Article Summary Table – Template 2 Full Reference Research Question(s) Sample Method Data Findings Evaluation Smetana, J. G., & Gettman, D. C. (2006). Autonomy and relatedness with parents and romantic development in African American adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 42(6), 1347-1351. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.42.6.1347 1. Less autonomy and more relatedness in early adolescence would lead to later starting of romantic relationships and better quality romantic relationships, including more supportive and less negative romantic relationships during late adolescence. 2. Early adolescents with high levels of relatedness to parents and low to moderate levels of autonomy in family decision making would report later starting of romantic careers and more positive romantic relationships five years later than would other youth. The study sample involved seventy-six middle-class adolescents (half female, half male) of the African American race of the final wave of the study. These adolescents were in various phases of their lives with some in their junior or senior year of high school, some in the process of enrolling in college, some already enrolled in college, some employed, and some in the military. It is important to note that nearly one hundred percent of these adolescents described themselves as being single. With the middle-class parents who were included, majority of them had some college instruction, over half grossed over seventy thousand dollars a year, and about half were in steady marriages for longer than the time the study was conducted. This research was a qualitative method because it gave a thorough understanding of the research topic; it used the population’s point of view; and it focused on the opinions and behaviors of the population. There were three waves. For the first wave, an interview was given. Wave three involved questionnaires five years after the first wave. No information was specified about wave two. Data collected focused on autonomy and relatedness on different levels. Measures that were used during research included interviews and questionnaires/surveys. The type of data that was collected within the interview was the evaluation of autonomy and relatedness. There were numerous questionnaires/surveys given to the subjects. Those that were used included a scale for family decision making for the autonomy aspect of research, the Trust and Communication subscales of the Parent-Peer Attachment Inventory, the Romantic History Survey, and the Network of Relationships Inventory. The scale that was used for family decision making assessed just that. The Trust and Communication subscales of the Parent-Peer Attachment Inventory measured closeness and connection to parents. The Romantic History Survey determined romantic involvement. The Network of Relationships Inventory calculated positive social support and undesirable interactions. The authors Smetana and Gettman (2006) clarified their results in a cl.

1. Article Summary Table – Template
2
Full Reference
Research Question(s)
Sample
Method
Data
Findings
Evaluation
Smetana, J. G., & Gettman, D. C. (2006). Autonomy and
relatedness with parents and romantic development in African
American adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 42(6), 1347-
1351. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.42.6.1347
1. Less autonomy and more relatedness in early adolescence
would lead to later starting of romantic relationships and better
quality romantic relationships, including more supportive and
less negative romantic relationships during late adolescence.
2. Early adolescents with high levels of relatedness to parents
and low to moderate levels of autonomy in family decision
making would report later starting of romantic careers and more
positive romantic relationships five years later than would other
youth.
The study sample involved seventy-six middle-class adolescents
(half female, half male) of the African American race of the
final wave of the study. These adolescents were in various
phases of their lives with some in their junior or senior year of
high school, some in the process of enrolling in college, some
already enrolled in college, some employed, and some in the
military. It is important to note that nearly one hundred percent
of these adolescents described themselves as being single. With
the middle-class parents who were included, majority of them
had some college instruction, over half grossed over seventy

2. thousand dollars a year, and about half were in steady marriages
for longer than the time the study was conducted.
This research was a qualitative method because it gave a
thorough understanding of the research topic; it used the
population’s point of view; and it focused on the opinions and
behaviors of the population.
There were three waves. For the first wave, an interview was
given. Wave three involved questionnaires five years after the
first wave. No information was specified about wave two.
Data collected focused on autonomy and relatedness on
different levels. Measures that were used during research
included interviews and questionnaires/surveys. The type of
data that was collected within the interview was the evaluation
of autonomy and relatedness. There were numerous
questionnaires/surveys given to the subjects.
Those that were used included a scale for family decision
making for the autonomy aspect of research, the Trust and
Communication subscales of the Parent-Peer Attachment
Inventory, the Romantic History Survey, and the Network of
Relationships Inventory.
The scale that was used for family decision making assessed
just that. The Trust and Communication subscales of the Parent-
Peer Attachment Inventory measured closeness and connection
to parents. The Romantic History Survey determined romantic
involvement. The Network of Relationships Inventory
calculated positive social support and undesirable interactions.
The authors Smetana and Gettman (2006) clarified their results
in a cluster profile. The first cluster had similarly high levels of
autonomy and relatedness. Clusters two and three had high
levels of relatedness, but the second cluster had minimal levels
of autonomy and the third cluster had a moderate amount of
autonomy. They found that those in cluster two had longer
romantic relationship periods than those in cluster one and
three. Negative interactions were linked directly to those
romantic relationships that have an extended course. Using the
information from their results, it was concluded that moderate

3. levels of autonomy during early adolescence can aid in the
transition into romantic relationships during late adolescence.
Because the subjects were younger when they were in wave one;
they may not have fully understood what an item had meant on a
survey/questionnaire or during an interview. Also, during the
interview, the subject may have said something that the
interviewer may have interpreted in a different way then what
the subject had actually meant. Another factor that could have
affected the research is that these individuals had to recollect
these experiences. A question that I have about the study’s
quality is: did those who gave the interviews explain certain
items when the subject did not understand? The previously
asked question also leads me to another one: If the
questionnaires/surveys were supplied to the subjects and had to
be returned by mail, was anyone able to assist those individuals
who may have had questions about the items or did not fully
understand the items or the scale that was used to score the
responses?

4. A few of the assigned articles are review articles. If you have a
review article of book chapter, please use this format.
Full Reference
What are the major topics discussed in the review?
Why is the review important?
Major findings discussed
Conclusion
Evaluation
BRIEF REPORTS
Autonomy and Relatedness With Parents and Romantic
Development in
African American Adolescents

5. Judith G. Smetana and Denise C. Gettman
University of Rochester
The influence of adolescents’ autonomy and relatedness to
parents on romantic relationships was
examined longitudinally over 5 years in 76 middle-class African
American late adolescents (mean age �
18.43 years). Relatedness to parents in early adolescence led to
longer duration and more supportive
romantic relationships in late adolescence, but longer duration
was concurrently associated with more
negative romantic relationships. Cluster analyses yielded 3
profiles of early adolescent autonomy and
relatedness; early adolescents who were high in relatedness and
low in autonomy to parents in early
adolescence reported longer duration romantic relationships in
late adolescence than did adolescents who
were moderate or high in relatedness and high in autonomy. The
implications for romantic development
in African American middle-class youth are discussed.
Keywords: romantic development, African American youth,
adolescent–parent relationships, autonomy
development, close relationships
There has been a great deal of recent interest in romantic
relationships during adolescence (Bouchey & Furman, 2003;
Col-
lins, 2003). Much of the research has focused on normative
changes and individual differences in romantic experience. Al-
though there also has been a great deal of interest in the
develop-
mental antecedents of romantic relationships in earlier parent–
child relationships, there has been relatively little longitudinal
research examining the influence of earlier parent– child
relation-

6. ships on later romantic relationships (Bouchey & Furman, 2003)
and virtually no research (either concurrent or longitudinal) ad-
dressing these issues in minority families. Rather, most of the
research on African American adolescents’ romantic experience
has focused on the timing of sexual intercourse, the incidence of
teenage pregnancy, and the incidence and consequences of early
childbearing. Furthermore, although the African American
middle
class has expanded considerably in size over the past 2 decades
(Billingsley, 1992), there has been little research on normative
processes of development and positive adaptation for middle-
class
youth of color (Garcı́a Coll et al., 1996). We examined the
influ-
ence of parent– child relationships on late adolescents’ romantic
relationships using a middle-class African American sample.
Although it is commonly assumed that early parent– child rela-
tionships influence later romantic experience, different mecha-
nisms have been proposed to account for these links. From an
attachment theory perspective, representations of attachment to
caregivers formed early in life are hypothesized to influence
sub-
sequent close relationships through expectancies about
closeness
and intimacy (Collins & Sroufe, 1999; Furman & Wehner,
1997).
However, attachment representations of friendships have been
found to fully mediate the relationship between adolescents’
work-
ing models of their relationships with parents and their views of
romantic relationships (Furman, Simon, Shaffer, & Bouchey,
2002). Another view is that adolescents imitate the patterns of
communication and conflict resolution observed in their
parents’

7. marital or romantic relationships (Gray & Steinberg, 1999).
Others
have suggested that parental socialization influences the
develop-
ment of romantic relationships either directly or indirectly
through
its effect on social competence. For instance, from a
transactional
perspective, Collins and Sroufe (1999) have proposed that a his-
tory of parental responsiveness and autonomy support leads to
increased self-esteem and self-worth, which then leads to more
positive romantic relationships. Consistent with this
proposition,
early adolescents’ strivings for autonomy and relatedness have
been hypothesized to be associated with the emergence and
quality
of romantic relationships (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999) because
having successful romantic relationships entails maintaining an
appropriate balance between expressing individuality and devel-
oping closeness and intimacy with a partner.
Although autonomy and relatedness may vary across cultural
and ethnic groups (Phinney, Kim-Jo, Osorio, & Vilhjalmsdottir,
2005), both have been shown to be important for African
Ameri-
cans. For instance, African American culture strongly
emphasizes
family obligations, frequent interaction with relatives, extended
kin networks, and attachment and loyalty to parents and commu-
nity (Cauce et al., 1996; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, &
Buriel,
1990). At the same time, African American child rearing
stresses
Judith G. Smetana and Denise C. Gettman, Department of
Clinical and

8. Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester.
We are grateful to the William T. Grant Foundation for its
support of
this project and to the many families who participated in this
research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Judith G.
Smetana, Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in
Psychology,
University of Rochester, Meliora Hall, RC 270266, Rochester,
NY 14627.
E-mail: [email protected]
Developmental Psychology Copyright 2006 by the American
Psychological Association
2006, Vol. 42, No. 6, 1347–1351 0012-1649/06/$12.00 DOI:
10.1037/0012-1649.42.6.1347
1347
independence and self-reliance (Cauce et al., 1996), although
among middle-class African American early adolescents, too
much
autonomy has been associated with greater deviance and malad-
justment (Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Steinberg, 1996; Smetana,
Campione-Barr, & Daddis, 2004). Furthermore, among African
American youths, independence is strongly sex differentiated.
Af-
rican American adolescent boys are permitted more freedom,
have
fewer rules, and have a later curfew than do African American
girls (Bulcroft, Carmody, & Bulcroft, 1996), whereas African
American girls are monitored more than are African American

9. boys (Smetana, Crean, & Daddis, 2002).
Thus, the previous research suggests that high relatedness but
low to moderate autonomy in early adolescence may be optimal
for middle-class African American adolescents’ future
adjustment.
In the present study, we examined the independent effects of
autonomy and relatedness to parents in early adolescence on
African American middle-class late adolescents’ romantic rela-
tionships, including the timing of onset of romantic activity, the
supportive and negative quality of romantic relationships, and
the
duration of adolescents’ current romantic relationships. As a
great
deal of previous research has shown that early onset of dating is
associated with greater deviance (see Bouchey & Furman, 2003;
Collins, 2003 for reviews), we hypothesized that less autonomy
and more relatedness in early adolescence would lead to later
starting of romantic relationships and better quality romantic re-
lationships, including more supportive and less negative
romantic
relationships in late adolescence.
In contrast, the observational research on autonomy and relat-
edness has assumed that high levels of both autonomy and relat-
edness are associated with better adjustment (e.g., Allen,
Hauser,
Bell, & O’Connor, 1994). To further examine these issues, we
also
adopted a person-centered approach to capture the organization
and patterning of autonomy and relatedness in early
adolescence.
Cluster analysis provides a holistic and phenomenological ap-
proach to classifying individuals that yields meaningful patterns
regarding the combination of variables. We identified different
profiles of African American adolescents’ autonomy and

10. related-
ness in early adolescence and then examined whether these clus-
ters differentiated romantic relationships in late adolescence.
The
previous research on autonomy and relatedness in middle class
African American youth (Lamborn et al., 1996; Smetana et al.,
2004) led us to hypothesize that early adolescents with high
levels
of relatedness to parents and low to moderate levels of
autonomy
in family decision making would report later starting of
romantic
careers and more positive romantic relationships 5 years later
than
would other youth.
Method
Participants and Sample
The sample consisted of 76 African American late adolescents
(mean
age � 18.43 years, SD � 1.39), 38 young men and 38 young
women, who
were participants in the third (and final) wave of a 5-year
longitudinal
study of African American middle-class families with
adolescents. (De-
scriptions of the original sample, attrition analyses, and detailed
sample
demographic characteristics are described in Smetana, Metzger,
&
Campione-Barr, 2004.) Briefly, most parents had some college
education,
55% of the families earned more than $70,000/year, and 51%
were two-

11. parent biological families who were stably married over the 5
years of the
study. At Wave 3, adolescents were still in high school (11th or
12th grade,
33%), in transition to college (24%), attending college (36%),
or working
or serving in the armed forces (10%); 99% reported being
single, unmar-
ried, and not cohabitating.
Procedures
Families were initially recruited through African American
churches,
professional and social organizations, and word of mouth (see
Smetana &
Gaines, 1999). At Wave 1, autonomy and relatedness were
assessed during
a home visit (or, in a few cases, a visit to the university)
conducted by
African American interviewers. At Wave 3, which occurred 5
years after
the initial wave, questionnaires were distributed and returned by
mail.
Measures
Autonomy. On the basis of Dornbusch et al. (1985), we had
adolescents
rate family decision making on a 5-point scale for each of 12
items ranging
from whether parents decide each issue without discussing it
(coded as 5),
make the decision together (coded as 3), or leave it entirely up
to the

12. adolescent (coded as 1). Responses were reverse scored so that
higher
scores indicated more adolescent autonomy in decision making.
On the
basis of Smetana, Campione-Barr, et al. (2004), the full 5-point
scale was
used in analyses. Alpha was .77.
Relatedness. Adolescents completed the Trust and
Communication
subscales (18 items) of the Parent–Peer Attachment Inventory
(Armsden &
Greenberg, 1987) separately for mothers and fathers. This scale
assesses
adolescents’ closeness and attachment to parents; responses
were scored on
5-point Likert scales. Alphas were above .84 for all ratings.
Furthermore,
the trust and communication subscales were very highly
correlated for
adolescents’ ratings of both mothers, r(76) � .81, and fathers,
r(54) � .80,
and, thus, mean ratings of trust and communication were
combined to
obtain separate measures of adolescents’ perceptions of
attachment to
mothers and fathers.
Romantic History Survey (RHS; Buhrmester, 2001). At Wave 3,
ado-
lescents completed the RHS, which retrospectively assesses
patterns of
romantic experience. The RHS includes 32 items assessing
increasingly
more advanced forms of involvement. We used the 16-item
Romantic

13. Activity subscale (which includes being romantically interested
in some-
one, having a crush on someone, or telling someone you love
them) and
added 3 items (holding hands and kissing, making out, and
going past
kissing) from the Sexuality subscale. One item was never
endorsed and was
dropped, resulting in an 18-item Romantic Activity scale (� �
.83). For
each item, respondents indicated all of the grades in which they
were
involved in the activity. There were five response choices: 6th
grade or
before (coded as 5), 7th and 8th grade (coded as 4), 9th and
10th grade
(coded as 3), 11th and 12th grade (coded as 2), and after 12th
grade (coded
as 1). If no response choices were checked, responses were
coded as 0.
Timing of onset was indicated by the youngest grade in which
the item was
experienced (Buhrmester, 2001); thus, high scores indicated
earlier age of
onset.
Network of Relationships Inventory (Furman & Buhrmester,
1985, 1992.
At Wave 3, adolescents rated the quality of their relationships
with their
romantic partners on the Network of Relationships Inventory.
The Network
of Relationships Inventory assesses positive social support and
negative
interactions on a 5-point Likert scale. Adolescents rated
perceptions of

14. social support from their current (or most recent) romantic
partner on 15
items assessing companionship, instrumental aid, intimacy,
nurturance, and
affection (� � .95), as well as perceptions of negative
interactions on six
items assessing conflict and antagonism (� � .91). We also
assessed length
(in months) and nature (casual, steady, or engaged) of the
current romantic
relationship.
1348 BRIEF REPORTS
Results and Discussion
On average, individual item responses on the RHS indicated that
adolescents in the present sample reported dating at least once
by
9th or 10th grade (M � 2.96, SD � 1.33), dating the same
person
on a regular basis by 11th or 12th grade (M � 2.16, SD � 1.41),
and being in an exclusive relationship in 12th grade or beyond
(M � 1.88, SD � 1.39). These descriptive data suggest that
middle-class African American adolescents in the present
sample
began dating in middle adolescence and followed a temporal
sequence of greater romantic involvement with age, as has been
reported among European American youth (Buhrmester, 2001;
Feiring, 1999).
Adolescents currently in a romantic relationship (n � 63, 83%)
reported that the average length of that relationship was 10.32
months. One third (32%) of the sample reported dating for 4

15. months or less, and 45% reported dating the same partner for
more
than four months. Adolescents’ perceptions of supportive and
negative romantic interactions (Ms � 3.14, 1.87, SDs � 0.78,
0.72,
respectively) were not significantly associated, r(63) � .10, ns,
indicating that these are two separate dimensions of romantic
relationships. Unexpectedly, however, longer duration relation-
ships were significantly associated with more negative romantic
interactions, r(63) � .48, p � .001, and earlier onset of
romantic
activity, r(63) � .36 p � .05.
We used hierarchical regressions to examine the longitudinal
influence of autonomy and relatedness in earlier parent–
adolescent
relationships on romantic experience. All variables were
centered
prior to analyses to reduce problems with multicollinearity. In
the
first step of the analyses, adolescents’ age, gender, and parents’
marital status (stably married vs. all else) were controlled.
Marital
status was moderately associated with adjusted yearly family in-
come, r(76) � .29, p � .01, thus providing some control for
income as well. Wave 1 autonomy and relatedness were entered
in
the second step. Results are in Table 1. Interactions between
Wave
1 autonomy and both age and sex were examined but were not
significant in any of the analyses. Thus, they are not discussed
further.
African American boys reported that they initiated their roman-
tic involvement at younger ages than did girls. This finding is in
accord with those of others who have reported that African

