within the services, non-Pasifika providers often lacked understanding of the collectivist cultural values and practices of Pasifika, including spiritual beliefs. They were more likely to use services if the providers were respectful of Pasifika practices and paid attention to developing relationships in a culturally appropriate way. This included involvement of the Pasifika family, when possible. Service-users often benefited from contact with Pasifika providers within mainstream services. These results support previous cross-cultural research that indicates the importance of offering evaluation and intervention services grounded in an understanding and respect for the cultural significance and meaning of mental health problems for the person, the family, and their community. While efforts are made to address these issues in New Zealand, change is slow and ongoing cultural training for service-providers along with psychoeducation for Pasifika about mental health services is strongly desirable.