The disjunction between mental and physical health outcomes for African Americans

非裔美国人的心理和身体健康结果之间的脱节

• 批准号: 7502039
• 负责人: Modupe N Akinola
• 金额: $ 1.95万
• 依托单位: HARVARD UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-18 至 2009-06-03
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7502039
• 关键词: Accounting; Acute; Address; Affect; Affective; African American; Biological; Biological Factors; Buffers; Cardiovascular Physiology; Cardiovascular system; Caucasians; Caucasoid Race; Clinical Psychology; Complex; Condition; Discrimination; Emotions; Environment; Exhibits; Exposure to; Health; Healthcare; Individual; Life Stress; Mediating; Mediator of activation protein; Mental Health; Morbidity - disease rate; Outcome; Physiological; Population; Process; Psyche structure; Psychological Stress; Questionnaires; Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Research Project Grants; Risk; Role; Stress; Testing; coping; direct application; experience; psychologic; racial difference; research study; response; self esteem; social; social cognition; stressor

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The main objective of this research project is to examine the use of coping strategies, specifically religiosity and repressive coping, in African American and Caucasian populations to explore whether these strategies can help account for the similar levels of psychological stress seen between African Americans and Caucasians, despite the fact that African Americans tend to experience greater exposure to stressful conditions. In addition, this project will examine whether certain coping strategies, particularly repressive coping, may be harmful to cardiovascular functioning, increasing physical health risk among African Americans compared to Caucasians. This research will help clarify the disjunction between stress and mental health outcomes among African-Americans, as well as the disjunction between positive mental health outcomes and poor physical health outcomes among African-Americans. Four experiments are proposed to examine the relationship between coping strategies and affective and biological responses to acute social stressors. These experiments will test the hypothesis that while certain coping strategies may buffer psychological stress, they may exacerbate physiological stress resulting in adverse physical health outcomes in the long term. Specifically, the proposed studies will determine: 1) whether religiosity and repressive coping strategies are more likely to be used by African Americans compared to Caucasians, 2) whether religiosity and repressive coping can buffer the effects of stress during evaluative tasks, and 3) whether repressive coping can elicit maladaptive cardiovascular functioning (i.e. threat reactivity) during evaluative tasks. Experiment 1 is a questionnaire study that examines race differences in religiosity, self esteem, and general health while Experiment 2 examines the mediating role of religiosity in buffering the effects of stress during evaluative tasks. Experiment 3 will examine whether individuals using repressive coping strategies are likely to report challenge appraisals, but exhibit threat cardiovascular reactivity during stressful evaluative tasks. Finally, Experiment 4 will test whether the disjunction between challenge appraisals and threat cardiovascular reactivity can be influenced by having repressive copers express their emotions in a safe environment. These studies will further our understanding of the complex interplay between social cognition and biological factors for African Americans which has direct applications to healthcare and clinical psychology.

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究项目的主要目的是检查应对策略的使用，特别是宗教信仰和压抑性应对，在非洲裔美国人和高加索人群中，以探索这些策略是否有助于解释非洲裔美国人和高加索人之间相似的心理压力水平，尽管非洲裔美国人往往会经历更多的压力条件。此外，该项目还将研究某些应对策略，特别是压抑性应对，是否可能对心血管功能有害，与高加索人相比，非洲裔美国人的身体健康风险增加。这项研究将有助于澄清非洲裔美国人的压力和心理健康结果之间的脱节，以及非洲裔美国人积极的心理健康结果和不良的身体健康结果之间的脱节。 本研究通过四个实验考察了应对策略与急性社会应激的情感反应和生物反应之间的关系。这些实验将检验这样一个假设，即虽然某些应对策略可以缓冲心理压力，但它们可能会加剧生理压力，导致长期不利的身体健康结果。具体来说，拟议的研究将确定：1）与高加索人相比，非裔美国人是否更有可能使用宗教信仰和压抑性应对策略，2）宗教信仰和压抑性应对是否可以缓冲评估任务期间的压力影响，以及3）压抑性应对是否可以在评估任务期间引起适应不良的心血管功能（即威胁反应）。实验1是一项问卷调查研究，探讨宗教信仰，自尊和一般健康的种族差异，而实验2探讨宗教信仰的中介作用，在缓冲压力的影响，在评估任务。实验3将研究是否个人使用压抑的应对策略可能会报告挑战评估，但表现出威胁心血管反应在紧张的评估任务。最后，实验4将测试挑战性评价和威胁心血管反应之间的分离是否可以通过让压抑型警察在安全的环境中表达他们的情绪来影响。这些研究将进一步加深我们对非裔美国人社会认知和生物因素之间复杂相互作用的理解，这些因素直接应用于医疗保健和临床心理学。