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A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students
A brief intervention aimed at buttressing college freshmen's sense of social belonging in school was tested in a randomized controlled trial (N = 92), and its academic and health-related consequences over 3 years are reported. The intervention aimed to lessen psychological perceptions of threat on campus by framing social adversity as common and transient. It used subtle attitude-change strategies to lead participants to self-generate the intervention message. The intervention was expected to be particularly beneficial to African-American students (N = 49), a stereotyped and socially marginalized group in academics, and less so to European-American students (N = 43). Consistent with these expectations, over the 3-year observation period the intervention raised African Americans' grade-point average (GPA) relative to multiple control groups and halved the minority achievement gap. This performance boost was mediated by the effect of the intervention on subjective construal: It prevented students from seeing adversity on campus as an indictment of their belonging. Additionally, the intervention improved African Americans' self-reported health and well-being and reduced their reported number of doctor visits 3 years postintervention. Senior-year surveys indicated no awareness among participants of the intervention's impact. The results suggest that social belonging is a psychological lever where targeted intervention can have broad consequences that lessen inequalities in achievement and health.
Journal Article
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science
Prior work finds a diversity paradox: Diversity breeds innovation, yet underrepresented groups that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. Does the diversity paradox hold for scientists as well? We study this by utilizing a near-complete population of ∼1.2 million US doctoral recipients from 1977 to 2015 and following their careers into publishing and faculty positions. We use text analysis and machine learning to answer a series of questions: How do we detect scientific innovations? Are underrepresented groups more likely to generate scientific innovations? And are the innovations of underrepresented groups adopted and rewarded? Our analyses show that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. However, their novel contributions are devalued and discounted: For example, novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups. These results suggest there may be unwarranted reproduction of stratification in academic careers that discounts diversity’s role in innovation and partly explains the underrepresentation of some groups in academia.
Journal Article
Recursive Processes in Self-Affirmation: Intervening to Close the Minority Achievement Gap
A 2-year follow-up of a randomized field experiment previously reported in Science is presented. A subtle intervention to lessen minority students' psychological threat related to being negatively stereotyped in school was tested in an experiment conducted three times with three independent cohorts (N = 133, 149, and 134). The intervention, a series of brief but structured writing assignments focusing students on a self-affirming value, reduced the racial achievement gap. Over 2 years, the grade point average (GPA) of African Americans was, on average, raised by 0.24 grade points. Low-achieving African Americans were particularly benefited. Their GPA improved, on average, 0.41 points, and their rate of remediation or grade repetition was less (5% versus 18%). Additionally, treated students' self-perceptions showed long-term benefits. Findings suggest that because initial psychological states and performance determine later outcomes by providing a baseline and initial trajectory for a recursive process, apparently small but early alterations in trajectory can have long-term effects. Implications for psychological theory and educational practice are discussed.
Journal Article
More Than Inconvenienced: The Unique Needs of U.S. College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic
U.S. college students are a distinct population facing major challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, students were already experiencing substantial mental health concerns, putting both their health and academic success in jeopardy. College students now face increasing housing and food insecurity, financial hardships, a lack of social connectedness and sense of belonging, uncertainty about the future, and access issues that impede their academic performance and well-being. There is also reason to believe that COVID-19 is exacerbating inequalities for students of color and low-income students. We provide several recommendations for institutions of higher education to mitigate these obstacles, including engaging in data-driven decision making, delivering clear and informative messaging to students, prioritizing and expanding student support services, and using an equity framework to guide all processes.
Journal Article
Self-Concepts, Self-Esteem, and Academic Achievement of Minority and Majority North American Elementary School Children
Minority and majority elementary school students from a Native American reservation (N = 188; K-fifth grade; 5- to 10-year-olds) completed tests of academic self-concepts and self-esteem. School grades, attendance, and classroom behavior were collected. Both minority and majority students exhibited positive self-esteem. Minority students demonstrated lower academic self-concepts and lower achievement than majority students. Two age-related patterns emerged. First, minority students had lower academic achievement than majority students, and this effect was stronger in older (Grades 3-5) than in younger (Grades K-2) students. Second, children's actual achievement was related to their academic self-concepts for older students but more strongly linked to self-esteem in younger students. The authors offer a developmental account connecting students' developing self-representations to their school achievement.
