Search

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come from studies conducted by different research teams with different procedures in different settings; it is therefore impossible to isolate whether different effects are the result of theorized heterogeneity, unidentified moderators, or idiosyncratic features of the different studies. We addressed this limitation by conducting a well-powered replication of self-affirmation in a setting where a previous large-scale field experiment demonstrated significant positive impacts, using the same procedures. We found no evidence of effects in this replication study and estimates were precise enough to reject benefits larger than an effect size of 0.10. These null effects were significantly different from persistent benefits in the prior study in the same setting, and extensive testing revealed that currently theorized moderators of self-affirmation effects could not explain the difference. These results highlight the potential fragility of self-affirmation in educational settings when implemented widely and the need for new theory, measures, and evidence about the necessary conditions for self-affirmation success. [This report was published in "Journal of Educational Psychology," (EJ1136567).]

This article proposes closing the academic performance gaps between African American and Latino students and their White counterparts particularly in the line of research that concerns the idea of "stereotype threat." Stereotype threat is predicated on the notion that people often fear behaving in a way that fits the negative cultural image associated with a group stereotype, thereby marking them as inferior. If an intervention reduces stereotype threat and general anxiety before a test and boosts performance on that test, then that seemingly "small win" can reduce an individual's fear of fulfilling negative stereotypes and improve future performance in evaluative situations. The intervention proposed was a self-affirmation writing exercise developed by Geoffrey Cohen and his colleagues (Cohen et al., 2006). The outcome suggested that apparently subtle mindset interventions that spark small but early alterations in trajectory can have long-term effects that endure across several years and across key schooling transitions. Tables and figures are appended.

This study addresses closing the academic performance gaps between African American and Latino students and their White counterparts, and between girls and boys in mathematics. Of the various models and theories of these social inequalities that have been advanced in literature, one particularly compelling line of research concerns the idea of "stereotype threat"--the apprehension individuals experience when confronted with a personally relevant stereotype that threatens their social identity or self-esteem. A number of research programs suggest that interventions aimed at reducing stereotype threat can attenuate its effects in school-based contexts, yielding significant gains in test scores. Specifically, individuals can manage threatening situations by shoring up their self-concept--a strategy known as "compensatory self-inflation" or "self-affirmation." This study assessed the achievement impacts of this stereotype threat-reduction intervention relative to a control group condition on the test scores of nearly 1,000 middle-school students in the Madison (Wisconsin) Metropolitan School District. Findings show no evidence that the self-affirmations closed the Black-White achievement gap. However, gender and ethnic group moderated the impact of self-affirmation; the variation in achievement by gender and ethnicity appears to be slighter in the self-affirmation condition. The proposed work may have important implications for education policy and practice in the state. Moreover, the cost-effective intervention strategies described in this study--each involving simple 15-minute writing exercises--could easily be replicated and implemented across the United States, with the potential to help close the persistent achievement gaps within other school systems across the country. Tables and figures are appended.