Black Peers Research Articles

Socioeconomic Status and Psychiatric Disorder among Blacks and Whites

This article examines the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and current (six-month) and lifetime rates of psychiatric disorders among blacks and whites. Overall, SES is inversely related to psychiatric disorderfor both racial groups. This association is weakerfor black males than for white males. There is some variation among specific disorders, with the strongest relationship with SES occurringfor alcohol abuse. The sixmonth rate of depression is unrelated to SES among blacks but inversely related for whites. In contrast to our expectations, we found that lower-SES white males have higher rates of psychiatric illness than their black peers. Lower-SES black females have higher rates of substance abuse disorders than their white counterparts. These findings underscore the need for research efforts to identify the mechanisms and processes that link social stratification to disease.

Patterns of Social Expectations among Black and Mexican-American Children

In 2 studies, a total of 213 black and Mexican-American third- and sixth-grade children were asked to respond to 8 videotaped scenes of everyday social encounters with same-ethnic, unfamiliar peers at school. Mexican-American children reported expectations for sharing and relying on authority figures significantly more often, and apologizing, getting angry, and initiating action significantly less often than their black peers. Emotional responses decreased and socially desirable responses increased with grade for both groups. In addition, ethnic differences were greater at the sixth-grade than at the third-grade level for both groups. Girls apologized and sought help from teachers more often than boys, and social expectations varied by sex for each ethnic group. Individual children varied in the degree of similarity to their group, with some children giving responses highly typical of their group across all 8 scenes and others giving responses not typical of their group. High self-esteem was significantly correlated to being similar to one's own group.

Salience of race in young children's cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to social environments

Children's cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to racial differnces were analyzed to assess the salience of race in each process and the extent to which racial responses are related across dimensions. The subjects were 41 preschool and kindergarten children in racially integrated classrooms. The measures included children's categorizations of themselves and others, their same- and cross-race friendship choices, and their racial contact patterns. The results showed that race was a factor when the children categorized people and chose friends, although its salience varied across tasks and across dimensions. Children's racial self-categorizations and their explicit references to race were correlated with their affective and behavioral preferences. Black and white subjects showed similar levels of racial salience on the cognitive tasks but differed in their affective and behavioral patterns. White children showed stronger and more consistent same-race preferences than their black peers did.

Neuropsychologic and Academic Functioning of Children with Sickle Cell Anemia

This study compared neuropsychologic test results and academic functioning among 28 school-age children with sickle cell anemia (SCA), and 28 healthy, age-, sex-, and socioeconomically matched black peers followed at a tertiary care center. Children with SCA scored significantly lower on reading and spelling achievement scores than healthy matched peers. Also, older children with SCA performed significantly less well on tests of visual-motor and attention skills than younger children with SCA. These results were unrelated to most measures of physical illness severity. The data suggest that sickle cell anemia may be associated with subtle neuropsychological and learning deficits that can contribute to decreased school performance.

Love-attitudes of white South African adolescents.

Perusal of the cross-cultural literature indicates an absence of reported research on a crucial aspect of interpersonal relationships, that of love and romance in South Africa. Accordingly, the Munro-Adams Love-Attitude Scale was administered to a random sample of 92 white adolescent seniors in secondary school from the Eastern Cape. While this study indicates that the white adolescent boys are more romantic than the girls, this finding might not be applicable to their black peers who are reported to show a reverse profile.

Psychosocial aspects of Mexican-American, white, and black teenage pregnancy

This study assesses whether pregnant Mexican-American adolescents have psychosocial characteristics different from their pregnant white or black peers. The study population consisted of 199 consecutive Mexican-American, white, and black pregnant adolescents, ages 11–19 years, followed prospectiveely at the University of California San Diego Medical Center Teen Obstetric Clinic from 1978 to 1981 (79 whites, 76 Mexican-Americans, and 44 blacks). Although all three groups had the same chronologic age ( X ̄ = 16.4 ± 1.4 years ), and the same number of years of schooling, pregnant black adolescents were more likely to be in school at the time of registration for prenatal care ( p < 0.01). Mexican-American teens were more likely to be married at conception and/or delivery ( p < 0.001), and to breastfeed their infants ( p < 0.05). The fathers of the Mexican-American babies were more likely than other fathers to be full-time students or employed ( p < 0.001). Although pregnant Mexican-American teens came from the largest families ( p < 0.001), black teenagers most frequently reported a good mother-daughter relationship ( p < 0.05). White pregnant teens most frequently reported a family history of psychiatric illness ( p < 0.01), parental death ( p < 0.05), or runaway behavior ( p < 0.01). These data suggest that pregnant teenagers from these three racial/ethnic backgrounds have different psychosocial profiles and hence different psychosocial problems and needs.

The Academic Preparation and Achievement of Black and White Collegiate Athletes

Data on all varsity athletes at a major university over a ten-year period were examined to assess the differences, if any, between whites and blacks in precollege academic preparation and college achievement. White athletes scored higher than their black peers on every measure of academic potential—ACT, SAT, high school rank, and high school grade point average. These differences in preparation translate into greater academic success in college for whites, both in better grades and a higher graduation rate. These findings confirm that schools with big-time sports programs tend to recruit black athletes who are academically marginal, thus a high rate of academic failure for them. The implications of this form of racial exploitation are elaborated.

The Effects of Race on Imitation

Summary The race of a model and the consequences of his behavior were varied in order to examine their effects on imitation. White and black first, third, and fifth grade American boys and girls were exposed individually to two different filmed tasks performed by both white and black peer models. In each film, only one of the two models was reinforced. Following each film, the 5 was asked to perform the modeled task. The results for both tasks indicated that there was a strong tendency for children to imitate the behavior of the model receiving positive consequences, regardless of the race of the model. Black Ss appear to have been more sensitive than white Ss to the vicarious consequences on an achievement task, but not on a nonachievement oriented task. Overall, the results suggest that race did not interfere with children's ability to learn from their peers.

Effects of Black vs. White Peer Models on Academic Expectations and Actual Performance of Fifth Grade Students

Black and white fifth grade students of both sexes were shown one of two video tapes of other students working on an academic task (reading a paragraph and answering questions about it). On one tape, two black students were congratulated by the teacher for having gotten the best score, while on the other tape two white students were congratulated. Planned comparisons indicated that black males who viewed the video tape of blacks succeeding expected to, and actually did, score higher than black males who observed white students succeeding. All other comparisons were not significant.

An investigation of differences in verbal behavior between black and white informal peer group discussions

This descriptive study investigated the differences among statements made by blacks and whites in informal peer group discussions. The study examined the verbal behavior of eight groups, blocked on race and sex, in informal discussions of inter‐racial dating. Verbal behavior was rated on the amount of orientation, unopinionatedness, agreement, profanity, humor, abstraction, and multi‐valued orientation reflected in randomly selected statements. Significant differences were found on six of the seven variables.

An Initial Investigation of the Relationship between Syntactical Divergency and the Listening Comprehension of Black Children

TO DETERMINE THE RELATIONSHIPS between measures of oral language production and measures of listening skill, 2 groups, each with 48 black pupils, were randomly selected from the third grades in 2 schools. One was a lower class (Title I) school and the second a low middle class (Non-Title I) school. The subjects in each school were randomly assigned to 3 subgroups of 16 each. A black and a white adult male educator and several black peers administered the measures. For the combined sample, all correlations were significant at the .05 level. A Neuman-Keuls test applied post hoc to the means for the 3 testers revealed that the black adult tester elicited significantly more divergent English than either the white adult tester (q = 2.98, p < .05) or the black peer testers (q = 3.88, p<.05). The results of the 6 Bonferroni tests on total word production indicated that the testers were homogeneous within the Non-Title I school, but that the black adult and black peer testers elicited significantly more words (p < .01) within the Title I school than did the white adult tester.

BLACK AND WHITE YOUTH AND THEIR PEERS

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsLeonard DouglasThe author, who taught in the Detroit Public Schools for many years, is presently a member of the Educational Psychology Department, Kentucky State College. He received a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1969. In the Nov.‐Dec, 7971 issue of this magazine, he wrote “ ‘Negro’ Self‐Concept: Myth or Reality?”

Race of evaluator, race of norm, and expectancy as determinants of black performance

Previous research has suggested that in intellectual achievement situations, black college students tend to perceive white examiners as more authoritative than black examiners, and white peer standards of performance as more difficult to attain than black peer standards. Using these two assumptions an expectancy × incentive formulation was used to account for black subjects' task motivation in situations where cognitive ability is ostensibly evaluated by either a black or a white experimenter, using either a white peer or a black peer standard of comparison. It was successfully predicted that when comparison with a white standard was anticipated, scores on a code task would be higher with a black tester than with a white tester, but when comparison with a black standard was anticipated, the difference between testers would be in the opposite direction. An attempted manipulation of perceived probability of success by means of experimental feed-back had only a weak effect upon the interaction of the two racial variables.