Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Psychology
Advisor
Desiree Byrd
Committee Members
Casey LaDuke
Nancy Foldi
Yvette Caro
Justin Storbeck
Subject Categories
Clinical Psychology
Keywords
discrimination, cognition, aging adults
Abstract
Black and Latine populations demonstrate worse performance on neuropsychological tests than White peers, a pattern which necessitates investigation to determine how sociocultural contexts may contribute to brain health inequity. Previous studies have shown inconsistent evidence of associations between cognition and interpersonal discrimination, a socially constructed process of exclusion based on identity, but the relationship to systemic discrimination remains underexplored. Job discrimination is a form of systemic mistreatment that may be highly relevant to Black and Latine communities who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged than majority counterparts. The current study utilized a sample of 550 non-Latine Black, US-born Latine, and immigrant Latine adults from the Health and Retirement Study to determine differences across race/ethnicity/nativity groups in endorsement of different types of discrimination, explore sociodemographic correlates to job discrimination, and investigate the relationship between cognition and job discrimination. Black and immigrant Latine reported more experiences of daily discrimination than US-born Latine, but groups did not significantly differ on lifetime or job discrimination. There were no significant correlations between job discrimination and income, years of educational attainment, age, or sex/gender. Among Black adults, job discrimination was not significantly associated with working memory, immediate memory, or delayed memory scores. Among Latine, there was no significant interaction between nativity and cognitive outcomes. These findings suggest that further research is required to determine how systemic discrimination interplays with other psychosocial factors to impact cognition. They also highlight the responsibility clinicians hold in sensitively considering how discrimination may contribute to brain health.
Recommended Citation
Samuel, Shana S., "Cognitive Consequences of Job Discrimination: An Investigation of Race/Ethnicity/Nativity Disparities in Neuropsychological Test Performance" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6513
