Examining Multiracial Pride, Identity-based Challenges, and Discrimination: An Exploratory Investigation among Biracial Emerging Adults

Abstract

This study investigated the main and interactive effects of identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride on psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, we examined whether these associations may differ by Biracial sub-group (e.g., Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority) given their unique racial experiences. Participants were 326 Biracial emerging adults (M_age = 19.57 years old; 75.2% female) recruited from three public universities in the United States for an online survey. For all Biracial groups, identity-based challenges were associated with greater psychological distress. After testing a series of competing multi-group regression models, results indicated that the relations between distress and our predictors: identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride do indeed differ across Biracial sub-group. The most apparent and unique differences were displayed by the Black-White Biracial sub-group. These findings highlight identity-based challenges as a unique risk in the Biracial population and suggest that a principled comparison between Biracial sub-groups is necessary to tease apart group-specific associations between these constructs and psychological distress.

The Multiracial¹ population in the United States is vastly growing, with growth between 2014 and 2060 estimated at 226% (Colby & Ortman, 2015). With changes in how individuals can classify themselves in the recent U.S. censuses (i.e., being able to check multiple boxes for race in 2000 and 2010) and subsequent changes in research demographic questionnaires, individuals who were typically categorized as monoracial may now elect to endorse a better fitting Biracial/Multiracial ethnic-racial label (Jones & Bullock, 2013). These trends of increased public salience and representation are allowing this previously hidden population to come out of the shadows and have coincided with numerous scholarly articles on ethnic-racial socialization (Atkin & Yoo, 2019), ethnic-racial identity (Yip et al., 2019), and discrimination (Seaton et al., 2018) urging scholars to begin to understand this increasingly visible, quickly growing, yet poorly-understood population. Unfortunately, there is currently a dearth of research on the cultural assets this group draws upon to exhibit resilience in the face of racialized stressors.

According to Critical Multiracial Theory, or MultiCrit (Harris, 2016), Biracial emerging adults, defined as those with monoracial biological parents of different racial groups, are uniquely marginalized in the context of the U.S. due to the monoracial paradigm that governs a monocentric society in which race is constructed in immutable and rigid categories. The monoracial paradigm presents unique risks to Biracial emerging adults that have important implications for their mental health outcomes. Specifically, monocentricity privileges single race identities as the norm and pathologizes Multiraciality as abnormal and exotic (Jackson & Samuels, 2019), which could lead to identity-based challenges, or the internal struggles Multiracial individuals face in developing a strong ethnic-racial identity and sense of racial belonging (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). Despite living in and inherently being affected by the U.S.’s monoracial paradigm of race, Multiracial people have agency and the ability to build resiliency in the face of these risk factors. In particular, we suggest that Multiracial pride is a factor that may be promotive of mental health and protective in the face of risks, thereby warranting further study.

Aspects of identity such as identity-based challenges and Multiracial pride may be particularly important to understand during the period of emerging adulthood, as this developmental stage is characterized by increasing complexity in one’s racial identity development (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 for review), from greater integration of racial identity with other forms of social identity (Erikson, 1968) to an expansion of the salience and relevance of racial identity across domains (e.g., selection of a major in college; Syed, 2010). Indeed, relative to earlier periods in development, many sociocognitive abilities are well-developed in emerging adulthood (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014) allowing for a deeper understanding of one’s identity in context that may also be fueled by factors such as discrimination (Branscombe et al., 1999). Despite a broad understanding of emerging adulthood as an important time for the study of discrimination and identity in racially/ethnically marginalized emerging adults, very little quantitative scholarship has focused on the effect of these factors, and the potential interactions between these factors, on the psychological functioning of Multiracial emerging adults. Given the limited research in this population, this study examines the direct effects and interactions among identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride in relation to psychological distress among Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, because few studies have attended to potential differences between Biracial sub-groups, each of which have uniquely racialized experiences due to their different racial-ethnic heritages, this study takes a data-driven, comparative approach in examining how these associations may differ between Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx²-White, and minority-minority Biracials³.

Identity-based Challenges

Across the various theoretical approaches to Multiracial identity, a number of ‘ideal’ identity outcomes have been asserted, including identification with a monoracial group, assertion of an integrated Multiracial identity, or adoption of context-specific and fluid identity (Rockquemore et al., 2009). Yet, whatever the content of their ultimate identity, the process of identity formation for Multiracials may be additionally complex in US society due to multiple contextual and societal factors including a monoracial paradigm that forces individuals into false racial categories (e.g., the “one-drop” rule) and racialized social hierarchies that privilege some groups versus others (Harris, 2016). Because of these societal factors, the process of identity formation for Multiracials may include some type of identity-based challenges. Identity-based challenges may be defined as the internal pressures and difficulties conforming to societies conception of race and difficulties in forming a strong racial identity (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). As Multiracial emerging adults contend with these societal limitations to their identity and authentic selves, these struggles can potentially place them at risk for negative psychological outcomes (Franco & O’Brien, 2018).

While there has been much theoretical work on Biracial identity throughout the last 60 years (Rockquemore et al., 2009) there has been much less empirical work, especially quantitative work, on the relations between identity processes and psychological functioning in Multiracial populations. Nonetheless, there is growing evidence that factors such as identity-based challenges indeed pose a risk to the psychological wellbeing and functioning of Multiracial individuals. For instance, two recent studies have found that identity-based challenges are significantly associated with greater depressive symptoms – an important component of psychological distress (Kessler et al., 2002) – and low self-esteem in diverse Multiracial adult samples (Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019; Franco & O’Brien, 2018). Another quantitative study asked Black-White Biracial adults to rank the level of pressure they felt from society, peers, and family to identify as monoracial, finding that they ranked pressure from society the highest, followed by pressure from peers, with relatively low pressure from family (Coleman & Carter, 2007). While this pressure was not associated with depressive symptoms in their sample, pressure from peers was significantly related to social anxiety. Collectively this highlights that Biracial individuals’ identity-based challenges seem to be linked to negative mental health outcomes. However, it is important to note that despite facing unique risks in a monocentric society, Biracials do not have more psychological problems than monoracial peers (Jackson et al., 2012), and differences may exist between different Biracial sub-groups. This study will expand upon previous research by examining these processes in a young adult sample, investigating how identity-based challenges, discrimination, Biracial pride, and their nuanced interactions may impact psychological distress, and exploring how these relations may vary based on Biracial sub-group.

Discrimination and Biracial Populations

Racial/ethnic discrimination is a pernicious risk factor faced by all minoritized populations that involves being treated negatively or unfairly based on race or ethnicity and has been robustly associated with negative mental health (Benner, 2017; Benner et al., 2018). Biracial populations may face numerous forms of racial/ethnic discrimination, such as negative treatment based on assumed racial/ethnic group membership inferred from their phenotype (i.e., identity-incongruent discrimination; Franco & Franco, 2016), unfair treatment targeted at the actual racial/ethnic group or groups to which they belong, and monoracism, or discrimination that targets individuals of more than one race because they do not fit into the discrete monoracial categories posited by societies monoracial paradigm (Johnston & Nadal, 2010)⁴. Monoracism may be observed through invalidation of a Multiracial person’s identity, objectification or exclusion based on an individual’s membership in multiple racial groups, and pressuring individuals to identify with only one race and/or to act and look a certain way to be recognized as a member of one of their monoracial groups (Harris, 2016). Because all of these aforementioned actions, including acts of monoracism, can be considered unfair, negative treatment on the basis of membership in one or more racial/ethnic groups, we subsequently use the umbrella term “discrimination” to refer to these harmful (Benner et al., 2018) and pervasive (Harris, 2016; Johnston & Nadal, 2010) experiences.

