Primary Submission Category: Social/relational factors
Examining the Interaction of Anticipatory Racism Threat and Racial Discrimination on Mental Health among African American Women
Authors: Amanda Perez Tyan Parker-Dominguez Thu Nguyen David Chae Amani Allen
Presenting Author: Amanda Perez*
The majority of studies examining the stress-health association focus on either the activation of or recovery from a stress experience. Perseverative cognition (PC)–repeated or chronic activation of a psychological stressor absent of an active stimulus–has been proposed as a core cognitive-emotional process linking psychological states to health. PC is central to cognitive-emotional states such as worry (about future stressors) and rumination (about past stressors) which centers prolonged psycho-physiologic stress activation as the primary mechanism underlying the stress-health relationship. Whereas numerous studies have investigated the stress-health links involving rumination, few have investigated the stress-health dynamics of anticipatory stress. We examined the interaction of each of five Anticipatory Racism Threat subscales (awareness/expectation, racism-related worry, race consciousness, stereotype awareness, confirmation concern/avoidance, 𝛼=.71-.93) with self-reported lifetime racial discrimination on three mental health outcomes : psychological distress (Kessler-6 (K6)), perceived stress (Cohen’s perceived stress scale (PSS)), and anxiety (Hospital anxiety subscale (HADS)). Data are from a nationally representative panel of 615 African American women ages 25-64 in the US. We performed adjusted weighted multivariable regression and found significant interactions for 3 of 5 subscales. Across all outcomes, when racial discrimination is high, confirmation concern/avoidance is protective; but is harmful when racial discrimination is low (p < 0.05). Racism-related worry and race consciousness, on the other hand, are protective when racial discrimination is low (p < 0.05). Our findings highlight anticipatory racism threat as an important component of the stress process for future investigation into the stress-health association among African American women.