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.
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