Race-based rejection sensitivity partially accounts for the relationship between racial discrimination and distressing attenuated positive psychotic symptoms : Race-based rejection sensitivity

This study examined the role that dimensions of racial identity play regarding the antecedents and consequences of perceived racial discrimination among African Americans. A total of 267 African American college students completed measures of racial identity, perceived racial discrimination, and psychological distress at 2 time points. After controlling for previous perceptions of discrimination, racial centrality was positively associated with subsequent perceived racial discrimination. Additionally, perceived discrimination was positively associated with subsequent event-specific and global psychological distress after accounting for previous perceptions of discrimination and distress. Finally, racial ideology and public regard beliefs moderated the positive relationship between perceived discrimination and subsequent distress. The results illustrate the complex role racial identity plays in the lives of African Americans.

Persistent and vexing health disadvantages accrue to African Americans despite decades of work to erase the effects of race discrimination in this country. Participating in these efforts, psychologists and other social scientists have hypothesized that African Americans' continuing experiences with racism and discrimination may lie at the root of the many well-documented race-based physical health disparities that affect this population. With newly emerging methodologies in both measurement of contextual factors and functional neuroscience, an opportunity now exists to cleave together a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which discrimination has harmful effects on health. In this article, we review emerging work that locates the cause of race-based health disparities in the external effects of the contextual social space on the internal world of brain functioning and physiologic response. These approaches reflect the growing interdisciplinary nature of psychology in general, and the field of race relations in particular.

The authors proposed a process model whereby experiences of rejection based on membership in a devalued group can lead people to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to status-based rejection. To test the model, the authors focused on race-based rejection sensitivity (RS-race) among African Americans. Following the development and validation of the RS-Race Questionnaire (Studies 1 and 2), the authors tested the utility of the model for understanding African American students' experiences at a predominantly White university (Study 3). Students high in RS-race experienced greater discomfort during the college transition, less trust in the university, and relative declines in grades over a 2- to 3-year period. Positive race-related experiences, however, increased feelings of belonging at the institution among students high in RS-race.