About this poster

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Panel information
Panel 7. Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

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Subjective age, the perception of feeling older than one’s same-aged peers, is associated with adverse health outcomes (Li et al., 2021) and appears to be a product of weathering (Benson, 2014). Prior work demonstrates that stress is positively associated with subjective age (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2015) – yet no studies have examined the extent to which race-related stress (e.g., racial discrimination) is linked to subjective age among Black Americans.
We address this gap in a longitudinal study of 143 Black youth who were surveyed as adolescents (Mage= 15; 66% female) and again as young adults (Mage= 20). We hypothesized that racial discrimination would be positively associated with subjective age during young adulthood. We measured racial discrimination with 19 items taken from the Everyday Discrimination Scale (e.g., Being insulted, or called a name) (Harrell, 1997). We used one item drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (ADD Health) to assess subjective age: (1) “How old do you feel compared with others your same age?”

We also investigated whether racial identity and parental racial socialization messages would moderate the hypothesized positive relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age. Respondents completed the following Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI-T) scales: (1) centrality (e.g., “Being Black is an important part of who I am”), (2) private regard (e.g., “I am happy that I am Black”), and (3) public regard (e.g., “Some people don’t expect me to do well in life because I’m Black”). As adolescents, participants also reported how often their parents conveyed the following racial socialization messages in the prior year: (1) racial pride (e.g., “Told you that you should be proud to be Black”), (2) racial barriers (e.g., "Told you Black people have to work twice as hard to get ahead”), and (3) egalitarianism (e.g., “Told you that hard-working Black people have the same chance to succeed as anyone else”).

Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that racial discrimination was significantly related to increased subjective age. Contrary to hypotheses, we found that none of the parental racial socialization messages tested significantly moderated the link between racial discrimination and subjective age. Of the racial identity dimensions tested, we found that private regard significantly moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age. Simple slopes analyses revealed that those who reported greater private regard (e.g., pride in being Black) were associated with increased subjective age. These results remained even after taking a conservative Bonferroni correction to account for moderation tests of three racial identity dimensions.

To our knowledge, our study is the first to document that racial discrimination contributes to greater subjective age among Black young adults. We also found that neither racial identity nor parental racial socialization disrupted the relationship between racial discrimination and subjective age. Our results have implications for the extensive body of research documenting entrenched, systemic patterns of poor mental and physical health outcomes among Black Americans (Williams & Mohammed, 2013). Future investigations should include replication of these findings, explorations on whether subjective age helps explain links between racism and other health outcomes (e.g., anxiety, heart disease), and examinations of additional prospective protective mechanisms. The current study findings contribute to anti-racism research by highlighting that disrupting racialized adversity may potentially improve an individual's psychological perception of their age.

Author information

Author	Role
Deaweh Benson, University of Michigan	Presenting author
Jada Childs, University of Michigan, United States	Non-presenting author
Vonnie C. McLoyd, University of Michigan, United States	Non-presenting author

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