The limited number of studies examining the impact of racial/ethnic discrimination in Biracial and Multiracial samples suggest that discrimination is, as among monoracial groups, associated with worse psychological functioning. For instance, Jackson et al. (2012) observed that Multiracial discrimination (i.e., discrimination attributed to participants’ Multiracial background) was associated with greater levels of psychological distress and negative affect; this effect was only partially reduced for those who perceived little conflict between their various monoracial identities. In another study of Multiracial adults, Multiracial discrimination was directly associated with decreased life satisfaction, and this association was partly mediated by participants seeing themselves as more similar to other Multiracial people (i.e., self-stereotyping) after exposure to discrimination (Giamo et al., 2012). In two measurement validation studies, subscales relating to discrimination faced by Multiracial people were associated with negative psychological outcomes such a greater depression (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011; Yoo et al., 2016) as well as greater anxiety and stress (Yoo et al., 2016). A small but growing body of research has, therefore, begun to document the harmful effects of discrimination on the psychological functioning of Multiracial individuals; these findings largely align with what has been demonstrated in meta-analyses of studies with primarily monoracial populations (Benner et al., 2018). These studies, however, have not considered whether and how the effects of discrimination may potentiate internal difficulties forming a strong racial identity and make these identity-based challenges even more predictive of negative outcomes such as psychological distress.

Interplay between Identity-based Challenges and Discrimination

Identity-based challenges and racial/ethnic discrimination can be both considered racialized stressors that impact mental health, yet there are important conceptual distinctions that are important to acknowledge. While discrimination consists of external experiences of mistreatment due to race or ethnicity, identity-based challenges for Biracials are internal experiences related to difficulties forming a strong racial identity (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). Logically, discrimination and identity-based challenges may fuel each other; external invalidation and discrimination against one or all of an individual’s racial groups may exacerbate existing challenges with racial belonging and understanding what race means to that person’s identity – and vice-versa. Therefore, these two risk factors may interact to predict greater distress than either factor would in isolation.

In sum, it is important to understand the impact of one’s external experiences (i.e., discrimination) and internal experiences at integrating and formulating their identity (i.e., identity-based challenges) when attempting to understand risks for psychological distress in this population. Developmentally, identity-based challenges and discrimination may be particularly important to study in adolescence and young adulthood, as the rapid ethnic-racial identity development that occurs during this time (Umaña-Taylor, 2018) may be ‘steered off course’ by the development of significant identity-based challenges. Finally, given that discrimination often exists in conjunction with identity-based challenges – both serving as risks for negative psychological outcomes – it is of paramount importance to understand if resilience factors such as Multiracial pride buffer against these two risk factors.

Multiracial Pride

Multiracial pride has been conceptualized as the positive feelings associated with being a Multiracial person (Cheng & Lee, 2009; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). These positive feelings associated with racial group membership have been studied with constructs such as positive racial affect (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014), private regard (Sellers et al., 1998), and ethnic-racial affirmation (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014); overall, these constructs share an underlying focus on the affective component of racial identity, which we and others have broadly referred to using the term pride. In a meta-analysis of diverse racially/ethnically minoritized youth, pride was found to be related to numerous adaptive psychological outcomes as a main effect (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). Examining Multiracial pride specifically, a small body of literature similarly points to pride being positively related to different metrics of psychological functioning. For instance, Multiracial pride has been shown to be positively correlated with desirable outcomes such as self-esteem (r = .22) and social connectedness (r = .35; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). Moreover, pride has been shown to mediate the link between caregiver’s cultural humility orientation and Multiracial adults’ depressive symptoms, where pride was linked to fewer depressive symptoms (Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019). When recalling positive experiences of being Biracial and Multiracial, individuals expressed greater identity integration (Cheng & Lee, 2009), or greater harmony between one’s different monoracial group identities. This suggests pride is a key part of identity for Biracial and Multiracial people and may be associated with desirable psychological outcomes as a main effect. However, these previously cited studies on Multiracials and Rivas-Drake et al.’s (2014) meta-analysis pointing to main effects of pride do not consider the impact of risk factors such as identity-based challenges and discrimination. When considering these risk factors, it is possible that Multiracial pride may continue to serve a promotive function (i.e., functions the same regardless of risk factor level), but it is also possible the pride may serve as a protective factor in this context (i.e., functions when risk is high/‘interacts’ with a risk factor; Masten et al., 2009).

Challenges and Potential Protective Factors

While racial affect and pride have been shown to be promotive, or associated with positive mental health as a main effect (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014), a recent meta-analysis by Yip and colleagues (2019) suggests that, across diverse samples of minority youth, neither racial affect, nor any other specific dimension of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) has consistently protected against the negative impact of discrimination (i.e., functioned as a moderator where high levels nullify the harmful association between discrimination and mental health). However, positive racial affect may still function as a protective factor against other notable risks faced by the Biracial population, namely identity-based challenges. Furthermore, accounting for both discrimination and identity-based challenges concurrently may help tease apart the conditions under which Multiracial pride is protective. Indeed, individuals who are able to develop Multiracial pride in the context of societal messages that perpetuate monoracism may not experience strong internal identity-based challenges. Meta-analytic work by Yip and colleagues (2019) suggests that private regard, a dimension of ERI synonymous with pride pertaining to positive feelings about one’s racial/ethnic group membership (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014), does not moderate the link between discrimination and negative mental health outcomes such as psychological distress. However, it is possible that accounting for Biracials’ internal identity-based challenges in addition to discrimination may help parse out when, how, and if pride may be protective as a moderator versus promotive, or predictive of desirable outcomes as a main effect (see Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). Based on the Biracial sub-group, the specific identity-based challenges individuals face, and the specific discrimination they are exposed to, there may be conditions where pride is necessary to reduce the impact of identity-based challenges and discrimination on psychological distress. Conversely, there may be other conditions where discrimination may interact and strengthen the association between identity-based challenges and distress regardless of pride. These conditions have not been addressed in a quantitative manner; therefore, the main purpose of this study is to examine the potentially complex associations between these variables psychological distress across four distinct groups of Biracial college students. We examine psychological distress as an outcome variable because (1) discrimination has been more strongly linked to psychological distress and negative mental health outcomes than other domains of functioning such as positive mental health (e.g., well-being, self-esteem, etc.; Paradies et al., 2015) and (2) because identity-based challenges are specifically conceptualized by Salahuddin and O’Brien (2011) to be linked to feelings of distress.