16. Amer-
ican boys are granted greater freedom than girls (Bulcroft et al.,
1996) and hence more opportunity to initiate romantic activity
(although it should be noted that the Adolescent Sex �
Autonomy
Interaction was not significant in our analysis). Consistent with
a
great deal of research on risk factors associated with early
dating
(Bouchey & Furman, 2003; Collins, 2003), adolescents growing
up in stably married, two-parent biological families also
reported
later onset of romantic activity. When controlling for
background
variables, we found that neither autonomy nor relatedness
signif-
icantly influenced the timing of onset of romantic experience.
Contrary to previous research with European American samples
(Feiring, 1999), African American girls in the present study did
not
report more supportive romantic relationships than did boys.
Pre-
vious research, however, has shown that Latina and Asian girls
(but not African American girls) report more general friendship
support than do boys (Way & Chen, 2000). The present findings
suggest that these findings also apply to African American ado-
lescents’ romantic relationships. A significant association in the
T
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1349BRIEF REPORTS
bivariate analyses, and with family background characteristics
controlled, a trend ( p � .07) in the regression analysis
indicated
that earlier relatedness to parents influenced the quality of later
romantic relationships. Adolescents who experienced closer
rela-

38. tionships with parents reported more supportive relationships
with
their romantic partners. That these findings only neared signifi-
cance in the regression analysis may be due to the small sample
size and the careful controls for demographic background.
Never-
theless, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that
earlier parent– child relationships influence later romantic
relation-
ships, although the results do not shed light on the specific
mech-
anisms (for instance, attachment relationships) that may account
for continuity across relationships.
Not surprisingly, adolescents who were older at Wave 3 had
longer duration romantic relationships, but greater relatedness
to
parents in early adolescence also was associated with longer du-
ration romantic relationships 5 years later. These results were
surprising, given that longer duration relationships were concur-
rently associated in late adolescence with more negative
romantic
interactions and earlier onset of romantic activity and were pre-
dicted by living in a single- or stepparent family or in a family
experiencing marital transitions (all of which have been
associated
with poorer adjustment, e.g., Collins, 2003; Hetherington,
1999).
Adolescents who experience close relationships with parents in
early adolescence may be more likely to remain in romantic
relationships, even more negative ones, as they individuate from
parents in late adolescence. It is also possible that early
adolescents
in single-parent, stepparent, or more maritally unstable families
report closer but more enmeshed relationships, leading to longer
but less healthy romantic relationships in late adolescence.

39. Further
research with African American youth is needed to examine this
possibility as well as to determine the ages at which longer
duration relationships become adaptive for development.
To identify profiles of autonomy and relatedness in our sample,
we adopted Davies, Cummings, and Winter’s (2004) two-step
analytic strategy for cluster analyses. First, we specified the
num-
ber of clusters by using a hierarchical agglomerative cluster
anal-
ysis, which is particularly useful for identifying the number of
clusters in a data set. Ward’s method with squared euclidean
distance was used to maximize within-group heterogeneity. The
results of the cluster analyses indicated that a three-cluster
solution
fit the data best. Next, we conducted a nonhierarchical cluster
analysis using the k-means method, which maximizes the
between-
clusters variance in relation to within-cluster variance and thus
allows a more precise classification of individuals into clusters.
We specified a three-cluster solution.
The results are depicted in Figure 1. The profiles differed
significantly from each other on scores on both autonomy and
relatedness. Previous research has assumed that greater
autonomy
and relatedness (Allen et al., 1994) or maintaining a balance
between them is optimal for adjustment, regardless of
adolescents’
age (or ethnicity). The first cluster (24% of the sample, n � 8
boys
and 10 girls) consisted of African American early adolescents
who
were moderately high on both autonomy and relatedness. Other
research (Lamborn et al., 1996; Smetana et al., 2004) suggests

40. that
greater connectedness but less autonomy might be more charac-
teristic and more adaptive for African American early
adolescents.
There were two different clusters demonstrating this pattern.
The
second cluster (29%, n � 12 boys and 10 girls) consisted of
adolescents who were high in relatedness but low in family
decision-making autonomy. Adolescents in the third cluster,
char-
acterizing 51% of the sample (n � 18 boys and 18 girls), also
were
high in relatedness but more moderate in autonomy. The propor-
tion of boys and girls in each cluster did not differ significantly.
Next, we used separate 2 (Sex) � 3 (Cluster) analyses of
variance to examine whether adolescents who fit these different
profiles of autonomy and relatedness in early adolescence
differed
in their romantic relationships in late adolescence. Cluster
mem-
bership had a significant effect on the duration of romantic rela-
tionships, F(2, 59) � 4.20, p � .05, partial �2 � .13. Post hoc
analyses indicated that adolescents in Cluster 2, who were very
low in autonomy but high in relatedness at Wave 1, had longer
duration romantic relationships in late adolescence (M � 16.11,
SD � 2.33) than did adolescents who were either moderate in
autonomy and high in relatedness or moderate in both (Ms �
9.77,
6.36, SDs � 1.88, 2.62, respectively). As longer duration
relation-
ships were associated with more negative interactions, the
results
suggest that moderate (rather than low) levels of autonomy in
early

41. adolescence may be more adaptive for late adolescent romantic
relationships.
Several limitations of the current study should be noted. First,
these analyses focused on adolescent reports. However, a great
deal of previous research has suggested that adolescents’
percep-
tions of their relationships with parents are more strongly
associ-
ated with adjustment than are parents’ views (Furman & Buhr-
mester, 1992). Although the present study was longitudinal,
adolescents’ reports of the timing of onset of their romantic
activ-
ity consisted of retrospective accounts. Future research should
obtain longitudinal data from different informants on the emer-
gence of dating in larger samples of African American
adolescents,
including heterosexual as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
trans-
gender African American adolescents. Future research also
should
examine adolescents’ measures of romantic relationship quality
across multiple romantic relationships to increase the reliability
of
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5

42. 4
4.5
5
Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3
R
a
ti
n
g
s
Autonomy
Relatedness
Figure 1. Cluster profile: Cluster 1 � early adolescents
moderately high
on both autonomy and relatedness; Cluster 2 � early
adolescents high in
relatedness but low in family decision-making autonomy;
Cluster 3 � early
adolescents high in relatedness but more moderate in autonomy.
1350 BRIEF REPORTS
the ratings as well as include both partners of the romantic rela-
tionship to determine whether views of the relationship differ.

43. Nevertheless, the results of the present study suggest that
earlier
relatedness to parents influences the positive quality of later ro-
mantic relationships and that both relatedness and its patterning
with autonomy influence the duration of later romantic relation-
ships in African American youths. Future research should
further
examine the normative trajectory of romantic relationships in
ethnic minority youths and their influence on mate selection,
marriage, and adjustment in adulthood.
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Received October 8, 2004

49. Revision received June 26, 2006
Accepted July 17, 2006 �
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55. Journal of Counseling Psychology
1985, Vol. 32, No. 3,43H40
Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association.
Inc.
0022-0167/85/$00.75
Relation of Racial Identity Attitudes to Self-Actualization and
Affective States of Black Students
Thomas A. Parham
Southern Illinois University—Carbondale
Janet E. Helms
University of Maryland
The relation between racial identity attitudes derived from
Cross's (1971)
model of psychological nigrescence, or black self-actualization,
and various af-
fective states hypothesized to be relevant to the racial
identification process
were investigated through multiple regression analysis. Subjects
were 166
black university students. Both prowhite-antiblack
(preencounter) and
problack-antiwhite (immersion) attitudes were associated with
greater per-
sonal distress as indicated by negative relations between these
attitudes and
mentally healthy self-actualizing tendencies and by positive
relations to feel-
ings of inferiority, anxiety, and hostility. Awakening black
identity (encoun-

56. ter attitudes) was positively related to self-actualization
tendencies and nega-
tively related to feelings of inferiority and anxiety. The
possibility that cogni-
tive and affective components of racial identity attitudes may
evolve via dif-
ferent models is explored. Implications for future research and
recommenda-
tions for delivery of psychological services to black populations
are discussed.
Studies of how black people are affected
by the counseling process have generally
focused on counselor characteristics or per-
ceptions of the counselor and the counseling
relationship (see Atkinson, 1983, and Sattler,
1977, for detailed reviews of such studies).
Missing has been sufficient consideration to
culture-specific diagnostic issues such as how
the condition of being black in a predomi-
nantly white environment influences the
personality development and psychological
adjustment of black persons. In fact, most
previous attempts to identify personality
characteristics and symptoms of black
clients either have been based on theories of
white adjustment or have merely compared
black people's scores with whites' scores on
some standard personality inventories that
have included few, if any, blacks in the
standardization samples (Gynther, 1972;
Snowden & Todman, 1982). The end result
of such procedures, as Gardner (1971) and
Smith (1977) have pointed out, is that blacks
This research was part of the doctoral dissertation of

