Social media use and acute vicarious racism as sources of race-based traumatic stress

Racism is increasingly encountered through indirect exposure to racialized harm, particularly via social media and highly publicized incidents of racial violence. Thus, the present research examined whether vicarious racism (i.e., witnessing or hearing about racism experienced by others) contributes to race-based traumatic stress (RBTS), and explored the psychological processes and identity-based factors that shape this relationship. Across three studies, we found converging evidence that both chronic and acute vicarious racism predicted increased RBTS symptoms among a sample of Black participants (N = 752). In Study 1, greater daily social media use (conceptualized as a proxy for chronic vicarious racism) was associated with higher levels of RBTS. In Study 2, experimental exposure to a single racialized police encounter causally increased RBTS symptoms relative to a control condition, with effects amplified among individuals higher in racial centrality and private regard. In Study 3, we replicated these effects and identified key mediating mechanisms, showing that vicarious racism increased perceptions of future discrimination, personal vulnerability to similar harm, and the inevitability of racism, which in turn predicted RBTS symptoms. These indirect effects were further moderated by dimensions of racial identity, particularly private regard. Consistent with the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Injury Model, findings suggest that racism need not be directly experienced to produce trauma-related outcomes; rather, witnessing racialized harm can function as a psychologically injurious event through cognitive appraisals of threat and vulnerability. Limitations, implications, and future directions are discussed.