Comparisons among Biracial subgroups

Biracial is an inclusive term which, for the purposes of this study, covers all those with monoracial biological parents of two different racial groups. The Biracial population is, thus, very diverse, including those with minority-minority heritage (e.g., Latinx-Asian) as well as those with White heritage (e.g., Asian-White). Some Biracial individuals, depending on phenotype, may even be able to ‘pass’ as White and benefit from the White privilege not afforded to members of minoritized groups. Biracial people of different racial compositions also come from groups with very different sociopolitical histories in the U.S., face many different barriers, and ultimately may have very varied lived experiences (Harris, 2016). For instance, Asian-White and especially Latinx-White individuals may face discrimination where their ‘American-ness’ is questioned as a function of phenotype, especially if they are darker-skinned and/or less phenotypically White. Moreover, there may be more cultural authenticity policing in these two groups which are more likely to have immigrant family members, whereby not knowing the culture or language of their Asian or Latinx ethnic group may invite criticism and rejection from their respective Asian and Latinx communities (Romo, 2017). In addition, though the one-drop rule has largely led to acceptance of Biracial Black individuals in Black communities, Asian and Latinx communities are less likely to apply this rule (Gullickson & Morning 2011). While there is privilege in the ability of some Asian-White and Latinx-White individuals to have more freedom in how they identify by not being subjected to the one-drop rule, there may also be other sociopolitical and cultural factors that make it more difficult for Asian-White and Latinx-White to identify with their racial minority group. For example, some Asian countries privilege the idea of an ethnically homogeneous society, and mixed Asian children have historically been associated with war, resulting in the rejection of Biracial Asian children in Asian families and society (Root, 1997). Thus, the identity-based challenges and discrimination experiences of Asian-White and Latinx-White individuals may be rooted in not having the cultural knowledge to be accepted by their racial minority communities, or biases from extended family and community members rooted in historical trauma.

While little quantitative scholarship has focused on discrimination, identity-based challenges, and psychological functioning in minority-minority Biracials, it is likely that the associations between these factors may be different than in other Biracial sub-groups, as minority-minority Biracials have no claim to privileged White identity. Examining the effects of identity denial, or the action of someone telling a Biracial person how they should identify (Albuja et al., 2019), among two samples of minority-minority Biracial adults, Albuja et al. (2020) observed that greater exposure to identity denial was associated with participants feeling Biracial people were devalued by society. These feelings (i.e., lower Biracial public regard) were then associated with less belonging, greater conflict between one’s racial identities, and less perceived freedom to choose an identity (Albuja et al., 2020). While identity denial demonstrated similar associations with identity integration conflict and autonomy to choose an identity in Biracial adults with White heritage (Albuja et al., 2019), the fact remains that the discrimination and identity development experiences of minority-minority Biracials are likely unique due to individual’s membership in multiple low-status groups. Building upon this prior work, we examine whether the associations between discrimination, identity-based challenges, Multiracial pride and feelings of psychological distress differ between minority-minority Biracial emerging adults and those with White heritage.

Black-White Biracials may struggle with identity-based challenges attempting to come to terms with being part of the dominant group that has historically enslaved and systematically oppressed the other group they also have heritage from. This legacy of oppression has perpetuated, ‘one-drop rule’ thinking in today’s society and has resulted in Black-White Biracials being frequently assumed to be and treated as monoracial Black (Franco & Franco, 2016); Black-White Biracials are subsequently more likely to self-identify as Black (Rockquemore et al., 2009). Given this discrimination and invalidation of identity options, along with a social chasm between the lived experiences of Blacks and Whites in the U.S. (Rockquemore et al., 2009), the ways in which discrimination, internal challenges with racial identity, and pride in being Biracial impact psychological distress may indeed be different for Black-White Biracials.

In summary, there are many reasons why identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride may differentially impact Biracials’ distress levels depending on their specific racial composition. Relative to other Biracial sub-groups, unique associations between these variables and distress his may be especially salient among Black-White Biracials who have membership in the most historically disadvantaged racial group in the U.S., as well as minority-minority Biracials, who, unlike other Biracial sub-groups, have no White heritage and, thus, no claim to a racial group privileged in U.S. society (Albuja et al., 2020). This study intends to assess these potential differences by comparing how the aforementioned factors may differ in their associations with psychological distress based on Biracial sub-group.

Present Study

In the absence of significant quantitative literature and theoretical work that would propose specific Biracial sub-group differences with respect to our study variables, this study examines how two risk factors, identity-based challenges and discrimination, and a proposed protective factor: Multiracial pride (Cheng & Lee, 2009; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011), are associated with psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Furthermore, we employed a multi-group approach to examine if and how these relations differed between Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracial college students. psychological distress was chosen as our outcome of interest based on consistent linkages between discrimination and psychological distress in past meta-analytic work (Benner et al., 2018). Harris (2016) introduced the MultiCrit framework to better conceptualized the unique racialized experiences of Multiracial college students, highlighting their disproportionate exposure to discrimination relative to monoracial students and the various experiences on college campuses that affirm and, more frequently, deny their ability to express a Multiracial identity. Therefore, we assert that discrimination and identity – both challenges forming a strong racial identity and pride in one’s identity – may be particularly relevant to study in a sample of Biracial college students.

We hypothesized that (1) identity-based challenges and discrimination would be associated with greater psychological distress across our Biracial sample, whereas pride would promote less distress as a main effect based on meta-analytic work by Rivas-Drake and colleagues (2014). Secondly, we hypothesized that, given the history of slavery and unique social position of Black Americans in the U.S. and given that minority-minority Biracials do not have any claims to ‘whiteness’ or ‘White privilege’ (2) Black-White and minority-minority Biracials will endorse the highest number of unique associations, or associations different in significance magnitude, and/or direction that are not observed among other Biracial sub-groups. While we hypothesized that identity-based challenges would interact with discrimination and pride to interact with these two risk factors in complex ways, given the absence of quantitative literature examining these interactions and examining these interactions between sub-groups, we posited no specific hypotheses as to the nature of the interactions for each group and regarded these analyses as exploratory.

Method

Participants

Participants were 326 Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracial college students (75.2% female, 7.7% foreign-born) recruited as part of the LOVING Project, a three-site cross-sectional study at large, public universities in the Southeast (32.2% of the sample), Southwest (45.1%), and upper Midwest (22.7%) regions of the United States focused on socialization, identity, and mental health in Biracial and Multiracial college students. Biracial participants (M_age= 19.57, SD = 1.80, range=18 - 25), defined as having monoracial biological parents of different racial groups mostly self-identified as part of the middle class (85.5%), with fewer participants identifying themselves as ‘poor’ (2.5%) or ‘affluent’ (1.8%). Although there were data collected on an additional 30 Biracial participants, they belonged to groups that did not produce a large enough sample size to make reliable cross-group comparisons (e.g., Native American-Middle Eastern/North African). These participants were therefore not included in our 326-person Biracial sample.

