Open AccessAfrican American mothers talk to their preadolescents about honesty and lying.
Author(s) -
Jordan A. Booker,
Jean M. Ispa,
Jihee Im,
Sahitya Maiya,
Joy Roos,
Gustavo Carlo
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.049
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1939-0106
pISSN - 1099-9809
DOI - 10.1037/cdp0000396
Subject(s) - psychology , honesty , lying , developmental psychology , social psychology , socialization , psycinfo , early head start , empathy , affect (linguistics) , autonomy , medicine , medline , communication , political science , law , radiology
Objectives: While existing work points to the ways parenting behaviors and specific value socialization approaches influence children's internalization of moral values (Baumrind, Child Development 43, 261-267, 1972; Hoffman, Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice, 2001; Grusec & Davidov, Child Development, 81, 687-709, 2010), little work has considered the experiences of African American and lower-income families. The current study capitalized on the availability of 53 video-recorded mother-preadolescent conversations about their disagreements from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (Vogel et al., Early head start children in grade 5: Long-term follow-up of the early head start research and evaluation study sample. OPRE Report # 2011-8, 2010). Methods: Using inductive analysis, we assessed mothers' affective tone, communication styles, and message content during the discussion of problems involving honesty and lying. Results: Mothers tended to display warm yet firm affect, incorporate both autonomy-supportive and dominant-directive communication styles, assert that lying is never acceptable, and explain why lying is problematic. Conclusions: Mothers' affect, communication styles, and message content reflected a no-nonsense approach to transmitting values about honesty to their children. To our knowledge, the current study is the first qualitative observational investigation of low-income African American mothers' conversations regarding honesty with their children. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).