Stigma Consciousness and Evaluative Concerns: A Pathway to Psychological Distress for Academically Stigmatized Students

Abstract

The psychological health of ethnic minority college students, specifically Black and Hispanic/Latinx students, warrants particular attention given their experience of ethnic stigmatization in higher education settings (e.g., lowered expectations surrounding intellectual ability). When faced with ethnic stigmatization, especially in an inherently evaluative collegiate context, concerns about negative performance evaluation may trigger increased threat vigilance, self-monitoring for mistakes, and rumination about potential failure. Thus, the evaluative concerns component of perfectionism may be a mechanism through which ethnic stigma consciousness relates to psychological distress for these students. The current investigation explored the relationships between stigma consciousness, evaluative concerns perfectionism, and psychological distress (i.e., anxiety, depression) in a large sample of Hispanic/Latinx and Black college students in the United States. The moderated mediational analysis revealed that for Hispanic/Latinx students evaluative concerns served as a mechanism through which ethnic stigma consciousness related to psychological distress. For Black students, there was no relationship between stigma consciousness and psychological distress. Findings suggest that preventative and/or treatment approaches aimed at reducing psychological distress among Hispanic/Latinx college students take into consideration the contextual impact of ethnic stigmatization. Treatments may incorporate assessment and targeting of this maladaptive component of perfectionism to disrupt the pathway to psychological distress.