57. the first author, supervised hy the second author.
Appreciation is extended to Michael T. Brown, Rod
McDavis, and Amen Rahh for their help in conducting
this research and to Josephine Shaffer for her help in
preparing the manuscript.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas A.
Parham, who is now at the Career Planning and Place-
ment Center, University of California, Irvine, California
92717.
have been negatively stereotyped in a man-
ner that cannot be of much use for adminis-
tering effective counseling interventions.
Cross (1971) has proposed a model of ra-
cial identity that appears to be more relevant
to the psychological life experiences of black
people than more traditional theories and
that might prove to be a useful system on
which to base counseling interventions. In
his model, a description of how a person
converts from Negro to black (the "Negro-
to-Black conversion experience"), he pro-
posed the existence of five distinct psycho-
logical stages. Each of the proposed stages
is characterized by different racial identity
attitudes, each of which is allegedly charac-
terized by distinctive cognitive, conative, and
affective elements.
The five stages, as proposed by Cross
(1971), are preencounter, encounter, im-
mersion-emersion, internalization, and in-
ternalization-commitment.1 In the preen-
counter stage, a person is programmed to

58. 1 Although Cross (1978) conceptualized the inter-
nalization-commitment stage as a separate stage, he
concedes that it is difficult to figure out where it fits in
the general model, because ostensibly similar behavioral
styles may accompany the immersion-emersion stage
as well. In our own work, we have chosen not to oper-
ationalize the fifth stage because it seems to confound
general styles (e.g., assertiveness or gregariousness) with
racial identity in a way that we have been unable to
separate.
431
432 THOMAS A. PARHAM AND JANET E. HELMS
view and think of the world from a Euro-
American frame of reference as he or she
thinks, acts, and behaves in ways that de-
value blackness and idealize whiteness. In
the second stage, encounter, the person be-
gins to abandon his or her old world view as
a consequence of a startling personal or so-
cial event. In the third stage, immersion-
emersion, the person idealizes blackness,
although the degree of internalization of
positive attitudes about one's own blackness
is minimal. The person immerses himself
or herself in black experiences (e.g., joins
political groups or attends seminars that
focus on blacks). In addition to the general
orientation that everything of value must be
black or relevant to blackness, the immer-
sion-emersion stage is also characterized by

59. a tendency to denigrate whites. In the
fourth stage, internalization, the person
achieves a feeling of inner security with his
or her blackness because the person has in-
corporated aspects of the immersion-emer-
sion experience into his or her self-concept.
Ideological flexibility and a general decline
in strong antiwhite feelings also typify the
internalization stage. The fifth stage, in-
ternalization-commitment, is characterized
as one in which the person continues to ex-
press her or his black identity by means of
continued political involvement for the sake
of the group.
Cross (1971, 1978) advised that the con-
version model should be considered a de-
scription of the Afro-American process of
self-actualization under conditions of op-
pression. He further postulated that per-
sons engaged in the nigrescence, or self-
actualization, process were likely to experi-
ence a wide range of affective states that
would parallel their stage of development.
Accordingly, self-actualization and feelings
of self-acceptance were preceded by feelings
of inferiority, shame, guilt, and rage, as well
as feelings of black pride. In adapting the
Cross model to pertain specifically to the
dynamics of counseling clients, Butler (1975)
concluded that clients in the preencounter
stage would exhibit a poor self-concept and
would be self-deprecating and perhaps ap-
athetic and uninvolved. Encounter clients
were hypothesized to have a positive self-
image accompanied by feelings of guilt,

60. confusion, and anxiety; immersion-emersion
clients were expected to experience guilt and
rage; and clients in the internalization stage
were assumed to have transcended emo-
tional reactions to their racial identity except
for generally positive self-regard and self-
acceptance.
Although various authors (Butler, 1975;
Jackson, 1977; Parham & Helms, 1981) have
theorized that knowledge about a client's
racial identity and corresponding affective
states would improve the counselor's arma-
mentarium of interventions, no study to date
has demonstrated an empirical relation be-
tween racial identity and particular affective
states. Therefore, the general purpose of
the present investigation was to study the
relation between racial identity and affective
states hypothesized by Cross (1971, 1978)
and Butler (1975) to be indicative of the
identification process.
In adapting the Cross (1971,1978) model
to study counseling variables, Parham and
Helms (1981) have pointed out that at-
tempts to classify people into a single stage
on the basis of their highest racial identity
attitudes presume a model comprising dis-
crete rather than continuous stages. How-
ever, a discrete attitudinal model is likely to
provide misleading information about racial
identity attitudes because only the people
who are at the peak of a particular stage can
be classified under such a model, even

61. though people with lower levels of measured
attitudes actually might be further along the
developmental continuum, if they have al-
ready experienced the stage or are in the
process of entering a new stage. Further-
more, because, according to theory, certain
of the racial identity attitudes (e.g., immer-
sion and internalization) appear to be addi-
tive to some extent, then placing people in
single categories causes one to ignore vari-
ance associated with the different types of
attitudes that an individual might hold si-
multaneously and that could be important
for predictive purposes. Therefore, Parham
and Helms recommended that a more effi-
cient use of racial identity attitudes associ-
ated with Cross's stages is to consider them
to be types of attitudes that one might pos-
sess, with the strength of each type of atti-
tude possibly varying across individuals.
Such a perspective implies that regression
models in which each type of attitude is
BLACK STUDENTS' RACIAL IDENTITY 433
taken into account for each subject, might
offer more sensitive strategies for investi-
gating relations between racial identity at-
titudes and other personality constructs
than would qualitative methods in which
people are classified into single stages.
Thus, in the present study, multiple re-
gression analyses were used to investigate

62. the relation between black students' racial
identity attitudes, self-actualizing tenden-
cies, and various affective states. With re-
gard to self-actualizing tendencies (i.e., time
competence and inner-directed support), it
was hypothesized that (a) preencounter at-
titudes would be negatively associated with
these tendencies and (b) encounter, im-
mersion, and internalization attitudes would
be positively associated with such tenden-
cies. In exploring the relation between ra-
cial identity attitudes and affective states,
it was hypothesized that (c) feelings of infe-
riority (interpersonal sensitivity) would be
positively associated with preencounter at-
titudes, (d) feelings of anxiety or obsessive-
ness would be positively associated with
encounter attitudes, (e) feelings of anger
would be positively associated with immer-
sion-emersion attitudes, and (f) feelings of
self-acceptance would be positively associ-
ated with internalization attitudes.
Method
Subjects
Subjects were 166 (65 male and 101 female) black
college students enrolled in four predominantly white
universities, one each in the eastern and midwestern
United States and two on the west coast. Ages for the
entire sample ranged from 17 to 25 years, with the av-
erage age ranging from 19 to 20 years. Subjects' self-
reported socioeconomic status ranged from the lower
to the upper middle class, with 51% of the sample indi-
cating that they were in the middle class. Because of

63. the difficulty in attracting black subjects and because
of the need to acquire subjects with a variety of atti-
tudes, both introductory psychology courses and black
studies courses were used to solicit subjects. No in-
centives for participation were offered to any of the
subjects regardless of their location.
Instruments
The instruments used in this study were (a) the
Personal Orientation Inventory, (b) the Racial Identity
Attitude Scale, (c) the Symptom-90 Checklist, and (d)
a personal data information sheet.
Personal Orientation Inventory (POI). The POI
(Shostrom, 1963) is a multiple scale instrument de-
signed to measure an individual's degree of self-actu-
alization or positive mental health and was used in the
present study because of its emphasis on health rather
than illness. The POI consists of 150 items to which
subjects respond by marking true or false; subjects'
scores for each of 12 scales are calculated by summing
the true responses for appropriately keyed items.
Three scales from the POI were used, the two basic
personal orientation scales, Inner Directed (127 items)
and Time Competence (23 items), and the Self-Accep-
tance Scale (26 items). The Inner Directed Scale as-
sesses whether a person's reactions are self or other
oriented. High scores indicate a reliance on self. The
Time Competence Scale assesses the degree to which
an individual lives in the past, present, or future; high
scores indicate an integration of past and future, which
permits the individual to be content in the here and
now. The Self-Acceptance Scale measures the person's
level of self-acceptance or affirmation in spite of ac-

64. knowledged weaknesses or deficiencies. Overall level
of self-actualization can be inferred from the Inner
Directed and Time Competence scales. Although
Shostrom (1963) reported no internal consistency data
for the three scales, Klavetter and Mogar (1967) re-
ported test-retest coefficients of .71, .77, and .77 for the
Time Competence, Inner Directed, and Self-Acceptance
scales, respectively.
Validity data reported by Shostrom (1963) indicate
that the POI significantly discriminated between groups
who were judged by clinical psychologists to be self-
actualizing or non-self-actualizing. Knapp (1965), in
a study of the diagnostic usefulness of the POI, found
it to be effective in differentiating between a self-
actualized group and a group with high scores on a
neuroticism scale.
Racial Identity Attitude Scale. The Racial Identity
Attitude Scale is a 30-item scale that was developed by
Parham and Helms (1981) to measure attitudes asso-
ciated with the various stages of black identity devel-
opment as described in Cross's (1971) model of psy-
chological nigrescence. The scale was adapted from
Hall, Cross, and Freedle's (1972) Q-sort items, which
were designed to assess attitudes and behaviors char-
acteristic of the various stages of racial identity. Re-
spondents used a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly
disagree, 5 — strongly agree) to indicate the extent to
which each item was descriptive of them. Scores for
each of the four aubscales (Preencounter, Encounter,
Immersion-Emersion, and Internalization) were ob-
tained by summing the responses to the items keyed to
a particular subscale and dividing by the number of
items in the subscale to maintain the scale metric.
Thus, scores for each subscale could range from 1 to 5,

