Culturally compelled coping and depressive symptoms in Black Americans: Examining the role of psychophysiological regulatory capacity.

Given the culture of racism in the United States, Black Americans are often required to use culturally compelled coping (CCC) styles, such as emotional and behavioral restraint and vigilance. Although CCC is adaptive in the face of pervasive racialized stress, it may still negatively impact mental health outcomes, like depression. Studies have found that Black Americans exhibit higher resting heart rate variability (HRV)-a trait-level biomarker of self-regulatory capacity-than White Americans (Hill et al., 2015), which may reflect the additional resources that Black Americans need to regulate given experiences of racialized stress. Theoretically, this should protect against the development of mental health issues, like depression, given that lower resting HRV is typically observed in psychopathology (Beauchaine & Thayer, 2015). However, the literature is mixed on the buffering effects of greater resting HRV on psychopathology for Black Americans (Keen et al., 2015). Thus, we aimed to understand, with data collected from Black Americans between 2015 and 2018, how individual differences in resting HRV and the use of CCC, particularly restraint and vigilance, related to self-reported depressive symptoms. We found that at higher levels of resting HRV, greater use of CCC was associated with higher depressive symptoms. This suggests that CCC strategies may be detrimental to emotional well-being for those who have the capacity-as indexed by higher resting HRV-to engage in these strategies. Hence, the present study provides preliminary evidence that the ways Black Americans are often compelled to cope with racialized stress may be a path to greater depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).