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Racial identity and autonomic responses to racial discrimination
Author(s) -
Neblett Enrique W.,
Roberts Steven O.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12087
Subject(s) - psychology , feeling , coping (psychology) , social psychology , race (biology) , racism , identity (music) , racial formation theory , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , gender studies , physics , sociology , acoustics
Several studies identify racial identity—the significance and meaning that individuals attribute to race—as a mitigating factor in the association between racial discrimination and adjustment. In this study, we employed a visual imagery paradigm to examine whether racial identity would moderate autonomic responses to blatant and subtle racial discrimination analogues with B lack and W hite perpetrators. We recruited 105 A frican A merican young adults from a public, southeastern university in the U nited S tates. The personal significance of race as well as personal feelings about A frican A mericans and feelings about how others view A frican A mericans moderated autonomic responses to the vignettes. We use polyvagal theory and a stress, appraisal, and coping framework to interpret our results with an eye toward elucidating the ways in which racial identity may inform individual differences in physiological responses to racial discrimination.