65. with higher scores indicating higher levels of a given
attitude. Parham and Helms reported the following
internal consistency reliability coefficients for the four
subscales: Preencounter, .67; Encounter, .72; Immer-
sion-Emersion, .66; and Internalization, .71. They also
reported some evidence of the construct validity of the
Racial Identity Attitude Scale in their finding that racial
identity attitudes predicted subjects' preference for the
race of their counselor.
Symptom-90 Checklist (SCL-90). The SCL-90
(Derogatis, Rickels, & Rock, 1976) is a self-report in-
434 THOMAS A. PARHAM AND JANET E. HELMS
Table 1
Summary °f Regression Analyses Using Racial Identity
Attitudes to Predict
Dependent Measures
Racial identity attitude
Dependent
measures
POI scale
Time Competence
Inner Directed
Self-Acceptance
SCL-90 scale
Interpersonal

66. Sensitivity
Anxiety
Hostility
Obsessive-
Compulsive
Preencounter
0
-0.29
-0.30
-0.15
0.19
0.13
7.66
0.12
F
14.88**
14.38"
3.36**
5.22**
2.49*
0.84
2.03
Encounter
0

67. 0.19
0.14
0.14
-0.10
-0.16
-3.90
-5.89
F
5.37**
2.71*
2.69*
1.47
3.26*
0.19
0.43
Immersion
0
-0.20
-2.40
-6.66
0.15
0.20
0.16
0.11

68. F
7.05**
0.10
0.69
3.48**
6.19**
3.82*
1.75
Inter nal-
ization
/3
2.84
8.39
5.26
-6.68
-6.60
-4.99
3.61
F
0.15
1.24
0
0.72

69. 0.70
0.38
0
Overall
model
fi2
.18
.15
.06
.08
.08
.03
.03
F
8.54"
7.30**
2.42
3.36*
3.54*
1.33
1.14

70. Note. POI = Personal Orientation Inventory; SCL-90 =
Symptom-90 Checklist.
* p < .05. ** p < .01.
ventory comprising 90 items, designed to measure var-
ious moods and psychological symptoms. Although 48
of the items, representing five subscales, were admin-
istered to each subject, only the four subscales for which
definite hypotheses were proposed were analyzed. The
four subscales, Interpersonal Sensitivity (inferiority),
Anxiety, Hostility, and Obsessive-Compulsive, were
used to operationalize the affective states and styles
presumed to be associated with racial identity devel-
opment. Respondents used a 5-point scale ranging
from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely) to indicate how
distressed they were by each of the symptoms. Dero-
gatis et al. (1976) reported internal consistency coeffi-
cients as follows: Obsessive-Compulsive, .86; Inter-
personal Sensitivity, .86; Anxiety, .85; and Hostility, .84.
Concurrent validity is shown by their findings that each
of the nine SCL-90 subscales showed peak correlations
with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
scale to which they logically should have been re-
lated.
Personal data sheet. The personal data sheet was
used in this study to acquire information about subjects'
backgrounds and demographic characteristics. The
questionnaire required subjects to indicate their age,
sex, and whether they designated themselves as colored,
Negro, Afro-American, or black. Subjects were also
asked to indicate their (a) socioeconomic class at birth,
(b) current socioeconomic class, and (c) highest socio-
economic class to which they aspired. In addition, each
subject was asked to indicate his or her academic class

71. level (freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior).
Procedure
Several black professors, instructors, and school of-
ficials, each affiliated with one of the four universities
previously mentioned, were contacted and identified
as test administrators. Subjects who participated in
the study were contacted by these individuals by way
of classroom or other group activities. One of the
present authors served as the test administrator in one
of the west coast locations. The battery of scales and
the appropriate instructions were administered to each
subject in the format of a four-part questionnaire that
consisted of the four instruments described above,
presented in the same order.
Subjects were informed that the investigation in-
volved an examination of their political attitudes as well
as how they typically felt about themselves. Because
of the small numbers of black students in some classes,
some subjects completed the questionnaire individually
whereas others were part of a general classroom ad-
ministration. Because the manner in which subjects
were located was left to the discretion of the test ad-
ministrators, analysis of data according to specific set-
ting variables was not possible (e.g., black studies classes
vs. introductory psychology classes). However, the
differential testing environments were not expected to
differentially influence the subjects' responses to the
instruments.
Results
To test the hypotheses that racial identity

72. attitudes were differentially related to
subjects' self-actualizing tendencies and
various affective states or styles, seven in-
dependent multiple regression analyses were
used. Beta weights and F ratios for all of the
regression analyses are presented in Table
1. Mean scale scores on each of the four
racial identity attitude scales were used as
predictor variables in each of the regression
analyses. Thus, scale scores for each of the
BLACK STUDENTS' RACIAL IDENTITY 435
four types of attitudes could potentially vary
from 1 to 5. The significance level of overall
regression models (as indicated by the F
ratio) reveals the extent to which a linear
combination of the four types of attitudes
predicted each of the dependent variables.
Examination of the F ratios associated with
the beta weights of the attitudes indicates
the extent to which the types of attitudes
differentially contributed to the prediction
of the dependent variable. In general, beta
weights were not examined for significance
unless the overall model was significant.
However, in those instances in which a spe-
cific hypothesis concerning an attitudinal
type had been proposed, the relevant beta
weight was examined even if the overall
model was not significant. Prior to com-
puting the multiple regression analyses,
simple correlations were computed between
the four types of racial identity attitudes.2

73. Correlations ranged from .07 (internalization
and immersion) to —.37 (preencounter and
encounter), and the direction and size of the
correlations were consistent with a linear
model of attitude development.
Relations Between Racial Identity
Attitudes and Self-Actualization
Two multiple regression analyses were
used to test the hypothesis that racial iden-
tity attitudes would be differentially related
to respondents' mentally healthy self-actu-
alizing tendencies. The Time Compe-
tence and Inner Directed scales served as
successive measures of self-actualization in
these analyses.
When time competence was used as the
dependent variable, results of the regression
analysis indicated that the 18% of the vari-
ance explained by the combination of racial
identity attitudes was significant, F(4,161)
= 8.54, p < .001. As shown in Table 1,
preencounter, encounter, and immersion
attitudes were significantly related to time
competence. However, the beta weights
show that preencounter and immersion at-
titudes were inversely related, whereas en-
counter attitudes were positively related.
Thus, the higher one's prowhite-antiblack
(preencounter) attitudes and the higher
one's problack-antiwhite (immersion) atti-
tudes, the less present oriented the person.

74. On the other hand, attitudes consistent with
a decision to become black (encounter) were
related to a tendency to be present ori-
ented.
When the other indicant of self-actuali-
zation, inner directedness, was used as the
dependent variable, results of the regression
analysis indicated that the 16% of the vari-
ance explained by racial identity attitudes
was significant, F(4, 161) = 7.03, p < .05.
Whereas both preencounter and encounter
attitudes were significantly related to inner
directedness, preencounter attitudes were
related in a negative direction but encounter
attitudes were related in a positive direction.
These results suggest that encounter atti-
tudes were related to a tendency to rely on
one's self for intrapersonal support whereas
preencounter attitudes were related to a
tendency to rely on others for such sup-
port.
In summary, it appears that the linear
combination of racial identity attitudes
predicted self-actualization as inferred from
time competence and inner directedness.
Indications are that higher levels of preen-
counter attitudes consistently were associ-
ated with less self-actualization, and thus
these attitudes were less psychologically
healthy; encounter attitudes were positively
associated with self-actualization. It ap-
pears that higher immersion attitudes, de-
spite their extremely problack perspective,
contributed to lower levels of self-actuali-

75. zation, particularly as indicated by time
competence. Internalization attitudes were
not significantly related to measures of
self-actualization.
Relations Between Racial Identity
Attitudes and Affective States
When the regression analysis was per-
formed to test the hypothesis that Inter-
personal Sensitivity (feelings of inferiority)
scale scores would be predicted by preen-
counter attitudes, the 8% of the variance
explained by the four types of racial identity
attitudes was significant, F(4,161) = 3.36, p
< .05. Preencounter attitudes were signif-
icantly related to feelings of interpersonal
2 A table of simple correlations is available from the
first author.
436 THOMAS A. PARHAM AND JANET E. HELMS
Table 2
Summary of Means and Standard Deviations of Racial Identity
Attitudes and Dependent
Variables Analyzed by Sex
Men
Variables
Racial identity attitude
Preencounter

76. Encounter
Immersion-Emersion
Internalization
POI scale
Time Competence
Inner Directed
Self -Acceptance
SCL-90 scale
Anxiety
Obsessive-Compulsive
Interpersonal Sensitivity
Hostility
M
2.17
4.15
3.09
3.56
14.63
77.22
12.54
1.87
2.25
2.17
1.85
SD
0.70
0.83

