This study offers a narrative exploration of Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood. Using narrative inquiry grounded in sociocultural theory of development, it analyzes written paragraphs collected from 50 college students, across two campuses of a public university in four sections of developmental psychology classes. Through values analysis, nine major values are identified as “organizing principles” in making sense of transition to adulthood: Self-sufficiency and freedom; Self-exploration; Family relationships; Macrostructural factors; Financial independence; College; Job experiences; Physical distance/separation from parents/family; Peer relationships. Sub-values reveal the pathways and processes through which each value was expressed and enacted. Values most emphasized by generational status and gender are explored, and attention is paid to the “relational moves” among values expressed by students to unpack the harmony and tension across value expressions. Young people navigate the tensions between familial and societal expectations and their own individual aspirations and endeavors at the nexus of gender, generational status, and unique personal, familial and social circumstances. This study contributes to research focusing on urban college students’ experiences of emerging adulthood and reveals the ways in which individual and social identities, desires and responsibilities are intricately intertwined.
This study explores social representations of the relationship between immigration and minority languages in the Basque Country and Catalonia. Using a word association task with a double stimulus, it analyses how these representations are discursively constructed and socially anchored in two diglossic contexts. Results reveal differentiated discursive patterns across contexts. In the Basque Country, discourses ranged from inclusive narratives of integration and coexistence, emphasizing empathy, solidarity, and cultural recognition, to accounts highlighting linguistic difficulty, sociolinguistic barriers, and critiques of institutional support. In Catalonia, clusters included defensive narratives framing the language as a source of tension and threat, inclusive discourses promoting mutual respect and cultural diversity, and pragmatic perspectives emphasizing institutional and community support. Discursive patterns were associated with national and linguistic identification, language use, ideological orientation, and perceived linguistic victimization. Findings indicate that social representations of minoritized languages in migration contexts are ambivalent, shaped by historical power asymmetries, identity processes, and institutional frameworks. Inclusive discourses are linked to strong subaltern identification and openness to linguistic integration, whereas defensive discourses correlate with low linguistic identification or conservative ideology. Overall, the study highlights the symbolic, relational, and instrumental roles of minoritized languages in shaping integration dynamics and social cohesion.
The Indian concept of Jīvanmukti - liberation while living - offers a critical challenge to dominant psychological models centred on ego integration, identity coherence, and performance. Drawing on cultural psychology, phenomenology, and classical Indian philosophy, this article examines how experiences of altered selfhood may be understood either as pathological dissociation within clinical frameworks or as liberation within contemplative traditions, while recognising the phenomenological differences between these states. Rather than treating these interpretations as mutually exclusive, the analysis situates them within broader systems of cultural mediation that shape how such experiences are understood and integrated. Across Advaita Vedānta, Yoga, and Tantra, Jīvanmukti is articulated as embodied transformation characterised by non-identification, detachment, and ethical spontaneity. Engaging Western perspectives, including Jung’s individuation and Maslow’s self-transcendence, the article questions universalist assumptions about psychological development while also examining how contemporary wellness cultures reframe liberation as self-optimisation. It is argued that experiences involving shifts in ego-identity are not inherently pathological but acquire significance within culturally mediated frameworks. Ultimately, Jīvanmukti invites a rethinking of psychological flourishing beyond ego and identity, suggesting that the distinction between dissociation and liberation lies not only in phenomenology but in the cultural mediation systems through which such experiences are interpreted and integrated.
This article re-examines the understanding of superstition in psychology, arguing that dominant cognitive and behaviorist approaches systematically misrepresent it by reducing it to cognitive bias or conditioned behavior. Such reductionism rests on a narrow, instrumental conception of rationality that is insufficient for explaining superstition as a meaningful form of human action. Based on a conceptual analysis of the psychological literature, this article identifies two central limitations: the reduction of rationality to instrumental calculation, and the persistent conceptual ambiguity in distinguishing belief, behavior, and symbolic dimensions in the study of superstition. To address these limitations, this article proposes the concept of symbolic rationality as an alternative analytical framework that understands action as a process of meaning-making embedded in cultural symbolic systems. Within this framework, superstition is not treated as a deviation from rationality, but as a form of rationality through which individuals manage uncertainty, construct coherence, and orient action in context. This perspective highlights that what appears irrational within formal models may exhibit coherence when situated within culturally grounded systems of meaning. The main contribution of this article lies in its conceptual reconstruction of superstition and its expansion of rationality beyond instrumental logic to include symbolic and contextual dimensions. By foregrounding the role of culture in shaping rational action, this framework provides a basis for developing more culturally sensitive psychological approaches and opens new directions for empirical research on decision making under conditions of uncertainty.
