title: Guadalupan Devotion as a Moderator of Psychosocial Stress among Mexican Immigrants in the Rural Southern United States.
abstract: This study considers how shared devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe among Mexican immigrants in rural Mississippi buffers the effects of immigration stress. Rural destinations lacking social services can quickly compound the already stressful experience of immigration. Guadalupe devotion provides a way of coping with the daily life stressors of immigration. We test the hypothesis that high consonance in the cultural model of Guadalupan devotion will moderate the adverse health effects of immigration stress. Results indicate that as exposure to immigration stressors increased, well-being decreased among those with low consonance, while the effect was eliminated in those with high consonance. Findings demonstrate the advantage of expanding research on coping to incorporate complex models that consider religious and secular elements and also illustrate how a master symbol, characterized as a cultural model of coping with limited local distribution, yields health effects dissimilar to the mediation normally associated with consonance.
authors.affiliation: Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University.
authors.forename: Mary Rebecca
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Read-Wahidi
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, The University of Alabama.
authors.forename: Jason A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: DeCaro
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000328:Adult; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000523:psychology*; D008800:Mexico / Q000208:ethnology; D008875:Middle Aged; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012424:Rural Population; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Virgin of Guadalupe; cultural consonance; religious coping; stress and coping