77. 0.62
0.74
3.26
9.79
2.04
0.62
0.70
0.73
0.65
Women
M
1.80
4.24
3.05
3.78
15.36
80.63
12.53
1.99
2.21
2.17
1.86
SD
0.50
0.72
0.61
0.56

78. 2.74
10.76
2.25
0.73
0.70
0.70
0.72
Total
M
1.96
4.20
3.07
3.70
15.07
79.30
12.54
1.94
2.22
2.17
1.86
SD
0.61
0.77
0.61
0.64
2.97

79. 10.39
2.17
0.69
0.70
0.71
0.69
F
ratio
12.38**
0.50
0.13
4.50*
2.39
4.28*
0
1.23
0.15
0
0
Note. On all scales, higher scores equal more of the attribute.
For men, n = 65; for women, n = 101. POI =
Personal Orientation Inventory; SCL-90 = Symptom-90
Checklist.
* p < .05. ** p < .001.
sensitivity in a positive direction as pre-
dicted; immersion attitudes were also sig-
nificantly positively related, suggesting that
high levels of preencounter and immersion
attitudes were likely to be related to feelings

80. of inferiority, personal inadequacy, and hy-
persensitivity.
In the regression analysis in which anxiety
scores were used as the dependent variable
to test the hyothesis that encounter attitudes
would be positively associated with feelings
of anxiety, the 8% of the variance explained
by racial identity attitudes was significant,
F(4,161) = 3.53, p < .05. Encounter atti-
tudes were significantly related to feelings
of anxiety, but in a negative direction. In
addition, both preencounter and immersion
attitudes were positively related to anxiety,
although no specific hypotheses about these
attitudes have been proposed.
The test of the hypothesis that feelings of
anger would be positively related to immer-
sion attitudes revealed no significant effect
due to the combination of racial identity
attitudes, F(4,161) = 1.32, p > .05. How-
ever, the Immersion attitude scale was a
significant predictor of anger (Hostility
scale). The direction of the beta weight
suggested that problack-antiwhite attitudes
were likely to be associated with feelings of
anger or hostility as predicted.
The overall regression model, testing the
hypothesis that feelings of self-acceptance
would be predicted by internalization atti-
tudes, barely missed significance, F(4,161)
= 2.42, p = .06. Examination of its beta
weight indicated that internalization atti-
tudes were not significantly related to feel-

81. ings of self-acceptance. Because the overall
model was nearly significant (an F of 2.425
was necessary for significance at the .05
level), we also examined the beta weights for
the other attitudes. Preencounter attitudes
were inversely related to self-acceptance,
indicating that prowhite-antiblack attitudes
were indicative of difficulty in accepting
oneself in spite of the absence of identifica-
tion with one's ascribed racial group. En-
counter attitudes were positively related to
feelings of self-acceptance, indicating that
making a decision to question previously
held negative assumptions about blackness
may be indicative of emerging feelings of
self-acceptance. The final hypothesis that
obsessiveness would be related to encounter
attitudes was not supported by the obtained
results, F(l, 161) = 0.43, ns; the overall
model also lacked significance, F(4, 161) =
1.14, ns.
In summary, it seems that with the ex-
ceptions of anger, obsessiveness, and possi-
bly self-acceptance, affective states were
BLACK STUDENTS' RACIAL IDENTITY 437
predicted by linear combinations of the ra-
cial identity attitudes, with particular atti-
tudes being differentially related to specific
affects, though not always as expected.
Secondary Analyses

82. Secondary analyses were conducted to
explore the extent to which racial identity
attitudes could be predicted from demo-
graphic characteristics. Several additional
regression analyses were conducted. In
these analyses, social class indicators, racial
self-designation, class level, age, and sex
served as successive predictor variables, and
mean scores on the four racial identity atti-
tude scales served as the dependent vari-
ables.
Results of the regression analyses indi-
cated that racial identity attitudes were not
significantly predicted by social class indi-
cators, academic class, racial self-designa-
tion, or age (all Fs < 1). However, sex sig-
nificantly predicted preencounter, /3 =
-0.26, F(l, 64) = 12.53,p < .005, and inter-
nalization attitudes, /3 = 0.16, F(l, 164) =
4.5, p < .05, but not encounter or immer-
sion-emersion attitudes. The direction of
the beta weights suggests that black men
were more likely to endorse preencounter
attitudes and less likely to endorse inter-
nalization attitudes than black women.
To explore the nature of these two ob-
served sex differences further, one-way
analyses of variance comparing men and
women on each of the dependent and inde-
pendent variables were performed. Means,
standard deviations, and F ratios for these
analyses are shown in Table 2. The analyses
of variance revealed that in addition to lower

83. preencounter and higher internalization
attitudes, black women also exhibited sig-
nificantly higher levels of inner directedness
than did black men.
Discussion
Since the early 1970s, black scholars have
speculated about the relation between racial
identity attitudes and self-actualization, or
the nigrescence process, and affective states
that are presumably related to each stage of
racial identity (e.g., Butler, 1975; Cross, 1971;
Thomas, 1971). The bulk of existing theo-
retical literature seems to suggest that an
individual's progression from Stage 1
(preencounter) to Stage 4 (internalization)
is marked by transitions from feelings of
inferiority to self-acceptance and from
non-self-actualizing to self-actualizing atti-
tudes and behaviors. The results of the
present study, which is the first to examine
empirically the relation between racial
identity attitudes, self-actualization
tendencies, and affective states, suggest that
the racial identity process either may be
more complex then previous authors had
speculated or it may be a more difficult
process to operationalize for diagnostic
purposes than one might anticipate.
Consistent with previous theory were the
obtained relations between preencounter
attitudes and the other personality variables.
That is, the findings that preencounter at-

84. titudes were related to lower levels of time
competence and higher levels of other di-
rectedness (i.e., self-actualizing tendencies,
according to Shostrom, 1963) as well as to
feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, hyper-
sensitivity, anxiety, and lack of self-accep-
tance are consistent with theoretical dis-
cussions in which the preencounter stage is
described as least mentally healthy (e.g.,
Butler, 1975; Cross, 1971).
The relation between immersion attitudes
and affective states and self-actualizing
tendencies was least consistent with con-
temporary theory about the developmental
process. Instead of indicating that these
attitudes reflect a positive sense of self due
to the acceptance of one's blackness, the re-
sults of the present study suggest that im-
mersion attitudes (and by implication the
immersion stage) are affectively similar to
preencounter attitudes. The only difference
between the two types of attitudes and the
only relation that was anticipated by prior
theory was that anger was related to im-
mersion attitudes. However, use in the
present study of the SCL-90 Hostility scale
to operationalize anger feelings does not
permit one to determine whether the anger
was directed inward (i.e., toward oneself in
response to one's previous identity resolu-
tions) or outward (i.e., toward society in re-
sponse to discrimination). The latter form
presumably is more healthy, and to the ex-
tent that outward-directed anger typifies

85. 438 THOMAS A. PARHAM AND JANET E. HELMS
immersion attitudes, it is still possible that
immersion attitudes represent somewhat
healthier adjustment than preencounter
attitudes.
Cross (1978) speculated that encounter
attitudes are a muted form of immersion
attitudes and that both are alike in their
positive orientation toward blackness. The
results of the present study suggest that the
positive perspective may be more charac-
teristic of encounter attitudes than of any of
the other attitudes, including immersion. In
fact, the present findings that encounter
attitudes were predictive of feelings of per-
sonal adequacy, self-acceptance, and low
levels of anxiety indicate that encounter at-
titudes, as operationalized in the present
study, may capture the euphoric feelings
about becoming black that Cross discussed,
but not the feelings of guilt and anxiety that
have also been considered part of the en-
counter stage. It is possible that entry into
the encounter stage is a uniformly positive
experience rather than a mixture of positive
and negative; it is also possible that current
measures may not be sensitive enough to
capture the subtle nuances of affective states
making up this stage.
At first glance, it is surprising that inter-
nalization attitudes were not significantly

86. related to any of the measures of affective
states or self-actualizing tendencies. How-
ever, a closer examination of the regression
analyses indicates that these attitudes
seemed to be related to the other measures
in the same direction as were encounter at-
titudes, though not significantly so. One
possible explanation for the lack of signifi-
cant relations is that internalization atti-
tudes may represent a muted form of en-
counter attitudes, that is, encounter atti-
tudes with the emotion removed. In his
early descriptions of internalization, Cross
(1971) described it as a stage governed pri-
marily by the intellect rather than affect.
Because all of the measures used in the
present study were measures of affect of
some sort, it is possible that they were not
suitable for capturing the rational focus of
internalization attitudes. Further studies,
which should include measures of cognitive
style, affective state, and racial identity at-
titude, might be useful in providing addi-
tional insight about the internalization stage
and consequent attitudes.
Although not all of our hypotheses were
confirmed, the present findings suggest that
emotions not only are present but also may
be a vital part of the conversion experience.
Also, to the extent that one can infer stages
from attitudes, speculation that the domi-
nant affect varies at different stages of the
process (e.g., Pugh, 1972) appears to have
received some support from the obtained
results. Nevertheless, the results do raise

