Advancing values affirmation as a scalable strategy for mitigating identity threats and narrowing national achievement gaps

Borman, Geoffrey D.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1708813114

Cited by 20 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…The fact that demographic categories did not moderate the results runs counter to our expectation that groups who consistently experience psychological threat (e.g., negatively stereotyped ethnic groups) should show the largest benefits of affirmation (see Borman, 2017).…”

Section: No Moderation By Student Ethnicity or Gendercontrasting

confidence: 97%

Bolstering trust and reducing discipline incidents at a diverse middle school: How self-affirmation affects behavioral conduct during the transition to adolescence

Binning

Cook

Purdie-Greenaway

et al. 2019

Journal of School Psychology

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A three-year field experiment at an ethnically diverse middle school (N = 163) tested the hypothesis that periodic self-affirmation exercises delivered by classroom teachers bolsters students' school trust and improves their behavioral conduct. Students were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation condition, where they wrote a series of in-class essays about personally important values, or a control condition, where they wrote essays about personally unimportant values. There were no behavioral effects of affirmation at the end of 6 th grade, after students had completed four writing exercises. However, after four additional exercises in 7 th grade, affirmed students had a significantly lower rate of discipline incidents than students in the control condition. The effect continued to grow and did not differ across ethnic groups, such that during 8 th grade students in the affirmation condition on average received discipline at a 69% lower rate than students in the control condition. Analyses of student climate surveys revealed that affirmation was associated with higher school trust over time, a tendency that held across ethnic groups and partially mediated the affirmation effect on discipline. Repeated selfaffirmation can bolster students' school trust and reduce the incidence of discipline in middle school, findings with both theoretical and practical implications.Trust, Discipline, and the Self 3

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Section: No Moderation By Student Ethnicity or Gendercontrasting

confidence: 97%

Bolstering trust and reducing discipline incidents at a diverse middle school: How self-affirmation affects behavioral conduct during the transition to adolescence

Binning

Cook

Purdie-Greenaway

et al. 2019

Journal of School Psychology

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“…However, as we shall see, the effectiveness of these interventions varies across contexts and for different groups to the extent that, in some cases, they can be detrimental. To be effective, the interventions must be diligently and competently implemented and completed (Borman, 2017; Borman, Grigg, Rozek, Hanselman, & Dewey, 2018; Easterbrook et al, 2020a), target the appropriate students (Binning & Browman, 2020), and be implemented in contexts that are sensitive and supportive enough to enable, sustain, and reinforce beneficial effects (Cohen, Garcia, & Goyer, 2018; Goyer et al., 2017; Walton & Wilson, 2018; Walton & Yeager, 2020). If they are implemented without these conditions in place, they may fail or even be harmful to some (Binning & Browman, 2020; Borman, 2017).…”

Section: Wise Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, such interventions must be used with care since they can be ineffective or even counterproductive to some groups. This can happen if those groups are not affected by psychological factors that dampen their educational performance, or if the interventions are not appropriately designed or effectively implemented in sustaining contexts (Bayly & Bumpus, 2020; Binning & Browman, 2020; Borman, 2017; Walton & Yeager, 2020). It is therefore critical to intervene only in contexts in which psychological factors contribute to educational inequalities, and in which social psychological interventions are likely to be effective, sustained, and unlikely to create unintended negative consequences.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling Educational Inequalities with Social Psychology: Identities, Contexts, and Interventions

Easterbrook

Hadden

2020

Social Issues Policy Review

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Some groups of students-typically those who have suffered because of historical inequality in society-disproportionately experience psychological barriers to educational success. These psychological barriers-feelings of threat to their social identity and the sense that their identity is incompatible with educational success-make substantial contributions to inequalities in educational outcomes between groups, even beyond economic, historical, and structural inequalities. A range of wise psychological interventions can help remove these barriers by targeting students' subjective interpretation of their local educational context. In this review, we outline the Identities in Context model of educational inequalities, which proposes that interactions between students' social identities and features of the local educational context-expectations about a group's academic performance, a group's representation in positions associated with academic success, and a group's orientation towards education-can trigger social identity threat and identity incompatibility in ways that vary considerably across contexts. We present an implementation process, based on the Identities in Context model, that academic researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can follow to help them choose and tailor wise interventions that are effective in reducing educational inequalities in their local context. Throughout the review, we make policy recommendations regarding how educational practices can be altered to help remove psychological barriers for underperforming groups of students and so reduce educational inequalities. Some groups of students-such as some ethnic minorities or those from lower class backgrounds-on average achieve much lower academic grades and

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“…For instance, purposeful individuals recover better from exposure to negative stimuli than those with low purpose (e.g., Schaefer et al, ), and in another study, purpose was related to faster recovery from, but not the reaction to, social stress (Fogelman & Canli, ). Other work demonstrates that academic stresses can leave some students particularly vulnerable to poor school performance, but self‐affirmation has been shown to alleviate these issues (e.g., G. L. Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, ; Cook, Purdie‐Vaughns, Garcia, & Cohen, ; D. K. Sherman, Bunyan, Creswell, & Jaremka, ; see also, Borman, ; D. K. Sherman, ). For example, D. K. Sherman, Bunyan, Creswell, and Jaremka () found that students who affirmed the self prior to a stressful exam felt less stressed and had lower levels of epinephrine in urine samples compared to students who did not affirm the self.…”

Section: Correlates and Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing similarities and differences between purpose in life and self‐affirmation

Burd

Burrow

2017

Social & Personality Psych

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Individuals contend with a variety of threats in daily life and may attempt to deal with them using various cognitive strategies. Two constructs borne from different literatures, purpose in life and self-affirmation, serve to promote well-being and to protect individuals from such threats. While self-affirmation has often been examined as a manipulation, purpose has, until recently, been considered a dispositional resource. However, both self-affirmation and purpose seem to confer similar advantages in response to threat. This paper reviews the evidence for the protective benefits of both purpose in life and self-affirmation, describes the mechanisms by which each confers these advantages, and considers the boundary conditions of each. Key similarities and differences are discussed, and we argue that there are broad gaps in the literature regarding where and when these constructs might operate differentially, or why these differences exist. We conclude with a call to researchers to explore empirically how and when these important interventions might be differentially beneficial to those who cultivate them.

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Advancing values affirmation as a scalable strategy for mitigating identity threats and narrowing national achievement gaps

Cited by 20 publications

References 23 publications

Bolstering trust and reducing discipline incidents at a diverse middle school: How self-affirmation affects behavioral conduct during the transition to adolescence

Bolstering trust and reducing discipline incidents at a diverse middle school: How self-affirmation affects behavioral conduct during the transition to adolescence

Tackling Educational Inequalities with Social Psychology: Identities, Contexts, and Interventions

Conceptualizing similarities and differences between purpose in life and self‐affirmation

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