Double-Edged Sword or Outright Harmful?: Associations Between Strong Black Woman Schema and Resilience, Self-Efficacy, and Flourishing

Black women embody self-determination and strength to overcome intersecting racism and sexism. This notion of strength has been operationalized as the Strong Black Woman (SBW) schema, and growing research on this schema has been mixed. Quantitative findings have largely connected this schema to negative health outcomes whereas qualitative work has revealed positive benefits of this schema. To further understand the complexity of this schema, we drew from a positive psychology framework to examine how this schema related to resilience, self-efficacy, and flourishing. Correlation and linear regression analyses were performed with data from 178 young adult Black women ( M age = 20.48, SD = 1.38) who were recruited from a Historically Black College in the Southeastern region of the United States. Regression findings revealed that some characteristics (e.g., obligation to manifest strength, intense motivation to succeed) were positively associated with resilience, self-efficacy, and flourishing whereas others (e.g., extraordinary caregiving, emotional suppression) were negatively associated with these outcomes. Our results further complicate the role of the SBW schema in the lives of Black women and support the need for continued research on this topic. Public Health Statement Many Black women are socialized to be strong and tenacious in the face of hardship. This study examined if being strong contributed to positive outcomes, like resilience, self-efficacy, and flourishing in a sample of college-aged Black women. We found that although some dimensions of strength were positively associated with resilience, self-efficacy, and flourishing, most dimensions were either not associated with these outcomes or were related to lower levels of these outcomes. These findings can inform new prevention and intervention programs to help Black women thrive.