87. some interesting theoretical, methodological,
and counseling practice issues in addition to
those already discussed.
An interesting theoretical possibility is
that cognitive aspects of the racial identifi-
cation process and affective aspects may not
evolve at the same rate or by the same pro-
cess. Studies of attitudes in other areas of
psychology have often reported lack of con-
gruence between cognitive, affective, and
behavioral elements (e.g., Kutner, Wilkins,
& Yarrow, 1952; La Piere, 1934; Weitz, 1972),
though no commonly accepted explanation
for discrepancies seems to exist. In the
present instance, it is possible that cognitive
aspects of the racial identification process
such as attitudes and perceptions may evolve
by a stagewise linear model, as Hall et al.
(1972) found, but that affective states evolve
by a different model. If such is the case,
then one possibility is that a typology con-
sisting of healthy and unhealthy affective
states might be most useful in interpreting
the relation between racial identity attitudes
and affect. Thus, on the basis of the data at
hand, a predominance of preencounter and
immersion attitudes might predict un-
healthy affective adjustment and a pre-
dominance of encounter and internalization
attitudes might predict healthy affective
adjustment. If this typology is accurate at
all, then it may provide a diagnostic frame-
work by which the counselor can decide
whether to intercede in the black client's
self-actualization process to promote better

88. adjustment. That is, clients demonstrating
a preponderance of preencounter or im-
mersion attitudes might require such inter-
cession, whereas clients demonstrating a
preponderance of encounter or internaliza-
tion attitudes might not.
Of course, it is also possible that Cross's
(1971) model is no longer an accurate de-
scription of black people's reactions to the
social conditions that they face. It is
BLACK STUDENTS' RACIAL IDENTITY 439
tempting, for instance, to hypothesize that
the model accurately characterized the ni-
grescence process of black people in the late
1960s and early 1970s hut that present day
hlacks, struggling to find their identity, are
influenced hy a different set of personal,
social, and environmental factors; as a con-
sequence, they may have learned to adapt
differently than did their predecessors. If
such is the case, then perhaps a stagewise
progression of the cognitive aspects of
identity development is no longer accurate
either. However, the questions of whether
the Cross model should be modified in the
manner discussed and whether the model
continues to be useful and accurate can only
be answered through additional empirical
investigations involving measurement of
racial identity attitudes in conjunction with
various operationalizations of adjustment.

89. In addition, longitudinal studies of identity
development are greatly needed.
In interpreting the results of the present
study, it is important to take several meth-
odological issues into consideration. First
of all, only one aspect of a person's iden-
tity—his or her adaptations to race and ra-
cism—was investigated. Thus, even when
the regression analyses were significant, only
8% (interpersonal sensitivity and anxiety) to
18% (time competence) of the variance was
explained by linear combinations of racial
identity attitudes. This range of effect sizes
compares favorably with the median effect
size of 8% of explained variance reported by
Haase, Waechter, and Solomon (1982) in
their review of univariate analyses reported
in counseling research, but one still wonders
what other factors might contribute to a
person's identity. Perhaps other demo-
graphic characteristics (e.g., social class) may
influence the person's global identity to some
extent. Nevertheless, the results of the
present study suggest that where racial as-
pects of that identity were concerned, only
sex seemed to be a significant demographic
predictor. Black women exhibited lower
levels of preencounter attitudes and higher
levels of internalization attitudes and
inner-directed self-actualizing tendencies
than black men. It is possible that because
black women experience less diversity of
experiences in white culture than black men
do, they are more likely to rely on themselves
for self-definition and are less likely to be-

90. lieve that their life situation can be improved
by identifying with white attitudes and val-
ues (Hooks, 1981; Jackson, 1973). In any
case, it is difficult to form concrete conclu-
sions about the relation between racial
identity attitudes and demographic factors
because although the sample size used in the
present study was adequate for the analyses
used, it was not of sufficient size or diversity
to permit separate within-group analyses on
the basis of various demographic charac-
teristics (e.g., sex, age). Further studies
involving samples of different ages, educa-
tional levels, and socioeconomic statuses are
needed.
The manner in which the different vari-
ables were operationalized in the present
study is also open to debate. For instance,
the Racial Identity Attitude Scale (Parham
& Helms, 1981), used to assess subjects' racial
identity attitudes, may require some modi-
fications. Although the reliabilities of the
subscales are comparable with those of other
personality instruments, the measure's
usefulness could possibly be enhanced by
improving the reliabilities (Anastasi, 1982).
Such scale refinement seems particularly
important because the Racial Identity At-
titude Scale is one of only a few instruments
designed to measure black personality
characteristics (cf. Milliones, 1980; Snowden
& Todman, 1982), and for it to become a
commonly accepted tool in counseling as-
sessment, it probably must be shown to be a

91. marked improvement over the more general
measures that already exist.
In addition, one might argue about the use
of nonblack measures to operationalize af-
fective states and self-actualizing tendencies.
For example, for a person to obtain a high
score on the POI Self-Acceptance Scale, he
or she must endorse individualistically ori-
ented items. However, theorists such as
Akbar (Luther X, 1974) suggest that such an
orientation is antithetical to healthy black
development. As a result, one may not find
the expected relations between variables
that evolve from black personality theory
because the available personality measures
are not consistent with such theory.
Regardless of the theoretical and meth-
odological issues raised, the results of the
present study do offer some possibilities for
understanding the dyamics of black people
and for counseling those who are displaying
440 THOMAS A. PARHAM AND JANET E. HELMS
different levels of the various racial identity
attitudes. In general, counselors who work
with black clients who are struggling with
racial identity issues should explore both the
cognitive and affective aspects of their con-
cerns because the two may not be related in
an obvious manner. The goal of the coun-
selor should be to help black clients integrate

92. the various aspects of their identity by be-
coming aware of what they think about their
racial identity as well as how they feel about
it. In other words, counselors should avoid
merely inferring adjustment from stated
attitudes and should actively explore the
client's emotional adaptations. Both
counselors and clients may also need to be
aware that although some of the feelings
associated with particular racial identity
attitudes are unpleasant and may require
resolution, such feelings may be a natural
part of the nigrescence process. Therefore,
mental health workers (and researchers)
should be cautioned against inferring serious
pathology where none exists.
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Received May 4,1984
Revision received November 28,1984 •
Personality and Soc ial Psychology Review
1998, Vol. 2, No. 1, 18-39

96. Copyright O 1998 by
Lawrence Erlbaurn Associates, Inc.
Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity: A
Reconceptualization of
African American Racial Identity
Robert M. Sellers
Department ofPsychology
University ofMichigan
Mia A. Smith and J. Nicole Shelton
Department ofPsychology
University of Virginia
Stephanie A. J. Rowley
Department ofPsychology
University ofNorth Carolina
Tabbye M. Chavous
Department ofPsychology
University of Virginia
Research on African American racial identity has utilized 2
distinct approaches. The
mainstream approach hasfocused on universal properties
associated with ethnic and
racial identities. In contrast, the underground approach
hasfocused on documenting
the qualitative meaning of being African American, with an
emphasis on the unique
cultural and historical experiences of African Americans. The
Multidimensional

97. Model ofRacial Identity (MMRI) represents a synthesis of the
strengths of these two
approaches. The underlying assumptions associated with the
model are explored. The
modelproposes 4 dimensions ofAfrican American racial
identity: salience, centrality,
regard, and ideology. A description of these dimensions is
provided along with a
discussion ofhow they interact to influence behavior at the level
ofthe event. We argue
that the MMRI has the potential to make contributions to
traditional research
objectives of both approaches, as well as to provide the impetus
to explore new
questions.
African Americans' experiences in the United States
differ significantly from those of members of other
ethnic groups. Although many ethnic groups have ex-
perienced discrimination and oppression in the United
States, the form of oppression that African Americans
have faced is unique. While the worthiness of other
ethnic groups has often been questioned upon their
arrival in American society, no other groups' humanity
was denied them by the U.S. Constitution. African
Americans were defined legally as property by the
United States government for almost a century. For
nearly 100 years after the end of slavery, laws were
enacted with the expressed purpose of making social
contact between Whites and African Americans illegal.
Such laws effectively relegated African Americans to
the status of second-class citizens. Because they were
brought to the United States against their will and
systematically deprived of access to their indigenous
culture, African Americans were not afforded the

98. choice of whether to assimilate into the new culture or
retain their indigenous culture. As a result, traditional
African culture has had to be grafted onto the cultural
practices of the European/American society to form an
original cultural expression. The African American
celebration of Kwanza is a good example of this union.
As a result of their experiences with oppression in
this society, the concept of race has historically played
a major role in the lives of African Americans. Al-
though race has dubious value as a scientific classifica-
tion system, it has had real consequences for the life
experiences and life opportunities of African Ameri-
cans in the United States. Race is a socially constructed
concept which is the defining characteristic for African
American group membership. This does not deny the
importance of both traditional African and African
American culture in the phenomenon of racial identity
in African Americans. However, American society's
somewhat arbitrary categorization of individuals into
18
Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert M. Sellers,
Depart-
ment of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml
48109- 1109. E-mail: [email protected]
AFRICAN AMERICAN RACIAL IDENTITY
this racial group has resulted in the psychological uni-
fication of many individuals who vary a great deal in
their experiences and cultural expressions. The fact that
the experiences of African Americans are heterogene-

