What goes around comes around? Holding racist attitudes predicts increased psychological distress over time

There has been a tendency for the academic literature, media, and practitioners to attribute prejudice - particularly extreme beliefs and the violence they can engender - to mental ill-health. Meta-analyses have found relationships (albeit weak) among these variables, but they rely primarily on correlational evidence. The reverse pathway, from holding prejudice to mental ill-health, has rarely been considered. Moreover, a third, unexplored, variable might cause both. To address these gaps, we investigate reciprocal relationships between holding racist beliefs - one form of prejudice - and mental ill-health over time. We further consider the possible operation of a third variable: social connectedness (or lack thereof, in the form of ostracism, alienation, etc).

The bidirectional link between racism and mental ill-health (operationalised as psychological distress) was assessed in three longitudinal Australian studies, each with over 2000 participants and three timepoints spanning approximately six months.

The cross-sectional associations between racism and psychological distress were small and unreliable. However, longitudinally, an increase in racist beliefs consistently preceded and predicted increased psychological distress. Social connectedness strongly predicted less racism and less psychological distress.

These findings suggest that people who hold prejudiced beliefs are at increased risk of psychological distress over time. This challenges common claims that it is mental ill-health that leads to prejudiced beliefs. Implications are discussed with an emphasis on the potentially undervalued contribution of positive social connection as a counterforce to both prejudice and mental ill-health.