Jules P. Harrell - US grants

The quality of life enjoyed by people of African descent in the United States is compromised by encounters with a number of forms of racially stressful events. Our laboratory studies have demonstrated the disruptive outcomes these encounters have on physiological and psychological activity. The studies proposed here are designed to study processes involved when individuals encounter various forms of racism. Processes will be studied by 1) examining the role of individual differences in personality on reactions to racism and 2) manipulating various facets of racist events and examining the impact on physiological and psychological processes. Two sets of studies are described. The first studies are psychometric and will involve refining measures of mainstream and African cultural orientation and Black identity. The second set of studies are psychophysiological where a variety of racist events will be presented via video tape. We will focus on processes by examining the magnitude and latency of physiological and affective responses to various forms of racism. In addition, we will achieve the process focus by determining the patterns of relationships between measures of Black culture and identity y and responses to various forms and facets of racism. It is hypothesized that racism perpetrated by Caucasian agents is likely to elicit rapidly occurring physiological arousal and confrontational coping patterns. Afrocentrism is expected to be associated with mitigated negative mood states when racism is encountered, while a belief in mainstream American values is expected to be associated with stronger negative responses to racism. The involvement of student research assistants in every phase of these efforts is anticipated.

Epidemiological evidence suggests that the social environments of African Americans are rife with psychological stressors and challenging situations. Day to day encounters with life stressors lead to virtually countless physiological changes and sequelae. These physiological consequences may have inherent clinical significance, as in the cases of blood pressure changes, or they may provide insight into the status of an individual's psychological neurological state. Thanks to continuing breakthroughs, researchers have the capacity to measure an expanding panoply of physiological responses both in the laboratory and in the field. In addition, the cardiac systolic time interval, pre-ejection period (PEP), and the variability of heart rate reflected in the respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA), appear to provide indices of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system input to the heart respectively. Researchers can assess both quite readily, in a non-invasive fashion. Here we propose two studies effects of stress and daily life events on cardiac activity in African American samples. The cardiac measures are not taken as indicators of disease, rather they are used to derive indices of underlying changes in autonomic nervous system activity. We will employ personality measures of hostility, cultural orientation and mood as predictors of cardiac activity while individuals carry out daily life functions. College students will serve as participants in the first investigation. Staff and faculty members at Howard University will constitute the principal source of data for the second. In addition to measures of PEP and RSA, impedance cardiographic measures of cardiac output, contractile force, stroke volume and left ventricular ejection time will constitute the primary dependent measures. Initially these will be obtained in the laboratory as participants encounter a battery of psychological tests of cardiac reactivity. These tests include rotary pursuit, visual search, and viewing and imaging socially noxious situations. Subsequently, impedance measures will be obtained during a 8- hour field assessment. In this phase, of the studies, participants will report moods and activities periodically. The studies will test the utility of a hierarchical regression model where personality variables including moderated measures of hostility, mood, cultural orientation, along with laboratory reactivity scores serves as predictors of cardiac activity recorded under ambulatory conditions. These studies are designed to clarify complex relationships between personality and laboratory cardiac reactivity, and the cardiac status of individuals engaged in daily activities. Thus they will contribute to our ability to forecast which individuals in this population are most vulnerable to the ravages of stressful environments.

This project will examine the multifaceted ways in which African American ethnic identity and racial identity (ERI) - the personal significance and meaning of race and ethnicity to an individual - shapes the association between racial discrimination experiences and biopsychosocial development during the transition to adulthood. Specific aims of the study are to investigate whether ERI mitigates or worsens the association between racial discrimination and development as well as identify mechanisms by which ERI influences development during the transition to adulthood. This project will improve understanding of how ERI operates and the role social context plays in the associations between racial discrimination and development. The project will also address theoretical debates about the presumed positive impact of ERI. Developmental outcomes during the transition to adulthood will be assessed using questionnaires and physiological stress reactivity tests. Broader impacts are significant, because findings can be used to improve the social and psychological well-being of vulnerable youth. Moreover, findings can potentially support and further evidence-based prevention-intervention efforts aimed at fostering positive youth development.

Racial discrimination constitutes a significant risk to the healthy development of African American youth during the transition to adulthood. Some evidence suggests that ERI protects against the harmful effects of racial discrimination, but there have been few systematic attempts to disentangle mixed findings. Participants will be African American young adults attending a southeastern, predominantly White institution and a mid-Atlantic historically Black college/university. Students will complete a series of questionnaires assessing key study variables followed by two laboratory challenges, once a year, for three consecutive years. Autonomic reactivity (as indexed by cardiovascular psychophysiology) will be assessed during the laboratory challenges. The central questions of the study are whether the protective or vulnerability function of ERI is influenced by the social context in which the youth are embedded and whether the impact of ERI on biopsychosocial development can be explained by coping skills, self-esteem, and perceptions of racial discrimination. Key hypotheses are: 1) ERI will act as a vulnerability factor in the link between racial discrimination and development in contexts with lower levels of diversity; 2) Initial levels of racial discrimination will lead to changes in ERI, which, in turn, will be associated with changes in development; and 3) Racism appraisals and coping will explain the association between ERI and changes in development during the transition to adulthood. Hypotheses will be tested using latent growth curve modeling. These results will be used to inform recommendations for the development of a contextually-tailored pilot ERI intervention.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.