Poster #82 - Racial-Ethnic Socialization Practices: Gender and Ethnic Group Differences and Links to Psychological Symptoms

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Parents use racial-ethnic socialization messages to promote equality (i.e., pluralism), emphasize racial/ethnic pride (i.e., cultural socialization), promote awareness of racial discrimination (i.e., preparation for bias), and promote distance from outgroup members (i.e., promotion of mistrust; Tran & Lee, 2010). Black parents report communicating these racial-ethnic socialization messages more frequently than do Asian and Hispanic/Latinx parents (Stein et al., 2021). These racial-ethnic socialization messages are linked to psychological health among racial/ethnic minorities. Specifically, cultural socialization is associated with better psychological health (Neblett et al., 2008), while preparation for bias and promotion of mistrust often relate to worse psychological health (Liu & Lau, 2013; Dunbar et al., 2015). Yet to be examined is whether the parent communicating the socialization message makes a difference. Therefore, in the current study, we examined differences in racial-ethnic socialization practices and their associations with psychological symptoms based on which parent was transmitting the messages as well as participant race/ethnicity.
In this study, 310 racial/ethnic minority college students (Mage = 19.13, SDage = 1.12; 56.2% female; 38.1% Latinx/Hispanic, 14.5% Asian, 47.4% Black) completed the Racial Socialization Measure (Hughes & Johnson, 2001) to report on the four types of racial-ethnic socialization messages they received from both a mother and father figure. They also completed the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) to measure their psychological stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Participants reporting on only one parent were excluded from analyses.
As shown on Table 1, a repeated-measures ANOVA was run to measure differences in racial-ethnic socialization messages based on parent gender and participant race/ethnicity. Overall, participants reported receiving significantly more pluralism, cultural socialization, and preparation for bias messages from their mother figure than from their father figure. There was a significant main effect of participant racial/ethnic group on cultural socialization and preparation for bias, such that Black participants reported receiving more of these messages than Asian and Hispanic/Latinx participants. There was also a significant interaction between parent report and participant’s race/ethnicity for pluralism, cultural socialization, and preparation for bias, such that Black mothers communicated these messages most frequently, while Asian fathers communicated these messages least frequently.
Additionally, we conducted bivariate correlations to examine the associations between racial-ethnic socialization messages and psychological symptoms. In general, cultural socialization and pluralism were not significantly associated with assessed psychological symptoms across ethnic groups. However, promotion of mistrust was positively associated with all symptoms in the full sample and the Black subsample, as well as sometimes in the Asian and Hispanic subsamples. Additionally, preparation for bias messages from mothers were positively associated with psychological stress in both the full and Hispanic/Latinx sample (see Table 2). Statistical comparisons will be run to determine if there are significant differences between these correlations based on parent and race/ethnicity. Results will be discussed in relation to how best to transmit psychologically healthy racial-ethnic socialization messages to youth in order to better address racial disparities found in mental health.

Authors

• Jessica S Philip, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Laura D Pittman, Northern Illinois University