Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Volumn 113, Issue 24, 2016, Pages E3341-E3348

  Yeager, David S ^a   Walton, Gregory M ^b   Brady, Shannon T ^c   Akcinar, Ezgi N ^b   Paunesku, David ^b   Keane, Laura ^d   Kamentz, Donald ^e   Ritter, Gretchen ^f   Duckworth, Angela Lee ^e,g   Urstein, Robert ^h   Gomez, Eric M ⁱ   Markus, Hazel Rose ^b   Cohen, Geoffrey L ^b,c   Dweck, Carol S ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d EuAspire   (United States)

^e Character Lab   (United States)

^f Department of Obstetrics Gynecology   (United States)

^g UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^h STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

ⁱ UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

Behavioral science; Field experiment; Inequality; Lay theories; Social psychology

Indexed keywords

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT; ARTICLE; CLINICAL EFFECTIVENESS; CLINICAL EVALUATION; CLINICAL RESEARCH; COLLEGE; COLLEGE STUDENT; COMPARATIVE STUDY; CONTROLLED STUDY; EARLY INTERVENTION; FOLLOW UP; FRIENDSHIP; HIGH SCHOOL; HUMAN; HUMAN RELATION; INTERVENTION STUDY; LAY THEORY INTERVENTION; MEDICAL EDUCATION; ONLINE ANALYSIS; OUTCOME ASSESSMENT; PERSONAL EXPERIENCE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SOCIAL STATUS; SOCIOECONOMICS; TEACHING; THEORY; ADOLESCENT; ADULT; DOUBLE BLIND PROCEDURE; EDUCATIONAL STATUS; FEMALE; FRIEND; MALE; MENTORING; RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL; SOCIAL SUPPORT; THEORETICAL MODEL;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; DOUBLE-BLIND METHOD; EDUCATIONAL STATUS; FEMALE; FOLLOW-UP STUDIES; FRIENDS; HUMANS; MALE; MENTORING; MODELS, THEORETICAL; SOCIAL SUPPORT;

