(PS5-B32) Understanding the Role of Belongingness on Adverse Mood and Acculturation After Social Exclusion

Although immigrants accounted for 13% of the U.S. population in 2020, numerous studies have reported the disparate mental health outcomes that exists among various racial/ethnic minority groups in the U.S. Despite foreign-born individuals making up a sizable portion of the population, cognitive and social mechanisms underlying adverse mental health outcomes resulting from acculturative stress are not well understood. Studies have demonstrated that a thwarted sense of belongingness and social rejection are closely linked to pathology in Asian-American college students and ethnically diverse youth and adults. Another found that rejection sensitivity as it relates to minoritized status, partially accounted for the relationship between psychotic distress and discrimination. The current study seeks to experimentally manipulate the experience of rejection to understand how belongingness may interact with negative moods among those who vary in acculturation in the U.S. This is an ongoing study for which N=12 participants have been recruited. Undergraduate students with varying levels of acculturation (measured by the Acculturation Scale) complete questionnaires assessing belongingness (General Belongingness Scale) and mood (Profile of Mood States) before and after a manipulation of social exclusion using a well-established social-exclusion task, the Cyberball paradigm. Analysis will explore whether individual’s acculturation status and mood after experiencing social rejection are mediated by a general sense of belonging. Implications for clinical practice include a better understanding of socio-cognitive mechanisms surrounding adverse mood for immigrant populations, which might inform the current lack of service utilization.