Long-term Objectives: African Americans routinely experience both subtle and overt racism and discrimination in their daily lives, which contributes to both physical and mental race-related health disparities. The proposed project seeks to extend understanding of the relationship between racial discrimination (RD) and psychological distress, as well as identify neurocognitive moderators that may function as vulnerability factors in the experience of negative psychological consequences of RD. The applicant's long-term goal is to establish a research program that investigates the cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of discrimination among members of minority groups, with a focus on health disparities related to race in the US and identifying interventions to mitigate the negative effect of discrimination.
Specific Aims : The proposed project will combine a ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach with an experimental lab component to 1) repeatedly measure experiences of racial discrimination (RD) and psychological distress in near real time, allowing the applicant to examine temporal precedence in the relationship between RD and psychological distress (Aim 1); and 2) examine attention to threat as a neurocognitive moderator that may function as a vulnerability factor in this relationship (Aim 2). Method: African American college students will complete three laboratory tasks during which EEG is recorded to assess attentional processes elicited by different types of threat. Participants will then report incidents of RD, momentary affect, anxiety, and depression-related symptoms (i.e., psychological distress) in near-real time using smartphones over the course of 4 weeks. Significance: The proposed project integrates a lab-based psychophysiological approach with an EMA approach to incorporate reliable measures of individual differences in neurocognitive attentional processes with tests of temporal associations between experiences of RD and psychological distress. Integration of the tightly controlled environment of the lab to measure individual differences with the ecological validity of EMA permits a much richer and more detailed analysis of the associations between RD, psychological distress, and neurocognitive moderators than has been possible in previous research on this topic.
Subtle, everyday experiences of racial discrimination are common among African Americans in the US and are associated with negative physical and mental health consequences. Existing research on racial discrimination and mental health relies heavily on cross-sectional and retrospective self-report measures, limiting researchers' ability to make causal inferences about the relationship between discrimination and mental health. Investigating the temporal dynamics of this relationship to establish causal precedence, as well as identifying neurocognitive vulnerability factors that may moderate this relationship, is important in developing interventions that mitigate the negative effects of discrimination on the mental health of individuals from racial minority groups.
