About the Research
Introduction Notes
Our research question asked ‘how does Shame’ influence childrearing practices across different cultures. To ground our research, we used our course readings from Dr. Tangney, Sterns, Lebron, and Jaquet. Then we found studies that pertained to childrearing and shame. We looked at cultures such as the united states, India, Israel, Bulgaria, Canada, and China. The studies we used came from 2009 or later, some were longitudinal, some were sequential, and some were cross-sectional. To organize our research, we used the concept of ethnotheories. There are individualism and collectivism. Individualism prizes independence, achievements of personal goals, as well as power. Collectivism prizes group harmony, relationships, and selflessness. Both ethnotheories use shame to enforce norms. To understand how cultural norms influence emotions. We used a topic that came up a lot in our research: socializing emotions. It states that childrearing practices that exist in specific cultures create different emotional qualities. And those emotional qualities then transmit social norms, in a way that is culturally dependent.
There’s several layers to the socializing emotions model. The first is predispositional priming. The second is experiential constancy. The third is emotional arousal. The fourth is evaluation. All of these occur at different developmental stages. In this synthesis of existing literature around shame and childrearing across cultures, we establish key distinctions between children in individualist cultures and collectivist cultures, as well as universal phenomena.