College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..

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    Daily Heterosexism Experiences and Well-Being among LGB People: The Moderating Role of Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and LGB-Affirmative Support
    (2020) Chong, Siu Kwan; Mohr, Jonathan J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Research has shown that perceived discrimination, including heterosexism, is linked to poorer mental and physical health across a variety of stigmatized populations. Given the deleterious effect of discrimination on health, scholars have called attention to resilience research and the importance of understanding factors that can protect lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people from the adverse effect. To date, most research on LGB people’s resilience relied on retrospective reports of heterosexism experiences. This limits the understanding about resilience factors that help LGB people effectively cope with discrimination as it occurs on a day-to-day basis. The present study addressed this gap by using an experience sampling design to test whether internal resources (mindfulness, self-compassion) and external resources (LGB-affirmative social support) reduce the impact of daily heterosexism experience on affective and somatic well-being. A sample of 254 LGB adults completed a baseline survey that assessed resilience factors, as well as brief online surveys twice daily for 14 days that assessed heterosexism experiences and well-being, providing a total of 3,346 days of data. As anticipated, results of multilevel modeling showed that heterosexism experiences were positively related to negative affect and somatic symptoms both at the daily and person levels. Inconsistent with my hypotheses, mindfulness, self-compassion, and LGB affirmative support did not moderate the within-person associations between daily heterosexism experience and daily well-being. These factors also did not moderate the between-person association between mean heterosexism and health. They were, however, positively linked with affective well-being regardless of heterosexism experiences. These findings provide insights for practitioners to support LGB clients to thrive.
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    The Effects of Positive Expressive Writing on Postpartum Wellbeing: A Comparison of Mindfulness and Self-Affirmation.
    (2015) Ericson, Sara Kate; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Research on women during the postpartum period has focused primarily on depression, to the exclusion of other aspects of wellbeing and distress. Though research has also described the barriers to getting help with experiences of postpartum emotional distress there is little research on easily accessible and affordable prevention and treatment interventions or consideration of how women’s individual differences may influence the effectiveness of interventions intended to prevent and treat symptoms of emotional distress. In the present study, self-report data was gathered from 257 women at five points in time during the extended postpartum period. Baseline measures of anxiety, depression, wellbeing, and two facets of mindfulness (nonreactivity and nonjudgment of inner experiences) were examined as potential predictors of how two types of positive expressive writing interventions, based on self-affirmation and mindfulness theories, would impact women’s symptoms of depression, anxiety, and complaints related to physical and psychological wellbeing. These conditions were also compared to a waitlist control condition. Contrary to what was hypothesized, there were no significant differences between the writing and waitlist conditions on outcome anxiety, depression, or wellbeing. Additionally, nonjudgment and nonreactivity did not interact with type of writing condition in predicted ways. Compared to the self-affirmation condition, those in the mindfulness condition used more emotion words in their writings, and reported more changes in affect over the course of their individual writing sessions. Post-hoc analyses indicated post-writing negative affect might mediate the relationship between baseline and follow-up depression and anxiety. Limitations and implications of the findings are discussed along with recommendations for future study.