Sue et al. (2007, p. 271) define a microaggression as: “Brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults towards [the marginalized group].” Microaggressions have not been used to analyze the experiences of adoptees in a bionormative society. A total of 156 interviews (males=75, females=81) and questionnaires of White adolescent adoptees in same-race families were analyzed using a mixed methods design. Study 1 used thematic analysis to discover 16 themes of microaggressions. Study 2 used the microaggression as the unit of analysis in chi squares to determine if themes were associated with levels of intensity, emotional reactions, initiators, gender, and age group. For nine themes, intensity was not equally distributed, with the most frequent level being medium. Emotion was not equally distributed across twelve themes, with the most frequent response being neutral. Initiator was not equally distributed across ten themes, with the most frequent initiators being peers/friends. Gender and age group were not equally distributed, with females most frequently experiencing three themes, and younger adolescents most frequently experiencing two themes. In Study 3, analyses used the individual person as the unit of analysis to assess the experience of microaggressions across all adoptees related to gender, age, and adoptees’ perceptions of their adoptions. Significant mean differences were found in average intensity level and number of microaggressions for males and females. Number of microaggressions and average intensity were negatively correlated with scores on the Positive Affect about adoption scale.

The 2 goals of the present investigation were to 1) examine the reliability of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire: Short Form (CBQ) in a sample of 4-7 year-old children from the Ukraine and 2) compare those children’s temperament profiles to a) one another when the form was administered in 2 different languages and b) their American counterparts from the CBQ standardization sample. Three waves of data were collected from the parents of 167 children residing in Kiev, Ukraine. Internal reliability analyses showed good internal consistency of the instrument. Comparative analyses conducted both within and between cultures showed similarities and differences across the 15 CBQ dimensions. The observed differences were in the predicted directions: Ukrainian children were rated higher than American children on dimensions reflecting negative affectivity. However, the language of the instrument was a mitigating factor. This finding supports the possibility that parental ethnotheories are embedded in specific languages.

This study focused on the experiences of transracial adoptees in the United States, in an effort to examine the roles of cultural socialization and family influences on adoptees’ ethnic identity development. This study explored these issues through in-depth interviews with 11 adult transracial adoptees. Qualitative data analysis indicated various factors influencing participants’ ethnic identity development. Analysis compared levels of parental connection to adoptees’ birth culture, according to participants’ responses to interview questions. Analysis also compared socialization activities perceived by participants as meaningful to those that participants described as superficial or lacking in meaning. Themes included freedom of choice, opportunities for exposure to birth culture, and family support. Through quantitative analysis, a significant connection was found between parents’ level of connection with adoptees’ birth culture and the number of cultural socialization strategies they engaged in with their children. There was also a significant link between socialization activities participants viewed as meaningful and the strength of their ethnic identity development.

The purpose of this study was to examine various aspects of Millennials' attitudes related to their beliefs about the United States and in the context of their personal, career, and family goals and ethnic identity. Another purpose of this study was to determine if selected personality variables would predict attitudes toward the United States. It was found that Millennials who held positive attitudes toward the United States in terms of being a viable country for them also had relatively clear and developed personal, career, and family goals. Moreover, three personality variables—resiliency, optimism, and (inversely) cynicism significantly contributed to Millennials' views of the United States. Last, ethnic identity—strong feelings of attachment and loyalty to one's ethnicity—correlated in various ways with both attitudes toward the United States and the belief that the United States is oppressive toward minorities. Those observed correlations varied depending on the specific ethnicity (non-Hispanic Whites who strongly identified with their ethnicity were less likely to consider the United States a discriminatory country toward minorities, whereas Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans who identified strongly with their ethnicity were more likely to view the United States as oppressive toward minorities. More research is recommended to clarify and elucidate some of the obtained findings in this study.

No description available.

This study examines whether Compassion Meditation (CM) can help ethnic minority college students heal from race-related stress. The present study hypothesized that through participation in a CM intervention, the augmentation of adaptive coping strategies (i.e., self-compassion) and the reduction of maladaptive coping strategies (i.e., internalization, defined as self-blame, and detachment, defined as social isolation) would reduce depression and PTSD. Participants (N = 9) participated in an 8-session weekly CM intervention and completed three questionnaires at the beginning, middle, and end of the intervention. Results demonstrated that increasing self-compassion predicted decreases in depression, and that reducing coping via detachment predicted decreases in PTSD. In addition, all nine participants met the clinical cutoff for major depression at pre-intervention, but only five remained above the cutoff point by post-intervention. Implications for future CM interventions, research, and prevention strategies are discussed.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric condition affecting approximately 8% of the adult U.S. population with rates twice as high in women than men. Increasingly, evidence has suggested a close relationship between PTSD and increased risk of metabolic diseases. However, the literature on PTSD and metabolic disease risk factors has been limited by the lack of investigation of the potential influence of race on this relation. The current study examined the possible effect of race on the relation between PTSD and metabolic risk. Data for this study were provided from sample of that included 50 African American women and 39 Caucasian women, 56.2% and 43.8% respectively. Results support the importance of race in the relationship between PTSD and metabolic disease risk factors. Future research would benefit from analysis of cultural factors to explain how race might influence the course of metabolic disease risk and development in women with PTSD.

Existing evidence suggests that disparities exist in the use of mental health services by Arabs in the U.S. While there are likely many factors that contribute, lack of cultural competence of mental health providers is one potentially important barrier for mental health service use among racial/ethnic minorities, including Arabs. The primary purpose of this study was to identify and examine factors related to the development and existence of cultural competence toward Arabs. Variables measuring demographics, professional characteristics, familiarity with Arabs, prior experience and knowledge of Arabs, and readiness for change were tested with a randomly selected sample of mental health providers in Northern Virginia. In order to assess baseline levels of cultural competence toward Arabs, as well as further define the potential relationships of these variables to cultural competence, a new measure of cultural competence toward Arabs [CC-A] was developed and initially validated through a focus group and pilot test. It was subsequently administered to a group of mental health providers in Northern Virginia to further assess the validity of the underlying constructs being tested and to explore relationships between this measure and other key factors. Factor analyses revealed that a unidimensional construct of cultural competence toward Arabs was being measured. Bivariate and multivariate analyses examined the way this measure related to these constructs. Regression analyses revealed that higher levels of cultural competence were significantly related to higher readiness for change, higher prior levels of knowledge toward Arabs, a greater degree of familiarity with Arabs, and utilizing books as a source of knowledge about Arabs. A model inclusive of these factors explained 19% of the variance in mean scores on the CC-A. Implications of these findings for research, clinical practice, and graduate training are discussed. These include consideration of alternative models for cultural competence, an assessment of additional methodologies to measure cultural competence, and the development and implementation of cultural competence interventions.

Existing research has supported mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) as an efficacious intervention for depressive relapse prevention, finding it comparable – if not even more effective at times – to antidepressant medication maintenance and other psychoeducational active control conditions. In light of bicultural populations being under-addressed in previous MBCT research, this study will attempt to examine whether bicultural-specific psychological mechanisms, specifically bicultural self-efficacy, will moderate mindfulness for depressive relapse. It will also examine mindfulness as a determining factor in preventing depressive relapse compared to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a treatment of comparable design without mindfulness implementation. Seven hundred and forty-seven Asian American participants previously diagnosed with clinical depression will be randomly assigned to undergo MBCT or CBT treatment. Results will indicate that participants undergoing mindfulness training through MBCT will have significantly lowered rates of depressive relapse, compared to participants undergoing CBT training as a control intervention. Bicultural self-efficacy will also act as a moderator for mindfulness, further promoting the effectiveness of mindfulness in MBCT.

Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a measure of mental associations between target pairs and positive or negative attributes. Highly associative categories yield faster responses than the reverse mental associations, which is thought to reflect implicit attitudes toward stereotypes. The present study investigated the effect of ethnic group on one’s implicit attitudes toward aging and gender stereotypes by comparing two groups of older adults, Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans, that likely hold different culture values. Past qualitative studies have established the existence of mental health stigma in Asian American populations, including negative Asian American perceptions of aging, but have not yet established a quantitative measure of this phenomenon. The age-attitude and gender-science IATs were administered to 20 Asian American and 20 Caucasian American older adults in the Southern California region. The results from the age-attitude IAT found that Asian American older adults demonstrated higher implicit bias toward aging, evidenced by faster responses to the category pairings associating “old” + “bad” and “young” + “good”. In contrast, performance on the gender-science IAT was similar for both groups, showing no strong bias toward gender stereotypes. Potential implications on the wellbeing of older adults, as stereotype threat and other forms of bias are already established harmful constructs in the population, are discussed.