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- 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 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

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.

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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 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, 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 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 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 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- 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, 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