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Despite barriers to educational attainment, low-SES youth often maintain strong academic intentions and performance if they continue to view school as important for obtaining the desired futures they envision for themselves. We undertook three related studies to examine the importance of one aspiration central to the desired futures of many low-SES youth: attaining upward socioeconomic mobility. Cross-sectional, longitudinal (Study 1), and experimental data (Study 2) demonstrate that low-SES youth’s beliefs about their likelihood of attaining mobility affects their likelihood of envisioning futures that hinge on educational attainment, which ultimately predict their academic intentions and performance. Study 3 then tests a novel intervention for promoting the adoption of education-dependent futures among low-SES youth: highlighting multiple viable school-based paths to future mobility.

What predicts goal-relevant behaviours when students are confronted with motivational conflicts? Drawing on value-based models, self-determination theory, and the goal complex model, a comprehensive goal framework tested the assumption that what a student wishes to achieve depends on why goals are being pursued, and that these determine subjective task value, goal pursuit and self-regulated learning. A cross-sectional survey of college students (n=366) found that autonomous motivation predicted goal pursuit and self-regulated learning. The relationship between autonomous motivation and the outcomes (e.g. goal pursuit and self-regulated learning) could be partially explained by higher attainment value for major, but not intrinsic and utility values. While mastery aims predicted goal pursuit and self-regulated learning, the strongest associations were observed when mastery aims were being pursued for autonomous motives. Attainment value mediated the relationship between the combined mastery-autonomous goal complex and the outcomes. Performance aims, more likely to be pursued for controlled motives, were generally nonadaptive. These findings support self-determination theory and value-based models.

The current laboratory-based study examined individual differences in sadness coherence (i.e., coherence between objectively coded sad facial expressions and heart rate in response to a sad film clip) and associations with dispositional affect (i.e., positive and negative affect, extraversion, neuroticism) and age in a sample of younger and older adults. Results showed that (a) greater sadness coherence was associated with lower dispositional negative affect (i.e., greater positive to negative affect ratio; lower neuroticism) and (b) older adults had greater sadness coherence than younger adults. Findings remained stable when controlling for covariates. Results were specific to coherence characterized by an inverse association between heart rate and facial expressions of sadness (i.e., did not emerge for absolute changes in heart rate or skin conductance), specific to sad facial expressions (i.e., did not emerge for happy facial expressions), specific to stimulus (i.e., did not emerge for sadness coherence in response to a happy film clip), generalized across overall levels of emotional responding (i.e., sad facial expressions; heart rate reactivity), and remained stable when controlling for expressive suppression. These findings demonstrate that individuals who exhibit greater sadness coherence experience more favorable dispositional affect, consistent with evolutionary-functionalist models of emotion, and that sadness coherence is higher in late life, consistent with developmental accounts of heightened reactivity to loss in late life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The current studies test the hypothesis that the financial burden of college can initiate a psychological process that has a negative influence on academic performance for students at selective colleges and universities. Prior studies linking high college costs and student loans to academic outcomes have not been grounded within relevant social psychological theory regarding how and when the financial burden of college can influence students’ psychological and cognitive processes. We test the hypothesis that the salient financial burden of college impairs students’ cognitive functioning, especially when it creates an identity conflict or perceived barrier to reaching a student’s desired financially successful future. First, we use longitudinal data from 28 selective colleges and universities to establish that students who accumulate student loan debt within these contexts are less likely to graduate from college because student loan debt predicts a decline in grades over time, even when controlling for factors related to socioeconomic status and prior achievement. Then, in an experiment, we advance research in this area with a direct, causal test of the proposed psychological process. An experimental manipulation that brings high college costs to mind impairs students’ cognitive functioning, but only when those thoughts create an identity conflict or a perceived barrier to reaching a student’s desired financially successful future.

Despite facing daunting odds of academic success compared with their more socioeconomically advantaged peers, many students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds maintain high levels of academic motivation and persist in the face of difficulty. We propose that for these students, academic persistence may hinge on their perceptions of socioeconomic mobility, or their general beliefs regarding whether or not socioeconomic mobility—a powerful academic motivator—can occur in their society. Specifically, low-SES students' desire to persist on a primary path to mobility (i.e., school) should remain strong if they believe that socioeconomic mobility can occur in their society. By contrast, those who believe that socioeconomic mobility generally does not occur should be less motivated to persist academically. One correlational and two experimental studies provide support for this hypothesis among low (but not high) SES high school and university students. Implications for future intervention efforts are discussed.

