Decline Is Not Inevitable: Changes in Science Identity during the Progression through a U.S. Middle School among Boys and Girls.

In the United States, science capital is important for navigating many aspects of life. Yet during middle school, science interest declines more for girls than boys. It is unclear, however, whether science identity also declines during the middle school years and if there are differences by gender. The authors advance prior research by modeling changes in science identity and associations with changes in identity-relevant characteristics using growth curve analyses on four waves of data from 760 middle school youth. For girls and boys, science identity changes over time; about 40 percent of the variance is within-person change, with the remainder explained by aggregate between-person differences. The associations of all identity-relevant characteristics with science identity are not significantly different for girls and boys, yet declines in average values of identity-relevant characteristics are larger for girls than boys.

Race and ethnic variation in college students' allostatic regulation of racism-related stress.

Racism-related stress is thought to contribute to widespread race/ethnic health inequities via negative emotion and allostatic stress process up-regulation. Although prior studies document race-related stress and health correlations, due to methodological and technical limitations, they have been unable to directly test the stress-reactivity hypothesis in situ. Guided by theories of constructed emotion and allostasis, we developed a protocol using wearable sensors and daily surveys that allowed us to operationalize and time-couple self-reported racism-related experiences, negative emotions, and an independent biosignal of emotional arousal. We used data from 100 diverse young adults at a predominantly White college campus to assess racism-related stress reactivity using electrodermal activity (EDA), a biosignal of sympathetic nervous system activity. We find that racism-related experiences predict both increased negative emotion risk and heightened EDA, consistent with the proposed allostatic model of health and disease. Specific patterns varied across race/ethnic groups. For example, discrimination and rumination were associated with negative emotion for African American students, but only interpersonal discrimination predicted increased arousal via EDA. The pattern of results was more general for Latinx students, for whom interpersonal discrimination, vicarious racism exposure, and rumination significantly modulated arousal. As with Latinx students, African students were particularly responsive to vicarious racism while 1.5 generation Black students were generally not responsive to racism-related experiences. Overall, these findings provide support for allostasis-based theories of mental and physical health via a naturalistic assessment of the emotional and sympathetic nervous system responding to real-life social experiences.

Mental Health Outcomes of Discrimination among College Students on a Predominately White Campus: A Prospective Study.

Racial discrimination is a social stressor harmful to mental health. In this paper, we explore the links between mental health and interpersonal discrimination-related social events, exposure to vicarious racism via social media, and rumination on racial injustices using a daily diary design. We utilize data from a racially diverse sample of 149 college students with 1,489 unique time observations at a large predominantly White university. Results show that interpersonal discrimination-related social events predicted greater self-reported anger, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and loneliness both daily and on average over time. Vicarious racism from day-to- day was associated with increased anxiety symptoms. In contrast, rumination was not associated with negative mental health outcomes. These findings document an increased day-to-day mental health burden for minority students arising from frustrating and alienating social encounters experienced individually or learned about vicariously.

Do adolescent risk behaviors mediate health and school bullying? Testing the stress process and general strain frameworks.

Adolescent bullying is a significant public health issue in the United States. The health consequences of bullying may vary, however, according to the social position and characteristics of victims and bullies within the bullying subculture. For example, research suggests that bully involved youth are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors, including social withdrawal, tobacco, and alcohol use. Yet, the extent to which health outcomes are shaped by involvements in bullying or the risk behaviors associated with bullying remains unclear. In this study we assess the extent to which risk behaviors mediate the links between health outcomes of bully-involved youth using data from the Health Behavior of School Aged Children 2005-2006 Study (N = 8066). School-level fixed-effects regression models assessed whether risk behaviors mediate relationships between bullying statuses and somatic and depressive symptoms. Results show that mediational risk behavior pathways vary across outcomes for youth situated differently in the bullying subculture, with substantially more mediation for bullies than victims. This study advances the current bullying and health research by accounting for risk behavior pathways linking bullying and health.