TRIOS: Domains of Cultural Expression and Meaning

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TRIOS Domains of Cultural Expression and Meaning

• James M. Jones, PhD.
• APA Director
• Univ. of Delaware Professor
• Grady L. Garner Jr., M.A. (PhD. Candidate)
• Adjunct Lecturer (UIC/4-03)

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The mental and emotional life of African Americans

• Jones argues that psychological resilience is a
  rather significant factor in the mental and
  emotional life of African Americans as an aid in
  combating racial oppression.
• He asserts that racism was sewn into the fabric
  of Amer. Society and Culture by the hands of
  political, economic, educational, judicial and
  social institutions.
• Racism is a cultural legacy and fosters an
  enduring psyhcological consciousness.
• Historical and systemic experience of being
  dehumanized, demeaned and disadvantaged for
  hundreds of years.

• Web Chapter (Jones, 2002)
• Kenneth B. Clark and his wife Mamie Phipps Clark
• Coined Self hatred
• Research Questions 1) How does the knowledge and
  self awareness of ones membership in a
  stigmatized racial group affect their ego
  development? (2) Will they internalize that
  stigma in the form of negative views of
  themselves (I.e., low personal self-esteem) and
  their group (low racial identity or racial
  preferences)?

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality

• James Jones had a goal, and that was to answer a
  pressing question.
• What psychological and cultural resources enable
  people of African descent in America to survive?
• His answer comes in the form of a Model The
  TRIOS Model
• TRIOS Time, Rhythm, Improvisation, Orality, and
  Spirituality
• Time Personal perspectives on the past, present
  and future (temporal orientation)

• Rhythm Patterns of behavior in time, flow,
  entertainment, movement
• Improvisation Goal directed creative problem
  solving under time pressure a distinctive style
• Orality Preferences for oral face-to-face
  communication, and personal expression and the
  meaningful role of spoken words in human affairs
• Spirituality Belief in the value of higher power
  and unknown forces that influence all living
  things and ones life in particular.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality

• TRIOS focuses more on the psychological process
  that characterize members of the stigmatized
  groups, rather than the privileged groups.
• TRIOS illustrates an effort to formally represent
  African American culture in theoretical
  formulations.
• Unlike most current theories that are replete
  with a Eurocentric focus.
• This is important because individual and
  collective histories of targets (which shape
  culture) are available at any given moment and
  thus influence behavior.

• So what of this Universal Context?
• Kurt Lewin believes that marginalized groups
  accept negative judgments by those who have
  status, thus facilitating and nurturing an
  emerging deep seated antagonisms toward their own
  group. He believes that the solution is an
  elevation of ones self-esteem as a group member.
• Jones expands Lewins ideas by adding that
  racisms implications and consequences are
  asymmetrical with respect to targets and others.
• That is to say, the experiences of the privileged
  and the stigmatized groups are polarized

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality

• In fact, those in the stigmatized groups
  (targets) live daily with the possibility of
  threat, bias, denigration, denial and truncated
  opportunity.
• Jones consequently believes that there are two
  types of motivational consequences of the
  universal context of racism
• 1. Self-protective motivations, where one is
  oriented to
• detect the occurrence of
• protect oneself from
• avoid if anticipated, and
• conquer if confronted with racism.

• 2. Self-enhancing motivations, where one is
  oriented to
• sustain, defend and enhance ones self-worth
  and humanity.
• The self-protective has been the dominate focus
  of theory and research on race. Trios combines
  both to offer a means by which one can
  promote/advocate psychological well-being among
  African Americans.
• That is to say that this is a dual process model
  of adaptation and psychological health.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality

• What does that mean really?
• A combination of Ego resiliency theory (Block and
  Kremer, 1996) and Stereotype threat (Steele,
  1997) features are present in this theory.
• Threat when the threatening qualities ofa
  context are perceptually, cognitively, or
  emotionally salient self-protective motives and
  mechanisms are aroused.
• Resiliency when the context is perceived to be
  secure, self-enhancing motives are released.

