Young adults in the United States and Benin reason about gendered cultural traditions

Abstract

This study explored emerging and young adults' reasoning about cultural practices in West Africa. American (Study 1, n 5 78, M 5 20.76 years) and Beninese (Study 2, n 5 93, M 5 23.61 years) undergraduates were surveyed about their evaluations of corporal punishment, scarification, and schooling restrictions in conditions where the practices had gender-neutral or gender-specified targets. In Study 1, the majority (69%) of American participants negatively evaluated the practices, especially when targets were female. However, the majority (73%) assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In Study 2, the majority (76%) of Beninese participants negatively evaluated the practices, and their evaluations did not vary by gender of the target. Few (10%) Beninese participants assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In both studies, emerging and young adults who initially judged practices positively changed their evaluations with a change in consent. K E Y W O R D S culture, gender, moral development 1 | I NTR OD U CTI ON Colleges often promote diversity by suggesting that undergraduates should respect and tolerate diverse ways of life and cultural practices. At the same time, many social scientists and philosophers assert that practices entailing harm, injustice, coercion, or victimization should not be tolerated (Hatch, 1983; Nussbaum, 1998). Some cultural practices, such as corporal punishment and scarification (the practice of producing scars to identify members of a community), involve physical harm. Other cultural practices, such as restricting children from attending school, limit individuals' opportunities. How do people decide if these cultural practices should be tolerated as part of a valuing of diversity, or rejected because of moral concerns with welfare and justice? The present investigation examined how undergraduates reason about cultural practices that have gendered or gender-neutral targets and their assumptions of consent to cultural practices. We examined these issues in two studies, one in the United States (Study 1) where undergraduates evaluated practices portrayed as common in Africa and the other in the West African country of Benin (Study 2), where undergraduates judged practices commonplace in their own culture. Social Development. 2017;26:831-845.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sode

Reasoning about Sexual Assault in Emerging Adults: The Role of Consent

“…Consent has been shown to be critical to many moral violations. For example, Conry-Murray and Shaw (2016) found that across two cultures, withdrawal of consent led to a change in participants' evaluations of social acts. This research indicated that consent was seen as necessary, though not sufficient for a social interaction to be judged to be morally permissible.…”