Reactions to Experiencing Distress (RED) Study

Race-related stress is a public health problem and a known predictor of severe psychological symptoms in Black Americans. Although there is a strong link between race-related stress and adverse mental health outcomes, limited research has examined the transdiagnostic mechanisms that explain how experiencing race-related stress contributes to psychological symptoms or what interventions might effectively target these mechanisms. The scientific premise of this study is that race-related stress may contribute to disproportionate allocation of attention toward threatening stimuli (i.e., attention bias to threat), a known predictor of stress-related symptoms. This attentional bias may be modifiable through a brief, culturally-informed mindfulness intervention.

Racial identity is hypothesized to be a key individual difference factor that influences the extent to which race-related stress affects attention bias to threat, as well as the degree to which a mindfulness intervention can mitigate these biases. The study will recruit 200 Black adults from the community who have experienced race-related stress to participate in a laboratory study targeting three specific aims:

To use eye-tracking methods to examine whether race-related stress (compared to non-race-related stress) leads to greater attention bias to threat;

To test whether a brief mindfulness meditation (compared to a neutral audio condition) reduces attention bias to threat;

To investigate whether racial identity moderates (a) the effect of the race-related stress manipulation on attention bias to threat and (b) the efficacy of the mindfulness intervention in reducing attention bias to threat.