Experiencing Discrimination Increases Risk-Taking, Anger, and Vigilance – Association for Psychological Science

Experiencing rejection not only affects how we think and feel — over the long-term it can also influence our physical and mental health. New research suggests that when rejection comes in the form of discrimination, people respond with a pattern of thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses that may contribute to overall health disparities.

“Psychological factors, like discrimination, have been suggested as part of the causal mechanisms that explain how discrimination gets ‘under the skin’ to affect health,” says psychological scientist and senior researcher Wendy Berry Mendes of the University of California, San Francisco. “We wanted to explore the behavioral consequences that follow experiences of discrimination to better understand these mechanisms.”

Based on previous research, Mendes and her colleagues hypothesized that people would react differently depending on whether they were rejected by members of their in-group or by members of an out-group. Specifically, they predicted that people who experienced perceived discrimination — rejection from someone of another race — would show responses characteristic of approach-orientation, including anger, increased blood flow, greater vigilance, and more risk-taking behavior.

via Experiencing Discrimination Increases Risk-Taking, Anger, and Vigilance – Association for Psychological Science.