Testing the Protective Role of Peer Support and Peer Cultural Socialization in the Lives of Ethnic-Racial Minority Youth

Experiences of ethnic-racial discrimination are commonplace among youth in the U.S. and are associated with increased mental health difficulties. Although social orientation towards peers is a normative developmental process in adolescence, few studies have examined whether peer support and peer cultural socialization, two contextual resources at the peer level, might help mitigate the negative consequences of experiences of ethnic-racial discrimination for minority youth. The total sample included youth (N = 717, 49.9% girls) from a public school district in a large Southwestern city in the U.S.; a subsample of youth from minoritized ethnic-racial backgrounds (n = 534, 50.0% girls) with a mean age of 13.54 years was extracted for the current study. The selected subsample of participants includes Hispanic/Latinx (42.7%), Multiethnic (42.5%), Black or African American (9.7%), Asian American or Pacific Islander (1.9%), American Indian or Alaska Native (1.9%), and Arab, Middle Eastern, or North African (1.3%) backgrounds. The present study examined the association between perceived ethnic-racial discrimination and depressive symptoms and the moderating role of peer support and peer cultural socialization as potential protective assets against ethnic-racial discrimination. Based on correlations, experiences of discrimination were higher for older children. Independent samples t-test demonstrated a significant difference in mean number of depressive symptoms between girls and boys such that girls experienced more depressive symptoms on average. Peer cultural socialization was positively correlated with peer support. Results from regression analyses indicated that ethnic-racial discrimination did not significantly predict depressive symptoms. Peer cultural socialization moderated this association, while peer support did not. The simple slopes analysis suggested that for youth experiencing low levels of peer cultural socialization, the association between ethnic-racial discrimination and depressive symptoms was non-significant. At high levels of peer cultural socialization, the association between ethnic-racial discrimination and depressive symptoms was significant and positive. Peer support did not significantly moderate the association between ethnic-racial discrimination and depressive symptoms, thus, highlighting the role of potential contextual factors that are relevant to these processes. Future work understanding adaptive responses to ethnic-racial stress can further specify the identity-based components that might promote adaptive responses to discrimination in ethnic-racial minority youth