Doing Good and Feeling Good Among African Americans

Abstract

Previous studies of religion’s role in the connection between helping and well-being among African Americans have examined this relationship from a stress and coping theoretical standpoint, perpetuating a deficit model of positive functioning. In an effort to develop the literature, the authors approached the study of these relationships from a role identity theoretical standpoint, and a fulfillment perspective within a community sample of African American adults (N = 140). Consistent with tests for mediation, the authors found support for the following: (1) helping positively predicted satisfaction, (2) subjective religiosity positively predicted helping, (3) subjective religiosity positively predicted satisfaction, and (4) the strength of the relationship between subjective religiosity and satisfaction was significantly reduced in the presence of helping. Findings point to a mediation effect for subjective religiosity and to role identity theory as a viable explanation for religion’s role in the relationship between helping and well-being among African Americans.

Keywords

African Americans religion spirituality altruism well-being

Religion is a cultural system that encompasses feelings, thoughts, experiences, and behaviors arising from a relationship with the sacred (Hill et al., 2000). As a cultural system, religion requires and receives validation and support from within an identifiable group of people such as an ethnic group, religious congregation, or a broader faith community (Hill et al., 2000). For many African Americans, religion provides a sense of identity, meaning, and direction; numerous scholars have proposed that this system encapsulates the essence of the African American ethos (e.g., Ani, 1980; Lincoln & Mamiya, 1990; Nobles, 2006). In sum, religion is perceived to be the foundation on which many of the African American community’s other cultural traditions, such as the African American helping tradition, are formed.

A review of the literature reveals that relatively much is known about the stress associated with the African American helping tradition and religion’s role as a primary means of coping with that stress (Mattis & Grayman-Simpson, in press). However, little is known about the relationships between the African American helping tradition, religion, and well-being beyond the stress and coping dynamic. As scholars of the psychology of the African American religious experience, we are concerned not only with religion’s role in the amelioration of psychological distress but also with its promotion of optimal functioning within this cultural group. Our concern with the salutogenic function of religion in the relationship between the African American helping tradition and well-being led us to address this notable gap in the literature with the present study.

The African American Helping Tradition, Religion, and Positive Functioning

The African American helping tradition is best characterized by a combined focus on the gifting of financial resources, time, and skills toward self-help endeavors and the dismantling of obstacles to Black progress (Carson, 1990; Hunt & Maurrasse, 2004). It developed within a precolonial African religious worldview that values the interconnected essence of all living things and has been reinforced by a racially hostile American society and collective faith in a better future (Ani, 1980; Karenga & Karenga, 2007; Martin & Martin, 2002; McAdoo, 2007). While this tradition is reflected in large-scale organized self-help efforts, informal community helping has been shown to be the most pervasive mode of assistance (Hunt & Murrasse, 2004). Fictive kinship networks represent one example of this kind of informal care (Cage, 1997; Naples, 1992; M. M. White, 1987).

A review of the empirical research attending to the study of outcomes associated with informal helping among African Americans indicates a perception of caring for others as an inherently stressful activity (see Martin, 2000; McCabe, Yeh, Lau, Garland, & Hough, 2003; Williams, Dilworth-Anderson, & Goodwin, 2003, for examples). Only a few studies have looked past burdens to examine personal rewards associated with helping (see Grayman-Simpson, 2012; Picot, 1995; T. M. White, Townsend, & Stephens, 2000, for examples). These studies consistently found that helping was personally rewarding. Specifically, African Americans reported positive feelings, favorable evaluations of life overall, and positive relationships with one’s self and others in association with providing informal care.

