Coping with Ethnic-racial Discrimination: Short-term Longitudinal Relations Among Black and Latinx College Students

Ethnic/Racial Identity, Adolescent Sleep, and Somatic Health: Discrimination and Stress Responses as Mediating Mechanisms

PURPOSE

This study sought to examine whether the daily associations between ethnic/racial discrimination and stress responses served as mediators linking ethnic/racial identity (ERI), adolescent sleep health, and somatic symptoms.

METHODS

Data were drawn from 279 adolescents of color (69% female; 24% African Americans; 31% Asian Americans; 41% Latinx; and 4% unknown ethnicity/race; Mage = 14.31 years, SD = 0.65). Adolescents first completed an online survey about ERI exploration and commitment; and then 14-day diaries on ethnic/racial discrimination and stress responses (i.e., rumination and problem-solving coping), and finally, a post-diary survey about sleep and somatic health over the past two weeks. This study adopts slope-as-mediator mediation modeling, a novel approach highlighting the role of daily-level experiences in developmental processes by examining the day-to-day association between two variables as an explanatory mechanism.

RESULTS

The daily associations between ethnic/racial discrimination and two stress responses significantly mediated the link between ERI exploration and adolescents' subsequent sleep and somatic health. For ERI commitment, only the mediating pathway of the association between ethnic/racial discrimination and problem-solving coping was significant.

DISCUSSION

Daily responses to ethnic/racial discrimination, both adaptively and maladaptively, could in part explain the association between ERI exploration and adolescent health. Active participation in cultural activities may increase adaptive responses to ethnic/racial discrimination; meanwhile, uncertainty about ERI may lead to maladaptive reactions such as rumination. For ERI commitment, only problem-solving coping with ethnic/racial discrimination mediated the links to health outcomes, an observation possibly explained by the benefits of holding a strong sense of commitment to ERI.

Pain Severity in Relation to Smoking Cessation Problems and Self-Efficacy for Quitting among Latinx Individuals Who Smoke Cigarettes: The Moderating Role of Perceived Discrimination

Background: Latinx individuals experience significant tobacco cigarette smoking-related diseases and illnesses. Although most Latinx smokers report a desire to quit smoking, evidenced-based cessation treatments are underutilized in this group, which may partially be due to lower likelihood of receiving advice from a healthcare professional. Further, there are a lack of cessation treatments that account for comorbid symptoms/conditions (e.g., co-occurring pain) and social determinants of health (e.g., perceived discrimination). Extant work has established the reciprocal relation between pain and smoking trajectories. Additionally, although social determinants, such as perceived racial/ethnic discrimination, have demonstrated clinical relevance to a variety of health-related behaviors, limited work has examined the role of perceived discrimination in pain-smoking relations. The current study examined the effects of perceived discrimination and pain severity in relation to smoking cessation problems and self-efficacy for quitting among Latinx cigarette smokers. Method: Participants included 226 (Mage = 34.95 years, SD = 8.62; 38.5% female) adult Latinx daily cigarette smokers. Results: Results indicated that the interaction of pain and perceived discrimination was predictive of greater quit problems (p = 0.041) as well as greater confidence in the ability to refrain from smoking in response to internal (p < 0.001) and external stimuli (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Overall, this work provides a more nuanced understanding of the psychosocial contexts in which Latinx smokers may encounter problems related to quitting, and this data is important for future smoking cessation research and treatment.

Exploring the associations between discrimination, coping, skin tone, and the psychosocial health of young adults of color

Although valuable strides have been made in linking racial and ethnic discrimination to health outcomes, scholars have primarily used between-person methodological approaches, which assess the implications of reporting high or low mean levels of discrimination. Alternatively, within-person approaches assess the implications of intraindividual variation, or acute changes, in an individual's exposure to discrimination. These approaches pose two fundamentally different questions about the association between discrimination and health, and empirical work that disaggregates these effects remains scarce. Scholars have also called for research exploring whether sociocultural factors-such as race-related coping and skin tone-contour these associations. To address gaps in extant literature, the current study examined 1) how an individual's average level of exposure to discrimination (between-person) and weekly fluctuations in these encounters (within-person) relate to psychosocial health and 2) whether race-related coping (confrontational and passive coping) and skin tone moderate these associations. Analyses were conducted using weekly diary data from African American and Latinx young adults (n = 140). Findings indicated that reporting higher mean levels of exposure to discrimination and encountering more discrimination than usual on a given week were both associated with poorer psychosocial health. Results also suggest that the efficacy of young adults' coping mechanisms may depend on their skin tone and the nature of the discriminatory events encountered.