• Jones adds that the self-enhancing motives are
  released to combat the negative elements ofa
  threatening environment, as well convert a
  threatening environment to a non-threatening one.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality (more specifically)

• Time A present-past time orientation may be
  central to early African Cultural systems.
• For Africans, time was slow moving and practical,
  deriving from tasks and behaviors nto prescribing
  them. This view distinguishes event time from
  clock time (Levine, 1997).
• Visiting with friends, completing a task, or
  engaging in an event takes priority over
  schedules, appointment promptness, etc.
• Mbiti (1971) suggests that in Swahili no word for
  the future exists, only for the past (Zamani) and
  present (Sasa).

• Rhythm represents a means of attaching
  psychological structure to the external world
  and its an internal response to the rhythmic
  patterns of the external world.
• Rhythm is recurringpatterns of behavior set in
  time and gives shape, energy and meaning to
  psychological experience.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality (more specifically)

• Improvisation is a way of connecting the
  internal and the external worlds.
• Improvisation is a means of control and a way
  to structure interactions among people.
• With respect to music, Chernoff (1979) notes that
  Improvisation is not so much in the genesis of
  new rhythms as in the organization and form given
  to the already existing rhythms, and a musicians
  style of organizing his playing will indicate the
  way he approaches form his own mind the
  responsibility of his role toward making the
  occasion a success.

• Improvisation then serves both a social
  integrative function as well as a personally
  expressive one.
• Improvisation is an organizational principle that
  is goal oriented and expressive.
• Improvisation allows for creative solutions to
  problems.
• Improvisation is the expression of ones soul and
  spirit is an improvisational action.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality (more specifically)

• Orality in an oral tradition includes
  storytelling, naming singing, drumming, and the
  important lessons of socialization and cultural
  transmission.
• The Word or Nommo is the lifeforce wherein all
  activities of men and all movement in nature rest
  on the worda newborn child becomes human only
  when his father gives him a name and pronounces
  it. (i.e., Kunte Kinte)
• The Griot in the African cultural tradition is a
  professional storyteller.

• Orality conveys meanings handed down over time
  through stories, but also establishes social
  bonds through the privileged meanings, styles of
  speech, and perferences for in-group relations.
• It is plausible to make connections, here,
  between individualism and collectivism. What one
  says and how your audience receives you aides in
  immediate self-definition of who I am.
• The important meanings and values of culture are
  spoken or sung. Notwithstanding, Kemet, 4500
  ca. Ancient Egyptians begin using burial texts
  to accompany their dead, first known written
  documents.

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TRIOS time, rhythm, improvisaion, oral
expression, and spirituality (more specifically)

• Spirituality this is the most central aspect of
  African origin as we have discussed throughout
  the course.
• In a field force sense, causality is multiply
  determined, and not all causes are material or
  knowable.
• Co-creation
• Spirituality is defined by a belief in a higher
  power as a functional element of ones daily
  life.

• Spiritual Forces
• Muntu - god, spirits and human beings
• Kintu - all forces which do not act on their own
  but under the control of Muntu
• Hantu - time and space
• Kuntu - modalities such as beauty and laughter.
• The psychological correlates of this cultural
  conception diverge from one constructed on the
  principles of a European-derived materialistic
  individualism. TRIOS is the nexus from which we
  trace the dynamics of African-European cultural
  contact in America.

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Conclusion

• Overall Trios is conceptualized as a worldview
  that reflects a cultural ethos of African origin,
  and it is expressed by individual motivations for
  self-protection and self-enhancement in a
  universal context of racism. Jones believes that
  TRIOS is pyschologically adaptive because it
  represents self-relevant beliefs and values that
  foster efo-resilience and optimism.
• TRIOS is a combination of the individualistic and
  collectivistic goals that afford relief for those
  oppressed, dehumanized and discriminated against.