Jules P. Harrell

Physiological Responses to Racism and Discrimination: An Assessment of the Evidence

A growing body of research explores the impact of encounters with racism or discrimination on physiological activity. Investigators have collected these data in laboratories and in controlled clinical settings. Several but not all of the studies suggest that higher blood pressure levels are associated with the tendency not to recall or report occurrences identified as racist and discriminatory. Investigators have reported that physiological arousal is associated with laboratory analogues of ethnic discrimination and mistreatment. Evidence from survey and laboratory studies suggests that personality variables and cultural orientation moderate the impact of racial discrimination. The neural pathways that mediate these physiological reactions are not known. The evidence supports the notion that direct encounters with discriminatory events contribute to negative health outcomes.

Racist Experiences and Health Outcomes: An Examination of Spirituality as a Buffer

The purpose of this study was to extend the research body, which implicates the insidious effects of racism on health outcomes. Specifically, this study tested the assumption that perception of racist experiences would predict differently for self-report symptoms (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised) compared to an objective measure of health (cardiovascular [CV] reactivity to standard laboratory stress- ors). It was also hypothesized that the cultural variable spirituality would moderate this relation. A total of 155 undergraduate students of African descent from a historical Black university in the mid-Atlantic region were recruited to participate in the current study. Perceived racist experiences and racial stress were commonly associated with negative health symptoms and showed an inverse relation to the CV responses. In addition, spirituality served as a significant moderator between racial stress and negative psychological health symptoms. Several implications are discussed in light of these findings.

Racial Identity, Self-Esteem, and Academic Achievement: Too Much Interpretation, Too Little Supporting Data

The current study draws on a hierarchical linear regression procedure to address the problem of overinterpretation in research on racial identity attitudes and academic achievement. The Racial Identity Attitude Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and a background questionnaire were administered to 128 African American students from a Historically Black College & University. Results show that the unique effect of racial identity on academic outcome is minimal. Moreover, over 50% of racial identity’s effect on academic outcome is predicted by individual differences in self-esteem. A model examining the relationship between racial identity, self-esteem, and academic outcome is presented.

Individual Differences in Physiological Responses to Fearful, Racially Noxious, and Neutral Imagery

Mental imagery has recently emerged as an alternative to traditional laboratory stressors in psychophysiological studies. The present study assessed physiological responsivity to fearful, neutral, and racially noxious image scenes in sixty-two black women. In addition, the utility of several personality variables for predicting physiological changes in response to the scenes was assessed. Thirty-one vivid and thirty-one non-vivid imagers participated in a preliminary session during which they were given progressive relaxation training and were instructed to image an event on cue. On a separate occasion physiological responses to the scenes were assessed. Findings indicated that the fearful and racially noxious scenes elicited comparable increases in corrugator and heart rate activity. The neutral scene had a less pronounced effect on heart rate and corrugator activity than the other scenes. Results of multiple regression analyses in which personality variables served as predictors of physiological activity revealed that certain dimensions of the Type A coronary prone behavior pattern and trait anxiety were significant predictors of physiological reactivity. These predictors were most effective where a conceptual link between the content of the scenes and the specific dimensions was identifiable. The results suggest that the imagery paradigm is useful for studying the effects of complex social stressful situations akin to those growing out of racism. They also underscore the potentially facilitory role personality assessment may have in pinpointing sources of variability in response to this form of laboratory stress.

The Relationship Among Type A Behavior, Styles Used in Coping with Racism, and Blood Pressure:

The relationship between six cognitive styles used in coping with racism and blood pressure in 32 Black students was studied. It was hypothesized that an apathetic style would be associated with lower blood pressure readings. Also, the relationship between the Type A coronary-prone behavior pattern and blood pressure was examined. As expected, weight was shown to have a strong relationship with blood pressure. The Type A dimension was positively related to diastolic pressure at rest and during mental arithmetic (mild stress). A style associated with a proactive and flexible orientation to the problems of racism was positively cor related with resting systolic blood pressure and the recovery of a diastolic pressure after stress.

