Self-Promotive Interdependence: How Emotional Expression in Sub-Saharan Africa Integrates Personal and Collective Success

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) presents a unique emotional pattern that challenges dominant frameworks in the current literature. In many regions, personal success typically elicits pride, while the success of an ingroup member evokes connection—reinforcing a distinction between individual and collective achievement. In contrast, success in SSA—whether one’s own or that of a close other—elicits both pride and connection, reflecting a cultural ethos we call self-promotive interdependence. This system integrates personal ambition with strong ingroup commitment, positioning individual achievement as essential to collective wellbeing. Across five studies involving participants from four SSA countries and comparison samples from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Latin America, East Asia, and the West, we examined emotional responses to success and failure. SSA participants consistently co-expressed pride and connection in response to both personal and ingroup success. In other regions, personal success was more narrowly associated with pride, while connection was reserved for others’ success—except in MENA, where pride and connection sometimes co-occurred. Failure in SSA also elicited complex blends of self-blame, camaraderie, and even pride in others’ effort, further supporting the logic of self-promotive interdependence. These findings reveal a distinctive cultural system in SSA that reconfigures the emotional dynamics of success and failure through the lens of shared identity and ambition.