Semester
Summer
Date of Graduation
2020
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Amy Gentzler
Committee Co-Chair
Aaron Metzger
Committee Member
Amy Root
Committee Member
Heather Washington
Abstract
This study was the first to examine whether African American parents’ past experiences with racism and discrimination influence parents’ emotional and racial socialization practices. Additionally, this study investigated whether parental beliefs about their child’s positive and negative emotions mediated the relationship between racial discrimination and emotion socialization behaviors. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 406 African American parents recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Using structural equation models, the study found significant association between racial discrimination and parents’ racial and emotion socialization behaviors. Furthermore, significant meditation effects were found such that racial discrimination was associated with emotional beliefs which predicted emotion socialization behaviors. This study adds to the literature by investigating differences within an African American sample of parents, given that the majority of research on parenting and socialization has either included samples of limited diversity (e.g., mostly White parents) or has compared parenting across racial groups (e.g., Black vs. White parents). This study provides novel information on how and why there may be variation in parenting within African Americans due to their experiences with racial discrimination.
Recommended Citation
Wilson, Tyia K., "The Role of Racial Discrimination on Parental Emotion and Racial Socialization" (2020). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7764.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7764