Poster #65 - Weathering the Storm: Racial Discrimination, Racial Socialization, and Subjective Age During the Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

The subjective perception of feeling older or growing up faster than one’s same-aged peers is associated with adverse health outcomes such as poorer mental, physical, and cognitive functioning (Li et al., 2021) and appears to be a product of weathering (i.e., cumulative wear and tear of repeated adaptations to stress, Benson, 2014). Prior work demonstrates that stressors are positively associated with subjective age (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2015) – yet no studies have examined the extent to which race-related stressors (e.g. racial discrimination) are linked to subjective age among Black Americans.

We address this gap in a longitudinal study of 143 Black emerging adults (ages 18-24; 66% female) who participated as adolescents in a study of psychosocial functioning. We hypothesized that higher rates of perceived racial discrimination would be associated with increased subjective age during emerging adulthood. We measured racial discrimination with 19 items drawing from the Everyday Discrimination Scale (Harrell, 1997). We used two items (standardized) to assess subjective age: (1) “How old do you feel compared with others your same age?” (2) “Rate how fast you grew up in comparison to your same-aged peers?” We also investigated whether parental racial socialization messages received during adolescence moderates the hypothesized relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age. As adolescents, the participants reported how often in the past year their parents conveyed three different types of racial socialization messages - (1) racial pride (e.g. “Told you that you should be proud to be Black”), (2) racial barriers (e.g.“Told you Black people have to work twice as hard to get ahead”), and (3) egalitarianism (e.g. “Told you that you can learn things from people of different races”).

Using hierarchical multiple regression, we investigated whether parental racial socialization moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age–controlling for youth gender and caregiver education. The overall model was significant, F(5, 115) = 2.30, p = .049, R² = .051. As predicted, racial discrimination was positively and significantly related to subjective age. Of the parental racial socialization messages, only racial barriers significantly moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age, b=-.263, p=.051. We conducted simple slopes analyses examining effects one standard deviation above and below the mean of racial barriers messages. The results revealed a significant, positive relation between racial discrimination and subjective age for those who received lower levels of racial barriers messages, b=.383, p=.002, but not for those who received higher levels of racial barriers messages, b=.043, p=.713. These findings suggest that racial barrier messaging may serve as a protective factor against subjective age in response to racial discrimination.
This area of study could be advanced by improved measures of subjective age, and assessment of how broader forms of structural racism relate to subjective age, other parenting factors (e.g. vigilant parenting) as moderators of the link between racial discrimination and subjective age, and how racial discrimination and subjective age relate to measures of biological age.

Authors

• Jada Childs, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Deaweh Benson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Vonnie C McLoyd, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor