The costs of anticipating and perseverating about racism: Mechanisms of the associations between racial discrimination, anxious arousal, and low positive affect

Although numerous studies have documented an association between racial discrimination and internalizing psychopathology symptoms, there is a lack of empirical work that establishes cognitive and emotional mechanisms through which racial discrimination is associated with specific transdiagnostic mental health outcomes (i.e., anxious arousal and low positive affect) among Black Americans. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to test a new etiological model of how racial discrimination is associated with anxious arousal and low positive affect. The overarching model posits that racial discrimination will be associated with anxious arousal and low positive affect through prolonged activation of race-related stress processes (i.e., anticipatory race-related fear and race-related rumination), the effects of which are conditioned on attention bias to threat. METHOD: A total of 326 Black participants (72.4% women) completed the study. RESULTS: For anxious arousal, the indirect effect of racial discrimination through anticipatory race-related fear depended on degree of attention bias, with the effect only reaching statistical significance at mean and relatively higher levels of attention bias to threat. For low positive affect, the indirect effect of racial discrimination through race-related rumination only reached a statistical significance at mean and relatively lower levels of attention bias to threat. CONCLUSIONS: Racial discrimination is indirectly associated with anxious arousal and low positive affect through the effects of anticipatory race-related fear and race-related rumination, respectively. Implications for etiology and treatment of anxious arousal and low positive affect are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).