Despite the persistence of anti-Black racism, White Americans report feeling worse off than Black Americans. We suggest that some White Americans may report low well-being despite high group-level status because of perceptions that they are falling behind their in-group. Using census-based quota sampling, we measured status comparisons and health among Black ( = 452, Wave 1) and White ( = 439, Wave 1) American adults over a period of 6 to 7 weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Personality and sleep characteristics are related to financial attitudes and behaviors. However, to our knowledge no study has examined how personality and sleep may be conjointly associated with these financial outcomes. The present study examined sleepiness as a moderator of the associations between college students' personality traits and financial risk tolerance and spending habits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn past work, White Americans' beliefs about Black poverty have predicted lower perceived work ethic of the poor, and, thus, less welfare support. In this article, we examine whether beliefs about White poverty predict more positive attributions about the poor among three representative samples of White Americans. Study 1 reveals that White (but not Black) Americans' White-poor beliefs predict increased perceptions that welfare recipients are hardworking, which predict more welfare support.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParents are theorized to play an important role in helping young children to downregulate arousal to achieve sufficient and good-quality sleep. To my knowledge, however, the links between parenting and children's physiological arousal at bedtime and subsequent nighttime sleep have not been empirically tested. The present study examined 3- to 6-year-old children's evening cortisol levels as a pathway linking parental involvement at bedtime to children's nighttime sleep duration and quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious research has utilized naturalistic observations of parent-child interactions at bedtime to identify constellations of specific parenting behaviors and qualities that predict better infant nighttime sleep. Little work, however, has naturalistically examined associations between aspects of bedtime parenting and nighttime sleep among young children. The present study assessed observed parenting practices and sensitivity in the context of bedtime as predictors of 3-6-year-olds' sleep.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExecutive functioning, composed of higher-order cognitive skills, rapidly develops in early childhood and is foundational for school readiness and school-age academic achievement. Identifying constellations of factors that are related to the development of executive functioning may inform interventions that prepare children for academic success. This study examined sleep disturbances as a moderator of the association between effortful control, defined as temperament-based self-regulation, and executive functioning among young children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch suggests that White Americans oppose welfare due to between-group processes: Many White Americans envision welfare recipients to be lazy, undeserving, and Black, and these perceptions predict reduced welfare support. In the present work, we consider the role of within-group processes that result from complementary beliefs that White people, as a group, are wealthy. Using a nationally representative sample of White and Black Americans (Study 1) and two large samples of White Americans (Study 2 and Study 3; = 2,000), we find that many White Americans feel relatively lower status than their racial group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMental health symptoms are of increasing concern among college students in the United States and are often associated with insufficient sleep. However, the predictive relations between sleep and mental health are not well understood. The present study examined the daily, bidirectional associations between multiple sleep variables (subjective rating of morning restedness, objective measurement of nighttime sleep minutes) and college students' feelings of emotional distress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol
January 2021
Short sleep duration compromises adolescents' functioning across many domains, yet risk for short sleep is not evenly distributed among youth in the United States. Significant Black-White disparities in sleep duration have been observed, with Black/African American youth on average sleeping fewer minutes per night than their White/European American peers. However, not all Black adolescents have short sleep, and identification of moderators of effects, including protective and vulnerability factors in the association between race/ethnicity and sleep duration, is warranted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Sleep problems are associated with negative developmental outcomes in youth, and identification of vulnerability and protective factors is needed to explicate for whom and under which conditions adolescents may be most at risk. Towards this end, we examined socio-economic status (SES) as a moderator of associations between multiple sleep parameters and adolescents' socio-emotional adjustment and cognitive functioning.
Methods: Participants were 272 adolescents (M age = 17.
Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with poor sleep in youth, yet mechanisms underlying this association are not well-understood. The present study examined greater chaos as a mediator of associations between low SES and 2 indices of poor sleep. Two hundred fifty-two adolescents (53% girls; 66% White/European American, 34% Black/African American) participated in the 3-wave longitudinal study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrior work has demonstrated that greater community violence concerns are associated with poor sleep quality among adolescents. However, these effects may not be uniform across all youth. The present study examined the role of individual difference variables, physiological regulation and race, as moderators of risk in the relation between adolescents' community violence concerns and their sleep.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudy Objectives: We attempted to identify the duration and quality of sleep associated with the optimal child outcomes in key developmental domains including cognitive functioning, academic performance, and mental health. In doing so, we examined nonlinear associations between the sleep and developmental variables. Based on racial/ethnic disparities in children's sleep, we assessed this variable as a moderator of examined relations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study examined self-reported sleepiness as a pathway of effects underlying racial and socioeconomic disparities in children's academic and cognitive performance.
Design: The study design was longitudinal, and path modeling was used to test study hypotheses.
Setting: Data were collected from participants residing in semirural communities and small towns surrounding Auburn, AL.
The present study investigates how coordination between stress responsivity of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) moderates the prospective effects of marital conflict on internalizing and externalizing symptoms across adolescence. Although an important avenue for psychophysiological research concerns how PNS and SNS responses jointly influence adjustment in the context of stress, these processes have rarely been studied in adolescence or longitudinally. Participants were 252 youth (53% female, 66% European American, 34% African American) who participated in laboratory assessments when they were 16, 17, and 18 years old.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfluential biopsychosocial theories have proposed that some developmental periods in the lifespan are potential pivot points or opportunities for recalibration of stress response systems. To date, however, there have been few longitudinal studies of physiological stress responsivity and no studies comparing change in physiological stress responsivity across developmental periods. Our goals were to (a) address conceptual and methodological issues in studying the development of physiological stress responsivity within and between individuals, and (b) provide an exemplar for evaluating development of responsivity to stress in the parasympathetic nervous system, comparing respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) responsivity from middle to late childhood with middle to late adolescence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFragmented and insufficient sleep has been implicated in disrupted autonomic nervous system activity during resting state conditions in typically developing children. Towards explication of these relations over development, the current study tested reciprocal relations between the development of sleep parameters (efficiency, duration, latency) and cardiac sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity indexed by pre-ejection period (PEP) during waking-resting state conditions throughout middle and late childhood. Whether sleep derives changes in PEP or vice versa was examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground & Objective: A growing body of work indicates that experiences of neighborhood disadvantage place children at risk for poor sleep. This study aimed to examine how both neighborhood economic deprivation (a measure of poverty) and social fragmentation (an index of instability) are associated with objective measures of the length and quality of children's sleep.
Participants: Participants were 210 children (54.
Objective: This study examined how neighborhood access to recreation facilities and physical activity are linked to multiple indices of adolescent sleep. Physical activity was also assessed as a mediator of the association between access to recreation facilities and sleep.
Design: The study used a cross-sectional design and path modeling analysis techniques.
Although the conceptual interplay among the biological and clinical features of sleep, arousal, and emotion regulation has been noted, little is understood about how indices of sleep duration and parasympathetic reactivity operate jointly to predict adjustment in early childhood. Using a sample of 123 toddlers, the present study examined sleep duration and RSA reactivity as predictors of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Parents reported on children's sleep duration and adjustment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF