This study examined whether racial identity attitudes moderate the relationship between racist stress events, racist stress appraisal, and mental health. One hundred eighteen African American and 144 self-identified Caribbean women completed the Cross Racial Identity Scale, the Schedule of Racist Events, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that multicultural identity attitudes moderated the relationship between racist stress appraisals and depression, as well as the relationship between racist stress events and depression. Compared with participants with multicultural identity attitude scores 1 standard deviation below the mean, those with multicultural identity attitude scores 1 standard deviation above the mean were somewhat protected from the impact of racist stress events and racist stress appraisals. The primary conclusion is that multicultural identity attitudes are somewhat protective against the impact of race-related stress on mental health. Implications for mental health practitioners and future research in the field of Black psychology are discussed.
enced by external cues. Diener (1980) maintained that the deindividuated person's behavior is less inhibited by long-term norms and long-term consequences because of a lack of self-monitoring and other self-regulatory processes. Therefore, the person whose attention is focused on the group is more reactive to immediate emotions, motives, and situational cues. Since deindividuated persons are less likely to self-regulate their behavior in accord with long-term norms, they are more likely to perform disinhibited behaviors.The purpose of the present experiments was to test deindividuation predictions that were derived from perceptual/attentional principles. More specifically, group characteristics such as size and homogeneity were varied and self-consciousness and disinhibited behavior were measured. Based on the theories of deindividuation, we predicted that a number of social factors could decrease self-consciousness -large groups, dense groups, similar groups, and few observers-and thus lead to more disinhibited behavior. Thus, the present studies allowed both a test of deindividuation predictions and an exploration of some of the natural causes of self-consciousness.
Two studies were conducted to explore the effects of fictional television violence on adventure show popularity. In Study 1 the amount of violence occurring within 62 episodes of 11 programs was correlated with the national Nielsen viewer index. A very low (r = .05) and nonsignificant relationship emerged. In addition, student raters' perceptions of the programs were factor analyzed. A violence factor emerged, but reported liking for programs did not load substantially on this factor. Study 2 was an experiment in which an adventure program ("Police Woman") was presented to subjects either uncut or with the violence deleted. Although the uncut version was perceived as significantly more violent, it was not liked significantly more. The violence condition accounted for approximately 1% of the variance in reported liking. There is presently little evidence indicating that violence enhances program popularity.
Despite the importance of increasing the number of graduate degrees awarded to members of minority groups, there has been little research on how minority students adapt to the graduate school environment. The present study examined how social integration and social support were related to academic performance and psychological well-being among 89 black graduate and professional students. Findings indicate that black graduate students were not well integrated into their academic environment. Students in relatively more integrated departments were better adjusted, had higher grades, and perceived themselves to be making good progress in their graduate work. These students were also less likely to have considered dropping out of school. Frequency of out-of-school contact with black faculty and the number of black students in the department were important social integration and social support variables. The implications of these findings for minority student retention are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.