Wisdom Ibikunle
Advanced Summer Research Scholar
Majors: Chemistry and Sociology
Mentor: Tennisha Riley
The PEER (Peers’ Emotional Engagement with Race) Study examines the effect of racial discrimination on Black adolescents’ emotion regulation and civic engagement and observes the role that friendships play in mediating the effects of discrimination. Prior research has shown that peers may play an essential role in adolescent emotional regulation. However, most of this research has been conducted on White adolescents, leading to an absence of knowledge on how shared experiences of racial discrimination affect adolescents’ interpersonal emotional regulation. This study seeks to determine the association between Black adolescents’ experiences of discrimination and interpersonal emotion regulation and learn how Black adolescents describe the impact of racial discrimination on their interpersonal regulation within peer friendships. We use two methods to build our understanding of Black adolescents’ friendships and emotional regulation. The first is an ecological momentary assessment (EMA), or a daily survey utilizing different metrics to measure racial discrimination, emotional regulation, and civic engagement. The second is a set of qualitative interviews between two Black adolescent friends (peer dyad) that allows us to examine their interpersonal emotional regulation in response to racial discrimination. The PEER study is currently in the recruitment process. We intend to enroll 150 Black adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 in the quantitative survey and roughly 20 dyads in the qualitative interviews.
Leave a Reply