Procedure

Each study site obtained individual approval from each of their respective Institutional Review Boards. After IRB approval, participants were recruited through university psychology pools and targeted on-campus advertisements, including placing announcements on the university homepage, posting flyers around campus, contacting past study participants, and targeting student organizations and courses related to the study of race and culture. Participants then completed online surveys through Qualtrics broadly assessing socialization, identity, discrimination, family functioning, and psychosocial functioning. Participants at the southeastern and midwestern universities received research credits for their participation, while participants from the southwestern university were financially compensated for their participation.

Measures

Identity-based challenges.

Identity-based challenges were assessed using the 5-item Challenges with Racial Identity subscale of the MCRS (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). Participants were presented with the item stem, “Based on your experiences as a Multiracial person, please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with the following statements” and were then asked to respond to sample items such as “I hide parts of myself when interacting with some friends” and “I feel the need to prove my racial identity to others.” Participants responded using a 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree) scale, with higher scores indicating greater identity-based challenges. Reliability was adequate (α = .777) and comparable to reliabilities of .67 and .68 found in past work (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011).

Discrimination.

Discrimination was assessed using the 3-item Brief Perceived Discrimination Scale (Armenta et al., 2013). Items were rated on a 1 (Never) to 4 (5 or more times) scale with greater scores indicating more frequent discrimination within the past year. Sample items included how frequently one has been “rejected by others because of your ethnicity/race” or been “treated unfairly or rudely by strangers because of your ethnicity/race”. Reliability was .819 in our Biracial sample.

Multiracial pride.

Multiracial pride was assessed using the 5-item Multiracial pride subscale of the MCRS (Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011). Using the same Multiracial-specific item stem presented before the identity-based challenges items, participants rated the degree to which they agree with statements such as “I am proud that I am Multiracial” and “I love being Multiracial” on a 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree) scale, with higher scores indicating greater levels of Multiracial pride. Similar to reliabilities in past work (α = .80; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011), reliability in our sample was .802. Despite using the term ‘Multiracial’ pride, this construct has been studied among Biracial and Multiracial populations (Cheng & Lee, 2009; Salahuddin & O’Brien, 2011).

Psychological distress.

Psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler 6 (Kessler et al., 2002), a 6-item scale asking participants how often they have felt things such as “anxious,” “worthless,” “hopeless,” “so depressed that nothing could cheer you up,” on a 1 (None of the time) to 5 (All of the time) scale. Greater scores indicate greater levels of psychological distress. The Kessler 6 has demonstrated good reliability in a nationally representative sample of American adults (α = .89; Kessler et al., 2002), and produced a reliability of .880 in our sample.

Results

Data Analytic Plan and Model Fit

All analyses were conducted using multi-group multiple regressions in Mplus 8.4. Missing data were addressed using Full Information Maximum Likelihood. The maximum amount of missingness among all study variables was 9.8% missingness for our measure of Multiracial pride. Identity-based challenges, discrimination, Multiracial pride, and all potential interactions between these variables were entered as predictors of psychological distress. Predictors were mean centered before creating interaction terms. An initial multiple regression was conducted using the whole sample to get a sense of how these variables predicted distress among a diverse Biracial sample. Then, the sample was split into 4 Biracial sub-groups (Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority) and 4 multiple regressions were run simultaneously allowing paths to be estimated freely for each group. A series of data-driven analyses were then conducted to determine if constraining paths across groups to equality (e.g., testing if the relation between discrimination and psychological distress was equal for Latinx-White and Asian-White Biracials) increased model parsimony without leading to significant decrements in model fit. This approach mirrors similar approaches by Albuja and colleagues (2019) who tested whether path analysis models may be constrained to equality between Biracial and Bicultural individuals (i.e., testing whether the entire model differs by Biracial/Bicultural status). We were, however, interested in going beyond whether the entire model differs by subgroup to examining which parts of the model, or which regression paths between Biracial sub-groups, can and cannot be stated to be equal across Biracial sub-groups. For those familiar with the study of measurement invariance, this approach is similar to establishing partial measurement invariance; when establishing partial measurement invariance, some items (or regression paths in our case) may be constrained to be equal across groups, while others cannot (van de Schoot et al., 2012).

We first conducted a principled analysis of competing analytical models before interpreting paths for our final analytical model in-depth. Because results and interpretations remained consistent without gender in the models, gender was excluded for model parsimony. Age and site were also excluded for greater parsimony⁵, as they were not associated with distress level and results did not differ by age nor site. In sum, variables that remained in our regression model were our three predictors (identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride), all two-way interactions, their 3-way interaction, and our outcome: psychological distress.

Descriptive statistics.

Means for each Biracial sub-group and means and correlations for the whole sample are included in Table 1. Examining correlations for the full sample, identity-based challenges were positively correlated with psychological distress (r = .347, p < .001) and discrimination (r = .238, p < .001), but negatively correlated with Multiracial pride (r = −.208, p < .001). Multiracial pride was associated with neither psychological distress (r = −.047, p = .398) nor discrimination (r = −.088, p = .113).

Table 1.

Means and correlations.

Variable	Bl-Wh (N = 75)	As-Wh (N = 93)	Lat-Wh (N = 86)	Min-min (N = 72)	Full Sample (N=326)
	M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
(1) Psychological Distress	2.438 (.939)	2.517 (.919)	2.222 (.802)	2.286 (.921)	2.369 (.903)	1	-	-	-
(2) Identity-based challenges	3.106 (1.150)	2.876 (1.081)	2.763 (1.206)	2.561 (1.153)	2.832 (1.162)	.347*	1	-	-
(3) Discrimination	2.009 (.783)	1.161 (.618)	1.461 (.530)	1.970 (.903)	1.742 (.746)	.156*	.238*	1	-
(4) Multiracial Pride	4.330 (1.192)	4.591 (.983)	4.735 (.804)	4.698 (.963)	4.591 (1.002)	−.047	−.208*	−.088	1

Note.

^*= p < .01.

Bl-Wh = Black-White. As-Wh = Asian-White. Lat-Wh = Latinx-White. Min-min = minority-minority.

Findings among the full sample.

Associations among Multiracial pride, identity-based challenges, and discrimination were first examined among the whole sample to understand how results would appear in the absence of a multi-group comparison. Multiple regression indicated that, for the full sample, only identity-based challenges emerged as a significant predictor, predicting greater psychological distress (b = .327, p < .001). Neither discrimination (b = .083, p = .144), Multiracial pride (b = .023, p = .686), nor any interactions were predictive of distress symptoms. However, given that identity and discrimination may vary widely based on the racial groups to which Biracial individuals belong, we were also interested in examining whether and how these associations varied by Biracial sub-group.

Choosing a model.

We conducted a principled comparison of competing models with the aim of examining the relations between our variables of interest across groups in a well-fitting, but parsimonious model. Good model fit was determined by a non-significant chi-square, a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .05, a Comparative Fit Index ≥ .95, and a Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .08 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Models were compared based on likelihood ratio tests, where a non-significant chi-square indicates that a more parsimonious model fits equally well as a less restrictive, less parsimonious model. Therefore, a minimally-restrictive first model was estimated where all regression paths for Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority Biracials were freely estimated. Given the lack of restrictions placed on the data, this model fit the data well (χ² (21) = 9.788, p = .9815, RMSEA = .000, CFI = 1, SRMR = .028). This fully-free model was compared to a highly restricted model where regression paths were constrained to be equal across all 4 groups. This highly restrictive model led to a significant decrement in model fit (Δχ² (21) = 46.219, p = .0012), so constraining associations to be equal across groups (essentially assuming differences between groups do not exist) while parsimonious, was deemed to be an inappropriate representation of the data (see Table 2 fit of all models and for comparisons).

