Date of Award

Summer 8-23-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Walter Buboltz

Abstract

Scholars have examined at length the impact of stress on well-being. However, people of color experience an additional stressor called racism. Increased experiences with chronic discrimination and racism have been associated with increased hypertension, heart disease, anxiety and depression to name a few (Williams, 2018). Chronic experiences with racism leads to a phenomenon called race-related stress (Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996). The research has shown the impact of race-related stress on physical and mental health outcomes, particularly on individuals from an ethnic background (Williams, 2018). However, not much research has focused on potential moderators in this relationship. This study poses emotion regulation as a potential moderator. Emotion-regulation has been shown to be effective in increasing one’s well-being such as an increase in positive emotions (Gross & John, 2003), reduction in psychopathology (Gross & Jazaieri, 2014), and overall general life satisfaction (Keyes, 2002). It is hypothesized that emotion-regulation strategies will moderate the relationship between race-related stress and well-being. With this study we can learn from individuals who use emotion-regulation as a strategy for preventing race-related stress. Furthermore, typically research on race-related stress has focused on primarily African American participants (Williams, 2018), whereas this study will invite people from various backgrounds to participate. This study will also examine the role of everyday life stress as a covariate, and whether there are differences between everyday life stress and race-related stress.

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