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