Social Ecology, Genomics, and African American Health: A Nonlinear Dynamical Perspective:

This article offers a model that clarifies the degree of interdependence between social ecology and genomic processes. Drawing on principles from nonlinear dynamics, the model delineates major lines of bifurcation involving peoples habitat, their family health history, and collective catastrophes experienced by their community. It shows how mechanisms of resource acquisition, depletion, and preservation can lead to disruptions in basic metabolism and in the activity of cytokines, neurotransmitters, and protein kinases, thus giving impetus to epigenetic changes. The hypotheses generated from the model are discussed throughout the article for their relevance to health problems among African Americans. Where appropriate, they are examined in light of data from the National Vital Statistics System. Multiple health outcomes are considered. For any one of them, the model makes clear the unique and converging contributions of multiple antecedent factors.

Racial Differentials in the Impact of Maternal Cigarette Smoking During Pregnancy on Fetal Development and Mortality: Concerns for Black Psychologists

Data from more than 60,000 births in the United States were reevaluated by statistical power analysis to determine if racial differentials existed in the impact of maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy on low birth weight and infant mortality. The risk of mortality was significantly greater for infants of Black maternal smokers than Black nonsmokers. But the same relationship was not evident for Whites. The most dramatic increase in mortality was exhibited among infants of Black mothers who smoked more than one pack of cigarettes per day. Recent estimates indicate that the rate of smoking among pregnant Blacks now surpasses that of Whites, and the number of Black women who smoke more than one pack of cigarettes per day during pregnancy has increased. Racism, sexism, and associated increased levels of psychosocial stress appear to be implicated in the etiology of these racial differentials.

Shared and Simple Effects of Determinants of Mean Arterial Pressure During Handgrip and Mirror Tracing Tasks

Abstract Hierarchical linear regression (HLR) can be used to quantify the relative contribution specific cardiovascular (CV) mechanisms make to blood-pressure responses. The impact particular mechanisms exert varies depending on the nature of situational demands and the length of time these demands have been imposed. Theoretically, the determinants of blood-pressure changes may exercise their influence independently as simple effects, or they might evidence a relationship that is correlated or shared with other mechanisms. Following a procedure Lindenberger and Potter (1998) outlined, we used HLR and computations of shared versus simple effect ratios to quantify the portions of variance several cardiovascular parameters accounted for independently in mean arterial pressure (MAP) reactivity during isometric handgrip and mirror tracing. The predictor variables included heart rate (HR), total peripheral resistance (TPR), and cardiac output (CO). CV activity of 50 college-aged males was measured during adjace...

Genes, age, and alcoholism: analysis of GAW14 data

A genetic analysis of age of onset of alcoholism was performed on the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism data released for Genetic Analysis Workshop 14. Our study illustrates an application of the log-normal age of onset model in our software Genetic Epidemiology Models (GEMs). The phenotype ALDX1 of alcoholism was studied. The analysis strategy was to first find the markers of the Affymetrix SNP dataset with significant association with age of onset, and then to perform linkage analysis on them. ALDX1 revealed strong evidence of linkage for marker tsc0041591 on chromosome 2 and suggestive linkage for marker tsc0894042 on chromosome 3. The largest separation in mean ages of onset of ALDX1 was 19.76 and 24.41 between male smokers who are carriers of the risk allele of tsc0041591 and the non-carriers, respectively. Hence, male smokers who are carriers of marker tsc0041591 on chromosome 2 have an average onset of ALDX1 almost 5 years earlier than non-carriers.

Exaggerated vasopressor response to exercise and cerebral blood flow velocity.

We studied 10 young adults, normotensive at rest, comprising a control group (n = 5) with normal blood pressure responsiveness to exercise and an experimental group exhibiting greater percentage of body fat and body mass index (BMI) than the controls, with exaggerated blood pressure (vasopressor) responsiveness to exercise (EEBPR) (n = 5). Lower absolute and varying oxygen consumption/body weight normalized units of middle cerebral arterial blood flow velocity (MCAV) were found during exercise in the experimental group (P < .01). These findings support the hypothesis that the combination of EEBPR and high BMI is associated with low MCAV that may put such individuals at risk for cerebral hypoperfusion and cognitive deficits.