Attempting to explicate the reasoning behind the reported positive relationship between informal helping and well-being among African Americans has led scholars to offer several rationales. One popular position suggests that the religious practices of African Americans function as a cultural compensatory mechanism that allow helping agents within this community to avoid and/or cope with the stress normally associated with other-oriented activity (Miltiades & Pruchno, 2002; Picot, Debanne, Namazi, & Wykle, 1997). Although the work of Miltiades and Pruchno and Picot and colleagues offer some support for this perspective, implicit in this viewpoint is still the notion that helping is a fundamentally stressful experience: one that is either avoided or managed differentially depending on one’s cultural resources, in this instance, religion. This premise is limited in that it perpetuates a deficit model of well-being. It ignores the actualization drive also present in humans (Maslow, 1968; Rogers, 1961) and the possibility that the African American helping tradition may fulfill religious existential needs in their own right. This latter position is consistent with a role identity theoretical perspective on the connection between helping and positive functioning and serves as the frame for the present study.

Role Identities

Role identities are the self-definitions and self-meanings that individuals apply as a consequence of their occupation within various structural social roles (Burke, 1980). These roles, and concomitant identities, are hierarchically organized, with ethnic roles considered among the most salient because of their pervasive influence in the majority of social interactions (Burke & Tully, 1977; Stryker, 1968). As a superordinate role, ethnicity brings structure and arrangement to lower order salient roles (Burke & Tully, 1977). For example, it is suggested that ethnic ideologies, values, patterns of meaning, and norms bring unique structure to the religious role of African Americans (Wimberley, 1989). National data suggesting that the majority of African Americans are acculturated into traditional African American culture, and that their ethnic and religious identities are highly salient, offer some support for these role identity theoretical propositions (Jaret & Reitz, 1999; The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009; Snowden & Hines, 1999).

In addition to providing self-definition and self-meaning, roles and internalized role identities prescribe appropriate behavior (Burke & Reitzes, 1981; Finkelstein, Penner, & Brannick, 2005; Grube & Piliavin, 2000). In the specific instance of the African American religious role, engagement in other-oriented behavior is prescribed (Caldwell, Chatters, Billingsley, & Taylor, 1995; Paris, 1985). Again, national data support this claim. More religiously identified African Americans have been found to be more helpful than less religiously identified African Americans (Ellison, 1992). From a role identity theoretical perspective, meeting this expectation allows African Americans to fulfill demands originating simultaneously from internalized religious role identities and from the ethnic group that shapes them. Furthermore, satisfactory enactment of salient role identities is purported to lead to a number of positive individual outcomes (Burke & Stets, 1999). These outcomes may include self-gratification, esteem, environmental mastery, identity verification, and validation of ethnic group membership (Burke & Stets, 1999; Callero, 1985; Franks & Marolla, 1976).

Although methodological limitations preclude the testing of a mediation model (i.e., the collection of cross-section rather than longitudinal data, a relatively small sample size—N < 200—and insufficiently reliable measures— α < .90; Hoyle & Kenny, 1999; Hoyle & Robinson, 2003; Menard, 1991), this study seeks to move toward empirical substantiation of a mediation effect for religious role identity in the relationship between helping and well-being indicators among African Americans by testing the following exploratory hypotheses: (1) informal community helping positively predicts satisfaction derived from community helping, (2) subjective religiosity positively predicts informal community helping, (3) subjective religiosity positively predicts satisfaction derived from community helping, and (4) the strength of the relationship between subjective religiosity and satisfaction derived from community helping is significantly reduced when informal community helping is added to the third regression model. Additionally, gender, age, education, income, and stress are included as controls, as previous conceptual models suggest that they have significant effects on the relationship between helping and positive outcomes among African Americans (Haley, Levine, Brown, & Bartolucci, 1987; Levin & Taylor, 1998; Martin, 2000; McCabe et al., 2003; Picot, 1995; T. M. White et al., 2000). Specifically, the aforementioned scholars hypothesized that women, elders, those of higher socioeconomic status, and those reporting lower levels of stress experience greater benefits in conjunction with informal care.

