Experiences of Racial Discrimination and Emotion Dynamics Among African Americans and Asian Americans

This dissertation sought to extend the empirical base of the microaggression research program (MRP) by investigating the effects of daily racial microaggression in a U.S. community sample of African Americans and Asian Americans of East Asia descent. We built on prior findings and strengthened ecological validity with the method of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) over a 21-day period. Our findings showed differences in the lived experience of African Americans and Asian Americans in encountering daily microaggression both in degree and in kind. Consistent with prior cross-sectional findings, we found significant associations between prior experience of racial microaggression with poorer mental health outcomes of depression and anxiety and racial trauma in our hierarchical regression analysis. These effects remained after controlling for the effects of experiences of overt racial discrimination, negative emotionality, COVID-19 stress, and other demographic characteristics. In our EMA analysis, we found evidence of individual differences (e.g., current symptoms of depression, anxiety and racial trauma, COVID-19 stress; personality attributes such as negative emotionality and experiential avoidance, ethnic identity; demographic characteristics such as gender, income, education) on a person's emotion dynamics such as their mean momentary affect and stress reactivity. Building on growing evidence that between-person processes very often differ from within-person processes in psychology, we conducted idiographic and two-level dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) analyses to reveal a more complex and nuanced picture of the similarities and differences between the two groups in their emotion dynamics, associations of emotion dynamics components with daily microaggression experiences, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and outcomes of depression and anxiety and racial trauma symptoms.