Revisiting the paradox of hope: The role of discrimination among first-year Black college students.

The psychology of hope is used to conceptualize how college students successfully meet their personal and professional goals and ultimately persist to graduation. However, limited evidence has suggested that high levels of hope might have a paradoxical effect for Black college students when faced with experiences of discrimination. The present study examined the moderation effects of hope on the associations between experiences of discrimination and perceptions of stress and academic integration among a sample of 1st-year U.S. Black college students (N = 203) partly derived from secondary data. Structural equation modeling revealed inverse associations between hope and stress, as well as positive associations between hope and academic integration. However, latent variable moderation revealed that students with high levels of hope had the strongest positive associations between discrimination and stress, thus supporting a paradoxical effect. By contrast, the negative association between discrimination and academic integration emerged for only students with low levels of hope. Results suggest the psychological and academic benefits of hope are complex. Specifically, in the context of discrimination experiences, hope may have a paradoxical effect for Black students' mental health while still retaining a positive and buffering effect for their academic integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).