Journal Article
On the Precipice of a \Majority-Minority\ America: Perceived Status Threat From the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans' Political Ideology
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans' political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that making California's majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b revealed that making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly. Moreover, the results implicate group-status threat as the mechanism underlying these effects. Taken together, this work suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide.
Journal Article
Classroom Predictors of National Belonging: The Role of Interethnic Contact and Teachers’ and Classmates’ Diversity Norms
Schools can be important for the development of national belonging in students with immigrant backgrounds. Following Contact Theory and prior research on diversity norms, this cross-sectional survey study examined if intergroup contact and perceived diversity norms of teachers and classmates predicted national belonging in ethnic minority (i.e., Turkish [n = 95], Moroccan [n = 73], and Surinamese [n = 15]) versus majority students (n = 213) living in the Netherlands (Mage = 10.53 years; 50.3% female). Minority students reported less national belonging than their ethnic Dutch classmates. Multilevel analyses indicated that their national belonging was affected by the presence of ethnic Dutch classmates and the relationship with their teacher. These results indicate that minority students’ national belonging could be promoted by reducing school segregation and stimulating positive teacher-student relationships.
Journal Article
Subtle and Intersectional Minority Stress and Depressive Symptoms Among Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents of Color: Mediating Role of Self-Esteem and Sense of Mastery
Little research has examined subtle, intersectional, and everyday minority stress, such as microaggressions specific to being a queer person of color, and its associations with depressive symptoms among sexual and gender minority adolescents (SGMA) of color. Moreover, research is needed to identify mechanisms that might explain the associations between minority stress and depression. This study examined the associations between subtle and intersectional minority stress (i.e., SGMA of color-specific microaggressions) and depressive symptoms among SGMA of color and tested self-concept factors (i.e., self-esteem and sense of mastery) as mediators of these associations. A large national US sample of SGMA of color (N = 3398; 31.8% transgender; 55.7% plurisexual) ages 13 to 17 years (M = 15.56, SD = 1.27) were recruited online. Participants’ race/ethnicity were Asian/Pacific Islander (12.2%), Black/African American (13.2%), Hispanic/Latina(o)/x (30%), Native American/Alaska Native (1.2%), Middle Eastern (1.9%), Biracial or Multiracial (40%), and other racial/ethnic minority groups (1.7%). Over and above the effects of racism and SGM-based victimization, subtle intersectional minority stressors were associated with greater depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem and sense of mastery. Mediation analyses indicated that subtle intersectional minority stressors had indirect effects on depressive symptoms through lower self-esteem and sense of mastery for the aggregate sample of SGMA of color and most racial/ethnic groups in the sample. The results demonstrate that subtle and intersectional minority stress is a unique and significant form of minority stress that is a risk factor for depressive symptoms for SGMA of color. Moreover, our findings underscore self-concept mechanisms as targets for prevention and intervention.
Journal Article
Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem
The economics profession includes disproportionately few women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups, relative both to the overall population and to other academic disciplines. This underrepresentation within the field of economics is present at the undergraduate level, continues into the ranks of the academy, and is barely improving over time. It likely hampers the discipline, constraining the range of issues addressed and limiting our collective ability to understand familiar issues from new and innovative perspectives. In this paper, we first present data on the numbers of women and underrepresented minority groups in the profession. We then offer an overview of current research on the reasons for the underrepresentation, highlighting evidence that may be less familiar to economists. We argue that implicit attitudes and institutional practices may be contributing to the underrepresentation of women and minorities at all stages of the pipeline, calling for new types of research and initiatives to attack the problem. We then review evidence on how diversity affects productivity and propose remedial interventions as well as findings on effectiveness. We identify several promising practices, programs, and areas for future research.
Journal Article