Is this attitude related to health? And if so, what is that relationship like? Since the 1980s, quite a few experiments have been done in this regard and several hundred scientific articles have been published. A systematic review and a meta-analysis on the results has recently been carried out by Yin Paradies and a large group of researchers from various research centers and universities in various countries around the world.
In this review, published in PLOS ONE (2015), a total of 293 studies published between 1983 and 2013 were included. When analyzing all the studies, it was observed that racism was associated with poorer mental health. Specifically, this relationship was observed with greater depression, with greater anxiety and with more psychological stress . Additionally, racism was also associated with poorer physical health and poorer general health . This relationship was not moderated by the age of the participants, their educational level or their sex, nor by their place of birth (although most of the studies were carried out in the United States).
The authors found a factor that did significantly moderate the relationship between racism and health. This variable was ethnicity, which had a different role on health depending on the race of the participants . In the case of Asian Americans and Latin Americans, the relationship between their racism and negative mental health was stronger. On the other hand, and only in the case of Latin Americans, the relationship between their racist attitude and their poor physical health was stronger than in participants of other ethnic groups.
A very interesting aspect that has been less studied is the relationship between racism and cognitive abilities. In 2014, Kristof Dhont and Gordon Hodson published an interesting review on this topic. Although some studies have shown a link between racism and capabilities lower cognitive, such as abstract reasoning, verbal reasoning and generates intelligence l conclude that it would be advisable for further studies that addressed openly these issues, so we can set up a broader idea of the factors that predict racism and prejudice in people.
Marisa Fernández is Senior Neuropsychologist at Unobrain
