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Scholarly Works (4 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2019)

Research indicates that people’s willingness to use or seek social support are influenced by cultural norms and values; however, its unknown how these mechanism influence health and well-being across contexts. One cultural construct that is relevant to social support is familism. Familism is a set of norms and attitudes that capture cultural ideals of how family relationships should be. Its central components of familism include fulfilling obligations to family, using family as referents for decision-making, and providing support to the family (Sabogal, Marín, Otero-Sabogal, Vanoss Marín, & Perez-Stable, 1987). My dissertation examined a) the link between familism and social support, (b) how these constructs come together to influence well-being in the context of stressful circumstances, and (c) whether familism can protect individuals from the possibility that social support will go wrong (e.g., threaten the self) and have negative effects or enhanced its positive effects.

To address these questions, the first study used data from a nationally representative sample of Latinos. The second and third studies used a sample of Latino, East Asian, and European Americans from a large, public institution. In Study 1 and 2, familism was tested as a moderator of the stress-buffering relationship between social support and psychological and health outcomes. The independent moderating effects of familism and social support were also tested. In Study 3, familism was tested as a moderator of the relationship between received social support and self-efficacy.

The results of the three studies were mixed. In Study 1 and 2, results indicated that familism does not consistently moderate the relationship of perceived stress, social support, and health outcomes. Also, it was not clear whether familism may buffer the effects of perceived stress independently of social support and vice versa. In Study 3, participants who received emotion-focused support during stressful circumstances reported higher self-efficacy if they also had high levels of familism. These findings shed light on the role that cultural values play in whether social support is beneficial for psychological and physical health outcomes. The results from my dissertation may shed light on the circumstances in which familism may be advantageous.

    Cover page: Familism, Social Support, and Psychological and Physical Health
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2019)
    We examined the effect of political rhetoric on the targets of that rhetoric. Drawing from scholarship on anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant rhetoric found readily in various media and scholarship on emotions, we tested four hypotheses. Hypotheses 1 and 2 predicted that positive and negative political rhetoric would increase and decrease positive and negative emotions, respectively. Hypotheses 3 and 4 then predicted that emotional responses to positive or negative political rhetoric would influence perceived stress, subjective health, and subjective well-being. Data collection occurred between August 2016 and June 2017 at a university in California. A sample of 280 Mexican-origin youth, defined broadly as having at least one ancestor born in Mexico or the participant themselves born in Mexico, participated in an experiment where they were randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: viewing (1) positive or (2) negative political rhetoric about immigrants and Latinos in general, or (3) neutral rhetoric as a control condition before providing qualitative responses to open-ended questions and completing measures of positive and negative affect, perceived stress, subjective health, and subjective well-being. Qualitative responses indicated that negative and positive political rhetoric elicited a range of negative emotions and positive emotions, respectively. Quantitative analysis with independent samples t-tests, ANOVA, and linear regression models found that negative political rhetoric elicited higher negative affect than positive and neutral rhetoric, and positive rhetoric elicited higher positive affect than negative and neutral rhetoric. Negative emotional responses, in turn, were associated with participants' higher perceived stress, lower subjective health and lower subjective well-being. Conversely, positive emotional responses were associated with lower perceived stress, higher subjective health, and higher subjective well-being. Positive political rhetoric, by eliciting positive emotions, can have a salubrious effect. Altogether, these findings suggest that political rhetoric matters for the targets of that rhetoric.
      Cover page: Words hurt: Political rhetoric, emotions/affect, and psychological well-being among Mexican-origin youth
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2019)

      Objectives

      Recently, there has been a call to better understand Latino health and arrive at effective approaches for achieving health equity via research focusing on the association between cultural factors and health. This study examined whether familism, a cultural value that emphasizes warm and close family relationships, would attenuate the negative effects that perceived stress, a psychological process that can worsen health, can have on two physical health indicators- number of health conditions and bodily pain.

      Method

      Latina mothers (n = 85, Mage = 52.68, SD = 6.60) with Type 2 diabetes and their daughters (n = 86, Mage = 27.69, SD = 7.61) whose weight put them at risk for also developing the condition were recruited to take part in a larger intervention study aimed at improving weight loss/dietary intake. Participants completed measures of familism, perceived stress, health conditions, and bodily pain.

      Results

      Results indicated that in the daughters, familism and perceived stress interacted to predict health conditions and bodily pain. As familism decreased, stress was associated with more health conditions and more bodily pain. These interactions were not significant for the mothers.

      Conclusions

      First, familism has the potential to buffer the negative effect of stress in ways that are protective for health among Latinas at risk for diabetes. Second, this buffering effect has boundary conditions, suggesting that a better understanding is needed of how, for whom, and under what circumstances familism can be beneficial for health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
        Cover page: Do Cultural Values Have a Role in Health Equity? A Study of Latina Mothers and Daughters
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC San Francisco Previously Published Works (2024)
        In this study, the effect of cumulative ACEs experienced on human maternal DNA methylation (DNAm) was estimated while accounting for interaction with domains of ACEs in prenatal peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples from the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental Stressors (MADRES) pregnancy cohort. The intergenerational transmission of ACE-associated DNAm was also explored used paired maternal (N = 120) and neonatal cord blood (N = 69) samples. Replication in buccal samples was explored in the Childrens Health Study (CHS) among adult parental (N = 31) and pediatric (N = 114) samples. We used a four-level categorical indicator variable for ACEs exposure: none (0 ACEs), low (1-3 ACEs), moderate (4-6 ACEs), and high (>6 ACEs). Effects of ACEs on maternal DNAm (N = 240) were estimated using linear models. To evaluate evidence for intergenerational transmission, mediation analysis (N = 60 mother-child pairs) was used. Analysis of maternal samples displayed some shared but mostly distinct effects of ACEs on DNAm across low, moderate, and high ACEs categories. CLCN7 and PTPRN2 was associated with maternal DNAm in the low ACE group and this association replicated in the CHS. CLCN7 was also nominally significant in the gene expression correlation analysis among maternal profiles (N = 35), along with 11 other genes. ACE-associated methylation was observed in maternal and neonatal profiles in the COMT promoter region, with some evidence of mediation by maternal COMT methylation. Specific genomic loci exhibited mutually exclusive maternal ACE effects on DNAm in either maternal or neonatal population. There is some evidence for an intergenerational effect of ACEs, supported by shared DNAm signatures in the COMT gene across maternal-neonatal paired samples.
          Cover page: Effect of parental adverse childhood experiences on intergenerational DNA methylation signatures from peripheral blood mononuclear cells and buccal mucosa.Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
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