How Are You? Ethnocultural Differences in Help Seeking Behavior

Cultural background and norms can shape beliefs and behavior. As such, the propensity toward seeking help from others is likely also dependent on cultural background. Those who identify strongly with their native culture may have different attitudes toward help-seeking compared to individuals who are more acculturated to U.S. culture. This investigation surveyed a sample of 551 participants from four ethnic backgrounds via Prolific and the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Participation System (SONA) to examine whether greater overall help-seeking was evident among 1) individuals from the majority U.S. culture (European American) compared with ethnic minority individuals in the U.S. identifying as Black/African American, Asian American, or Hispanic/Latino; 2) individuals who endorsed more individualistic cultural values; 3) individuals reporting higher levels of acculturation (i.e., greater comfort with mainstream American culture); and 4) individuals who reported greater emotion granularity (EG), which is the ability to understand one’s own emotions in a more detailed way; and 5) the interactions of ethnic group and each of these constructs (i.e., individualism, acculturation, and emotion granularity). Results based on analysis of variance revealed that, contrary to the first study hypothesis (H1), White/European American participants reported being less likely to seek help for personal or emotional problems than Black/African American participants. In exploratory analyses, Black/African Americans also reported greater help-seeking tendencies than Asian Americans. Also contrary to what was hypothesized (H2), participants high in individualism reported less help-seeking tendencies than participants low in individualism. The third hypothesis (H3) was not supported: Ethnicity did not interact with individualism in predicting help-seeking behavior. As hypothesized (H4), greater acculturation (i.e., comfort with mainstream culture), was associated with greater help seeking; however, (H5) acculturation and ethnic group membership did not interact to predict help-seeking. Finally (H6), there were not differences in help-seeking based on comparisons of individuals higher versus lower in EG, nor did EG interact with ethnic group membership (H7); however, exploratory correlational results indicated greater EG (when measured as a continuous variable) was associated with greater help-seeking. Understanding cultural influences on help-seeking can be invaluable in helping professionals navigate how to effectively provide diverse populations with culturally accessible resources.