The role of Afrocultural ethos in African American youth's emotion skill development

Abstract

Research on African American youth's emotional development provides an incomplete understanding of the cultural influences that shape emotion-related skills such as emotion expression, regulation, and understanding. In this article, I propose the multiple cultural frameworks of triple quandary theory to characterize the nature of mainstream cultural experiences and minority cultural experiences in current research on emotional development in African American youth. I also discuss Afrocultural ethos as an aspect of African American cultural experiences that shapes African American emotional development, using affect and orality as examples that can be explored and embedded within emotional development research. Finally, I describe important factors for researchers to consider in the study of Afrocultural ethos in affective developmental science.