Individual, Contextual, and Temporal Antecedents and Consequences of Ethnic-Racial Discrimination among Children and Youth / EADP Collaboration Grant Symposium
Chair(s): Savaş Karataş (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)
Ethnic-racial discrimination is prevalent in today’s superdiverse societies (e.g., European Commission, 2023). In adolescence, frequent experiences of discrimination were associated with less favorable psychosocial adjustment, such as lower academic success, heightened psychological distress, increased substance use, and greater engagement in risk-taking behaviors (e.g., Benner et al., 2018; Civitillo et al., 2024). Despite extensive evidence of its adverse effects, further systematic research needs to explore how individual, contextual, and developmental factors shape its impact. This symposium brings together studies with children and youth to advance knowledge on the antecedents and consequences of ethnic-racial discrimination.
First, in their multi-study research conducted with children in The Netherlands, Sierksma and Poorthuis explore the helping behavior of Dutch White children and address whether children provide less empowering help to peers with marginalized ethnic backgrounds. Next, Karataş et al. examine how ethnic identity affirmation and the development of a coherent sense of overall self are longitudinally associated with peer ethnic discrimination among ethnic minority youth in Italy. Afterward, using a co-sibling control design, Del Toro et al. disentangle the moderating role of a sibling’s ethnic-racial identity exploration and commitment in the longitudinal associations between ethnic-racial discrimination and mental health among youth in the U.S. Finally, Civitillo et al. present meta-analytic findings from intensive longitudinal studies examining the between-person and within-person associations between ethnic-racial discrimination and mental health.
Overall, this symposium combines studies employing distinct yet complementary methodological approaches to enhance our understanding of the individual (identity), contextual (family, peer socializations), and temporal (short-time scale assessments) factors linked to ethnic-racial discrimination across diverse cultural contexts and age groups.
Presentations of the Symposium
How Do Children Distribute Different Types of Help? The Role of Task Difficulty and Recipient’s Ethnicity
Jellie Sierksma, Astrid Poorthuis
Utrecht University
A promising solution to overcome group-based biases is to encourage prosocial behavior such as helping across group boundaries early in life. Yet, not all help is equal. Some help, for example, does not provide recipients with opportunity to develop their skills (e.g., providing correct answers; outcome-oriented help) while other types are more empowering (e.g., providing strategies; mastery-oriented help).
Across three preregistered studies, we examined how Dutch White children (7-12 years) help peers. We hypothesized that children might help peers who belong to migrant groups (i.e., Black, Middle Eastern) in less beneficial ways compared to peers who belong to non-migrant groups in their society (i.e., White), especially when tasks are difficult. We used a cover story to introduce children to White and Black peers (Study 1-2; total N = 406) or White and Middle-Eastern peers (Study 3; N = 180) who worked on difficult or easy word-puzzles (within-subjects). Peers then asked for help and participants could provide either a hint (mastery-oriented help) or the correct answer (outcome-oriented help) on one puzzle.
In all studies, children provided less mastery-oriented help on difficult tasks. The internal meta-analysis of Study 1 and 2 further showed that when tasks were difficult, Dutch children gave Black peers less mastery-oriented help than White peers, particularly when they evaluated this group very positively. Conversely, children helped White and Middle-Eastern children similarly.
These results suggest that in some situations helping can back-fire: When peers need to practice the most (i.e., tasks are difficult), children provide the least beneficial help. A tendency that is amplified when they help peers who belong to stigmatized ethnic groups they sympathize with or perceive as needing extra help. Thus, peer-to-peer-helping can sometimes hamper learning and perpetuate inequality.
The Cost of Peer Ethnic Discrimination: Interrelations with Ethnic Identity and Identity Coherence among Ethnic Minority Adolescents
Savaş Karataş1, Jana Vietze2, Chiara Ceccon3, Ughetta Moscardino3
1Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3University of Padova
A fundamental developmental task for ethnic minority adolescents is forming a coherent global identity, which is inextricably intertwined with the fulfillment of the acculturative task of ethnic identity development (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2021; Meca et al., 2017). While feeling positively about their ethnic group membership (i.e., ethnic identity affirmation) may contribute to forming a coherent sense of overall self among youth (Crocetti et al., 2024), ethnic discrimination poses a higher risk to both (Del Toro et al., 2021). Given the central role of the interactions within peer groups throughout adolescence (Brown & Larson, 2009; Karataş, 2024), this risk may be heightened when young people experience ethnic discrimination during peer socialization. Therefore, this study explores how ethnic identity affirmation and global identity development are longitudinally associated with perceived peer ethnic discrimination.