This article explores how women who self-identify as Coloured in post-apartheid South Africa narrate and negotiate their cultural identities within the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. Drawing on cultural psychology with narrative identity theory and decolonial feminist psychology, the study examines how women reclaim cultural practices, resist deficit discourses, and assert belonging. The study employed a narrative approach and made use of purposive and snowball sampling to recruit 13 female participants who identified as Coloured, were 18 years or older and resided in Cape Town, in the Western Cape. Using narrative thematic analysis, the findings reveal that Coloured identity is neither fixed nor culturally lacking but actively constructed through embodied practices such as food, language, and faith, as well as through critique of master narratives. Storytelling emerged as a key tool for resisting symbolic erasure and reclaiming agency. The article contributes to cultural psychology by illuminating how identity is shaped through memory, emotions, and everyday meaning-making in contexts of historical and social marginalisation.
This qualitative study examines how unemployed Turkish fathers in Germany and T & uuml;rkiye navigate their paternal identities amidst shifting gender roles and socioeconomic challenges. Based on 21 in-depth interviews, four distinct masculinity types were identified: disappointed, religious, playful, and stay-at-home fatherhood. These identity patterns transcend national borders and socioeconomic status, suggesting a transnational cultural continuity among Turkish fathers. While unemployment challenges the traditional breadwinner ideal, it also provides opportunities for alternative constructions of fatherhood through caregiving, community engagement, or religious devotion. Findings highlight how unemployment can lead to either heightened vulnerability or the development of adaptive new identities. Clear differences emerge between Germany and T & uuml;rkiye in response to their different social welfare systems. While there is strong dissatisfaction with state support in T & uuml;rkiye and fathers are often dependent on financial support from their families, the situation in Germany allows fathers to enjoy greater satisfaction with their lives and to develop alternative identities. Future research should incorporate the perspectives of spouses and children to better understand the broader family dynamics of unemployment.
Qualitative health research has examined how people make meaning in the context of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) diagnoses, often focusing on how patients describe and reflect upon their current health situation. However, meaning is frequently treated as something enclosed within signs, with limited attention to how it emerges dynamically through lived, bodily processes. Addressing these two gaps, this article explores how affect and bodily experience guide the process of meaning-making in T1DM, a chronic and incurable illness. Grounded in a semiodynamic approach inspired by Peircean semiotics, we conducted a microgenetic analysis of in-depth interviews from a single-case study. Our analysis focused on four experiential moments: the transition to illness, the reception of the diagnosis, the pursuit of a cure, and the embodied experience of a hypoglycemic episode. Although the diagnosis initiated a shift in the patient's experience, it was through the embodied and affect-laden episode of hypoglycemia that more enduring reorganizations in meaning took place, shaping decisions around self-care and engagement with treatment. These insights may support health professionals in attending more sensitively to the meanings that guide patients' thinking, actions, and illness management. Additional cases are needed to support theory-building around the embodied dynamics of meaning-making in T1DM.
This descriptive qualitative study explores how Chinese students navigate academic and cultural adaptation in an under-researched context: Pakistan. Notably, existing research on qualitative experiences is predominantly centered on Western settings, with limited exploration in developing countries and religious societies. The study employed semi- structured interviews with 18 Chinese students, consisting of seven women and 11 men, aged between 22 and 38. The participants were enrolled in programs ranging from undergraduate to doctoral levels. Thematic analysis identified four key domains of experience: 1. Navigating Sociocultural Adjustment, 2. Environmental and Institutional Challenges, 3. Psychological and Emotional Responses, and 4. Coping Mechanisms and Adaptation. This study analyses participant data, revealing similarities and differences, major challenges, and coping strategies among students. Key findings indicate that participants utilize peer support, digital communication, and cultural negotiation to cope and enhance their well-being. Situated within the growing China-Pakistan educational exchanges, the study offers culturally grounded insights into international student ac-culturation in a non-Western context. The results are also of practical value for edu-cators and policymakers, as they can contribute to the development of inclusive support systems that promote international students' academic and psychosocial well-being.
