1.  Participants’ reported on their demographic information, including gender, age, family standard of living, and ethnicity.  Experiences of discrimination in the last year were assessed using the Schedule of Racist Events (Landrine & Klonoff, 1996;  =.94).  Participants’ ethnic identity was assessed using the Ethnic Identity Scale (Umaña-Taylor, et al., 2004). The following subscales were used:  Exploration: how much individuals have explored their ethnic background (  =.89).  Resolution: how clearly individuals understand the meaning of their ethnicity in their lives (  =.88).  Affirmation: how positive individuals view their ethnicity (  =.90).  Psychological distress was assessed through:  The Clinical Anger Scale ( Snell et al., 1995;  =.92).  The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales – 21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) which has the following subscales: Depression (  =.90), Anxiety (  =.83), & Stress (  =.84).  Data came from a sample of 661 late adolescents who were enrolled in an Introductory to Psychology course at a regional state university in the Midwest during the following semesters: Fall, 2014; Spring, 2015; and Fall, 2016.  These analyses limited the sample to the 112 African American and 86 Latino participants in the study who were under the age of 20 ( n = 198). The mean age of the sample was 18.61 ( SD = 0.49) and 58% of the participants were female.  A majority of participants reported that their parents were not married (53.5%).  37% of the sample reported that their family had only enough money for basic necessities, some reported living under meager conditions or with extreme financial hardships (17%), and others reported feeling financially comfortable or having more than enough money (47%).  Participants completed a series of questionnaires online to complete a requirement for their course.  Research has documented the negative influence of racial and ethnic discrimination on adolescents’ socioemotional outcomes (Brody et al., 2006; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2015).  Understanding what may help protect adolescents from the negative impact of discrimination is a growing interest (Neblett et al., 2012).  Having a more positive ethnic/racial identity has been identified as one probable protective factor against discrimination (Neblett et al., 2012).  However, this research primarily has been done using specific measures in studies of specific ethnic groups, limiting the understanding of how universal these processes are.  This poster will explore whether three aspects of ethnic identity (i.e., exploration, resolution, and affirmation) buffer the expected negative associations between discrimination and psychological distress (i.e., anger, depression, anxiety, and stress) among African American and Latino late adolescents and consider whether these patterns are similar across these ethnic groups. Discrimination, Racial Ethnic Identity, and Psychological Distress: Patterns across Latino and African American Adolescents Laura D. Pittman, Kristina Kochanova, Emily E. Stewart, Andrew Flannery, & Micah Ioffe Northern Illinois University Participants and Procedures Measures Background Results  Please contact Laura Pittman at lpittman@niu.edu with any questions.lpittman@niu.edu  The results of this study revealed that ethnic identity affirmation, but neither resolution nor exploration, buffered the risk associated with experiences of discrimination in the past year on psychological distress. This pattern was consistent across anger, depression, anxiety, and stress.  Overall, the influence of ethnic identity on the associations between discrimination and psychological distress did not vary by ethnic group; however, ethnic identity exploration or resolution did more dramatically influence the positive link between discrimination and anger among African Americans as compared to Latinos. Ethnic identity exploration and resolution was particularly protective among African Americans. This ethnic group difference may be particularly salient in the time frame that data was collected; that is, in the past few years, due to the racial tensions and heightened media attention related to discrimination against African American, may make ethnic identity a more important protective factor for African Americans at this time than Latinos.  These findings are limited by their cross-sectional design where causation cannot be assumed. In addition, measurement relied on self-reports, where other reports of discrimination experiences may be helpful to tease apart reporter biases.  Further research should explore whether there are gender differences in the responses to discrimination and how media messages may contribute to these associations. Discussion References Brody, G. J., Chen, Y., Murry, V. M., Ge, X., Simons, R. L. et al. (2006). Perceived discrimination and the adjustment of African American youths: A five-year longitudinal analysis with contextual moderation effects. Child Development, 77, 1170-1189. Landrine, H., & Klonoff, E. A. (1996). The Schedule of Racist Events: A measure of racial discrimination and a study of its negative physical and mental health consequences. Journal of Black Psychology, 22, 144-168. Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. Psychology Foundation of Australia: Psychology Foundation Monograph. Neblett, E. W., Rivas-Drake, D., & Umaña-Taylor, A. J. (2012). The promise of racial and ethnic protective factors in promoting ethnic minority youth development. Child Development Perspectives, 6, 295-303. Snell, W. E., Gum, S., Shuck, R. L., Mosley, J. A., & Hite, T. L. (1995). The Clinical Anger Scale: Preliminary reliability and validity. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 215-226. Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Yazedjian, A., & Bámaca-Gómez, M. (2004). Developing the Ethnic Identity Scale using Eriksonian and social identity perspectives. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 4, 9-38. Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Tynes, B. M., Toomey, R. B., Williams, D. R., & Mitchell, K. J. (2015). Latino adolescents’ perceived discrimination in online and offline settings: An examination of cultural risk and protective factors. Developmental Psychology, 51, 87-100 Table 1. Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate and Partial Correlations Notes. Partial correlations appear above the diagonal and controlled for family standard of living, age, and gender. + p <.10; * p <.05; ** p <.01; *** p <.001.  Experiences of discrimination were positively correlated with both anger and anxiety, but not depression or stress. Discrimination experiences were also negatively correlated with ethnic identity resolution and, at a trend level, affirmation. All four dependent variables were intercorrelated as expected.  T-tests were run and found no significant differences by ethnic group on any independent or dependent variable.  A series of regression analyses were run using the PROCESS macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2013) to explore whether ethnic group moderated the links between discrimination experiences and psychological distress. All analyses controlled for gender, age, and family standard of living. No interactions were found to be significant.  Similarly, a series of regression analyses were run to determine if the aspects of ethnic identity buffered the expected negative association between discrimination and each of the four domains of psychological distress (i.e., anger, depression, anxiety, and stress). The discrimination interactions with exploration and resolution were not significant. However, the discrimination interactions with affirmation were found to be significant (see below). Correlations VariablesMean (SD)12345678 1. Discrimination32.08 (14.53) -- -.07-.19*-.12.25**.09.16*.09 2. Exploration22.12 (5.05) -.07 --.74***.32***-.08-.15 + -.04-.05 3. Resolution13.07 (3.02) -.21**.73*** --.32***-.19*-.17*-.04-.07 4. Affirmation21.81 (3.71) -.13 +.32*** ---.33***-.32***-.16*-.26** 5. Anger9.24 (9.63).24** -.04-.17*-.34*** --.51***.37***.50*** 6. Depression5.57 (5.46).08 -.12-.15*-.28***.51*** --.62***.76*** 7. Anxiety5.24 (4.72).18* -.03 -.14 +.39***.64*** --.72*** 8. Stress6.76 (4.81).08 -.01-.04-.22**.51***.78***.73*** --  As shown in Figure 1, the interaction predicting anxiety was significant ( b = -.02, t = -3.24, p =.001). Specifically, when ethnic identity affirmation was lower, discrimination was positively associated with anxiety ( b =.13, t = 4.02, p <.001); however when ethnic identity affirmation was higher, discrimination was not associated with anxiety ( b =.002, t =.09, p =.93).  Ethnic identity affirmations were also significant predicting depression ( b = -.02, t = -2.13, p =.04), and at a trend level, stress ( b = -.01, t =-1.90, p =.06) and anger ( b = -.02, t = -1.81, p =.072), with the patterns of associations being similar to Figure 1.  Three-way interactions between discrimination, each ethnic identity dimension, and ethnic group were run to see if the associations varied. Two significant interactions were found: (1) discrimination × exploration × ethnic group on anger ( b =.012, t = 2.65, p =.009) and (2) discrimination × resolution × ethnic group on anger ( b =.016, t = 2.22, p =.03).  As shown in Figure 2, among African Americans who had lower ethnic identity exploration, discrimination experiences were positively linked to anger ( b =.47, t = 4.53, p <.001); however, among African Americans who had higher ethnic identity exploration, discrimination experiences were not linked to anger ( b = -.02, t = -.18, p =.86). The differences based on ethnic identity exploration were not as dramatic among Latinos. Specifically, among those with higher ethnic identity exploration, discrimination experiences were marginally linked to anger ( b =.13, t = 1.96, p =.051), but no association was found when ethnic identity exploration was lower ( b =.15, t = 1.44, p =.15). A similar pattern was found when examining ethnic identity resolution.