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Symposia

Oppression and Resilience Minority Health

Identifying Mechanistic Intervention Targets for Asian Americans Facing Racialized Stress from Adolescence to Older Adulthood

4 - (SYM 45) Rethinking Self-improvement: The Role of Self-improvement and Rumination in the Context of Discrimination and Psychological Health Among East Asian Young Adults

Saturday, November 22, 2025
12:41 PM - 12:58 PM CST
Location: Foster 2, Level 2
Keywords: Asian Americans, Mental Health Disparities, Risk / Vulnerability Factors
Recommended Readings: Lee, D. L., & Ahn, S. (2011). Racial discrimination and Asian mental health: A meta-analysis. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(3), 463-489. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010381791,   Doan, S.N., Yu, S.H., Wright, B., Fung, J., Saleem, F., & Lau, A.S. (2022). Resilience and family socialization processes in ethnic minority youth: Illuminating the achievement-health paradox. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25, 75–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-022-00389-1,   Tsai, W., Chiang, J. J., & Lau, A. S. (2015). The effects of self-enhancement and self-improvement on recovery from stress differ across cultural groups. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 21-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615598380,   Choi, J. H. S., & Miyamoto, Y. (2023). Cultural differences in rumination and psychological correlates: The role of attribution. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(8), 1213–1230. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221089061,   U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Mental Health Care for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44243/
Abstract Body

Background. East Asian (EA) international young adults face heightened daily discrimination-based stress due to the rise of anti-Asian hate since 2020 in the U.S. Rumination is a regulatory strategy that involves prolonged self-critical reflection on one’s involvement in stressful experiences. A recent study showed that EAs commonly use rumination in response to stress and perceive it as self-improvement. Accordingly, East Asians may be motivated to ruminate as a way to strategize how one may prevent similar stressful experiences in the future. However, in the context of pervasive and systemic racism against Asians, EA young adults may be less successful in preventing discriminatory encounters. Accordingly, the prolonged self-critical rumination may in turn be associated with poorer psychological health. Our study is the first to explore whether self-critical rumination mediates the relationship between daily discrimination-based stress and psychological health (e.g., depressive and anxiety symptoms, life satisfaction) among EA young adults. Further, we explore whether perceiving rumination as self-improvement moderates the relationship between daily discrimination-based stress and rumination. Method. 337 EA international college and graduate students (Mage = 20.71, SD = 2.15, 65.59% male) completed an online cross-sectional survey. Results. We found that self-critical rumination mediated the relationship between daily discrimination-based stress and greater depressive/anxiety symptoms (indirect effect =.01-.02, 95% CI [.01, .02]]) and lower life satisfaction (indirect effect = -.01, 95% CI [-.02, .004]) after bootstrapping and Monte Carlo simulation, controlling for age, gender, and years in the U.S. Further, the mediation pathways were moderated by self-improvement such that the indirect effects of daily discrimination-based stress on psychological health outcomes were greater among individuals with higher tendency to perceive rumination as self-improvement (Index of Moderated Mediation = .49, p < .001). Discussion. Our findings provided critical preliminary evidence that holding a mindset of self-improvement may maladaptively influence regulatory response to stressful experiences that are specific to discrimination among EAs.