This article examines how the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage functions as a culturally situated medium for activating what Maslow termed Being values (B-values)—such as wholeness, interconnectedness, and harmony. Situating Maslow’s concept of peak experiences within a cultural-psychological framework, the study investigates how transformative experiences emerge in liminal contexts where everyday social roles are temporarily suspended and individuals engage in embodied, collective, and symbolic practices. A sequential exploratory approach was adopted. First, qualitative content analysis of 32 pilgrim travelogues uncovered recurring themes—such as unity, clarity, and self-transcendence—that align with Maslow’s characteristics of peak experiences. Though historically theorized as intrapsychic, the results suggest that B-values are co-constructed through cultural and relational affordances central to pilgrimage. In a complementary survey of 501 pilgrims, over 60% reported experiencing interconnectedness, underscoring the significance of shared walking rituals, sacred landscapes, and narrative reflection in facilitating personal transformation. By reframing B-values as culturally mediated achievements rather than purely individual insights, the study bridges humanistic and cultural psychology. It contributes to a broader understanding of meaning-making and identity transformation in contemporary spirituality, positioning self-actualization as a relational, embodied, and culturally situated process.
Intending to draw out the sociocultural significance of panginhas, this study employed a qualitative inquiry method using an inter-mix approach of classical ethnography and grounded theory. It foregrounds panginhas as a culturally mediated activity through which meaning-making, identity, and psychological processes are constructed within coastal life. Perspectives of the participants across age groups-the Old Dependents, Working Independents, and Young Dependents-were codified, revealing sociocultural significance. The study reveals panginhas as a nexus of community members' varied experiences. Panginhas operates not only as an economic activity but as a shared practice where meanings are internalized and negotiated. It functions as a conduit for the internalization of a sociocultural identity, transforming a subsistence activity into a psychological foundation for the self. The theory further details that panginhas; (a) reinforces an empowered coastal community, (b) nurtures collective precocity, and (c) fosters social identity and cultural continuity through collective efficacy. These dimensions illustrate how repeated participation mediates affective meaning, agency, relational identity, and shared understanding. A framework from the theory entitled "K. I. N. H. A. S (Knowledge Idealizing Nature, Harnessing Harmony, and Amplifying Sustainability) with a Heart'' is developed to address issues surrounding panginhas, positioning it as an expression of enduring heritage and psychological resilience.
This article explores collective forgetting as a socially constructed phenomenon. While memory has been the subject of numerous studies in the field of social psychology, forgetting remains largely untheorized, particularly in its social, cultural and political dimensions. Drawing on Social Representation Theory and qualitative research, we argue that forgetting is not simply an individual cognitive failure or the effect of the unconscious, but the product of socialization processes. It is transmitted through families, institutions, the media and cultural norms, often shaping collective identities and power dynamics. We examine how forgetting manifests itself in discourse through silences, absences, uncertainties, and narrative transformations. Case studies, such as intergenerational silence around the Second World War or institutional efforts to redefine local histories, illustrate how forgetting can be deliberate or negotiated. Methodologically, the article highlights the value of interviews, biographical narratives, and comparative discourse analysis. Ultimately, it calls for a broader psychosocial approach to forgetting.
