ABSTRACT
Research indicating that White men experience less stress than African American men hardly seems worthy of headlines. Although White men are not exempt from discrimination, violence, fi nancial diffi culties, poor health, money problems, or marital diffi culties, African Americans tend to experience more of such stressful events. However, research by Shervin Assari and Maryam Moghani Lankarani (2015) showed that experiencing less stress does not translate into escaping the effects of stress. To the contrary, that research showed that White men experienced a higher rate of depression related to stressful experiences than African American men or to women of either ethnicity. As Assari said of White men and stress, “They don’t get a lot of it and they are not used to it, so they are more prone to its harmful effects” (in Shumaker, 2015). That is, the key to the harmful effects of stress may lie in effective coping rather than in the magnitude of stress.