Table 2.

Comparison of competing models.

Model	Χ2 (df)	p	RMSEA	CFI	TLI	SRMR	ΔΧ2 (df)	p	Decision
(1) Fully free	9.788 (21)	.9815	.000	1	1	.028	-	-	-
(2) Fully constrained	56.007 (42)	.0726	.064	.770	.846	.057	46.219 (21)	.0012	Reject model 2 retain model 1
(3) Non-significant values constrained to equality	25.8 (33)	.8097	.000	1	1	.043	16.012 (12)	.1908	Fit similar to model 1 Retain model 3
(4) ID-challenges constrained to equality	28.583 (36)	.8058	.000	1	1	.047	2.783 (3)	.4263	Fit similar to model 3 Retain model 4

To increase parsimony while not introducing model misfit, we examined the patterns of significant and non-significant regression paths for each group and reasoned that if a path was non-significant and thus not different from zero across at least two sub-groups, it could reasonably be constrained to equality between groups. Table 3 illustrates the regression paths that were constrained to equality when estimating Model 3 with a *. For instance, discrimination was non-significant for Black-White, Asian-White, and minority-minority Biracials and was thus constrained to equality across these groups but not among Latinx-White Biracials for whom discrimination significantly predicted distress. Compared to the fully-free model, this third model provided an equally-good fit to the data (Δχ² (12) = 16.012, p = .1908), meaning that this approach does indeed increase parsimony without producing a significant decrement in model fit. Examining the remaining paths, we observed that the positive association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress was significant (i.e., non-zero) across all four Biracial sub-groups, which was both consistent with Hypothesis 1. To test whether this significant effect was equal in magnitude across groups, we compared the fit of model 3 against a fourth model where this path was constrained to equality across all sub-groups. Compared to the previous model, this 4^th model provided an equivalent fit to the data (Δχ² (3) = 2.783, p = .4263) and was, thus, selected as our final analytical model (χ² (36) = 28.583, p = .8058, RMSEA = .000, CFI = 1, SRMR = .047). This final model, where the only paths that are freely estimated among our four Biracial sub-groups are those that are unique to one specific sub-group, provides the most parsimonious and restrictive model that still facilitates comparison across groups without erroneously introducing model misfit (e.g., misfit arose in the highly restrictive second model because paths were constrained to equality that were not truly equal). Stated differently, this process allowed the data to show us which paths could be assumed to be equivalent across groups and which paths were unique to specific Biracial sub-groups.

Table 3.

Standardized beta coefficients across groups.

Variable	Full Sample (N=326)		Bl-Wh (N=75)		As-Wh (N=93)		Lat-Wh (N=86)		Min-min (N=72)
	b	p	b	p	b	p	b	p	b	p
ID Challenges	.327 (.054)	<.001	.296 (.058)*	<.001	.294 (.057)*	<.001	.351 (.063)*	<.001	.305 (.059)*	<.001
Disc	.083 (.057)	.144	.115 (.065)*	.080	.096 (.054)*	.072	.208 (.100)	.038	.137 (.076)*	.071
MR Pride	.023 (.056)	.686	−.236 (.104)	.023	.043 (.069)*	.531	.038 (.061)*	.533	.041 (.067)*	.535
ID*Disc	−.032 (.056)	.565	.029 (.056)*	.603	−.301 (.103)	.003	.023 (.044)*	.605	.047 (.090)*	.601
ID*Pride	−.042 (.055)	.447	.225 (.112)	.045	−.079 (.071)*	.268	−.061 (.055)*	.266	−.071 (.064)*	.268
Disc*Pride	−.026 (.058)	.656	−.495 (.116)	<.001	.025 (.050)*	.618	.023 (.046)*	.617	.048 (.097)*	.618
ID* Disc* Pride	.047 (.057)	.408	.478 (.118)	<.001	−.008 (.066)*	.909	−.004 (.038)*	.909	−.011 (.093)*	.909

Note.

^*indicates that path has been constrained to equality with other paths in that row bearing a *.

Significant paths have been bolded.

ID = identity, Disc = Discrimination, MR = Multiracial.

Paths for final model.

Results are presented starting with the Biracial sub-group that displayed the fewest differences relative to the three other groups. Contrary to Hypothesis 2, the sub-group that displayed the fewest differences was the minority-minority Biracial group (N = 72). In our process of selecting a model, all regression paths for the minority-minority group were constrained to be equal to paths from at least one other Biracial sub-group. This occurred because no predictors in this group produced non-zero (i.e., significant) associations with psychological distress, save for identity-based challenges, which was significant but could be constrained to equality with all other sub-groups for increased parsimony without a significant decrement in model fit (see Table 3 for all regression coefficients). Among minority-minority Biracials, only identity-based challenges, not discrimination, pride nor any of their 2 and 3-way interactions, were predictive of psychological distress (b = .305, p < .001). Among Latinx-White Biracials (N = 86), identity-based challenges were associated with greater distress (b = .351, p < .001) as was discrimination (b = .208, p = .038).

Examining regression paths among Asian-White Biracials (N = 93), over and above the impact of identity-based challenges (b = .294, p < .001), there was a significant interaction between identity-based challenges and discrimination (b = −.301, p = .003). When probing interactions, significant unstandardized beta coefficients indicated whether simple slopes were significantly different from 0, whereas a significant Wald test (W) indicated that simple slopes were significantly different from each other. While demonstrated with a t-test, which is similar to a Wald test, Robinson and colleagues (2013) demonstrate that testing the difference in magnitude between simple slopes is a slightly more powerful test than a test of significance for an interaction term. This test also maintains equivalent Type I error rates as does the test of an interaction term despite having higher power (Robinson et al., 2013). Interactions were probed at low (−1 SD), medium (mean), and high (+1 SD) levels of the interaction term.

Probing the significant interaction between identity-based challenges and discrimination revealed that, for Asian-White Biracials, associations between identity-based challenges and psychological distress at low (B = .214, p < .001), mean (B = .247, p < .001) and high levels of discrimination (B = .279, p < .001) were positive and significantly different from zero, but not significantly different from each other (W_high-low (1) = .353, p = .553). Although initial examinations suggested the existence of a significant interaction, we assert that identity based challenges are best regarded as being associated with greater psychological distress for Asian-White participants as a main effect because the strength of the identity-based challenges psychological distress relation does not differ based on levels of discrimination exposure (see Figure S1 in the Supplemental Materials for simple slopes plot)⁶.

