Experiences of racism and subjective cognitive function in African American women

This research summary can be incorporated into a lecture or shared with students as a reading to demonstrate how psychological science explores the diversity of human experience. This resource can also be used to encourage students to identify the major components of a research study (i.e., the hypothesis or study question, sample, method, and findings). Students can be asked to identify potential limitations of the study and encouraged to discuss the implications for our understanding of human behavior. Keywords highlight how concepts within and across pillars are incorporated into a single research study.

Patricia Coogan and colleagues hypothesized that ongoing racism, a type of chronic stress, would negatively impact cognitive functioning. These researchers examined data from a longitudinal study of over 17,000 Black women. Beginning in 2009, these women first answered questions about their experiences with daily racism, such as receiving worse service than others in restaurants and stores, hearing racial slurs, and feeling that other people were afraid of them. They also reported their experiences with institutional racism, such as having trouble renting or buying a house, being treated unfairly at work due to their race, and having difficulty dealing with the police and legal system. Six years later, these same women answered questions designed to test their short-term memory and their ability to understand instructions and following conversations and the plots of television shows. Their findings revealed that the more women reported experiencing racism earlier in their lives, the worse their performance on these memory tasks. Black women who reported frequently experiencing daily racism were nearly three times as likely to show poor cognitive functioning than women who reported lower levels of daily racism. Women who reported frequently experiencing institutional racism were more than two and a half times as likely to show poor cognitive functioning. These findings indicate that psychological trauma—such as that arising from racism—can alter cognitive functioning and memory. They also suggest that efforts to reduce racial injustice may lead to better cognitive functioning and lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease.

Coogan, P., Schon, K., Li, S., Cozier, Y., Bethea, T., & Rosenberg, L. (2020). Experiences of racism and subjective cognitive function in African American women. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 12(1), e12067. https://doi.org/10.1002/dad2.12067opens in new window

Race, Social, Racism, Bias, Cognition, Memory, Stress

The development of resources to broaden diversity and representation in the teaching of high school psychology resources is an APA Committee of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools initiative supported by funding from the American Psychological Foundation David and Carol Myers Fund. This resource was developed by Eric Castro, Shawn C.T. Jones, PhD, Allyn Olsen, and Catherine Sanderson, PhD.