“Where Are You REALLY From?” Navigating Rejection Sensitivity, Perceiving Microaggressions, and Anxiety Among South Asian Students

Three in four people of color experience discrimination within their daily lives (Wong-Padoongpatt et al., 2020). However, despite the well-known link between racial microaggressions and mental health, little is known about the impact of microaggressions on South Asian students, as existing studies frequently aggregate all Asian populations rather than distinguishing South Asians as a distinct subgroup (Ogunyemi et al., 2020; Torres-Harding et al., 2020; Wong-Padoongpatt et al., 2020). The present study examined the relationships between discrimination, rejection sensitivity, and emotional and physiological reactions among South Asian American students. Participants were 192 postsecondary students who completed an online 2-part longitudinal study. Participants completed self-report questionnaires and recorded their heart rate before and after viewing a video depicting discriminatory interactions with South Asian characters from popular shows and movies. Correlational analyses revealed that greater past discriminatory experience was related to greater rejection sensitivity, r(190) = .61, p < .001, and tendency to perceive the interactions in the video as microaggressive, r(190) = .15, p = .032. Further analyses revealed evidence that the relationship between past discriminatory experiences and emotional and physiological reactions (increase in heart rate and negative affect and decrease in positive affect) was serially mediated through rejection sensitivity and perception of microaggressions. Implications for future research and strategies involving stress management, conflict resolution, and multicultural training are discussed.