Symposia
Culture / Ethnicity / Race
Stephanie Chin, M.S.
The University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Jojo Yao, M.Phil.
Ph.D Student
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Laurie McCubbin, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Training, Assistant Department Chair, and Associate Professor
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Objectives: The outbreak of the novel Covid-19 pandemic has caused high levels of fear in the public leading to stigma, xenophobia, and racial discrimination specifically targeted at Asians globally as well as in the U.S. (Devakumar et al., 2020; Lin, 2020). Few studies on Asians/Asian Americans examine thriving in the face of stressors such as ethnic discrimination (Kim et al., 2012) and the relation between resilience and thriving in the context of discrimination. This study focuses on race-related stress caused by Covid-19 and thriving under the influence of resilience, as well as examines gender differences between Asian/Asian American men and women.
Methods: This study uses a cross-sectional, correlational design. An online survey was distributed to Asian/Asian American adults across the U.S. through Qualtrics. The mean age was 34 years (SD = 12.74), with ages ranging from 18 to 76 years. Regarding gender, 74.4% were female, 22.9% were male, and 2.7% were non-binary. Regarding ethnicity, participants identified as East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Multiethnic, unspecified, and Pacific Islander.
Results: We ran two hierarchical multiple regression analyses using the entire sample Results from the regression indicated that higher levels of ethnic/racial discrimination and perceived stress were related to higher levels of psychological distress. Resilience can help decrease the effects of ethnic/racial discrimination, which in turn can decrease psychological distress among Asian and Asian Americans. The second regression findings indicated that perceived stress and resilience predicted thriving, but resilience did not moderate the relationship between any stressors and thriving. Results indicated that resilience accounted for additional variance in psychological distress scores for women, but not men. Higher resilience predicted lower levels of psychological distress. Resilience did not moderate the relationship between stressors and psychological distress though. In the analyses investigating effects on thriving, the results suggest that resilience decreased psychological distress for women and increased thriving for both men and women.
Conclusions: We must foster resilience among Asian and Asian Americans, especially during the current times of increased likelihood of being a target of discrimination. Additionally, it is important to consider how discrimination, stress, and resilience impact psychological outcomes between Asian/Asian American men and women during the pandemic.