Correlation between the internalization theme of racial identity attitude survey-B and systolic blood pressure

This brief report describes our first attempts at defining relationships between racial identity attitudes as measured by the Racial Identity Attitudes Survey-B (RIAS-B) and cardiovascular responses during the presentation of stressful stimuli.

We manipulated verbal tasks to study reactivity and derived correlation coefficients to define relationships between racial identity attitudes and cardiovascular responses.

The participants (N = 17) were African-American students participating in a summer program to enhance minority careers (N = 15) or enrolled in introductory psychology. All students held a dominant Internalization theme for racial identity as assessed by the RIAS-B. After the initial baseline, the participants responded to three verbal tasks incorporating the description of a frustrating event with racial overtones (HIAFF), a description of the furniture in their house (LOAFF) and serial digit multiplication (MATH).

The data indicate significant correlations between the Internalization score on the RIAS-B and the systolic blood pressure (SBP) for tasks as grouped by content (HIAFF r = .60; MATH r = .55) or by sequence (TASK1 r = .53, TASK2 r = .50). There were no significant correlations between Internalization score and pulse rate or diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Students had a high incidence of a positive family history for cardiovascular diseases (70%).

The data suggest that as identity accumulation increases, so does reactivity. Internalization and the related self-esteem that this theme might engender does not attenuate the cardiovascular stress response in African-American college students with a prevalence of a positive family history for cardiovascular disease.