Deflecting the trajectory and changing the narrative: How self-affirmation affects academic performance and motivation under identity threat.

Abstract

To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance. Two studies, each featuring a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-ethnicity middle school, examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap between Latino American and European American students. In Study 1, students completed multiple self-affirmation (or control) activities as part of their regular class assignments. Latino American students, the identity threatened group, earned higher grades in the affirmation than control condition, whereas White students were unaffected. The effects persisted 3 years and, for many students, continued into high school by lifting their performance trajectory. Study 2 featured daily diaries to examine how the affirmation affected psychology under identity threat, with the expectation that it would shape students' narratives of their ongoing academic experience. By conferring a big-picture focus, affirmation was expected to broaden construals, prevent daily adversity from being experienced as identity threat, and insulate academic motivation from identity threat. Indeed, affirmed Latino American students not only earned higher grades than nonaffirmed Latino American students but also construed events at a more abstract than concrete level and were less likely to have their daily feelings of academic fit and motivation undermined by identity threat. Discussion centers on how social-psychological processes propagate themselves over time and how timely interventions targeting these processes can promote well-being and achievement.

Self-affirmation facilitates minority middle schoolers' progress along college trajectories

“…For this reason, the consequences of psychological threat and affirmation may be relatively large. As documented in previous randomized experiments reported by our research group (13)(14)(15), the selfaffirmation process improves academic outcomes in the middle school transition for minority youth. Responding to a series of structured writing assignments distributed by their teachers at the beginning of the academic year and before tests throughout the year, middle schoolers reflected on the importance of core values in their lives.…”

“…At another middle school with a predominantly Latino American minority population, the same affirmation activities improved the academic grades of Latino American students over the course of 3 y (15). Consistent with self-affirmation theory, minority students who had completed the self-affirmation exercises were less likely to display drops in academic belonging and motivation at times of difficulty in school (15,25).…”

“…A well-timed triggering of a psychological process at an early gateway to this system could channel students into streams of opportunity that diverge over time. We focus on the intermediate and long-term institutional outcomes of the two groups of minority students featured in the two studies cited earlier (14,15). Each group received the affirmation intervention in middle school.…”

“…Randomized experiments conducted during transitions to middle school (13)(14)(15), high school, and college (11,12,16,17) have shown that brief interventions that support adaptive psychological processes improve grades and school retention. They do so by encouraging students to reflect on core values (13)(14)(15), by assuring them of their belonging in school (11,12), by highlighting the personal relevance of academic coursework (16), or by cultivating the belief that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed (11,17). No study, however, has shown that a psychological process altered at one transition has persistent and direct causal effects on outcomes at later transitions and in new institutions years later, and, if this does occur, how.…”

The moderating impact of self‐esteem on self‐affirmation effects

“…Furthermore, research has also explored the potential for self-affirmation manipulations to reduce social identity threat and stereotype treat (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel & Master, 2006;Cohen, Garcia, Purdie-Vaughns, Apfel & Brzustoski, 2009;Sherman, Hartson, Binning, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia, Taborsky-Barba, Tomassetti et al, 2013;Sherman & Kim, 2005).…”