Colloquia - The Psychology of Struggle and Hope: John Henryism and the Health of Black Americans

Sherman James - Susan B. King Distinguished Professor Emeritus Sanford School of Public Policy Duke University

For reasons not fully understood, Black Americans develop hypertension, heart failure, stroke, renal failure, and type 2 diabetes at younger ages than White Americans. These chronic, degenerative diseases are leading causes of the 5–7-year deficit in life expectancy for Black Americans compared to White Americans. For both groups, however, the prevalence of these cardio-renal-metabolic disorders follows an inverse socioeconomic gradient with poor and working-class individuals having 1 ½ to 2 times greater risk than their middle and upper-middle class counterparts. While statistical models that control for individual differences in standard risk factors like obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, education, etc., reduce the observed excess risks, statistically significant excess risk usually persists. Interdisciplinary research models that integrate insights from US labor history with insights from the psychological, sociological, and medical sciences could lead to a more holistic understanding of the cardiometabolic disease epidemic that affects Black Americans disproportionately. The John Henryism Hypothesis is a modest step toward such a model. Briefly, this hypothesis posits that, for Black Americans, especially the poor and working class, the widespread physiological wear and tear resulting from repeated, but hopeful, “high-effort coping” – John Henryism – with systemic adversity (e.g., poverty and racial discrimination) accelerates biological aging of multiple organ systems with the heart, kidney, and brain being major targets. This presentation will discuss the origins of the John Henryism Hypothesis; how John Henryism, a personality construct, is measured by the John Henryism Scale for Active Coping (JHAC); key psychological, social, and economic correlates of “high” JHAC scores; major research findings from tests of the hypothesis; potential health care and social policy implications; and future research priorities.