Research goal:

Identifying social, cognitive and affective happenings that may cause/relate to vulnerability or resilience for the study of mental disorders among minority groups experiencing racial discrimination.

Publications:

Mekawi, Y., & Watson-Singleton, N. N. (2021). Examining racial discrimination’s association with depressive symptoms through meta-dehumanization among African Americans: Does racial identity matter?

Mekawi, Y., Carter, S., Brown, B., Martinez de Andino, A., Fani, N., Michopolous, V., & Powers, A. (2021). Interpersonal trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder among Black Women: Does racial discrimination matter?

Fani, N., Harnett, N. G., Bradley, B., Mekawi, Y., Powers, A., Stevens, J. S., Ressler, K. J., & Carter, S. E. (2022). Racial discrimination and white matter microstructure in trauma-exposed Black women.

Mekawi., Y., Hyatt, C., Maples-Keller, J., Carter, S., Michopoulos, V., & Powers, A. (2021). Racial discrimination predicts mental health outcomes beyond the role of personality traits in a community sample of African Americans.

Mekawi, Y., Hunter, C., & Heller, W. (2021). The costs of anticipating and perseverating about racism: Mechanisms of the associations between racial discrimination, anxious arousal, and low positive affect.

Mekawi, Y., Carter, S., Packard, G., Wallace, S., Michopolous, V., & Powers, A. (2022). When (passive) acceptance hurts: Race-based coping moderates the association between racial discrimination and mental health outcomes among Black Americans.

McKenna, B., Mekawi, Y., Katrinli, S., Carter, S., Stevens, J.S., Powers, A., Smith, A. K., & Michopolous, V. (2021). When anger remains unspoken: Anger and accelerated epigenetic aging among stress-exposed Black Americans.

Research goal:

Identifying cognitive, social, and affective factors that maintain racially-prejudiced behavior and attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities. While also integrating methods and theories from social, personality and affective sciences to understand implicitly and explicitly prejudiced behavior and attitudes (e.g., racial shooter biases, colorblind racial ideology, committing racial microaggressions).

Publications:

Mekawi, Y., Todd, N. R., Yi, J. & Blevins, E. (2020) Distinguishing “I don’t see color” from “Racism is a thing of the past” : Psychological correlates and consequences of avoiding race and denying racism.

Mekawi, Y., & Bresin, K., & Hunter, C. D. (2019) Dehumanization of African Americans influences racial shooter biases.

Mekawi, Y., & Todd, N. R. (2018) “Okay to say?” Preliminary validation of the Acceptability of Racial Microaggressions Scale.

Mekawi, Y., Bresin, K., & Hunter, C. (2017) Who is more likely to not see race? Individual differences in racial colorblindness.

Mekawi, Y., & Bresin, K. (2015) Is the evidence from racial shooting task studies a smoking gun? Results from a meta- analysis.

Research goal:

The goal of this research is related to assessment of psychological phenomenon particularly among racially marginalized groups. Given that the majority of measures have been validated using primarily White samples, this line of work advances our understanding of the phenomenology of psychopathology among racially marginalized groups which can improve the ecological validity of work done with this population.

Publications:

Mekawi, Y., Watson-Singleton, N. N., Dixon, H. D., Fani, N., Michopoulos, V. & Powers, A.(2020) Validation of the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale in a sample of trauma-exposed African American women.

Watson-Singleton, N., Lapro, D., Mekawi, Y., & Hampton, J. (2020) Africultural coping systems inventory psychometrics in a clinical sample of African Americans.

Silverstein, M. W., Mekawi, Y., Alonzi, S., & La Torre, A. (2021). Psychometric properties of the assessment of COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors.

Mekawi, Y., Guelfo, A., Karimzadeh, L., Powers, A., & Fani, N. (2021). Validation and construct validity of the Posttraumatic Avoidance Behavior Questionnaire in a sample of trauma-exposed Black women.

Research goal:

Identifying factors that may help us understand the development and chronicity of PTSD in Black Americans and to examine factors such as trauma type and emotion dysregulation that can deepen our understanding of why and how individuals from marginalized groups develop PTSD.

Publications:

Mekawi, Y., Kuzyk, E., Dixon, H.D., McKenna, B., Camacho, L., Martinez de Andino, A., Stevens, J., Michopolous, V., & Powers, A. (2021). Characterizing typologies of poly-traumatization: A replication and extension study examining internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in an urban population.

Bresin, K., Mekawi, Y., Stevens, J. S., Hinrichs, R., Fani, N., Michopoulos, V., & Powers, A. (2021) From alcohol to aggression: Examining the structure and nomological network of dysregulated behaviors in a trauma-exposed community sample.

Lalonde, C. S., Mekawi, Y., Ethun, K. F., Beurel, E., Gould F., Dhabhar, F. S., Schultebraucks, K., Galatzer-Levy, I., Maples-Keller, J. L., Rothbaum, B. O., Ressler, K. J., Nemeroff, C. B., Setevens, J. S., & Michopoulos, V. (2021) Sex differences in peritraumatic inflammatory cytokines and steroid hormones contribute to prospective risk for nonremitting posttraumatic stress disorder.

Research goal:

Applying basic research about implicit biases to the identification of effective strategies to reduce racial bias in applied settings.

Publications:

Mekawi, Y., Todd, N. R., & Blevins, E. (in press). Reducing acceptability of racial microaggressions using online videos: The role of perspective-taking and white guilt.

Mekawi, Y., & Todd, N. R., (2021) Focusing the lens to see more clearly: Overcoming definitional challenges and identifying new directions in racial microaggressions research.