A foundation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is critical for students’ college and career advancement, but many U.S. students fail to take advanced mathematics and science classes in high school. Research has neglected the potential role of parents in enhancing students’ motivation for pursuing STEM courses. Previous research has shown that parents’ values and expectancies may be associated with student motivation, but little research has assessed the influence of parents on adolescents through randomized experiments. Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, and Hyde (2012) documented an increase in adolescents’ STEM course-taking for students whose parents were assigned to a utility-value intervention in comparison to a control group. In this study, we examined whether that intervention was equally effective for boys and girls and examined factors that moderate and mediate the effect of the intervention on adolescent outcomes. The intervention was most effective in increasing STEM course-taking for high-achieving daughters and low-achieving sons, whereas the intervention did not help low-achieving daughters (prior achievement measured in terms of grade point average in 9th-grade STEM courses). Mediation analyses showed that changes in STEM utility value for mothers and adolescents mediated the effect of the intervention on 12th-grade STEM course-taking. These results are consistent with a model in which parents’ utility value plays a causal role in affecting adolescents’ achievement behavior in the STEM domain. The findings also indicate that utility-value interventions with parents can be effective for low-achieving boys and for high-achieving girls but suggest modifications in their use with low-achieving girls.

During high school, developing competence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is critically important as preparation to pursue STEM careers, yet students in the United States lag behind other countries, ranking 35th in mathematics and 27th in science achievement internationally. Given the importance of STEM careers as drivers of modern economies, this deficiency in preparation for STEM careers threatens the United States’ continued economic progress. In the present study, we evaluated the long-term effects of a theory-based intervention designed to help parents convey the importance of mathematics and science courses to their high-school–aged children. A prior report on this intervention showed that it promoted STEM course-taking in high school; in the current follow-up study, we found that the intervention improved mathematics and science standardized test scores on a college preparatory examination (ACT) for adolescents by 12 percentile points. Greater high-school STEM preparation (STEM course-taking and ACT scores) was associated with increased STEM career pursuit (i.e., STEM career interest, the number of college STEM courses, and students’ attitudes toward STEM) 5 y after the intervention. These results suggest that the intervention can affect STEM career pursuit indirectly by increasing high-school STEM preparation. This finding underscores the importance of targeting high-school STEM preparation to increase STEM career pursuit. Overall, these findings demonstrate that a motivational intervention with parents can have important effects on STEM preparation in high school, as well as downstream effects on STEM career pursuit 5 y later.

Despite a growing number of brief, psychosocial interventions that improve academic achievement, little research investigates how to leverage parents during such efforts. We designed and tested a randomized controlled intervention targeting parents to influence important discussions about the future and responses to academic difficulty experienced by their adolescent during eighth grade in the United States. We recruited experienced parents to convey the main messages of the intervention in a parent panel format. As expected, current parents who were randomly assigned to observe the parent panel subsequently planned to talk with their adolescents sooner about future opportunities and to respond more positively to experiences of academic difficulty than parents who were randomly assigned to a control group. The intervention also led to a significant increase in student grades, which was mediated by parents’ responses to academic difficulty. We suggest an increase in experimental research that utilizes parents to influence student achievement.

High school students from lower–socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are less likely to enroll in advanced mathematics and science courses compared to students from higher-SES backgrounds. The current longitudinal study draws on identity-based and expectancy-value theories of motivation to explain the SES and mathematics and science course-taking relationship. This was done by gathering reports from students and their parents about their expectations, values, and future identities for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics beginning in middle school through age 20. Results showed that parental education predicted mathematics and science course taking in high school and college, and this relationship was partially mediated by students’ and parents’ future identity and motivational beliefs concerning mathematics and science. These findings suggest that psychological interventions may be useful for reducing social class gaps in STEM course taking, which has critical implications for the types of opportunities and careers available to students.