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

这个项目调查种族歧视如何影响非裔美国人的生理功能和心理适应。智力价值：这项研究由两项研究组成。第一项研究的主要研究目的是将实验和动态血压监测方法相结合，以检查非裔美国人在24小时内对实验室中发生的实际种族歧视做出的情感和生理反应。此外，这项研究还解释了解释这些关系的过程。第二项研究的主要研究目的是考察饮食作为一种应对策略是否可以减轻种族歧视对情绪和生理结果的影响。本研究还考察了生理应对过程是否缓解了种族歧视和情绪结果之间的关系。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心理体验的理解，并捕捉到非裔美国人体验的变异性；(2)确定解释种族歧视与心理调节和生理功能之间的联系的过程；(3)阐明种族歧视是如何随着时间的推移而经历的；以及(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。这些研究提供了一个极好的机会来调查因果归因、认知评估和应对过程，作为理解种族歧视有害后果的潜在途径。在研究种族歧视方面，这些研究采用了生态上有效的研究设计，其中非裔美国人实际经历了种族歧视，从而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了非种族压力源，以及种族歧视的经历是否比目前在压力和应对的通用模型中捕捉到的更多。此外，这些研究共同阐明了种族歧视的基础过程，以及在实验室内外展开种族歧视的方式。

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.