Disentangling the directionality among cultural stressors and psychosocial outcomes in recently immigrated Hispanic families: A random intercept cross-lagged panel model approach

Beyhan Ertanir; Alan Meca; Cory Cobb; Ingrid Zeledon; Jennifer B Unger; Elma Lorenzo-Blanco; Pablo Montero-Zamora; Byron L Zamboanga; Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati; Daniel W Soto; Dilan Aksoy; Wassilis Kassis; Maria Duque; Aigerim Alpysbekova; Seth J Schwartz

doi:10.1111/jora.13017

Disentangling the directionality among cultural stressors and psychosocial outcomes in recently immigrated Hispanic families: A random intercept cross-lagged panel model approach

J Res Adolesc. 2024 Sep 8. doi: 10.1111/jora.13017. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ University of Basel, Muttenz, Switzerland.
² University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Windisch, Switzerland.
³ The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
⁴ Texas A&M University, College Station, College Station, Texas, USA.
⁵ University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
⁶ The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.
⁷ University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA.
⁸ Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA.

PMID: 39245848
DOI: 10.1111/jora.13017

Abstract

Research shows the impact of cultural stressors (e.g. perceived discrimination, bicultural stressors, negative context of reception) on adolescents' psychosocial outcomes. Given the presence of multiple cultural stressors in many Hispanic adolescents' lives, it is essential to examine the (a) developmental sequencing of cultural stressors among recent immigrant youth and (b) predictive effects of cultural stressors on adolescents' psychosocial outcomes. We employed a random intercept cross-lagged panel model to examine the longitudinal interplay among cultural stressors and their effects on youth outcomes using longitudinal data with six waves among 302 recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents (47% girls, M_age = 14.51, SD = .88). We observed bidirectional within-person relations and between-person associations among cultural stressors. At the within-person level, bidirectional cross-lagged effects emerged between perceived discrimination and bicultural stress, between perceived discrimination and negative context of reception, and between negative context of reception and bicultural stress. At the between-person level, bidirectional cross-lagged effects emerged only between perceived discrimination and bicultural stressors. Our findings indicate that cultural stressors explain heterogeneity in psychosocial outcomes: self-esteem was inversely predicted by all cultural stressors, whereas depressive symptoms were predicted only by perceived discrimination. In addition, optimism was predicted only by bicultural stressors, and externalizing behavior was predicted by both bicultural stressors and perceived discrimination. These results suggest that the longitudinal relationships among cultural stressors are (partly) bidirectional. Additionally, cultural stressors demonstrated differential predictive effects on psychosocial outcomes, indicating the added value of considering multiple cultural stressors and their longitudinal effects on adolescents' psychosocial outcomes.

Keywords: bicultural stress; cultural stressors; discrimination; immigrant; negative context of reception; stress proliferation.

Abstract

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