Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 37, No. 4, 2018, pp. 275-296
© 2018 Guilford Publications, Inc.
The authors thank Sheila Browne, Amie Grills, William Kurtines, and Aida Varela
for their assistance in collecting participant data. Further, the authors acknowledge the
helpful contributions of Onawa La Belle in preparing the data.
Address correspondence to Alexandra M. Burgess, 486 Chandler St, Sullivan 241-B,
Worcester, MA, 01602; E-mail: aburgess@worcester.edu
ACADEMICALLY STIGMATIZED STUDENTS
BURGESS ET AL.
STIGMA CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVALUATIVE
CONCERNS: A PATHWAY TO PSYCHOLOGICAL
DISTRESS FOR ACADEMICALLY STIGMATIZED
STUDENTS
ALEXANDRA M. BURGESS
Worcester State University
KRISTINE M. MOLINA
University of Illinois at Chicago
KAVITA BHANDARI AND PATRICIA M. DIBARTOLO
Smith College
The psychological health of ethnic minority college students, specifcally Black
and Hispanic/Latinx students, warrants particular attention given their experience
of ethnic stigmatization in higher education settings (e.g., lowered expectations
surrounding intellectual ability). When faced with ethnic stigmatization, espe-
cially in an inherently evaluative collegiate context, concerns about negative per-
formance evaluation may trigger increased threat vigilance, self-monitoring for
mistakes, and rumination about potential failure. Thus, the evaluative concerns
component of perfectionism may be a mechanism through which ethnic stigma
consciousness relates to psychological distress for these students. The current
investigation explored the relationships between stigma consciousness, evalua-
tive concerns perfectionism, and psychological distress (i.e., anxiety, depression)
in a large sample of Hispanic/Latinx and Black college students in the United
States. The moderated mediational analysis revealed that for Hispanic/Latinx stu-
dents evaluative concerns served as a mechanism through which ethnic stigma
consciousness related to psychological distress. For Black students, there was no