Predictors of perception: Examining economic context and self-regulation in the development of youths’ societal perceptions

• In Event: 3-065 - From Perception to Participation: Examining Youth Engagement to Promote Resilience among Urban Youth of Color

Integrative Statement

Although a growing body of work has linked youths’ societal perceptions and participation with both protective (e.g. empowerment; Wagaman, 2016) and detrimental (e.g. declines in self-esteem; Godfrey, Santos, & Burson, 2017) outcomes, comparatively little is known about what underlies their development. Some have argued that youths’ societal perceptions are motivated, in part, by their own experiences with inequity and oppression (Freire, 2000). Youth who have had first-hand experience with poverty and inequality may be more likely to perceive inequality in U.S. society and less likely to believe that everyone has an equal opportunity to get ahead. At the same time, research from developmental neuroscience has highlighted a link between exposure to poverty and environmental risk and the development of self-regulatory skills – skills related to attention, planning, memory, and the ways that we process and respond to emotionally-valenced stimuli (e.g. Roy & Raver, 2014). As such, it could be that self-regulation, in part shaped by exposure to poverty and inequality, also plays a role in the development of societal perceptions. We capitalize on longitudinal data (collected at six waves between 2003 and 2017) from a sample of 425 African American and Latino adolescents (M age=16; SD=.80) living in high-poverty, urban neighborhoods to pose the following questions: (1) Are youths’ experiences with poverty and economic inequality related to their societal perceptions (i.e. perceiving society as unequal or fair) and participation (i.e. working to effect social change) and (2) Are youths’ self-regulatory skills (i.e. behavioral dysregulation, cognitive dysregulation, and attentional bias towards emotional stimuli) related to their societal perceptions and participation? Analyses were run using structural equation modeling. Measures of poverty and economic inequality include the following: family’s average income-to-needs ratio across waves 1-5, youths’ reports of financial hardship at wave 5, youths’ reports of exposure to violence at wave 5, and youths’ ratings of subjective social status at wave 6. Measures of self-regulation include both youth report (behavioral and cognitive dysregulation) and direct assessments (attentional bias towards and away from negative emotionally-valenced stimuli) collected at wave 5. Youths’ reports of societal perceptions and participation were collected at wave 6. Correlations between all predictors and outcomes are presented in Table 1. The model testing questions of interest is presented in Figure 1. All paths adjust for youth gender, race/ethnicity, and age. Results reveal family income to be positively related to perceived inequality (β = .17, SE = .04, p<.01) while subjective social status is positively related to perceived fairness (β = .17, SE = .05, p<.01). We also find that greater cognitive dysregulation is negatively related to social action while (β = -.31, SE = .07, p<.01) greater attentional bias away from negative images is predictive of lower rates of perceived fairness (β = -.15, SE = .06, p<.01). The complex ways that indicators of both economic inequality and self-regulation are related to youths’ societal perceptions and participation will be discussed. Understanding what underlies youths’ sociopolitical perceptions and participation offers an important first step towards promoting the development of socio-politically engaged citizens.

Authors

• Amanda L Roy, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marbella Uriostegui, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Presenting Author