Content and Attributions of Caregiver Racial Socialization as Predictors of African American Adolescents’ Private Racial Regard

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effect of adolescents’ beliefs about socialization from caregivers (“attributions”) on the link between racial socialization and private regard. This research addresses the paucity of literature on adolescent attributions as a context for the relation between socialization and private regard. The independent roles of racial barrier, racial pride, and self-worth messages were examined. Adolescents’ attributions were defined as beliefs that race-based messages were coming from a parent-child relationship characterized by love, autonomy, and care. Moderation analyses on the sample of 88 African American and biracial youth (ages 11-14 years) revealed that for adolescents who placed more emphasis on a positive relationship quality as the purpose for receiving socialization, self-worth messages were associated with higher private regard. The findings support the importance of attending to adolescents’ attributions for socialization and the impact that it has on fostering positive feelings about being African American.