Who Am I?: The Intersection Between Racial and Emotional Socialization in the Development of Black Ethnic Identity

Kaela Yamini, Dominique Harry, Violeta Rodriguez, & Anne Shaffer

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Study Aims

• Examine if there are relations between how African Americans socialize race and emotions for their children

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• Evaluate how racial socialization and emotion socialization predict racial identity

Introduction and Key Terms

Racial Socialization- The act of teaching and conveying messages about racial and individual pride, preparation for bias, and intergroup relations among different racial groups (Coard & Sellers, 2005; Hughes, Bachman, Ruble & Fuligni, 2006a; Stevenson, 1997; White et al., 2010).

Emotion Socialization- The processes by which children come to understand emotions and emotional experiences through direct and indirect teaching by parents (Han & Shaffer, 2013; Morris et al., 2007; Shipman et al., 2007).

Racial Socialization

1:44

Emotional Socialization

(4:27-5:15)

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Background

Racial identity has three dimensions (Seller et al., 1997)

• Salience- the extent to which a person's race is a relevant part of her or his self-concept at a particular moment in time
• Centrality- the extent to which a person normatively defines her or himself with regard to race
• Ideology- the individual's beliefs, opinions, and attitudes with regard to the way she or he feels that the members of the race should act

Emotion and racial socialization should predict racial identity because the feelings children develop and exhibit to the outside world can influence how they feel about their race. Previous research hasn’t examined the concepts of racial socialization and emotion socialization together.

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Hypotheses

We hypothesize that supportive emotion socialization practices will be associated with greater racial socialization from African American parents, which will result in greater awareness of racial identity.

Sample & Procedures

• 141 participants (102 women and 63 men)
• All self-identified as African American
• All were undergraduate students �
• Recruited via Psychology participant pool and flyers
• Compensated with course credit or $10�
• Data collected via online Qualtrics survey
• Respondents reported retrospectively on their childhood experiences of socialization

Measures

• Racial Socialization Messages: Racial Socialization Questionnaire (RSQ; Lesane-Brown, Scottham, Nguyen, & Sellers, 2006)
• Subscales
• Racial Pride- caregivers’ emphasis on black unity, heritage, focus on instilling positive feelings towards Blacks
• Racial Barriers- extent to which awareness of racial inequities and coping strategies are emphasized
• Egalitarian- emphasis on interracial equality and coexistence
• Cultural Socialization- frequency of socialization activities or behaviors related to Black culture

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Measures Cont.

• Emotion Socialization
• Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions (CCNES; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990)
• Supportive responses: Emotion-focused, Problem-focused, Expressive Encouragement
• Unsupportive responses: Minimizing, Punitive, Distressed

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Measures

• Ethnic Identity
• Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI; Sellers et al., 1998)
• Ideology Subscales:
• Humanist- emphasizes similarities across all humans and generally ignores distinctions of individuals
• Nationalist- distinct uniqueness of being Black, importance of African Americans being in control of their own destiny
• Assimilation- emphasis on how African Americans fit in broader society
• Oppressed Minority- emphasizes oppression among African Americans and other minority groups and focuses on linking oppressed experience of multiple minority groups

Descriptive statistics

• Racial socialization
• Moderate to high levels of all types of messages
• Emotion socialization
• Higher levels of supportive (vs. unsupportive) responses
• Racial identity
• Moderate to high levels of all identities except Nationalist (lower)

Results: Multiple Regressions

• Racial socialization and emotion socialization subscales were entered simultaneously as independent variables, to determine which subscales predicted unique variance in each aspect of ethnic identity.

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• No racial or emotion socialization subscales emerged as independent predictors of Assimilationist or Oppressed Minority identities.

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Table 1: Predictors of Humanist Identity

Humanist identity was predicted by higher Egalitarian messages

Table 2: Predictors of Nationalist Identity

Nationalist identity was predicted by lower Egalitarian messages, �lower Racial Pride, �higher Cultural Socialization, and �higher Unsupportive emotion socialization

Conclusions

• Healthy emotional socialization may encourage more positive racial socialization
• Messages that exemplify equality can help African Americans take a more Humanist attitude toward their racial identity
• Lack of supportive emotional socialization may negatively impact African Americans, factoring into Nationalist attitudes as well as a lack in egalitarianism and racial pride

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Limitations & Future Directions

• Self-report
• Majority female participants
• Research would benefit from parental reports
• Data gathered at a predominantly White institution
• Gathering data from more HBCU (Historically Black College & University) students
• Gathering data from young adults not attending college

Questions