Research

In one line of research, I integrate developmental and cognitive theories to articulate why specifying perpetrators of ethnic/racial discrimination and socialization matters for adolescents. Due to mind-body interactions associated with puberty instigating social and brain development, adolescence is a period when perceived/experienced discrimination, peer relationships, and student-teacher relationships begin to emerge and matter more than ever. For example, because peer-group acceptance and conformity are uniquely salient during adolescence, a consistent finding in my work is that peer-perpetrated (but not adult-perpetrated) discrimination is the predictive of youth’s psycho-social functioning (Del Toro & Hughes, 2019; Del Toro et al., 2020, 2023). In addition, because adolescents experience societal pressures to be autonomous outside the home, teachers become important socialization agents. Indeed, across multiple studies, I have found that ethnic/racial socialization from teachers (but not parents) is the most effective in promoting youth’s academic performance and instilling youth with resilience against discrimination (Del Toro & Wang, 2020; Del Toro et al., 2024). Whereas prior studies unspecified the perpetrator or combine multiple perpetrators into a single measure, I distinguish between perpetrators. This distinction between perpetrators has methodological implications as combining multiple perpetrators into a single measure can weaken significant findings when one perpetrator predicts an outcome and another perpetrator does not. Specifying the perpetrator can also inform setting-specific interventions: For adolescents, peers and educators may be optimal relational settings to improve multiple indicators of healthy adolescent development.

In a conceptual model titled, Hidden Resilience (Del Toro et al., 2024), I argue that resilience is not best captured immediately psychologically but rather distally over time ‘under the skin.’ To explain, conversations about race and racism may momentarily feel unsettling for both parents and children, but these conversations are essential for youth to develop the coping skills needed to overcome the detrimental effects of ethnic/racial discrimination. In addition, engagement in coping practices (e.g., forgiveness, exercise) must be routine and chronic over time to observe their intended consequences. Indeed, across multiple studies, I have found that discrimination weakly predicted children’s biological pre-mature aging (i.e., pubertal development, epigenetic aging) when parents felt a strong sense of belonging to their ethnic/racial group (Del Toro et al., 2024, 2025). Whereas prior studies solely rely on survey methods and have produced conflicting results about families’ resilience, I use rigorous methods to capture theory-driven processes underlying families’ resilience linked to ethnic/racial discrimination.

Experimental methods can be leveraged to build robust theories. However, aspects of ethnic/racial discrimination and socialization can be difficult to emulate in a research lab. Alternatively, twins born into and raised by the same family provide a natural quasi-experimental framework as twins account for selection bias, account for omitted variable bias, and enhance internal validity. Twins provide a natural quasi-experimental framework to study naturally occurring processes, like discrimination and socialization, that are difficult and unethical to manipulate in a lab. Thus, with twin data, I test why one twin will experience more ethnic/racial discrimination than their twin sibling and whether these twins will show divergent trajectories, after accounting for shared genetic liability and environmental confounds linked to racism (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage). As I have shown in preliminary studies (Del Toro et al., accepted; Del Toro et al., in prep), twins show significant variability in ethnic/racial discrimination and socialization as well as adjustment outcomes, enabling me to test research questions as they relate to my conceptual models. Currently, I am using these preliminary studies as an empirical base to pursue federal funding to support the development of an ethnically/racially diverse twin registry and recruit participants from this registry. With such data, I will continue developing strong theories related to risk and resilience among families of color.

The human body interacts with environments to contribute to youth’s risk and resilience. For example, in one longitudinal study of sexual minoritized youth, I found that self-identification with a sexual minority identity predicted more advanced pubertal development one year later (likely attributable to physiological weathering from chronic discrimination), and more advanced pubertal development predicted greater self-identification with a sexual minority identity (likely attributable to youth’s advanced cognitive abilities that enables them to explore and identify with their social identities; Del Toro et al., accepted; Del Toro et al., revise & resubmit). Building on this study in ongoing and future work, I am incorporating the social brain (Del Toro et al., revise & resubmit), HPA-axis (Del Toro et al., in prep), and epigenetic age acceleration (Del Toro et al., accepted; in prep) to understand when youth are susceptible to and resilient against the impacts of ethnic/racial discrimination. Whereas most extant studies use biomarker data within a public health framework and are outcome-focused, I use biomarkers to inform my theory and understand when adolescents of color are resilient within an ethnically/racially stratified society.  

Capitalizing on the aforementioned studies, discrimination from non-peers (i.e., law enforcement and the criminal justice system) can also have indirect and pernicious consequences on youth development. This work has resulted in a series of publications, including first-authored publications in the American Journal of Public Health and Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS). For example, in a small-scale longitudinal study of urban Black and Latino boys in a large southern city in the US, boys who reported more frequent stops by police also reported greater engagement in delinquent behavior and greater psychological distress 6, 12, and 18 months later. Neither delinquent behavior or distress predicted stops. Furthermore, distress partially mediated the relations between stops at baseline and delinquent behavior 12 and 18 months later (Del Toro et al., 2019). Building on this research, I replicated these findings in two daily diary studies (Del Toro, Jackson, & Wang, 2022), and I examined how children may also experience the negative effects of the criminal justice system through their parents (Del Toro, Fine, & Wang, 2022). Whereas past research examines the consequences of policing on crime rates and on adult samples, I use a developmental framework to understand the effects of policing on racial minority children’s  mental health and wellbeing. Collectively, these studies have political implications given the hotly contested debate about whether increases in police surveillance and incarceration result in increases in citizens’ safety. In addition, these studies challenge the rhetoric that individuals’ engagement in illegal and delinquent behaviors elicit police intervention. Instead, as my research shows, frequent police surveillance and incarceration come at a cost to the mental health and wellbeing of children of color.

Using a similar ecological framework to distinguish between perpetrators of discrimination, I am examining setting-specific strength-based approaches that mitigate the negative effects of police surveillance on African American youth’s wellbeing. I was awarded a small internal grant (role: PI, $30,000), support from the National Institutes of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD; role: PI, $45,000), and a grant from the Spencer Foundation (role: PI, $75,000) to investigate how racial socialization from different agents (i.e., peers, educators, and parents) buffers the negative effects of police stops on African American youth’s development. Racial socialization is defined as the behaviors, practices, and social regularities that communicate information and worldviews about race to youth (Hughes, Harding, Niwa, Del Toro, & Way, 2017). Whereas most studies focus on racial socialization from parents, my research suggests that racial socialization from educators (independent of that from parents) promotes greater engagement (Del Toro & Wang, 2021) and better grades in school (Del Toro & Wang, 2020). This research can provide scientists with information regarding which setting is optimal to intervene and reduce the harmful effects of policing on racial minority youth’s mental health.