Racial Discrimination, Coping, and Underlying Processes in African American Young Adults

本项目研究种族歧视如何影响非裔美国人的生理功能和心理调整。智力价值：本研究包括两项研究。第一项研究的主要目的是将实验和动态血压监测方法结合起来，研究非裔美国人在24小时内对实验室中发生的实际种族歧视的情感和生理反应。此外，该研究还阐明了导致这些关系的过程。第二项研究的主要目的是检验饮食作为一种应对策略是否会减轻种族歧视对情绪和生理结果的影响。本研究亦探讨生理应对过程是否能减轻种族歧视与情绪结果之间的关系。更广泛的影响：本研究有可能：(1)极大地增强我们对种族歧视是如何在心理上经历的理解，并捕捉到非裔美国人经历的可变性；(2)识别种族歧视与心理调节和生理功能之间联系的过程；(3)阐明种族歧视是如何随着时间的推移而经历的；(4)提供一个概念框架和方法方法，可以作为未来研究的工具。这些研究为研究种族歧视的因果归因、认知评估和应对过程提供了一个极好的机会，作为理解种族歧视有害后果的潜在途径。在研究种族歧视时，这些研究通过采用非裔美国人实际经历种族歧视的生态有效研究设计，为当前的研究文献做出了贡献。这项研究的结果将有助于确定种族歧视是否是一种独特的压力源，其情感和生理后果是否超过非种族压力源，以及种族歧视的经历是否比目前在压力和应对的一般模型中所捕获的更多。此外，这些研究共同阐明了种族歧视背后的过程，以及种族歧视在实验室内外展开的方式。

This project investigates how racial discrimination impacts African Americans' physiological functioning and psychological adjustment. Intellectual Merit:This research consists of two studies. The primary research aim of the first study is to combine experimental and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring approaches to examine how African Americans emotionally and physiologically respond to actual racial discrimination that occurs in the lab, over a 24-hour period. Additionally, the study explicates the processes that account for these relationships. The primary research aim of the second study is to examine whether eating as a coping strategy mitigates the impact of racial discrimination on emotional and physiological outcomes. This study also examines whether physiological coping processes mitigate the relationship between racial discrimination and emotional outcomes.Broader Impacts:This research has the potential to: (1) greatly enhance our understanding of how racial discrimination is psychologically experienced and capture the variability in African Americans' experiences; (2) identify the processes that explicate the link between racial discrimination and psychological adjustment and physiological functioning; (3) elucidate how racial discrimination is experienced over time; and (4) provide a conceptual framework and methodological approach that can be employed as tools for future studies. The studies provide an excellent opportunity to investigate causal attribution, cognitive appraisal, and coping processes as potential pathways for understanding the deleterious consequences of racial discrimination. In studying racial discrimination, the studies contribute to the current research literature by employing ecologically valid research designs in which African Americans actually experience racial discrimination. The findings from the research will help to determine whether racial discrimination is a distinct stressor with emotional and physiological consequences that exceed those of nonracial stressors and whether there is more to the experience of racial discrimination than what is currently captured in generic models of stress and coping. Additionally, the studies collectively elucidate the processes that underlie racial discrimination and the ways in which racial discrimination unfolds both within and beyond the laboratory context.