IISBR
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About the IISBR
    • Affiliates
  • Assay Services
  • Events
    • Future Events
    • Past Events
  • IISBR Research
    • Salivary Research News
    • IISBR Research Studies
    • IISBR Publications
  • Courses
    • Spit Camp I
    • Spit Camp II
  • Contact Us

Telomere length and procedural justice predict stress reactivity responses to unfair outcomes in African Americans.

October 8, 2017 by IISBR

Background:

This experiment demonstrates that chromosomal telomere length (TL) moderates response to injustice among African Americans. Based on worldview verification theory – an emerging psychosocial framework for understanding stress – we predicted that acute stress responses would be most pronounced when individual-level expectancies for justice were discordant with justice experiences. Healthy African Americans (N=118; 30% male; M age=31.63 years) provided dried blood spot samples that were assayed for TL, and completed a social-evaluative stressor task during which high versus low levels of distributive (outcome) and procedural (decision process) justice were simultaneously manipulated. African Americans with longer telomeres appeared more resilient (in emotional and neuroendocrine response-higher DHEAs:cortisol) to receiving an unfair outcome when a fair decision process was used, whereas African Americans with shorter telomeres appeared more resilient when an unfair decision process was used. TL may indicate personal histories of adversity and associated stress-related expectancies that influence responses to injustice.

View Abstract

Tagged With: dheas, health disparities, justice, salivary cortisol, salivary dheas, stress reactivity, telomeres, worldview verification theory

UCI School of Social Ecology
Social Ecology I
Irvine, CA 92697-7050
www.uci.edu
www.socialecology.uci.edu

Log-In

© 2021 UC Regents