Quantity and quality: Dimensions and provisions of social support inform the role of social pain minimization in the discrimination-to-mental health relation among Black Americans

Abstract

Introduction: Despite growing evidence that emotion invalidation, termed social pain minimization (SPM), contributes to discrimination's negative effect on mental health and suicidality (Benbow et al., 2022; Kinkel-Ram et al., 2021), it is unclear what elements of social support give rise to SPM. Is SPM related to social support quantity (e.g., the number of support providers and frequency with which people seek support)? Or, is social support quality (e.g., active versus passive destructive responses and threatened support needs) most central to SPM? This work addresses these questions and provides evidence that support quality rather than quantity shapes feelings of SPM and informs SPM's mediating role in the discrimination-to-mental health relation. Methods: With a cross-sectional correlational design, 232 Black participants (42.9% female; Mage = 34.86, SDage = 11.15) completed measures of daily discrimination, social support quantity and quality, SPM, and mental health. Results: At a bivariate level, indices of support quality, but not quantity, predicted SPM and mental health. However, when these indices of support quality were entered simultaneously in multiple regression, only passive destructive (PD) treatment and provisions of worth positively and negatively predicted SPM, respectively. Serial parallel mediation analysis further revealed that PD treatment and threats to self-worth fueled SPM's mediating role in the association between discrimination and mental health. Discussion: The results suggest that support quality, not quantity, sets the stage for SPM. Although many dimensions of support quality related to SPM, PD treatment and threats to self-worth had the strongest unique relationships to minimization. Moreover, these support dimensions contributed to SPM's mediating role in the link between discrimination and mental health. In discrimination's wake, PD responses and threatened self-worth increased SPM, which then undermined mental health.