Social Class-Based Discrimination and Psychological Symptoms Among Socioeconomically Disadvantaged College Students: The Moderated Mediation Role of Stress Mindset and Rumination

Abstract

Discrimination as a crucial stressor damages the mental health of socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals through increased ruminative thinking. A “stress-is-enhancing” mindset may protect the mental health of socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals under the pressures of perceived discrimination and rumination. This study examined the mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of stress mindset in the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological symptoms among socioeconomically disadvantaged college students. A total of 919 socioeconomically disadvantaged undergraduate students (48.4% female, ages 17–25) were recruited. The results indicated that perceived discrimination was positively associated with psychological symptoms among socioeconomically disadvantaged undergraduate students through rumination (B = 0.11, boot SE = 0.01, boot 95% CIs = [0.08, 0.13]). Importantly, stress mindset moderated the indirect association between perceived discrimination and psychological distress through rumination (B = −0.18, boot SE = 0.08, boot 95% CIs = [−0.32, −0.03]). Specifically, compared with individuals with low levels of the stress-is-enhancing mindset, the indirect effect of perceived discrimination on psychological distress through rumination was weaker among individuals with high levels of the stress-is-enhancing mindset. The findings provide support for future intervention practice to promote a stress-is-enhancing mindset to protect the mental health of socioeconomically disadvantaged college students under the pressures of perceived discrimination and rumination.

Stress beliefs moderate the impact of COVID‐19 related work stress on depressive, anxiety and distress symptoms in health care workers

“…More specifically, stress beliefs appear to moderate the impact of the encountered stressors on mental health. For instance, university students with high negative stress beliefs responded with a stronger increase in negative affect in response to daily social stressors or class discrimination than students with low negative stress beliefs (Laferton et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2022). Similar moderation effects have been found in adolescents encountering adverse events (Park et al, 2018) and workers encountering job stressors (Casper et al, 2017).…”

“…These beliefs have been shown to alter cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physiological responses to stress, thereby altering the impact of stress encounters (see Crum et al, 2020;Jamieson et al, 2018 for theoretical frameworks on stress beliefs). Negative stress beliefs have been associated with higher levels of depressiveness, anxiety and distress among adolescents (Park et al, 2018), community college and university students (Fischer et al, 2016;Jamieson et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2022), employees (Casper et al, 2017;Crum et al, 2013), police officers (Keech et al, 2020), and chronic pain patients (Grünenwald et al, 2023). The effects of stress beliefs have been shown to be independent of factors such as the big five personality traits, optimism, somatosensory amplification or resilience (Emirza & Yılmaz Kozcu, 2023;Laferton et al, 2018Laferton et al, , 2020Zeng et al, 2024).…”

Milieu-specific differences in symptom severity and treatment outcome in psychosomatic rehabilitation in Germany

“…On the other hand, regarding the Precarious Milieu, patients could be affected by social exclusion and disadvantage in rehabilitation, as it tends to happen in their everyday life, according to the Sinus model. Perceived social status discrimination, known to be associated with psychological symptoms ( 47 ), might also be negatively associated with improvement. Moreover, since a great distance to intellectuality, know-it-all attitude and creativity is described for the Precarious Milieu, several therapy formats such as cognitive psychotherapy, health counseling and creative therapies might be perceived by these patients as inappropriate, patronizing and too abstract.…”

Serial Mediation Model of Social Capital Effects over Academic Stress in University Students

“…Several studies demonstrate that psychological symptoms of stress are associated with a low level of social capital. Thus, a higher prevalence of these symptoms was found in Chinese university students with reduced social capital (i.e., low level of economic and social resources) [ 37 ]. In addition, a higher level of the same symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety) was found in Chinese medical students with low level of social capital (i.e., living alone, with economic difficulties, low access to social support and with a dysfunctional family network) [ 38 ].…”