(PS6-98) Race-Based Stressors and Racial Trauma: The Moderating Role of Parental Racial Socialization

Abstract Text: Experiences of race-based stressors are linked with higher levels of racial trauma for racial/ethnic minority individuals (Zhang et al., 2022). The Developmental and Ecological Model of Youth Racial Trauma (Saleem et al., 2020) suggests the need to take family contexts and processes into account. While previous research has not examined racial trauma as an outcome, the way in which parents talk to their children about race (i.e., racial/ethnic socialization; RES) has been found to moderate the association between race-based stressors and other psychological outcomes (e.g., internalizing symptoms, Keum & Ahn, 2021). Specifically, cultural socialization, which emphasizes racial/ethnic pride, weakens the link between race-based stressors and negative psychological outcomes (e.g., Gibson et al., 2022), whereas the research on promotion of mistrust messages (i.e., promoting distance from outgroup members) is more mixed, sometimes supporting it as a moderator and sometimes not (Keum & Ahn, 2021; Park et al., 2021; Saleem et al., 2022). Additionally, previous work has focused primarily on Black families (Anderson et al., 2019), but understanding how RES may moderate the link between race-based stressors and racial trauma in other racial/ethnic groups is needed. Thus, this study examined whether RES was a moderator of the association between race-based stressors and racial trauma, among college students from three racial/ethnic backgrounds (i.e., Asian American, Black, Latinx).
The current study collected data nationwide using online questionnaires from 232 college students (Mage= 19.27; 31.5% Asian American, 35.8% Black, 32.8% Latinx; 62.9% female). Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (FESM; Umaña-Taylor, 2001), the Racial Socialization Scale (Hughes & Johnson, 2001), and the Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale (TSDS; Williams et al., 2018). Using PROCESS (Hayes, 2013), regressions with three-way interactions between race-based stressors, RES and race/ethnicity predicting racial trauma were examined. Significant interactions were probed using simple slope analyses. Significant interactions were found for cultural socialization and promotion of mistrust. Specifically, cultural socialization and promotion of mistrust strengthened the link between race-based stressors and racial trauma for Asian participants but weakened the link for Black and Latinx participants. Overall, the findings suggest that RES does moderate the links between race-based stressors and racial trauma, but there are differences in how it functions between different racial/ethnic minority groups. Specifically, cultural socialization and promotion of mistrust seems to serve as protective factors for Black and Latinx emerging adults who experience race-based stressors but exacerbate the association among Asian American emerging adults. Overall, the findings suggest that parenting strategies, such as RES, may influence whether experiences of race-based stressors lead to racial trauma. Thus, these findings have important implications for prevention and intervention efforts for youth from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds.