Book Review: Psychotherapy with African American Women: Innovations in Psychodynamic Perspectives and Practice. Edited by Leslie C. Jackson and Beverly Greene. New York, Guilford Press, 2000, 298 pp., $35 (hardcover)

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45624/1/11199_2004_Article_294989.pd

Subjective Religiosity among African Americans: A Synthesis of Findings from Five National Samples

Demographic correlates of subjective religiosity are examined using data from five large national probability samples (i.e., Americans Changing Lives, n = 3,617; General Social Survey, n = 26,265; Monitoring the Future, n = 16,843; National Black Election Survey, n = 1,151; and National Survey of Black Americans, n = 2,107). In analyses of data involving both Black and White respondents, race emerges as a strong and consistent predictor of various indicators of subjective religiosity with Black Americans, indicating that they had significantly higher levels of subjective religiosity than Whites. Analyses using African American respondents only indicate that subjective religious involvement varies systematically by gender, age, region, and marital status. The findings are discussed in relation to research on religious participation among African Americans and future research and theory concerning the meaning of religion within discrete subgroups of this population.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67324/2/10.1177_0095798499025004004.pd

Buried hatchets, marked locations: Forgiveness, everyday racial discrimination, and African American men’s depressive symptomatology.

Everyday racial discrimination (ERD) is linked to pronounced depressive symptomatology among African-American men. Yet, many African-American men do not experience depressive symptoms following ERD exposure often because they employ positive coping strategies that offset its effects. Granting forgiveness is one coping strategy associated with less depression. However, extant findings about the mental health benefits of forgiveness are somewhat mixed and pay scarce attention to offenses which are fleeting, historically rooted, and committed outside of close personal relationships. Evidence further suggest age-related differences in forgiveness, ERD exposure, and depressive symptoms. We explore the extent to which three strategies of granting forgiveness of ERD—letting go of negative emotion (negative release), embracing positive emotion (positive embrace), or combining both (combined)— are associated with less depressive symptomatology in 674 African-American men (ages 18-79). Building on past findings, we also test whether these forgiveness strategies moderate the ERD-depressive symptoms relationship for men in different age groups (18-25, 26-39, 40). Higher combined and negative release forgiveness were directly related to lower depressive symptoms among 18-25 year-olds. We also detected a less pronounced positive relationship between ERD and depressive symptoms among men reporting high levels of combined (18-25 and 26-39 groups) and negative release (26-39 and 40+ groups) forgiveness. We observed a more pronounced positive ERD-depressive symptoms relationship among 18-25 and 26-39 year-olds reporting lower forgiveness. When faced with frequent ERD, younger African-American men may have the most difficult time burying hatchets without marking their location but experience more positive mental health benefits when they do

What Would I Know About Mercy? Faith and Optimistic Expectancies Among African Americans

A small body of research has begun to explore the association between faith and optimism among African Americans. However, missing from the extant work is an examination of the extent to which traditional indices of religious commitment work together with beliefs about God to shape optimism. The present study examines the utility of indices of social location, religious commitment (i.e., early and current religious service attendance, subjective religiosity), belief about the quality of one’s relationship with God (i.e., a belief that one is connected to a loving God), and beliefs about being the recipient of divine forgiveness for predicting dispositional optimism among a sample of community residing African American adults (N = 241). Age, subjective religiosity, and organizational religiosity were positively related to optimism in bivariate analyses. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated a significant association between age, subjective religiosity, and optimism; however, those associations were eliminated once relationship with God and belief in one’s forgiveness by God were entered into the model. Only belief in God’s love predicted optimism in multivariate analyses. Serial mediation analyses revealed that beliefs about the quality of one’s relationship with God and belief in divine forgiveness fully mediated the relationship between subjective religiosity and optimism, but that the relationship is driven largely by relationship with God. Implications of these findings are discussed

The Social Production of Altruism: Motivations for Caring Action in a Low-Income Urban Community

Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed

Religiosity, Spirituality, and the Subjective Quality of African American Men's Friendships: An Exploratory Study

The present study fills a crucial gap in literature surrounding the lives of African American men by exploring factors that shape the quality of these men's friendships. Drawing on data from a sample of 171 African American men, the study examines the relative utility of subjective religiosity, subjective spirituality, advice exchange, and affective sharing as predictors of the level of perceived support from male and female friends. Findings reveal age differences in subjective religiosity, subjective spirituality, and in level of advice and affective exchange in men's same-sex as well as cross-sex friendships. Age differences emerged in men's perceptions of the supportiveness of their friendships with women but not with men. Age was not a predictor of perceived supportiveness of same-sex or cross-sex friendships. Subjective religiosity did not predict support in same-sex or cross-sex friendships. Subjective spirituality positively predicted perceived support in men's same-sex friendships but not in cross-sex friendships. Implications of these findings are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44637/1/10804_2004_Article_341947.pd

Who Will Volunteer? Religiosity, Everyday Racism, and Social Participation Among African American Men

This study explores the relative importance of everyday racism, empathic concern, communalism, and religiosity as predictors of pro-social involvement (i.e., volunteerism and membership in political/social justice organizations) among a sample of African American men ( N = 151). Church involvement emerged as a positive predictor of the likelihood that these men were involved in volunteer work as well as the number of hours that men dedicated to volunteer work. Communalism positively predicted the amount of time (in hours per year) that men were involved in volunteer work. Subjective religiosity and the stress of everyday racism were associated with a greater likelihood of being a member of a political–social justice organization. Implications of these findings are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44632/1/10804_2004_Article_496119.pd

Masculinity Ideology and Forgiveness of Racial Discrimination among African American Men: Direct and Interactive Relationships

Forgiveness research has focused almost exclusively on interpersonal transgressions committed in close relationships. Consequently, less is known about factors informing forgiveness of non-intimate actors. The current study addresses these gaps by investigating correlates of forgiveness over racial discrimination among African American men (N=171). Specifically, we explore relationships between the endorsement of traditional masculine ideology (e.g., restrictive emotionality), overall forgiveness, forgiveness with positive affect, and forgiveness with the absence of negative affect. Links between personality, religiosity, social support, discrimination experiences, and these forms of forgiveness also are examined. Restrictive emotionality emerged as a barrier to forgiveness of discrimination. However, the relationship between restrictive emotionality and forgiveness was moderated by age, socioeconomic status, personality, and religious coping disposition

Work(i)ngs of the spirit: Spirituality, meaning construction and coping in the lives of Black women.

Despite theoretical and anecdotal evidence that spirituality and religiosity are distinct constructs, these words have been used as synonyms in psychology research. This two-part, multi-method study explored Black women's definitions of spirituality, their ideas about the distinctions between spirituality and religiosity, and their perceptions about the role(s) of spirituality in helping them to cope with adversity. In the first part of the study, 130 Black women (ages 16-69 years) completed the Lazarus and Folkman Ways of Coping Questionnaire, and the Black Women's Spirituality-Religiosity Measure (BWSM) which was developed for use in this research. Women's narrative responses to two open-ended BWSM questions about the definition and functions of spirituality were content analyzed. Participants defined spirituality as one's subjective beliefs about the transcendent nature of life. Religiosity was defined as an adherence to prescribed doctrines and traditions of a religion. Spirituality was primarily identified as crucial in the construction of meaning (i.e., in identifying one's life purpose, and in explaining experience). Factor analyses of close-ended items of the BWSM yielded empirically reliable indices of spirituality and religiosity. These indices were used to investigate the relationship between religiosity, spirituality and coping in the lives of Black women. Spirituality and religiosity were associated with the use of positive reappraisal and planful problem-solving scales of the WOC. Post-hoc analyses indicated that within these scales spirituality and religiosity were correlated with different strategies of coping. These findings confirm the assertion that these constructs name distinct though related experiences. In part two of this study twenty-three participants were interviewed. Content analysis of the narratives revealed that Black women's coping efforts are shaped by the meanings which they construct about adverse events. Spiritual and religious perspectives played a significant role in determining the meanings which women assigned to experiences. For these women, personal growth--achieved, in part, through learning and internalizing life lessons (i.e., meanings)--was a primary point of focus in the process of coping. This work points to the need to include both spirituality and religiosity in studies of the lived-experiences of Black women. A meaning-centered model of coping which includes spirituality and religiosity was proposed.Ph.D.Black studiesPsychologyQuantitative psychologySocial SciencesSocial psychologyWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129714/2/9610193.pd