Investigating engaged and disengaged emotions among South African black and white students

Abstract

Markus and Kitayama’s self-construal theory states that the way in which the self is constructed in an individual directly influences their motivations, cognitions and emotions. Self-construals influence emotions primarily by their social alignment. Engaged emotions bring about connectedness with others while disengaged emotions bring about social distance between individuals. Literature’s understanding of the self-construal of black and white South Africans is that white individuals should display more disengaged and less engaged emotions than should black individuals. Engaged and disengaged emotions have recently been saliently demonstrated in South Africa. However, the applicability of Markus and Kitayama’s selfconstrual theory to black and white individuals has recently been brought into question. The purpose of this current research was to investigate engaged and disengaged emotion episodes between white Afrikaans, white English and black English students (n=293). Emotion episode questions were posed in two different contexts, namely the home and the university by applying the Componential Approach to Emotions. A five-step framework analysis was utilised to interpret the data. Log-linear analysis was conducted on the emotion episodes as imbedded in the self-construal theory. This was done to determine whether engaged and disengaged emotional differences emerge between cultural groups. Intrapersonal vs. interpersonal emotions, positive and negative emotions, as well as three emotion components (appraisals, action tendencies and subjective feelings) were utilised to investigate the emotional episodes. Results indicated that engaged and disengaged emotions were salient. However, no cultural differences in the emotion processes of students were reported. This is in contrast to the expectations of literature that white students should experience more disengaged emotions and less engaged emotions than should black students. Furthermore, context was indicated to significantly influence the experience of engaged and disengaged emotions. In this regard, the university was closely associated with negative intrapersonal emotional episodes, while the home context was associated with positive interpersonal emotional episodes. Post-hoc explanations for the results include acculturation and social class similarities. At a componential level, only appraisals saliently displayed engaged and disengaged emotions, while subjective feelings and action tendencies did not. This may be due to the centrality of appraisals in the emotion process. Implications of the self-construal similarities among students for intervention and counselling services are discussed. Primarily, focusing on cognitive based counselling models, mitigating negative environmental influences and teaching students to tap into social support networks would best-facilitate promoting student support