EID: 84974855609     PISSN: 00278424     EISSN: 10916490     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1524360113     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Stinebrickner R, Stinebrickner T (2014) Academic performance and college dropout: Using longitudinal expectations data to estimate a learning model. J Labor Econ 32(3):601-644.
2. Espenshade TJ, Radford AW (2009) No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life (Princeton Univ Press, Princeton).
3. Massey DS, Charles CZ, Lundy G, Fischer MJ (2011) The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America's Selective Colleges and Universities (Princeton Univ Press, Princeton).
4. Tinto V (1994) Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition (Univ of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL).
5. Hayward MD, Miles TP, Crimmins EM, Yang Y (2000) The significance of socioeconomic status in explaining the racial gap in chronic health conditions. Am Sociol Rev 65(6):910-930.
6. D'Addio AC (2007) Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage: Mobility or Immobility Across Generations? A Review of the Evidence for OECD Countries (Organ for Econ Co-op and Dev, Paris).
7. Steele CM (1997) A threat in the air. How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. Am Psychol 52(6):613-629.
8. Morgan SL (2005) On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Attainment and Race in the United States (Stanford Univ Press, Stanford, CA).
9. Ross L, Nisbett RE (1991) The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology (Pinter & Martin Ltd, London), 2nd Ed.
10. Wilson TD, Linville PW (1985) Improving the performance of college freshmen with attributional techniques. J Pers Soc Psychol 49(1):287-293.
11. Walton GM, Cohen GL (2011) A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science 331(6023):1447-1451.
12. Pennebaker JW, Chung CK (2011) Expressive writing and its links to mental and physical health. The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology, ed Friedman HS (Oxford Univ Press, London), pp 417-437.
13. Tiwari S, Kendall PC, Hoff AL, Harrison JP, Fizur P (2013) Characteristics of exposure sessions as predictors of treatment response in anxious youth. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 42(1):34-43.
14. Wilson TD, Gilbert DT (2005) Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 14(3):131-134.
15. Kuhn TS (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL).
16. Murphy MC, Steele CM, Gross JJ (2007) Signaling threat: How situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings. Psychol Sci 18(10):879-885.
17. Walton GM, Cohen GL (2007) A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. J Pers Soc Psychol 92(1):82-96.
18. Aronson JM, Fried CB, Good C (2002) Reducing the effects of stereotype threat on African American college students by shaping theories of intelligence. J Exp Soc Psychol 38(2):113-125.
19. Dweck CS, Leggett EL (1988) A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychol Rev 95(2):256-273.
20. Stephens NM, Hamedani MG, Destin M (2014) Closing the social-class achievement gap: A difference-education intervention improves first-generation students' academic performance and all students' college transition. Psychol Sci 25(4):943-953.
21. Stephens NM, Fryberg SA, Markus HR, Johnson CS, Covarrubias R (2012) Unseen disadvantage: How American universities' focus on independence undermines the academic performance of first-generation college students. J Pers Soc Psychol 102(6):1178-1197.
22. Cohen GL, Garcia J, Purdie-Vaughns V, Apfel N, Brzustoski P (2009) Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science 324(5925):400-403.
23. Yeager DS, Walton GM (2011) Social-psychological interventions in education: They're not magic. Rev Educ Res 81(2):267-301.
24. Coleman JS (1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. Am J Sociol 94:95-120.
25. Walton GM, Logel C, Peach JM, Spencer SJ, Zanna MP (2015) Two brief interventions to mitigate a "chilly climate" transform women's experience, relationships, and achievement in engineering. J Educ Psychol 107(2):468-485.
26. Paunesku D, et al. (2015) Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychol Sci 26(6):784-793.
27. Yeager DS, et al. (2014) Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide. J Exp Psychol Gen 143(2):804-824.
28. Murphy MC, Walton GM, From prejudiced people to prejudiced places: A socialcontextual approach to prejudice. Frontiers in Social Psychology Series: Stereotyping and Prejudice, eds Stangor C, Crandall C (Psychology Press, New York).
29. Yeager DS, et al. (2016) Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: The case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school. J Educ Psychol 108(3):374-391.
30. Murphy MC, Dweck CS (2010) A culture of genius: How an organization's lay theory shapes people's cognition, affect, and behavior. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 36(3):283-296.
31. Castleman BL, Owen L, Page LC (2015) Stay late or start early? Experimental evidence on the benefits of college matriculation support from high schools versus colleges. Econ Educ Rev 47:168-179.
32. Diehl R (2012) Final Report of the Task Force on Undergraduate Graduation Rates (Univ of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX).
33. Julian TA (2012) Work-Life Earnings by Field of Degree and Occupation for People with a Bachelor's Degree: 2011 (US Census Bureau, Washington, DC).
34. Castleman BL, Page LC (2015) Summer nudging: Can personalized text messages and peer mentor outreach increase college going among low-income high school graduates? J Econ Behav Organ 115:144-160.
35. Bettinger EP, Long BT, Oreopoulos P, Sanbonmatsu L (2012) The role of application assistance and information in college decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA experiment. Q J Econ 127(3):1205-1242.
36. Sander R, Jr, ST (2012) Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It (Basic Books, New York).
37. Liptak A (2015) Supreme court justices' comments don't bode well for affirmative action. NY Times. Available at www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/supreme-court-torevisit-case-that-may-alter-affirmative-action.html. Accessed December 10, 2015.
38. Walton GM, Spencer SJ, Erman S (2013) Affirmative meritocracy. Soc Issues Policy Rev 7(1):1-35.
39. Dynarski SM, Hemelt SW, Hyman JM (2013) The Missing Manual: Using National Student Clearinghouse Data to Track Postsecondary Outcomes (Natl Bur of Econ Res, Cambridge, MA), NBER Work Pap 19552.