This paper centrally discusses the cultural nature of cognitive schemata for selfregulation. I focus on “Positive Determinism”, a self-regulatory mental model based on faith and optimistic beliefs, in which control is relinquished. Positive Determinism describes a particular kind of mental model of how the world works, that is in a benevolent and orderly manner. I conceptualize the employment of positive deterministic beliefs as a “hypoegoic” self-regulatory strategy (Leary et al., 2006), in which individual control and effort is relinquished. This culturally specific pattern of self-regulation has not been explored adequately in the literature.
A second focus of the presentation is to link cultural cognitive schemata to current research on immigrant “cultures of optimism”, i.e. immigrants’ optimistic ideas about achievement and opportunity in the host countries. Optimistic ideas are thought to facilitate developmental and educational outcomes and explain differences between first and second-generation immigrants (and their “cultures”). Nevertheless, the concept of “culture of optimism” serves an unspecified placeholder function and remains vague. This paper intends to map out in a more detailed fashion how ideas ascribed to the “macro-culture” are enacted at the micro level of everyday action and there become efficacious.
This data was collected as part of an exploratory study of cultural resources for self-regulation conducted with first-generation immigrant adolescents in Chicago, USA.