Bicultural adolescents' anger regulation: In between two cultures?

Abstract

This study explored the anger-regulation strategies of bicultural individuals who are brought up with two distinct cultures that might carry contradictory demands about how to regulate emotions. With a sample of 525 adolescents in the Netherlands and Morocco, we found that bicultural Moroccan-Dutch adolescents' anger regulation in response to hypothetical peer conflict were largely similar to those of their Dutch peers. In fact, both the Dutch and the Moroccan-Dutch adolescents' anger regulation differed in the same ways from the Moroccan group, with greater acting out and less calm verbalisation, reflection, and diversion in the former than in the latter. Additionally, our findings indicate that Moroccan-Dutch adolescents' identification with the Dutch as well as with the Moroccan culture is related to more anger verbalisation and less externalising anger regulation. These results are interpreted in light of the complex cultural position faced by bicultural adolescents.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Children
• Individualism
• Collectivism
• Identity

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research to the first author (Grant No. 017.003.018).

Many thanks to Jamal el Kattabi, Roy Bernabela, Asad Jaber, Mariam Boukhoubezaa, Khaoula Boukhoubezaa, Soumaya el Hamami, Charlotte Duinen, Handan Golbasi, Dagmara Ostrowska and Mieke Evers for all their help and assistance, as well as the adolescents, teachers and schools taking part in the study.

Notes

¹Two versions of the BARQ were administered with the Dutch and the Moroccan-Dutch group, with a Dutch and a Moroccan provocateur, using a Latin-square design. Additional analyses showed no differences between the two versions in the cultural groups. Therefore, we used the first BARQ version that participants filled out.