Finally, we examined regression paths among Black-White Biracials (N = 75). Partially consistent with Hypothesis 2, this group displayed the most differences relative to other Biracial sub-groups. Specifically, while identity-based challenges (b = .296, p < .001) and Multiracial pride (b = −.236, p = .023) emerged as main effects, a significant 3-way interaction was observed between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride (b = .478, p < .001). This complex 3-way interaction was probed using Mplus code from Stride and colleagues (2015). Of the 9 simple slopes (see Table 4 for all unstandardized coefficients and Figure 1 for a simple slopes plot), only one was non-significant: the relation between identity-based challenges when Black-White emerging adults were low in discrimination and relatively low in pride (B = .183, p = .141; −1 SD in pride = 3.735 out of 6). To summarize the magnitude of the simple slopes, when Black-White emerging adults have high levels of Multiracial pride, the relations between psychological distress and identity-based challenges are equally strong for those who face low levels of discrimination and those who face high levels of discrimination (W (1) = .207, p = .6489). The same pattern across levels of discrimination emerged when Black-White emerging adults endorsed mean (W (1) = .353, p = .5526) and low (W (1) = .289, p = .5910) levels of Multiracial pride. Although the association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress seems to be intensifying as discrimination becomes more frequent, Multiracial pride seems to be working to stabilize these associations. Stated differently, discrimination generally interacts with and potentiates the effect of identity-based challenges, but one’s Multiracial pride may dampen that potentiating effect of discrimination. Unlike what was observed among Asian-White Biracials, this is not evidence for a ‘false’ interaction, but rather a complex one where one variable intensifies an association while the other reduces it; the net influence of these factors largely cancel each other out (as evidenced by non-significant Wald tests comparing across levels of discrimination while holding constant pride) but the association between identity-based challenges and psychological distress is, nonetheless, conditional on both those variables.

Table 4.

Unstandardized beta coefficients for simple slopes of 3-way interaction among Black-White Biracials.

	Black-white (N=75)
	B	p
Low Discrimination – High Pride	.217 (.099)	.029
Mean Discrimination – High Pride	.255 (.056)	<.001
High Discrimination – High Pride	.293 (.103)	.004
Low Discrimination – Mean Pride	.206 (.081)	.011
Mean Discrimination – Mean Pride	.247 (.043)	<.001
High Discrimination – Mean Pride	.287 (.082)	<.001
Low Discrimination – Low Pride	.183 (.124)	.141
Mean Discrimination – Low Pride	.229 (.092)	.013
High Discrimination – Low Pride	.275 (.127)	.030

Figure 1.

Three-way interaction predicting psychological distress observed among Black-White Biracial participants.

Note. All simple slopes are statistically different than zero unless otherwise indicated by ‘ns’.

Post-hoc power analysis.

To examine our power to detect significant main effects and interactions in this study, post-hoc power was assessed by conducting Monte Carlo simulations in Mplus. Using the parameter estimates we obtained in our analyses as the tentatively proposed ‘population’ values, we ran 1,000 simulations, each with the same number of observations as in our study, and reported the number of times out of 1,000 that each parameter was observed to be significantly different from zero (i.e., the definition of power). As expected, results from our power analysis revealed that we were underpowered to detect many significant effects across our four Biracial sub-groups (see Table 5 for power estimates and estimates of power if our sample size were doubled). However, because of their large effects, we had adequate power to detect identity-based challenges’ impact on psychological distress across all sub-groups. We also had adequate power (1 - β = .976) to detect the most nuanced and interesting effect we tested for, the 3-way interaction between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride observed among our sample of Black-White Biracial participants. This implies that, even with the small sample used in the current study, the interaction between these variables had a strong enough effect on psychological distress that this effect can be reliably detected in a small sample of Black-White Biracials. Although there are concerns of biased estimates when assessing post-hoc power (see Yuan & Maxwell, 2005), there we no similar published studies using these variables to use to accurately compute a-priori power or to more accurately create population estimates when assessing post-hoc power.

Table 5.

Post-Hoc power estimates from Monte Carlo Simulations.

Estimate	Bl-Wh (N=75)		As-Wh (N=93)		Lat-Wh (N=86)		Min-min (N=72)
	Power	Power if N*2	Power	Power if N*2	Power	Power if N*2	Power	Power if N*2
ID Challenges	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Disc	.394	.661	.394	.661	.520	.813	.394	.661
MR Pride	.658	.910	.146	.228	.146	.228	.146	.228
ID*Disc	.994	1	.087	.117	.087	.117	.087	.117
ID*Pride	.071	.068	.552	.818	.07	.068	.071	.068
Disc*Pride	.531	.798	.173	.282	.173	.282	.173	.282
ID* Disc* Pride	.976	1	.067	.052	.067	.052	.067	.052

Note. Paths with power > .8 have been bolded.

Given the dearth of quantitative scholarship in this field and the lack of data from which to craft accurate population estimates, we contend that our analysis of a-priori power is appropriate despite the limitations of the technique. Additionally, rather than asserting that these exact relations between variables hold for entire populations of Biracial college students, we intend this study to function as am early foray into this area that illustrates a novel way of examining between Biracial group differences, and presents tentative findings that will require subsequent replication in independent samples by independent research teams.

Discussion

Biracial individuals are a rapidly growing (Colby & Ortman, 2015) but largely understudied population (see Seaton et al., 2018 for call to action). One key to understanding this population is understanding the unique risks they face, such as experiencing internal identity-based challenges in addition to external stressors such as discrimination (Jackson et al., 2012; Yoo et al., 2016). More important, however, is understanding the assets they employ in effectively combating these risks. The primary goals of the current study were, therefore, (1) to examine how identity-based challenges, Multiracial pride – an important aspect of identity, and discrimination individually and interactively influence psychological distress among Biracial emerging adults and (2) to explore whether these associations differed by Biracial sub-group.

Qualitatively, our diverse sample of Biracial emerging adults endorsed relatively high levels of pride (4.330 on a 6-point scale) and moderate levels of identity-based challenges (3.106 on a 6-point scale), suggesting that they are proud to be Biracial despite endorsing some underlying struggles with their racial identity. Even at low levels of endorsement, these identity-based challenges had a notable impact on emerging adults’ well-being as, consistent with Hypothesis 1, identity-based challenges predicted greater psychological distress across all Biracial sub-groups whilst controlling for discrimination. This finding aligns with past research showing positive relations between depression and identity-based challenges (Franco & McElroy-Heltzel, 2019; Franco & O’Brien, 2018), and provides additional evidence for the utility of examining how Biracial emerging adults internally struggle with their racial identity. As MultiCrit would predict, society’s perpetuation of a monoracial paradigm continually invalidates the racialized experience of Multiracial individuals (Harris, 2016); this form of discrimination serves as a risk to healthy identity development and our study shows that it also serves as a risk for greater psychological distress.

Partially consistent with Hypothesis 2, we found the greatest number of unique regression paths among Black-White Biracials, but no unique paths (i.e., paths that were not be constrained to be equal with those of other sub-groups) arose for minority-minority Biracials. Specifically, only identity-based challenges arose as a significant predictor of psychological distress among minority-minority Biracials, who were different combinations of Black, Latinx, and Asian. The multitude of different Biracial combinations in the minority-minority Biracial sub-group makes it exceptionally difficult to identify the specific ways in which these different variables and their interactions impact levels of distress. Overall, these differences may be highly nuanced and future work should examine these processes in a larger samples of minority-minority Biracials that are more homogenous in terms of their racial/ethnic background.

