Responsive social support to disclosures of racial discrimination: Expectations and implications for well-being.

Abstract

Objectives: Social support helps people of color (POC) cope with stressors such as racial discrimination. Yet when POC disclose lived experiences of racism, confidants may fail to provide support that meets disclosers' emotional needs. Drawing on theories of shared reality and emotion reappraisal, we compare two emotion-focused social support approaches: validation (conveying that recipients' feelings or responses are appropriate) and reframing (seeking to reduce recipients' distress by offering a more positive perspective).

Method: Two POC samples of Canadian young adults (35% South Asian, 32% East Asian, 9% Black, 8% Southeast Asian, 7% Middle Eastern, 2% Latino/a/e, 1% Indigenous, 6% other; 78% women, 19% men, 2% nonbinary; mean age = 19.9) recalled a lived experience of racism then were randomly assigned to imagine disclosing it to a White or same-race confidant.

Results: In Study 1 (N = 430), POC rated validation as more helpful than reframing and forecasted larger gaps between desired and expected support from White than same-race confidants. Study 2 (N = 651) found that (a) experiences of racism are disclosed to same-race and White confidants more often than other groups and (b) imagining a confidant's reframing (vs. validating) response led to worse overall affect, less perceived responsiveness, less racial shared reality, and more rumination. In both studies, the gap between validation and reframing on perceived support increased for experiences that participants more strongly attributed to race, especially when disclosed to White confidants.

Conclusions: Implications for providing responsive emotional support for lived experiences of racism are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).