Vicarious Effects

Seeing someone undergo an awful experience can leave a visceral impact for you as a viewer. Witnessing someone who shares your racial identity experience discrimination also has a powerfully negative effect, according to research by Fatima Varner, assistant professor of human development and family sciences. To understand the effects of vicarious racial discrimination, such as news coverage of racially motivated killings, Varner examined relationship effects between parents and their children.

Family conversations can have a positive impact on young people’s behavior, school outcomes and psychological functioning.

“We learned that the way mothers and fathers perceive their own racial identity — and the way they think the public regards them — has an impact on how they parent their children,” Varner said.

She found some bright spots, nonetheless. Many Black parents who experience vicarious racial discrimination are more likely to talk with their children about race and discrimination — and such family conversations can have a positive impact on young people’s behavior, school outcomes and psychological functioning. Families tended to use events in the news as a starting point for family discussions about positive aspects of their culture or for reading books with their children with a similar theme.

Overall, Varner and her team produced some of the most comprehensive research of the year about families and race, publishing six studies last year on links between experiences with discrimination and outcomes for Black children and their parents. In one study, the team found parents who believed that they had the ability to control their own thoughts and emotions — what researchers call perceived thought control ability — were protected from some of the negative effects of discrimination and other stressors. Varner and her colleagues showed that this practice may be a valuable tool for Black mothers to protect their mental and physical health.