Objectives: Racial discrimination experiences contribute to health disparities and can influence individuals’ health. Yet, pathways by which discrimination-related experiences affect alcohol craving remain understudied using experimental designs. Additionally, limited research has examined possible differential effects of “major” discrimination and microaggression experiences in everyday life on alcohol craving. This between-groups experiment examined causal effects of everyday racial discrimination on stress, negative emotions, and alcohol craving. We also tested indirect pathways by which discrimination-related experiences were linked to alcohol craving via stress and negative emotions. Method: People of color and Indigenous peoples participated in the study (N=184; Mage=23.90; 47.8% women; 48.9% community adults). Participants were randomized to one of four experimental conditions, in which they experienced in virtual environments either “major” discrimination, microinsult, microinvalidation, or daily hassles unrelated to race/racism. Participants’ levels of stress, negative emotions, and alcohol craving were assessed immediately before and after experimental simulations. Results: Compared to daily hassles unrelated to race/racism, simulated racial discrimination elicited greater stress and negative emotions. Daily hassles caused greater alcohol craving among those who endorsed higher levels of coping motives for drinking. We observed minimal differences in stress and negative emotions across the three racial discrimination conditions, and found no evidence supporting indirect links between racial discrimination and alcohol craving via stress and negative emotions. Conclusion: Everyday racial discrimination—regardless of intensity level—is more stressful than daily hassles unrelated to race/racism. Future research should examine cumulative effects of racial discrimination, and understanding individual difference factors that moderate its immediate and delayed effects.

It is important to understand how persuasive the most-cited climate change messaging strategies are. In five replication studies, we found limited evidence of persuasive effects of three highly cited strategies (N = 3,216). We then conducted a registered report megastudy (N = 13,544) testing the effects of the 10 most-cited climate change messaging strategies on Americans’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. Six messages significantly affected multiple preregistered attitudes, with effects ranging from 1 to 4 percentage points. Persuasiveness varied little across party lines, inconsistent with theories predicting heterogeneous effects for targeted messages. No message increased pro-environmental donations, suggesting costly behaviours are difficult to influence with messaging alone. Inference of mechanisms driving effects was limited as the most impactful messages influenced multiple mediating variables. Taken together, these results identify several persuasive strategies, while also highlighting the limits of short-form messages for increasing Americans’ support for action to address climate change.