Africentric Cultural Values, Psychological Help-Seeking Attitudes, and Self-Concealment in African American College Students

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among Africentric cultural values (i.e., the extent to which an individual adheres to a worldview emphasizing communalism, unity, harmony, spirituality, and authenticity), favorable psychological help-seeking attitudes, perceived counseling stigma, and selfconcealment (i.e., the tendency to withhold personal, sensitive information that is perceived as negative or upsetting) in a sample of African American college students. The authors found that for both African American women and men, higher degrees of Africentric cultural values were associated with greater perceived stigma about counseling and greater self-concealment. In addition, findings indicated that neither favorable psychological help-seeking attitudes nor perceived counseling stigma significantly mediated the relationship between Africentric cultural values and self-concealment behavior. Implication of the findings and future research directions are discussed.

Relations Among Self-concealment, Mindfulness, and Internalizing Problems

“…Conceptually, while considered an adaptive behavioral tendency in some sociocultural contexts (O'Neil, Helms, Gable, David, & Wrightsman, 1986;Wallace & Constantine, 2005), self-concealment may serve as a maladaptive control-and avoidance-focused emotion/behavior regulation strategy in other contexts (Masuda, Anderson, et al, 2011;Masuda, Boone, & Timko, 2011). Research has shown that self-concealment is positively associated with global psychological symptoms (Cramer, 1999), depression (DiBartolo, Li, & Frost, 2008), anxiety (Larson & Chastain, 1990;Potoczniak, Aldea, & DeBlaere, 2007), and various forms of somatic complaints (Larson & Chastain, 1990).…”

International Education in the United Kingdom

“…(Jessie, Uni. 1) According to Irungu (2013), African students have a cultural bias against seeking counseling (see also Wallace & Constantine, 2005). This was echoed by the attitudes of the students in our study:…”

“…According to most African cultures, the relative who has more is expected to share with others in the family-an expectation that can create incredible pressures. (Irungu, 2013, p. 174) This collectivism is often stated to be a common feature of many African societies (Hofstede, 2001;Hyams-Ssekasi, 2012;Irungu, 2013;Wallace & Constantine, 2005) and not only implies an obligation to share finances but also provides a key support mechanism for individuals. A number of studies have found that African students struggle with the differences in cultures between the individualism found in the United Kingdom and the United States, and their own more communal cultures (Boafo-Arthur, 2014;Fischer, 2011;Irungu, 2013;Mwara, 2008).…”

Self-concealers: Do they conceal what we always assumed they do?

“…An, admittedly speculative, explanation is that as high self-concealers have smaller social networks and prefer to stay relatively aloof from others (CepedaBenito & Short, 1998;Wallace & Constantine, 2005), they may therefore less frequently deploy sexual activities one would likely keep secret (other than those generally accepted and regarded as a matter of privacy such as masturbation). Hence, it may be that the more one is a self-concealer, the less sexual activities one has to keep secret.…”