Method

Larger Study Design

The present study is an analysis of data gathered as part of a larger investigation of African American family and community experiences in New York City. The institutional review board of New York University approved all methods employed for this study. Face-to-face contact was used to solicit participants from various community settings throughout the five boroughs of New York City (e.g., barber shops, book stores, hair salons, parks, and restaurants). Participants were also recruited through personal contacts, and voluntarily, by existing participants via their own personal contacts through work, church, and social affiliations (e.g., senior citizen organizations and fraternal organizations). Recruitment resulted in a total sample of 201 men and women. After giving written informed consent, participants immediately completed a paper-and-pencil African American Family and Community Experience survey. This survey asked participants to respond to a number of questions regarding their demographic background, level of community involvement, religious and spiritual lives, personality dispositions, and experiences of stress. Completion of the survey took approximately 30 minutes. Participants were compensated with $10 cash and were given a debriefing sheet with the principal investigator’s contact information.

Present Study Sample

The race/ethnicity of participants was measured with a single categorical variable comprising six choices: “African American/Black,” “Afro-Caribbean,” “Afro-Latino,” “Continental African,” “Biracial,” and “Other.” As this study focused on the African American helping tradition specifically, only those individuals who self-reported their race/ethnicity as “African American/Black” were included in the present analyses. This resulted in an eligible sample of 140 self-identified African American adults for the present study.

Thirty-five percent of the sample was male (n = 49); 65% female (n = 91). Ages ranged from 18 to 75 years. The average reported age was 37 years (SD = 0.65). Three participants did not report their age. On average, participants completed some college (n = 52). Five participants did not report their highest level of educational attainment. The median household income was between $30,000 and $39,000 (n = 29). Fourteen participants did not report household income.

Power

As suggested by Cohen (1988), a minimum power of .80 for tests of direct effects was sought. Based on a Type I error alpha level set at .05, with previous related research demonstrating approximately 25% of the variance being accounted for by main-effects-only models (Pruchno, Patrick, & Burant, 1997), and a desired significant medium effect size of at least .15 (Cohen, 1992), the size of the present sample was deemed large enough to run sufficiently powerful tests (Soper, 2007).

Measures

Informal Community Helping was conceptualized as the degree of engagement in interpersonal acts of care. It was assessed with 15 items generated by a separate sample of 40 adults of African descent participating in an ethnographic investigation of altruism in New York City (Mattis et al., 2009). Semistructured interviews were used to explore participants’ experiences as witnesses, givers, and recipients of altruism. Responses of those interviews were content analyzed resulting in the 15-item index used in the present study. Eight of the 15 items were similar in wording to items found in the Johnson et al. (1989) Altruism Scale; thus, the wording from the Johnson et al. scale was retained with minor revision in the creation of this index. Specifically, items were revised in order to make them applicable to a wider range of individuals. For example, “I have donated goods or clothes to charity” in the Johnson et al. scale was reworded as “How many times in the past year did you do the following . . . Gave or loaned supplies (e.g., food, clothes, medicine, books) to someone who needed it.” Similar to the Johnson et al. scale, this index asked participants to report the number of times in the past year that they engaged in particular acts of caring. One sample question asked, “How many times in the past year did you . . . take food to someone who didn’t have enough to eat?” Responses to the items were recorded on a 6-point Likert-type scale where 0 = Did not happen and 5 = 11 or more times. Scores were computed as the sum of the 15 items. Internal reliability of this index with this sample of African Americans was .88.

Subjective Religiosity was conceptualized as one’s perceptions and attitudes about religion, including individual perceptions of being religious (Levin, Taylor, & Chatters, 1995; Taylor, Mattis, & Chatters, 1999). In this study, it was measured by a single item from the African American Family and Community Experience survey: “How religious are you?” Responses were recorded on a 5-point Likert-type scale where 1 = Not at all religious and 5 = Very religious. The use of single-item measures in social science research is controversial. However, national probability studies of African Americans have found single-item measures of religiosity to be robust (Taylor, Chatters, & Levin, 2004). Given the precedent set by research on African American religiosity, we reasoned that the use of a single-item measure was appropriate in this instance.

