Black US Americans’ emotions are subject to stereotypes about the anger and aggression of Black people. These stereotypes are readily applied to Black adolescents’ emotions. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to operationalize racial oppression in the emotional lives of Black adolescents through an application of García Coll et al.'s (1996) ecological model for minority youth development. We specify emotionally inhibitive features of Black adolescents’ schools, the adaptive culture of Black Americans in the United States that responds to emotional inhibition, Black families’ emotion socialization processes, and Black adolescents’ emotional flexibility behaviors. Throughout, we integrate findings from research on Black adolescents’ emotional adjustment with research on cultural values, emotion and racial socialization, school‐based racial experiences, and theory on emotion and cultural navigation.

The current study tested direct and indirect associations between racial discrimination and civic engagement via emotion regulation strategies. Differences between males and females were also explored. Method: African American college students (76% female; M age ϭ 18.42) participating in a university-wide research study provided self-reports of their racial discrimination experiences, use of emotion regulation strategies, and civic engagement attitudes and beliefs. Results: Greater racial discrimination was associated with less use of reappraisal (i.e., thinking about emotions in a different way) and, in turn, use of reappraisal was associated with greater civic engagement attitudes. The same association was found for civic engagement behaviors. However, reappraisal was associated with greater civic engagement behaviors for females and less civic engagement behaviors for males. Conclusion: The current study highlights the need to consider the role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies on college students' sociopolitical development and civic engagement. Public Significance StatementThe effects of racial discrimination on civic engagement suggests that African American emerging adults process racialized experiences in different ways. Use of reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy appears to be a contributing and effective means of processing racial discrimination experiences.

This entry considers the manifestation, predictors, and outcomes of emotion socialization in the familial context in childhood. It discusses broad theoretical classifications of familial emotion socialization, including common conceptualizations and operationalizations of emotion socialization subtypes. It discusses child, parent, and sociocultural factors as predictors of familial emotion socialization. Finally, it examines outcomes associated with familial emotion socialization in childhood. Throughout, it considers empirical work that advances the theory and conception of the nature and process of emotion socialization.

Fathers have a distinct and unique effect on child development, but little is known about fathering beyond White or majority White families. The current study includes African American/Black biological fathers (N = 88) and their two‐year‐old children. Fathers reported low incomes and high rates of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Parenting behaviors were observed in high‐stress and low‐stress triadic contexts. In the high‐stress condition, we assessed paternal responses to children's bids after the family was reunited following a separation paradigm. In the low‐stress condition, we assessed parenting behaviors during a teaching task. Fathers’ social baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was obtained as an index of parasympathetic arousal. RSA moderated the association between PTSD and fathers’ responsiveness (F = 6.90, p = .00, R2 = .30), with no association between PTSD and responsiveness demonstrated among fathers with the highest levels of RSA relative to the sample (effect = .04, p = .00; CI [0.02, 0.06]). RSA did not moderate the association between paternal depression and parenting behaviors (p > .05). Furthermore, responsiveness was only significantly associated with low‐stress paternal teaching behaviors for fathers with lower RSA (F = 4.34, p = .01, R2 = .21; effect = –.19, p = .00; CI [0.06, 0.32]). Findings demonstrate significant relationships among RSA, PTSD, and parenting for African American/Black men in contexts of economic adversity.

No abstract