Poster #177 - Race Related Stress and Maladaptive Stress Responses: Moderating Effects of Kin Social Support

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Among African Americans, racism has been extensively linked to poor mental health outcomes (Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996) including increased depressive symptoms (Rudd, 1989). African American students are more likely to engage in unhealthy eating habits (Nelson et al., 2009) and be overweight or obese as a result of race-related stress compared to students of other racial backgrounds (Napolitano & Himes, 2011). Research on race-related stress has shown that experiences with racism require different coping strategies than when reacting to general stressors (Clark et al., 1999). Indeed, African American students in predominately White universities experience challenges in finding adequate resources to cope with race-related stress (Allen, 1992), thus likely resulting in maladaptive coping strategies. In combating racial stressors, Black youth may be more likely to turn to social support, specifically from those who have experienced similar instances of racism. Kinship support is a well-established resource against racism-related stress in Black communities (García Coll et al., 1996). Thus, the current study examines whether kin support moderates the relationship between experiences of racism and maladaptive stress responses (i.e., depression, emotional eating, and disengagement coping) in African American youth.
Methods
Participants
Participants were 92 African American undergraduates (80.4% female), with mean age 22.33 years (SD = 4.86). Participants indicated that they were raised by both parents (58.7%), by their mother only (34.8%), by grandparents (2.2%), by aunts/uncles (1.1%), or by another caregiver (3.3%).
Procedure
Participants were recruited using a Human Subject Pool Management Software, Sona. Participants completed questionnaires and two social stress tasks.
Measures
Individual Racism. Racism experienced on an individual level was assessed using the IRRS (Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996).
Depression. Depression scores were calculated using the CES-D (Radlof, 1977).
Emotional eating. Emotional eating was measured using the Minnesota Eating Behaviors Survey (von Ranson et al., 2005).
Disengagement Coping. Mental disengagement and denial coping were assessed using the respective subscales of the COPE Inventory (Carver et al., 1989).
Kin social support. Kinship social support was measured with questions taken from Taylor et al. (1993).
Results and Discussion
Four moderation models were examined using the PROCESS macro v3 (Hayes, 2018) for SPSS. The moderation analyses tested whether kin support moderates the relationship between individual experiences of racism and maladaptive stress responses. Personal experiences of racism were associated with depressive symptoms (β = .38, p < .001), mental disengagement coping (β = .02, p = .02), denial coping (β = .02, p = .01), and emotional eating behaviors (β = .02, p = .001). However, kin social support was only directly associated with depressive symptoms (β = -7.23, p < .001). Evidence of moderating effects is present in the interaction between kin support and racism for depressive symptoms (β = -.43, p = .03), mental disengagement coping (β = -.04, p = .03), and emotional eating behaviors (β = -.03, p = .01), but not denial coping (β = -.01, p = .45). The findings suggest that kin support buffers against the deleterious effects of racism on race-related stress responses.

Authors

• Motunrayo Olaniyan, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Azeb Gebre, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ronald Taylor, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Debra Bangasser, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author