From racial discrimination to risky sex: Prospective relations involving peers and parents.

Abstract

This study investigated how early experience with racial discrimination affected the subsequent risky sexual behaviors of a diverse sample of African American youths (N = 745). The analyses focused on 3 risk-promoting factors thought to mediate the hypothesized discrimination → risky sex relation: negative affect, affiliation with deviant peers, and favorable attitudes toward risky sex. In addition, attentive parenting was examined as a protective factor. Analyses using structural equation modeling revealed that youths who perceived more racial discrimination at age 10 or 11 were engaging in more sexual risk taking at age 18 or 19. This relation was mediated by the hypothesized risk-promoting factors via pathways that were consistent with our conceptual model. Results also indicated a prospective reciprocal relation between parenting and children’s deviant affiliations: deviant peer affiliations at age 10 or 11 predicted more attentive parenting behaviors by the parents; this response from the parents, in turn, predicted relatively fewer deviant affiliations when the youths were 15 or 16. Study findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to the disproportionately high rates of sexually transmitted infections among African Americans.

The impact of stress on the life history strategies of African American adolescents: Cognitions, genetic moderation, and the role of discrimination.

“…Recent studies have also documented prospective relations between racial discrimination and substance abuse in Black adolescents (and adults) that are mediated by affect (anger), cognitions (e.g., deviance tolerance; Gibbons et al, 2004; 2010), and reduced self-control (Gibbons et al, in press). Similar relations have been found between perceived discrimination and increases in risky sexual behavior, also mediated by negative affect and “risky” cognitions (Roberts et al, in press). Once again, this relation is particularly strong when the discrimination is experienced early (by age 10).…”

Angry rumination moderates the association between perceived ethnic discrimination and risky behaviors

“…In support of this theory, significant associations exist between depressive and anxious symptoms and later risky behaviors in adolescents and young adults Auerbach, Claro, Abela, Zhu, & Yao, 2010). Moreover, depressive and anxious symptoms mediate the prospective associations between PED and substance use and risky sexual behaviors in African-American youth (Gibbons, Gerrard, Cleveland, Wills, & Brody, 2004;Roberts et al, 2012).…”

Factors that Influence Trajectories of Delinquency Throughout Adolescence

“…A major strength of this study is the inclusion of four time points spanning the period of adolescence. Furthermore, we specifically focused on racial discrimination, a unique and important predictor of antisocial behavior for African Americans, and provide more evidence to the growing number of studies that indicate discrimination impacts negative outcomes such as offending (Burt et al 2012), risky sex (Roberts et al 2012), and substance use ). While there is recent research investigating African-American samples from a developmental perspective (Park et al 2008(Park et al , 2010Bradshaw et al 2010), our study sample and findings differ from these in a few ways.…”