Discrimination and adolescents' academic and socioemotional adjustment: The moderating roles of family and peer cultural socialisation.

Abstract

Racial discrimination has detrimental effects on ethnic minority adolescents' development. Guided by the integrative model of minority children's competencies and the bioecological model, the current study examined how family and peer cultural socialization independently and conjointly buffered the detrimental effects of discrimination on ethnic minority adolescents' academic and socio emotional adjustment. Using short-term longitudinal data from 245 eighth graders (87% Latinx, 51% female), results suggested that the moderating roles of cultural socialisation operated differently for academic and socioemotional outcomes. Specifically, the three-way interaction results indicated that family and peer cultural socializations appeared to be protective for adolescents' school engagement in the face of discrimination. The significant two-way interaction results revealed that both peer and family cultural socialisation tended to be protective-reactive for socioemotional outcomes, wherein the benefits of cultural socialisation were realised under low-risk but not high-risk conditions for depressive symptoms. Our study provides a nuanced understanding of the moderating roles of cultural socialisation in the links between discrimination and adolescents' well-being, and it highlights the importance of considering cultural socialisation from multiple contexts in examining ethnic minority adolescents' adjustment.