Satisfaction Derived from Community Helping was conceptualized as the degree of positive appraisal of self, interpersonal relationships, and community that one endorses as a consequence of community helping. Integrating the work of Callero (1985), Keyes and Magyar-Moe (2003), McCall and Simmons (1978), Miller and Stiver (1997), and Naples (1992), scores were calculated as the mean of four items that began with the stem: “When helping people in your community, to what extent do you feel . . . ” Items included “Good about yourself?” “More connected to the community?” “Motivated to do more for the community?” and “Energized in your other relationships (e.g., friendships, romantic, and work relationships)?” Responses were recorded on a 5-point Likert-type scale, where 1 = Not at all and 5 = Completely (Grayman, 2006). One participant did not respond to the questions of satisfaction derived from community helping. Reliability for this index with this sample of African Americans was .82.

Stress was measured by average scores on the African American Stress Scale (Watts-Jones, 1990). This scale consists of 18 items designed to assess the impact of numerous stressors commonly present within African American communities over the past year. “Living in a neighborhood with high crime, drugs, and fighting,” “Being ill/having a health condition yourself,” and “Trying to make ends meet” represent sample items from this scale. Responses were recorded on a 6-point Likert-type scale where 0 = Did not happen, 1 = Not at all stressful, and 5 = Very stressful. Internal reliability of the African American Stress Scale with this sample was .94.

Age was measured with a single open-ended item, while participants selected their Highest Level of Formal Education from among five choices: “Less than High School,” “GED/HS Diploma,” “Some College,” “College Degree,” “Graduate or Professional Degree.” Finally, Combined Household Income was measured using a single categorical item comprised of 10 income ranges: “Less than $9,999,” “$10,000-19,999,” “$20,000-29,999,” “$30,000-39,999,” “$40,000-49,999,” “$50,000-59,999,” “$60,000-69,999,” “$70,000-79,999,” “$80,000-89,999,” and “$90,000 or above.”

Results

Bivariate Analyses

One hundred and thirty-nine of the 140 participants were included in bivariate analyses. One participant was excluded because of missing data. Given the sample size, a significance level of .05, and an effect size set at .30, power analysis indicated that there was a 97.6% probability that significant correlations of a medium effect would be detected within this sample if they existed. In sum, these bivariate tests had sufficient power.

On average, African Americans in this study reported experiencing a positive sense of well-being derived from informal helping (M = 3.41; SD = 0.95). Tests of zero-order Pearson correlations revealed that informal community helping shared a moderately strong significant positive relationship with satisfaction derived from community helping (r = .49, p ≤ .01), subjective religiosity shared a moderately strong significant positive relationship with informal community helping (r = .34, p ≤ .01), and subjective religiosity shared a small significant positive relationship with satisfaction derived from community helping (r = .28, p ≤ .01). Table 1 presents a summary of all intercorrelations.

Table 1.

Summary of Intercorrelations for Age, Education, Income, Stress, Informal Community Helping, Subjective Religiosity, and Satisfaction.

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1. Age	—
2. Education	.12	—
3. Income	.16	.46**	—
4. Stress	−.26**	−.15	−.18	—
5. Informal Community Helping	.07	.14	−.13	.09	—
6. Subjective Religiosity	.21*	−.06	−.01	−.01	.34**	—
7. Satisfaction	−.09	.03	.05	.05	.49**	.28**	—

p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.

Multivariate Analyses

Hypotheses 1 was tested with a single-block multiple regression that included gender, age, education, income, stress, and informal community helping as predictors and satisfaction derived from community helping as the dependent variable. Twenty-three of the140 participants were excluded from this regression because of missing data, leaving a total of 117 respondents for this test. Power analyses suggested that a sample size of 110 was required in order to obtain 80% probability that significant results of a medium effect would be detected. Sufficient power was achieved.

