The under-representation of minorities in academic institutions is a persistent social problem. One social psychological explanation for this chronic situation is that individuals in minority groups face the additional psychological burden of stereotype threat; that is, they must contend with negative stereotypes about their group that can hamper their performance and lead to disidentification from academic domains. In past social psychological research, self-affirmation has been shown to attenuate this stereotype threat. The present research seeks to explore the underlying mechanisms of how and why self-affirmation attenuates stereotype threat and improves academic performance. The basic premise of this proposal is that when dealing with a stressor, people must not only contend with solving the problem at hand, but additionally, they must also deal with the broader psychological implications of success and failure for their self-evaluation. These additional psychological concerns, exacerbated when an individual is a member of a negatively stereotyped group, can be attenuated when alternative self-resources are affirmed through the process of self-affirmation. To examine the dynamic nature of how individuals sustain motivation under threat, a field study is proposed with children in a middle school composed of students of varying races and ethnicities. The field study will feature: 1) a self-affirmation intervention that has been demonstrated to reduce stereotype threat and improve performance in similar settings; 2) the repeated measurement of potential mediators including daily perceptions of stereotype threat, collective threat, self-esteem, collective self-esteem, academic identification and self-efficacy; 3) the observation of academic performance (i.e., classroom quizzes and examinations). It is proposed that self-affirmation can lead to improved academic performance among stereotype threatened individuals by buffering self-worth against daily stressors and stereotype threat. By utilizing repeated measurements of potential mediators, this research will examine on a within-person level whether days in which students perceive stereotype threat are associated with reductions in self-esteem and academic motivation, and whether self-affirmation can attenuate this link between perceptions of stereotype threat and self-evaluation. The goal of this research is to explore and better understand how drawing on alternative self-resources can enable individuals to maintain motivation and improve performance in the face of negative group stereotypes and psychological threat more generally. The present research has the potential to benefit educational practices by elucidating the mechanisms by which stereotype threat can be reduced and academic motivation sustained.