Suicide is a major public health challenge globally, and although universal public health frameworks exist, suicide prevention efforts need to be tailored for specific cultural communities. Andaman and Nicobar Islands, one of the union territories of India with particularly high rates of suicide-related deaths, provide a unique socio-historic, economic, political, and healthcare context to understand suicidality. In this qualitative study, we explored factors that trigger suicide and potential solutions for suicide prevention that may be feasible and relevant for migrant youth within the resource-limited healthcare infrastructure of the islands. We completed individual semi-structured interviews with 10 key informants (7 men, 3 women), who included youth who attempted suicide, peers, and professionals. Overall, youth suicide on the islands needs to be situated within historic trauma rooted in British colonial rule and continued sociopolitical and economic marginalization. Youth experience academic pressures, interpersonal challenges, substance use, and challenges unique to island life, which along with the public perception trivializing youth distress and access to means, elevate risk for suicidal behavior. Sustained investment in infrastructure development, along with innovative approaches that move beyond traditional suicide prevention frameworks to help foster compassionate communities and empower youth with entrepreneurial and life skills would be beneficial.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) governance is not experienced in a culturally neutral way. The meanings workers bring to risk, authority, voice, and institutional protection are shaped by the cultural worlds in which they live and labour, yet this dimension of occupational health has received almost no qualitative attention in the Caribbean and Latin America. This study explored how sugarcane workers in Guyana experience OHS governance and what those experiences reveal about the relationship between culture, working conditions, and psychological wellbeing. Fourteen male workers were recruited through snowball sampling and interviewed by telephone using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Four master themes emerged: employer accountability experienced as absent; protective standards experienced as inadequate; worker voice experienced as structurally suppressed; and an occupational psychological health burden experienced as unrecognised. Findings indicate that inadequate protection was absorbed rather than contested, silence was communally sustained, and psychological distress was carried privately and without institutional recognition. The cultural world these workers inhabit shaped not only their exposure to governance failures but the very terms on which those failures were lived and made sense of. Culturally grounded approaches to OHS policy and occupational mental health are not supplementary considerations but preconditions of meaningful worker protection.
This article demonstrates how public dialogue on the term 'second/third-generation migrant', currently used within European Union integration policies, create barriers to transcultural dialogue and democratic participation within Europe. Drawing on 75 semi-structured interviews within Dublin, D & uuml;sseldorf, Glasgow, London and Stockholm, our dialogical analysis shows how public dialogue articulates three dimensions of developmental psychology foregrounding the figure of a generational migrant with cognitive, moral and seemingly pathological dimensions. We argue that the ordinal logic implied in the concept of the imagined generational migrant reflects not only a desire to control but crucially an absence of a desire to meet the other as coeval. Understanding this desire to control requires reorienting social representations theory from an epistemic subject engaged in perspective-taking, sharing and resisting cultural knowledge towards an ontological subject with imaginative impulses, and novelistic projections about the generational migrant's cultural being. As the term 'third-generation migrant' comes into use such integration logic sustains boundaries between those marked as having a migrant background and those unmarked. We propose that a focus on the desire to control is central to cultural psychology's capacity to interrogate the parameters of public dialogue as well as policy on migration and integration within the European public sphere.
In this paper, we examine the controversy surrounding Freudian theories, which the Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar was aware of, namely, the abandonment of the seduction theory and the construction of the Oedipus Complex. Jeffrey Masson, the disillusioned psychoanalyst, who was in communication with Kakar in the 1980s, called Freud's abandonment of seduction theory "the assault on truth". Both Kakar and Masson also wrote about India but from divergent viewpoints; Kakar adopted "a cultural interpretation" of the Oedipus Complex, while Masson claimed Freud "suppressed" the truth about sexual abuse and trauma in Viennese families. Both authors knew Kakar personally and professionally, worked with him over many years, and decided to examine this recent history, going back to the 1890s. We suggest that Masson developed a highly critical interpretation of Freud based on access to the Freud archives. John Ross, a friend of Kakar's, similarly offered a critique of Freud from within psychoanalysis, calling it "the Laius Complex", where the father sets in motion the intergenerational Oedipal rivalry. Kakar developed a cultural adaptationist view, "the maternal enthrallment theory," where Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory and the issues of child sexual abuse are completely avoided.
Erikson and Kakar's work on identity development has illuminated the interconnectedness of individuals and communities. This study examines the relationship between prohibited desire and identity in inter-faith intimacy, using Erikson's negative identity paradigm. Society often rejects mixed identities resulting from inter-faith relationships. The paper examines Kakar's impact on group identification and considers Erikson's concept of negative identity. Through Karuna, a young Hindu introduced to Islam by her family, her intimate relationships with a young Muslim man are explored. India is huge and diverse, and Hindus and Muslims have lived together for generations. Unfortunately, Hindu-Muslim unions are illegal now. The politicisation of Hindu-Muslim love as Love-Jihad perpetuates the myth that Muslim men actively pursue Hindu women. This paper looks at a Hindu-Muslim relationship through the eyes of Karuna, who was introduced to Islam by her family. As Karuna grew older, her love for radical Islam resulted in her choosing Muslim men as her love objects and eventually being disowned by her family. Using Erikson's conceptualisation of the negative identity, which focuses on what happens when you identify with everything that is forbidden by your community, we focus on understanding Karuna's desirous self.
