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Given the developmental benefits associated with higher sense of purpose, past work has aimed to understand how experiences of adversity relate to sense of purpose. With a specific focus on experiences of adversity that may impact individuals from marginalized groups, past work has found that discrimination is related to lower sense of purpose in life, but that these effects are weaker for Black adults relative to White adults. The current research aims to extend past work by examining how and for whom discrimination is related to sense of purpose in life. Moreover, the current work also aimed to understand the extent to which sense of purpose spans across generations and whether there are generational differences in the relationship between discrimination and sense of purpose. Using data from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study, 822 parents (G1 participants) and 654 children (G2 participants) completed measures for sense of purpose, major experiences of discrimination, and personality traits. Results found mixed evidence for a relationship between discrimination and sense of purpose, with little evidence for consistent moderators. In addition, while the current work found no evidence of intergenerational associations for sense of purpose, results showed that discrimination was positively associated across generations, suggesting a potential for an intergenerational cycle of marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Immigrants face multiple forms of cultural stress that hold pernicious influences on their psychological well-being, including everyday discrimination, bicultural stressors, and negative context of reception from others. Research thus is needed to consider potential buffers and mitigating factors that may help immigrant adults in the face of cultural stress. The present studies evaluated a sense of purpose as one potential buffer., Method: Study 1 asked immigrant adults in the Unites States to complete measures of the three cultural stress indicators in addition to sense of purpose and measures of well-being (depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress, self-esteem, self-rated health). Multiple regression analyses examined whether sense of purpose moderated the influence of cultural stress on immigrant well-being. Study 2 randomly assigned immigrant participants receive an experimental condition that asked participants to imagine a common cultural stressor faced by immigrants. Multiple regression analyses tested whether sense of purpose operated differently on postscenario affect across the control and experimental conditions., Results: Study 1 found that all cultural stress indicators negatively correlated with psychological well-being and sense of purpose. However, sense of purpose did not significantly moderate these associations. Study 2 found that imagining the cultural stressor led to worse momentary affective well-being, whereas sense of purpose was associated with better well-being. Again, sense of purpose did not interact with the condition to predict the postscenario affect., Conclusions: Sense of purpose was consistently associated with better psychological well-being. However, little evidence was found that sense of purpose mitigates the ill effects of cultural stress for immigrant adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).