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Closing the Gender Achievement Gap in STEM: Testing a Culturally Adapted Version of a Brief Intervention
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In recent years, several randomized experiments show that brief social psychological interventions have increased academic performance and especially reduced the gender achievement gap in both high school and college settings. The common idea behind those interventions is that psychological predicaments such as stereotype relevant worries are partly responsible for the academic achievement gaps. Specifically, when someone is concerned that her actions will represent her gender group, this creates a threat on identity and in turn undermine her task performance.
In a typical stereotype relevant situation, one can either worry about the performance that will reflect upon the abilities of one’s group (group as target stereotype threat) or one’s personal ability and capacity (self as target stereotype threat). Previous studies demonstrated that values affirmation intervention that focus on the individual values protect only against self-as-target stereotype threat. In a series of randomized trials, we examine whether affirmations that focus on the group values would enhance the mental task performance of female college students under a group as target stereotype threat. Reference: Çetinkaya, E.*, Hermann, S., & Kisbu-Sakarya, Y. (2020). Adapting the values affirmation intervention to a multi-stereotype threat framework for female students in STEM. Social Psychology of Education, 23, 1587-1607. Link |