The overall model was significant, F(6, 111) = 6.69, p ≤.01, and accounted for 27% of the variance in scores (R² = .27), a medium effect. Furthermore, Hypothesis 1 was supported. Informal community helping predicted satisfaction derived from community helping when controlling for the effects of gender, age, education, income, and stress (β = .50, p ≤ .01). This variable alone accounted for 23% of the variance in the model (sr = .48), a medium effect. Table 2 summarizes results of this regression.

Table 2.

Block Regression Predicting Satisfaction Derived From Community Helping With Informal Helping.

	Satisfaction
Variable	β	SE	sr	1 − R²	95% CI
Gender	.06	.16	.06	.90	[−0.15, 0.47]
Age	−.17*	.01	−.16	.88	[−0.01, 0.03]
Education	−.15	.08	−.13	.75	[−0.08, 0.24]
Income	.19*	.03	.17	.75	[−0.03, 0.09]
Stress	−.06	.07	−.06	.87	[−0.07, 0.21]
Informal helping	.50**	.01	.48	.92	[−0.01, 0.03]
R² = .27**

Note: CI = confidence interval.

p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.

Hypothesis 2 was also tested with a single-block multiple regression that included gender, age, education, income, stress, and subjective religiosity as predictors and informal community helping as the dependent variable. Twenty-two of the original 140 study participants were excluded because of missing data, leaving a total of 118 respondents for this test. Again, power analysis suggests that this test was sufficiently powerful. The overall model predicting informal helping was significant, F(6, 112) = 3.92, p ≤ .01, accounting for 17% of the variance in scores (R² = .17), a medium effect. Hypothesis 2 was also supported. Subjective religiosity had a small significant positive effect on informal helping (β = .32, p ≤ .01), accounting for 9% (sr = .31) of the total variance in scores when controlling for the effects of gender, age, education, income, and stress. Table 3 summarizes results of this regression.

Table 3.

Block Regression Predicting Informal Helping With Subjective Religiosity.

	Informal Helping
Variable	β	SE	sr	1 − R²	95% CI
Gender	.11	2.87	.10	.93	[2.76, 8.50]
Age	−.04	.11	.03	.86	[1.11, 0.33]
Education	.23*	1.35	.20	.76	[−1.30, 4.00]
Income	−.16	.59	−.14	.77	[−0.57, 1.75]
Stress	.15	1.16	.14	.89	[−1.11, 3.43]
Subjective religiosity	.32**	1.23	.31	.95	[−1.18, 3.64]
R² = .17**

Note: CI = confidence interval.

p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.

Hypothesis 3 was tested with another single-block multiple regression that included gender, age, education, income, stress, and subjective religiosity as predictors and satisfaction derived from community helping as the dependent variable. Again, 23 of the original 140 study participants were excluded because of missing data, leaving a total of 117 respondents. This model was also significant, F(6, 111) = 2.50, p ≤ .05. It accounted for 12% of the variance in scores of satisfaction derived from community helping (R² = .12), a small effect. Additionally, Hypothesis 3 was supported by these analyses. Subjective religiosity had a small significant positive effect on satisfaction derived from community helping when controlling for the effects of gender, age, education, income, and stress (β = .29, p ≤ .01), accounting for 8% of the variance in helping scores (sr = .29). Table 4 summarizes results of this regression.

Table 4.

Block Regression Predicting Satisfaction With Subjective Religiosity.

	Satisfaction
Variable	β	SE	sr	1 − R²	95% CI
Gender	.12	.17	.12	.92	[−0.16, 0.50]
Age	−.19*	.01	−.18	.85	[−0.01, 0.03]
Education	−.02	.08	−.01	.77	[−0.08, 0.24]
Income	.12	.04	.10	.78	[−0.04, 0.12]
Stress	.00	.07	.00	.89	[−0.07, 0.21]
Subjective religiosity	.29**	.07	.29	.96	[−0.07, 0.21]
R² = .12*

Note: CI = confidence interval.

p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.