Pigmentocracy, or social stratification based on skin tone gradations, structures opportunity and life outcomes across Caribbean societies, yet how it shapes masculine identity construction remains empirically unexplored. This study examined how St. Lucian men construct and navigate masculine identity within St. Lucia's pigmentocratic hierarchies. Critical realist thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 23 St. Lucian men (ages 22-58) revealed three interconnected cultural mechanisms. First, skin tone operates as a developmental sorting system through family socialization and institutional channeling: darker phenotypes are directed toward physical-hypermasculine archetypes emphasizing bodily strength and emotional restraint, while lighter phenotypes are guided toward intellectual-refined masculinities centered on professional achievement. Second, contradictory cultural valuation emerges wherein darker masculinity is erotically desired yet reproductively devalued, whereas lighter masculinity confers intergenerational advantages while triggering masculine authenticity concerns. Third, color-coded masculine expectations are enforced through differentiated surveillance and sanctioning, with violations (particularly gender nonconformity and homosexuality) punished most severely for darker-skinned men. Findings reveal how pigmentocracy operates through gendered enforcement mechanisms and illuminate the profound psychological costs of navigating chromatic masculine constraints across St. Lucian society.
This study examines how Bangladeshi street-based female sex workers construct their narrative identity within the context of structural stigma, emphasizing how cultural resources support their meaning-making processes. Through thematic analysis of 103 life-event narratives from 30 participants, we identify six identity themes: (1) trauma and victimization (similar to McAdams' contamination sequences), (2) maternal identity as a redemptive force, (3) adaptive resilience demonstrating agency, (4) community solidarity reflecting communion, (5) rights-based empowerment, and (6) stigma and internalized shame. Notably, all participants experienced severe childhood adversity, family dysfunction (100%), displacement from home (67%), and violence (93%), suggesting a common pathway from childhood trauma to entering sex work rather than a voluntary career choice. Early trauma often fragmented autobiographical memory, evidenced by predominantly overgeneral turning points (85%), but culturally mediated resources facilitated redemption. Motherhood and NGO-facilitated peer networks served as collective scaffolding for generativity, transforming contamination sequences through shared meaning-making. Participants' low psychological well-being (GHQ-12, M = 21.57) was contextualized but did not influence narrative patterns. By illustrating how redemption emerges through culturally distributed rather than sole individual processes, we extend McAdams' model and challenge Western individualistic paradigms of identity development. The study advocates for prevention-focused interventions addressing childhood adversity as the main pathway to sex work, alongside culturally grounded support leveraging maternal identity and peer testimony for those already engaged. It argues that both prevention and psychological healing require collective, not just personal, narrative repair.
Intersubjectivity, the coordination of people's beliefs and actions, is central to human psychology and society. However, a legacy of Cartesian dualism has fragmented research along two dimensions (psychological vs. interpersonal; structural vs. interactional). This fragmentation obscures how the psychological and interpersonal aspects of intersubjectivity mutually reinforce one another. I argue that, despite epistemological differences, these literatures converge on recurring formal correspondences: three recursive levels of perspective-taking (direct, meta, meta-meta), three-turn interaction sequences (initiation-response-feedback), and triadic self-other-object relations. Building on these convergences, I propose a minimal model of dialogical intersubjectivity that entails three-turn social interaction generating and sustaining three levels of perspective-taking. Each turn can take the prior turn as its object, thereby adding a level of perspective-taking. The exchange of turns rotates participant positions (e.g., speaker becomes listener), introducing an external vantage point on the prior contribution, thus ratcheting up intersubjectivity by one level. This model explains how implicit assumptions become explicit and how social interaction patterns give rise to psychological processes.
