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Correlation between the internalization theme of racial identity attitude survey-B and systolic blood pressure
1Department of Psychology, University of Alabama in Huntsville, 35899, USA. torresa@email.uah.edu
Objectives:
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.
Design:
We manipulated verbal tasks to study reactivity and derived correlation coefficients to define relationships between racial identity attitudes and cardiovascular responses.
Method:
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).
Results:
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%).
Conclusions:
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.