Historically, the existing literature on Biracial and Multiracial individuals has overwhelmingly focused on those with some White heritage. In a review of 125 articles on Biracials and Multiracials published from 1990 to 2009, Charmaraman and colleagues (2014), found that only 30% of studies even sampled minority-minority Biracials. Conceptually, this sub-group, because they do not have White ancestry, may be different in the discrimination group members face and the challenges they may have with racial identity. However, the lack of unique associations displayed by our minority-minority Biracials relative to White Biracial groups calls this claim into question. Ultimately, far more research is needed to tease apart when and why specific minority-minority Biracial groups may be similar or different from other Biracial subgroups (see Jackson et al., 2017 for an example of studying ethnic-racial socialization and identity in Latinx Multiracials with and without White heritage).

Interestingly, in addition to finding a main effect for Multiracial pride, which is consistent with work finding the promotive effects of pride on internalizing symptoms (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014), we found evidence for a significant 3-way interaction between identity-based challenges, discrimination, and pride predicting psychological distress among Black-White Biracials. Probing this interaction revealed that Biracial pride offsets the degree to which discrimination strengthens the relation between identity-based challenges and distress symptoms. This was most apparent when emerging adults endorsed high pride and low levels of discrimination; for these Black-White emerging adults, identity-based challenges were no longer associated with psychological distress. While meta-analytic work that has, thus far, failed to find that ERI dimensions such as pride protect against the negative impact of discrimination on psychological distress (Yip et al., 2019), this, at least in Multiracial populations, may be due to an important but previously unaccounted for variable such as identity-based challenges that may be interacting these variables in nuanced ways. By accounting for identity-based challenges, we did indeed find the additive effect of discrimination on the relation between identity-based challenges and distress symptoms is attenuated by Multiracial pride– at least for Black-White Biracials. Given that Multiracial pride is, by definition, the positive affect associated with Biracial group membership, it may be a factor that is particularly well positioned to mitigate the negative affect that is characteristic of psychological distress. Related to this notion is the finding that positive affect has, in part, been shown to predict fewer depressive symptoms (Watson et al., 1988). Additionally, the main effect of pride and its importance in preventing discrimination from strengthening the relation between identity-based challenges and psychological distress suggests that pride plays a key role in promoting wellbeing among Black-White Biracials.

Equally interesting as the specific nature of this three-way interaction is the fact that it was only observed among our Black-White sub-group. While, to our knowledge, there is little quantitative scholarship that would directly imply this type of association, this unique association may be due to the stark Black-White divide in the U.S.; the effects of this divide may be particularly felt by those who have to work to navigate being a member of both these racial groups. Multiracial pride may be particularly important for this population when faced with discrimination or when experiencing identity-based challenges because of the perceived conflict and distance between these two racial groups (Cheng & Lee, 2009). Indeed, this deep divide has spurred scholarship on identity typologies in this population (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002) and continuation of one-drop rule thinking when categorizing Black-White faces (see Kawakami, Amodio, & Hugenberg, 2017 for brief review). Additionally, scholarly work has suggested that discrimination and invalidation that Black Biracials receive from monoracial Blacks is particularly harmful and associated with greater identity-based challenges and greater cultural homelessness (Franco & Franco, 2016). Our measure of discrimination did not specify the race the perpetrator was and what identity status they were targeting with their discriminatory behaviors. It is possible that Black-White Biracials in our sample faced this particularly harmful form of discrimination, further necessitating Multiracial pride to disrupt and protect against the harmful associations between discrimination, identity-based challenges, and psychological distress. Ultimately, the unique sociocultural experiences that arise from having Black and White ancestry in the U.S. may underlie unique associations between our observed risk and protective factors relative to other Biracial subgroups.

Finally, we found evidence for one unique association among the Latinx-White sub-group. Among Latinx-White Biracials, both identity-based challenges and discrimination predicted greater distress as main effects. In Asian-White Biracials, we observed a false interaction where identity-based challenges were associated with greater psychological distress; this relation did not change in magnitude or direction across levels of discrimination in spite of a significant interaction term. For Latinx-White Biracials, these findings imply that external poor treatment in the form of discrimination and internal challenges in forming a cohesive racial identity contribute to psychological distress in these groups. Due to the current sociopolitical climate, those assumed to be Latinx, whether they are of full Latinx origin or Latinx-White individuals who cannot pass as White, have been subjected to increasing discrimination and foreigner objectification (Kiang et al., 2019). Among Latinx populations, both of these factors have been shown to lead to depression (Armenta et al., 2013), a factor related to psychological distress. Above and beyond its contribution to identity-based challenges, Latinx-White Biracials are likely to personally know or be part of communities where undocumented individuals and mixed-status families face fear of deportation and ICE raids. This systematic oppression has been shown to affect the Latinx community at large and has been shown to lead to increases in depressive and anxiety symptoms among this population (Stafford et al., 2019). Further, within Latinx groups, colorism and racism interact to favor lighter-skinned individuals leading to skin-tone discrimination so skin tone may also contribute to the relation between discrimination, identity-based challenges, and distress in this population. Overall, these findings point to both identity-based challenges and discrimination as independent predictors of psychological distress in this sub-group that should be further explored.

For Asian-White Biracials, while discrimination appears to increase the impact of identity-based challenges on psychological distress, this interaction did not hold because the strength of this association was the same at low, mean, and high levels of discrimination. Despite producing a significant product term, there was no difference in strength for the identity-based challenges – psychological distress association based on the moderator, discrimination. Therefore, in light of these mixed findings, we contend that this is a false moderation, as the definition of a moderation is a “variable that affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent or predictor variable and a dependent or criterion variable” (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Because the magnitude of the effect is statistically equivalent across levels of the moderator, we assert identity-based challenges are best regarded as impacting psychological distress as a main effect among Asian-White Biracials. Interestingly, this finding aligns with past work examining different clusters of identity and mental health outcomes among Asian-White Biracials (Chong & Kuo, 2015). Specifically, after finding evidence of an Asian-Dominant, a White-Dominant, and an Asian-White integrated cluster, Chong and Kuo (2015) found that Asian-Dominant individuals endorsed the highest levels of psychological distress, while White-Dominant individuals endorsed the highest levels of internalized oppression. This implies that challenges with racial identity, which may take the form of internal difficulties forming an Asian-White integrated identity versus accepting one dominant identity, may be associated with distress or feelings of shame related to being of Asian heritage.

In summary, our findings indicate that identity-based challenges are associated with psychological distress across the sample, whereas discrimination and pride come on-line in unique ways depending on Multiracial sub-group. Ultimately, associations between discrimination, identity, and adjustment are likely highly nuanced; Biracials may understand and experience these factors differently from each other and from monoracial emerging adults and (Shih & Sanchez, 2005). Nonetheless these initial findings add to the small body of quantitative literature by providing initial evidence for how these associations vary by Biracial sub-group.

