Contextualizing behaviors associated with paranoia: Perspectives of Black men.

Abstract

The sociocultural context of racism influences the behaviors of Black men and may reflect healthy paranoia (Sue, Capodilupo, & Holder, 2008). No published studies however, have directly examined the sociocultural experiences that influence Black men's endorsement of paranoid-like behaviors. An online study was conducted with a nonclinical sample of Black men (N ϭ 104) who completed the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III) Paranoid scale (Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 1994) and reported why they endorsed certain items. Responses to weighted items on this scale were analyzed using modified consensual qualitative research (CQR) procedures (Spangler, Liu, & Hill, 2012). The results indicated that this sample of Black men endorsed items reflective of clinical paranoia because they have life experiences that make them mistrustful. Their item responses were systematically categorized into the following categories: (a) life lessons learned in close relationships, (b) negative experiences at work or school, and (c) experiences living in oppressive contexts. Participant responses also reflected coping strategies categorized as: (d) personal coping (through awareness, acceptance, and meaningmaking), (e) relational coping (through analysis and boundary enforcement), and (f) coping with systemic oppression. These results suggest that adaptive coping with life experiences may be misinterpreted as paranoia when the sociocultural context is not carefully considered.

Theories for Race and Gender Differences in Management of Social Identity-Related Stressors: a Systematic Review

“…Still, the compiled evidence does build some theoretical support for an interactive effect of race/ethnicity and gender on stress response and management style [64,83,181,184,201,203,207,209]. Particularly among black women and men, race and gender identities as unique cultural scripts and adaptive processes are thought to feature prominently in their distinctive reactions to social identity stressors [64,131,141,142,203].…”

“…Being previously and chronically targeted by racial discrimination [70,74,75,86,89,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120]; being subject to racial humiliation [117]; perception of oneself as having a stigmatized identity [121][122][123][124][125][126][127][128]; and recognition of one's membership in a negatively stereotyped group [16,43,65,129,130] are characterized as experiences specific to occupying a subordinate social status. According to the reviewed literature, these psychosocial risk factors increase physiological and behavioral reactivity [2,28,105,112,113,115,131,132], passivity [132], hypervigilance…”

“…Black men, on the other hand, most likely of the groups under study to be victimized by racially-motivated physical violence [130] and to perceive racism as a threat to their culturally-prescribed gender identity [13,39,103,217], have adapted to gendered racism in ways distinct from those of black women according to the reviewed literature. Through anger repression [35,130,148], generativity [64], 'healthy' paranoia [131], negative coping [33,108,135], distancing [33], racial identity building [108,138], and intimate partner violence [13], members of this group demonstrate unique gendered race-specific responses to identity stress. With the exception of two studies [66,96], none of the included literature distinguished the strategies for coping with identity-based stress and associated health outcomes unique to white women or white men.…”

A Taxonomy of Coping Strategies and Discriminatory Stressors in Digital Gaming

“…Coping is culture- (Kuo, 2011), gender- (Szymanski and Henrichs-Beck, 2014), orientation- (Nadal et al, 2011), ethnicity-(Neal- Barnett and Crowther, 2000;Brondolo et al, 2009b), class- (Scott, 2004), education- (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), and affiliation specific (Sellers et al, 1997(Sellers et al, , 2001. How one copes is determined by emotional responsivity (Pennebaker et al, 1988;Stanton et al, 1994), socio-historical contexts (Chief Moon-Riley, 2017;Mosley et al, 2017), awareness of privilege (Fujishiro, 2009;Black, 2016), novelty (Young et al, 2019), over-exposure (Miller et al, 2007;Brondolo et al, 2009a), beliefs surrounding both identity and what constitutes discrimination (Brondolo et al, 2009a;Dale et al, 2018), as well as individual preferences for coping strategy (Noh and Kaspar, 2003;Pascoe and Richman, 2009). Furthermore, coping is immediately contextual: how one copes with the stress of a sexist boss differs from coping with a sexist stranger or from coping with sexism in leisure (Walker et al, 1977;Bacchus, 2008;Szymanski and Henrichs-Beck, 2014).…”

The Role of Coping Strategies in Understanding the Effects of Institutional Racism on Mental Health Outcomes for African American Men

“…However, this approach has contributed to a lack of understanding of the ways in which African American men confront institutional racism across multiple settings and contexts. In particular, many African American men likely encounter multiple incidences of institutional racism in different settings within a single day (e.g., Mosley, Owen, Rostosky, & Reese, 2017). Therefore, efforts to manage, alleviate, or endure the consequences of these incidents entails the constant need to adjust to the enduring demands of institutional environments, which can contribute to severe psychological distress (e.g., Mosley et al, 2017).…”