title: The Everyday Implications of Ethnic-Racial Identity Processes: Exploring Variability in Ethnic-Racial Identity Salience Across Situations.
abstract: Given the social and developmental relevance of ethnicity-race during adolescence, it is important to understand the meaning of ethnic-racial identity in adolescents' everyday lives. The current study considered how individual differences in ethnic-racial identity exploration (i.e., the extent to which individuals have explored their ethnicity-race), and commitment (i.e., the extent which they have a clear sense of what it means to them) influenced variability versus stability in the awareness of ethnicity-race in a given situation (i.e., salience), and how this variability is related to mood in that situation. Within an ethnic/racially diverse sample of 395 adolescents (M age = 15; 63 % female; 12 % Black, 26 % Latino, 34 % Asian, 23 % White), results indicated that ethnic-racial identity exploration was unrelated to variability in salience, while commitment promoted stability in salience across situations. Further, among adolescents who were generally very aware of their ethnicity-race, increases in situational salience were related to decreased negative and anxious mood. Among adolescents who were generally not aware of their ethnicity-race, increases in situational salience were related to increased positive and decreased negative mood. Implications for understanding the developmental and everyday experiences of ethnic-racial identity are discussed.
authors.affiliation: T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA. sara.douglass@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Douglass
authors.affiliation: Fordham University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Yijie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Fordham University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Tiffany
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yip
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D001364:Awareness; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003863:Depression / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D012931:Social Environment; D012933:Social Identification; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Adolescence; Affect; Ethnic-racial identity; Salience; Variability