Hope Springs: Moderating the Link Between Racial Discrimination and Depressive Symptoms for African American Emerging Adults

Abstract

To better understand the moderating effect of coping mechanisms (distraction and rumination) and internal assets (hope) on the relationship between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms, a sample of 363 African American students (65.3% female; mean age = 20.25 years; SD = 2.39) from two large Midwestern universities were surveyed using self-report measures. Hierarchical multiple regressions were used to explore the relationships among the variables and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that discrimination (B = 0.10, p