99. ous has resulted in variability in the significance and
qualitative meaning that they attribute to being a mem-
ber of the Black racial group. For instance, some indi-
viduals place little significance on race in defining who
they are, while others may see their racial membership
as the defining characteristic of their self-concept. Even
when individuals place similarly high levels of signifi-
cance on race in defining themselves, they may differ a
great deal in what they believe it means to be Black.'
One individual may believe that being Black means
congregating among other Blacks, while another may
believe being Black means that one should integrate
with Whites. It is the significance and meaning that
African Americans place on race in defining themselves
2
that we refer to as racial identity.
In this article, we introduce a new model of African
American racial identity-the Multidimensional Model
of Racial Identity (MMRI). This model provides a
conceptual framework for understanding both the sig-
nificance of race in the self-concepts of African Ameri-
cans and the qualitative meanings they attribute to being
members of that racial category. Along with this con-
ceptual framework, we propose a mechanism by which
racial identity influences individuals' situational ap-
praisals and behaviors. Before presenting the model, we
highlight the potential contributions of the MMRI and
place it within its historical context by presenting a brief
historical review of the way in which African American
racial identity has been conceptualized and investigated
in the psychological literature. Next, we discuss how
contemporary researchers have begun to conceptualize
ethnic identity to incorporate both the significance and
the meaning of their ethnic group membership. We will

100. then describe the four dimensions that comprise the
We purposefully make a distinction in our usage of the terms
Black and African American. The term Black is used as an
ambiguous
category that may or may not be inclusive of all persons of
African
descent, depending upon the individual's viewpoint. Some
African
Americans conceptualize the Black reference group as a group
that
is made up of African Americans only. Other African Americans
may
hold a more Pan-African view of the Black reference group, in
which
anyone of African descent is considered to be Black. Thus, we
use
the term Black when referring to the individuals' own pheno-
menological view ofthe make-up of their reference group. In
contrast,
we use the term African American to refer to those individuals
of
African descent who have received a significant portion of their
socialization in the United States. Thus, the term African
American
is culturally bound to a group of people within the context of
Ameri-
can society.
Although some researchers have argued against the term racial
identity in favor of the term ethnic identity to describe group
identity
within African Americans (e.g., Smith, 1989), we believe the
impor-
tance of the concept of race in the experiences of African
Americans

101. makes the former term preferable.
MMRI as well as some preliminary evidence of its
operationalization. Next, we discuss how both the sig-
nificance of race and the meaning of race interact to
influence behavior at both -the molecular and molar
level. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the
contributions of the MMRI to our understanding of
African American racial identity.
Brief History of Racial
Identity Research
Racial identity has been one of the most heavily
researched areas that focuses on the psychological ex-
periences of African Americans. Since its infancy, ra-
cial identity researchers have grappled with the signifi-
cance and meaning of the construct (Cross, 1991).
Much of the early research viewed African American
racial identity within the context of this group's stigma-
tized status in American society, with little regard for
the role of culture (Clark & Clark, 1939; R. Horowitz,
1939). Gaines and Reed (1994, 1995) refer to this
research tradition as the mainstream approach. This
approach primarily has focused on the universal aspects
of group identity, using African Americans as a specific
example. In the late 1960s another group of psycholo-
gists, primarily African Americans, began to redefine
African American racial identity with particular empha-
sis on the uniqueness of their oppression and cultural
experiences. This research constitutes what Gaines and
Reed (1994, 1995) refer to as the underground perspec-
3tive. Although the mainstream approach owes its roots
to the work of Gordon Allport (1954), the underground
approach has a lineage that dates back to the pioneering

102. work of W. E. B. DuBois (1903).
Initially, Gaines and Reed (1994, 1995) distin-
guished between the mainstream and underground ap-
proaches in their analysis of the research literature on
prejudice. In their analysis, these investigators sug-
gested that the mainstream approach is concerned pri-
marily with examining universal cognitive and affec-
tive processes (biases and errors) to explain how and
why individuals (regardless of race) exhibit prejudicial
behavior. This approach suggests that any group can act
in a prejudicial manner or display in-group bias. In
contrast, the underground (or Afrocentric) approach
emphasizes the historical and cultural factors associated
Gaines and Reed (1994, 1995) use the term underground to
reflect the fact that the research from this approach has
traditionally
received relatively little recognition from the broader
psychological
community. Like Gaines and Reed, we do not wish to convey
secretiveness or subversive activity when we use the term
under-
ground. The researchers within this approach have held a
continuing
public discourse regarding their work that has been presented
and
published in sources that are available to everyone. The
applicability
of the term underground comes from the unfortunate reality that
the
scholarship has been virtually ignored by mainstream
psychology.
19

103. SELLERS, SMITH, SHELTON, ROWLEY, & CHAVOUS
with African Americans' experiences in the United
States. Prejudice is seen as more than an error or bias in
cognitive processing with an associated affective re-
sponse. The underground approach views racial preju-
dice as a by-product of America's history of slavery and
exploitation. Racial prejudice is viewed within the con-
text of the White society's need to resolve the disso-
nance between the high moral ideas that embody being
an American and America's immoral treatment of Af-
rican Americans. In actuality, much of Gaines and
Reed's (1994, 1995) discussion of prejudice focuses on
the differences in Allport and DuBois's conceptualiza-
tion of the identity development of African Americans
in the face of prejudice.
Mainstream Approach to African
American Racial Identity
Allport (1954) maintained that living in a racist
environment must have negative consequences for the
African American psyche. As a result, he assumed that
African Americans were forced to either devalue as-
pects of themselves that reminded them of the stigma
of being African American, or devalue the broader
society for its prejudice against them, in order to func-
tion. This notion of an unhealthy, stigmatized identity
was consistent with the predominant conceptualiza-
tions of the African American self-concept prior to the
late 1960s (Clark, 1965; R. Horowitz, 1939; Kardiner
& Ovesey, 1951). Subsequently, much of the early
research on African American racial identity from the
mainstream perspective presumed that self-hatred was

104. a significant aspect of the African American self-con-
cept (Cross, 1991).
As the mainstream approach has matured, much of
the focus has been on understanding the cognitive proc-
esses and structures of different group (or social) iden-
tities within the self-concept (e.g., Cheek & Briggs,
1982; Gurin & Markus, 1988; Hogg, 1992; Markus,
1977; Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; J. C. Turner &
Oakes, 1989) while ignoring the unique experiences of
each group. For mainstream researchers, racial identity
within African Americans is simply one example of
these processes. The focus has been on assessing the
common psychological structures associated with
group identities of different racial/ethnic groups. Based
on this focus, mainstream researchers tend to employ
measures of group identity that are applicable to mem-
bers of a variety of groups (e.g., Luhtanen & Crocker,
1992; Phinney, 1992). For example, Luhtanen and
Crocker (1992) developed a collective self-esteem scale
that measures individuals' attitudes and feelings about
a group with which they strongly identify. The refer-
ence group individuals choose may be based on race,
gender, ethnicity, region, occupation, or something
else. Presumably, persons' responses to a particular
group are comparable to the responses of another group
they may select or even to other persons' responses to
different groups. Phinney's (1990, 1992) measure of
ethnic identity emphasizes a universal process that is
associated with individuals' development of an ethnic
identity. Phinney de-emphasizes the unique history and
experiences associated which each ethnic group in fa-
vor of promoting a generic model that emphasizes the
similarities across ethnic groups so that comparisons
can be made across them.

105. The mainstream approach to racial/ethnic identity
has tended to focus on the significance of race or
ethnicity in individual lives. For instance, both Phinney
(1992) and Crocker (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990) have
a concept in their model that deals with the importance
individuals place on their racial/ethnic group member-
ship. Crocker and her colleagues address this dimension
of racial identity with their membership subscale in the
Collective Self-Esteem measure (Luhtanen & Crocker,
1992). Phinney also measures a similar construct in her
Multi-Group Ethnic Identity measure (Phinney, 1992).
To their credit, Crocker and her colleagues distinguish
between the significance of race to an individual's
self-concept and the affective and evaluative feelings
that the individual holds for his or her racial/ethnic
group by delineating a separate construct that they call
private self-esteem. Cross (1991) notes the historical
importance of making such a distinction in investigat-
ing racial identity and self-esteem in African Americans
as some of our recent research on the relationship
between racial identity and self-esteem suggests
(Rowley, Sellers, Chavous, & Smith, in press).
In its focus on universal properties and its emphasis
on the significance of a group identity to an individual,
the mainstream approach also has produced a great deal
of research describing contexts in which a particular
group identity is most likely to be salient (e.g., Abrams,
Thomas, & Hoggs, 1990; Cota & Dion, 1986; Kite,
1992; McGuire & McGuire, 1982; J. C. Turner, Oakes,
Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). Research in self-categori-
zation and social identity suggests that the social con-
text of a particular situation can make various aspects
of an individual's identity more or less accessible to
them (e.g., Abrams et al., 1990; Cota & Dion, 1986;