To unravel these over time associations, a Cross-Lagged Panel Model was conducted with 280 ethnic minority adolescents in the North-East of Italy (Mage=14.29, SDage=0.87, 59.3% female; 76.40% 2nd generation). Findings revealed the negative reciprocal longitudinal associations between perceived discrimination and ethnic identity affirmation. That is, the higher perceived peer discrimination was related to relatively lower ethnic identity affirmation at a later time point, and vice versa. Additionally, the higher perceived peer discrimination was related over time to relatively lower personal identity coherence. Finally, a bidirectional relationship emerged between ethnic identity affirmation and global identity coherence, indicating that stronger ethnic identity affirmation was linked to relatively higher identity cohesion over time, and vice versa.
Overall, the findings reaffirm the detrimental effects of peer discrimination. However, they also underscore the protective role of holding strong positive feelings about the ethnic group against discrimination. Such findings offer a nuanced perspective to understand how to best promote harmonious interactions within ethnically and culturally diverse peer groups to foster youth’s identity development.
Ethnic-Racial Identity Exploration Instills Early Adolescents of Color with Resilience Against Racial/Ethnic Discrimination: A Co-Sibling Control Study
Juan Del Toro1, Warren C. Aguilar2, Junqiang Dai3, Charissa Cheah2
1University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2University of Maryland-Baltimore County, 3Georgia State University
Adolescents of color engage in ethnic/racial identity (ERI) development to understand their ethnicity/race (Umaña-Taylor, 2023). ERI exploration is youth’s curiosity about the meaning of their ethnicity/race; ERI commitment reflects youth’s sense of connection to their race/ethnicity (Phinney & Ong, 2007). These two identity processes differ in how they help youth cope with discrimination (Yip et al., 2019). However, most studies rely on between-person comparisons, which are susceptible to sporadic relations and unmeasured confounds. Building on prior work, the present study leveraged the co-sibling control design to test the following primary research question: Does a sibling’s ERI exploration and commitment modify the degree to which discrimination is associated with their mental health one year later.
Participants were 1,624 11-to-12-year-old siblings nested across 805 families (34% Black, 37% Latinx/é, 3% Asian, 26% Other youth; 51% females, 49% males). Youth completed measures of ethnic/racial discrimination (Gonzalez et al., 2021) at baseline; attention problems, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing symptoms (Achenbach, 2009) at baseline and one-year follow-up; and ERI development (Phinney & Ong, 2007) at the one-year follow-up. Covariates included baseline mental health, race/ethnicity, sex, and age. Multilevel models in Mplus included family-mean centered measures to estimate sibling discordant scores for all constructs.
Adolescents experiencing more discrimination than their siblings reported more internalizing symptoms, more attention problems, but did not differ on externalizing symptoms one year later. These relations were significantly moderated by ERI exploration (but not commitment). Simple slope analyses showed that siblings reporting +1 standard deviation on ERI exploration showed weak relations between racial/ethnic discrimination and each mental-health indicator than did siblings reporting -1 standard deviation on ERI exploration.
ERI exploration protected adolescents experiencing frequent ethnic/racial discrimination. Our co-sibling control design amplified the depiction of resiliency and yielded recommendations for future research regarding the roles of ERI in adolescence.
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Racial-Ethnic Discrimination and Young People’s Mental Health in Intensive Longitudinal Studies
Yijie Wang1, Qi Huang1, Daeun Kim1, Jiayi Liu1, Sylvia Lin1, Youchuan Zhang1, Juan Del Toro2, Sauro Civitillo3
1Michighan State University, 2University of Minnesota Twin Cities, 3Utrecht University
This meta-analysis examined whether there is a significant within-person association between racial-ethnic discrimination and mental health in intensive longitudinal studies among adolescents and young adults. A follow-up systematic review examined potential differences by time scale (same-moment, next-moment, same-day, next-day). A comprehensive and systematic literature search was conducted across PsycINFO and PsycArticles, Web of Science, and Pubmed (before November 2024). All included studies were coded by sample, context, design, measurement, results, and time scale. Study quality was assessed by criteria developed from existing reviews. For studies that provided effect sizes, within-person and between-person correlations were synthesized separately in a meta-regression framework using robust variance estimations. A follow-up systematic review of all included studies compared study findings of within-person associations between discrimination and mental health at more nuanced time scales: same-moment (i.e., real-time), next-moment, same-day, and next-day.
The meta-analysis synthesized 96 effect sizes from 24 studies (16 independent projects), 3,035 total participants, and 104,602 possible data points. Racial-ethnic discrimination showed a small but significant association with mental health at the within-person level (r = -.11), and a moderate and significant association at the between-person level (r = -.27). The associations exhibited a similar pattern for negative mental health but were not significant for positive mental health outcomes. The systematic review (28 studies from 20 projects, 3,719 participants, and 107,931 possible data points) identified most consistent associations during the same moment (real-time), which weakened over other time scales.
Findings highlighted a meaningful within-person association between racial-ethnic discrimination and young people’s mental health outcomes. Prevention and intervention can address daily exposure to discrimination to prevent the accumulation of discrimination stress over time. Future research should also explore whether discrimination influence negative and positive mental health outcomes in distinct ways across varying time scales.