Finally, Hypothesis 4 was tested by comparing the strength of the effect of subjective religiosity on satisfaction derived from community helping in two different models: (1) a regression model including controls only and (2) a regression model including controls and informal helping. The significance of the former model was previously established with the test of Hypothesis 3. Twenty-three participants were excluded from the latter analysis because of missing data, leaving a sample of 117. Power analysis indicated that this latter regression also contained sufficient power, and this model was also found to be significant, F(7, 110) = 6.27, p ≤ .01. It accounted for 29% of the variance in satisfaction scores (R² =.29), a medium effect. Results also supported Hypothesis 4. While informal community helping remained a significant predictor of satisfaction derived from community helping (β = .45, p ≤ .01), subjective religiosity failed to emerge as a significant predictor in the same model. Table 5 summarizes results of this regression.

Table 5.

Block Regression Predicting Satisfaction With and Subjective Religiosity and Informal Helping.

	Satisfaction
Variables	β	SE	sr	1 − R²	95% CI
Gender	.06	.16	.06	.90	[−0.15, 0.47]
Age	−.20*	.01	−.14	.85	[−0.01, 0.03]
Education	−.13	.08	−.11	.73	[−0.08, 0.24]
Income	.19*	.03	.16	.76	[−0.03, 0.09]
Stress	−.06	.06	−.06	.87	[−0.06, 0.18]
Subjective religiosity	.15	.07	.14	.86	[−0.07, 0.21]
Informal helping	.45**	.01	.41	.83	[−0.01, 0.03]
R² = .29**

Note: CI = confidence interval.

p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.

Discussion

Scholarship has contributed much in the way of helping society to understand the unique set of stressors that African Americans face by virtue of their social location (Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999; Utsey, Giesbrecht, Hook, & Stanard, 2008; Watts-Jones, 1990). Religion is consistently shown to be a powerful means for coping with these stressors (Ellison & Taylor, 1996; Mattis, 2002; Utsey, Bolden, Lanier, & Williams, 2007). However, researchers who have studied the role of religion in the relationship between informal helping and well-being among African Americans from a stress and coping standpoint have told but one side of a story. Significant findings from the present study add another dimension to that story that is worth telling. In sum, results from this investigation support a role identity theoretical perspective on the relationships between and among religion, informal helping, and well-being among African Americans. Specifically, the path to experiences of psychological, social, and emotional well-being in tandem with informal helping for African Americans may run through the enactment of salient religious role identities.

Study Limitation

A chief limitation of this study rests in the recruitment strategy. Respondents were recruited through convenient methods rather than through random selection. This is a sampling bias that resulted in the investigation of a self-selected group of African Americans. Although the reported median household income and average highest level of education within this sample were comparable with recent national figures (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010), these factors alone do not indicate that the sample was representative of the general population of African Americans. Having a representative sample could have offset the study limitation created by inclusion of a nonrandom sample (Cook, Heath, & Thompson, 2000). Without either a representative or a randomly selected sample, one is cautioned against drawing conclusions about the generalizability of these findings to the general population of African American adults. Additionally, the cross-sectional nature of this particular study precludes the definitive assignment of causality to these significant relationships. Limitations notwithstanding, we can speculate about the potential practical application of this research.

Application of Findings

Practitioners working with African Americans from a strengths-based perspective might interpret observations of other-oriented tendencies, particularly other-oriented tendencies among religiously identified African Americans, as a relationship strength, a recommended area of positive psychological assessment according to Gelso and Woodhouse (2003). Simply sharing one’s personal observations of this relationship strength in the other may instigate a therapeutic experience, as can helping religiously identified African Americans to cognitively reframe self-deprecating meaning-making tendencies around other-oriented behavior. Recognizing the importance of remaining amenable to the varied subjective realities of African Americans, and without attempting to essentialize African American culture and/or experience, including religious experience, we contend that holding such a strengths-based frame may be of benefit to the practitioner and the African American clients that she/he serves.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was made possible with the support of grants to the second author from the John Templeton Foundation and Fetzer Institute.

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