Everyday discrimination and diurnal cortisol during adolescence☆
Section snippets
Sample
Participants were recruited though mailings and presentations made in 10th and 11th grade classrooms in four public high schools in the Los Angeles area. These schools were chosen because they were composed of a large population of students from either Asian, European or Latin American backgrounds. In the first two schools, there was a majority of Asian (43%, 57%) and Latino (50%, 40%) students. In the third and fourth schools, there was a majority of Latino (38%, 23%) and White (51%, 63%)
Descriptive statistics and correlations
As shown in the last row of Table 1, everyday discrimination was infrequent (42 participants reported “never” on all items) and adolescents were more likely to attribute discrimination to their age and race than to their gender or height/weight, ts(292) = 3.13–5.84, ps < 0.05 after Bonferroni correction. Discrimination frequency was associated with lower waking levels of cortisol, less of a daily decline, and greater bedtime levels. Attributions to gender were associated with greater AUC and
Discussion
Everyday discrimination occurred relatively infrequently, but adolescents who perceived higher rates of such unfair treatment evidenced elevated levels of cortisol across the day. This is consistent with three recent studies (Doane and Zeiders, 2014, Skinner et al., 2011, Zeiders et al., 2012), providing converging evidence that the discrimination-health risk link during adulthood may begin as early as adolescence. The heightened cortisol output was due largely to less of a decline in cortisol
Limitations
Daily reports of discrimination and cortisol would provide stronger evidence for this association than our measure of discrimination that assesses frequency over 12 months. However, one daily diary study found that ethnic discrimination occurred < 1% of days over a two-week period (Huynh and Fuligni, 2010). Given how infrequent everyday discrimination is, measuring daily discrimination may be resource intensive because it would require at least one month of daily reports and the corresponding
Conclusions
In conclusion, the current study adds to the small, emerging body of research on discrimination and HPA activity during adolescence by suggesting that perceiving unfair treatment due to one's membership in several social categories (e.g., race, gender, age, and weight) can elevate diurnal cortisol levels among adolescents from different ethnicities and genders. Continuing research should focus on potential psychological mediators of this dynamic, but our study joins other recent research to
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Implications and contribution
Adolescents who perceive discrimination in their daily lives—whether because of their race, gender, age, or physical size—experience elevated levels of HPA activity. Such perceptions of unfair treatment have potential implications for health.