Limitations

Despite its novel findings, this study is not without its limitations. First, our cross-sectional study design prevents us from illustrating the process by which Multiracial pride and identity-based challenges develop over time, how that development is impacted by discrimination, and how these three factors together influence trajectories of distress over time. Indeed, it is possible that internal identity-based challenges may arise after a discriminatory event, thus functioning as a potential mediator of the positive association between discrimination and psychological distress. For other youth, overcoming identity-based challenges may foster increases in Multiracial pride, and increased pride and salience in one’s Multiracial group membership may then prompt increases in perception and frequency of discrimination (Gonzalez-Backen et al., 2018). Again, although we have conceptualized discrimination as exacerbating identity-based challenges’ impact on psychological distress and that relationship potentially being buffered by pride, our cross-sectional design prevents us from comparing alternative models, as these models are statistically equivalent in a cross-sectional design. Given the strong theoretical focus on identity development in this population (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002; Root & Kelley, 2003), future work should examine the function, process, and impact of Multiracial pride, identity-based challenges, and discrimination across development and over time to better untangle these likely bidirectional associations.

Second, although we were able to find a significant three-way interaction for our Black-White Biracial sub-group, our choice to split our Biracial sample into 4 sub-groups limits our statistical power, as clearly indicated in our post-hoc power analyses. With a greater sample size, we would have been better positioned to both detect sources of model misfit in selecting our final model and to uncover potential significant interactions that varied across groups. However, as shown by our estimation of power when doubling our sample size, power to detect effects that are very weak in the population will continue to be low until sample sizes approach extremely high numbers. As the first study to examine main effects and interactions between these variables among sub-groups of Biracial college students, we assert that the discovery of large and significant effects (i.e., the effect of identity-based challenges on psychological distress and the 3-way interaction) makes a contribution to this nascent field even if we were underpowered to detect smaller and more subtle effects. Nonetheless, future work may benefit from more targeted recruitment strategies that allow researchers to collect larger samples of specific Biracial sub-groups. These more targeted collection will result in bigger sample sizes and greater power to detects the weaker effects that this study was not sufficiently powered to detect. Given that the aims of this study were to conduct a principled but data-driven examination of these associations between groups, results should be treated with caution and replicated by independent research teams.

Thirdly, participants in our study come from a convenience sample of Multiracial college students recruited from three public universities across the United States. While our multi-site sampling design increases the geographic representativeness of this sample of Biracial college students, we are not aware of the specific response rates relative to the total Multiracial/Biracial population at each university and the experiences of these college students may, more broadly, not generalize to the broader Biracial emerging adult population. Additionally, our sample of Biracial emerging adults were relatively average and homogenous in terms of SES. Recent scholarship has pointed to the unique effects of discrimination experiences on both low and high-SES (and upwardly socially mobile) minoritized youth (Assari et al., 2018). Future work should aspire towards a more balanced sample of Biracial emerging adults from across the SES spectrum.

Additionally, our measure of discrimination assessed the general ethnic-racial discrimination faced by our sample of Biracial emerging adults, but it is not sensitive to the source of discrimination. As has been demonstrated in a sample of Black Multiracial adults, identity invalidation (a form of discrimination) was most often perpetrated by Black individuals, and identity invalidation that came from Black individuals was particularly strongly associated with participants identity-based challenges and feelings of not having a cultural home (Franco & Franco, 2016). Identity invalidation may also be related to Multiracial identification, as Norman and Chen (2020) observed that general discrimination from ingroup members was associated with greater Multiracial identification, while discrimination from outgroup members was associated with weaker Multiracial identification. Similarly, discrimination against Multiracial people may be incongruent with the actual racial groups to which they belong, and this identity-incongruent discrimination may have implications for identity development as well (Franco et al., 2019). These studies demonstrate that discrimination may take many forms and may have differential effects on identity and, potentially, functioning depending on discrimination type and the race of perpetrator. Future work should more fully consider perpetrator race and different forms of discrimination, especially when the aim is to understand potential mechanisms behind differences between Biracial and Multiracial groups.

Finally, our study examines one domain of Multiracial identity, Multiracial pride, and does not examine pride in tandem with other domains. One domain of identity, racial centrality, or how important racial group membership is to one’s self-concept (Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous, 1998), has been found to operate as a ‘double-edged sword’ among monoracial emerging adults by leading to positive adjustment outcomes whilst also intensifying the negative impact discrimination has on mental health (Yip, 2018). As evidence of this, in a model accounting for general discrimination, centrality has shown to be negatively associated with life satisfaction in a sample of Multiracial adults (Giamo et al., 2012). Given these mixed findings, future work with Multiracial populations should attempt to unpack the impact of racial centrality whilst also examining how other ERI domains may be protective given high levels of centrality. In addition, not all Biracial individuals identify as Multiracial, so there is a possibility that they do feel pride in their racial identity in different ways, such as in relation to both of their monoracial groups. These differences in identification may also have direct implications for psychological functioning, as Binning et al. (2009) observed that Multiracial adolescents who identified with multiple groups instead of solely a ‘low-status’ (Black or Latinx) or high-status (White) group reported greater positive affect, lower levels of stress, and less alienation in school. Future studies could assess pride in both monoracial and Multiracial identities to capture these different dimensions of identity, their potentially differential relations based on racial composition to other aspects of identity such as pride, and their relations to outcomes such as psychological distress.

Implications and Conclusions

This study has implications for clinical intervention in this quickly-growing but poorly-understood population. Firstly, this study implies that, in addition to understanding the sociocultural history of a Biracial client’s groups and how it may impact their sense of self, counselors should specifically probe for identity-based challenges. These challenges may interfere with the development of a strong racial identity and act as an additional risk for greater psychological distress regardless of Biracial racial composition. While scholarly work suggests that an integrated Biracial identity is associated with the fewest negative psychological symptoms (Cheng & Lee, 2009; Chong & Kuo, 2015) identity development is a highly individualized developmental process. Counselors and interventionists may be most useful in facilitating identity exploration to help these individuals start to resolve what their identity means to them (Umaña-Taylor, 2018). Additionally, while we only found interactive effects of pride emerging among Black-White individuals, positive racial-ethnic pride has broadly been associated with numerous positive psychosocial outcomes among minoritized individuals more broadly (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). Assessing and facilitating Multiracial pride may work to combat identity-based challenges that may arise throughout development. Generally, understanding the unique risk and resilience factors displayed by this population is paramount in delivering effective, culturally-informed treatment and supporting the positive psychosocial development of Biracial youth in diverse college settings.

In conclusion, this study makes a contribution to the field by illustrating how associations between Multiracial pride, internal identity-based challenges, and discrimination among college students may impact psychological distress across four Biracial sub-groups. By outlining initial associations between these constructs across groups in the absence of significant past quantitative scholarship, future scholars may build upon this work by delving more deeply into the mechanisms that underlie these group differences, as well as testing how identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride operate together across time and development.

Availability of data, material, and code:

Data, material, and code for this study are not publicly available