Nicole M. Stephens

Closing the Social-Class Achievement Gap: A Difference-Education Intervention Improves First-Generation Students’ Academic Performance and All Students’ College Transition

College students who do not have parents with 4-year degrees (first-generation students) earn lower grades and encounter more obstacles to success than do students who have at least one parent with a 4-year degree (continuing-generation students). In the study reported here, we tested a novel intervention designed to reduce this social-class achievement gap with a randomized controlled trial (N = 168). Using senior college students’ real-life stories, we conducted a difference-education intervention with incoming students about how their diverse backgrounds can shape what they experience in college. Compared with a standard intervention that provided similar stories of college adjustment without highlighting students’ different backgrounds, the difference-education intervention eliminated the social-class achievement gap by increasing first-generation students’ tendency to seek out college resources (e.g., meeting with professors) and, in turn, improving their end-of-year grade point averages. The difference-education intervention also improved the college transition for all students on numerous psychosocial outcomes (e.g., mental health and engagement).

Social class disparities in health and education: Reducing inequality by applying a sociocultural self model of behavior.

The literature on social class disparities in health and education contains 2 underlying, yet often opposed, models of behavior: the individual model and the structural model. These models refer to largely unacknowledged assumptions about the sources of human behavior that are foundational to research and interventions. Our review and theoretical integration proposes that, in contrast to how the 2 models are typically represented, they are not opposed, but instead they are complementary sets of understandings that inform and extend each other. Further, we elaborate the theoretical rationale and predictions for a third model: the sociocultural self model of behavior. This model incorporates and extends key tenets of the individual and structural models. First, the sociocultural self model conceptualizes individual characteristics (e.g., skills) and structural conditions (e.g., access to resources) as interdependent forces that mutually constitute each other and that are best understood together. Second, the sociocultural self model recognizes that both individual characteristics and structural conditions indirectly influence behavior through the selves that emerge in the situation. These selves are malleable psychological states that are a product of the ongoing mutual constitution of individuals and structures and serve to guide peoples behavior by systematically shaping how people construe situations. The theoretical foundation of the sociocultural self model lays the groundwork for a more complete understanding of behavior and provides new tools for developing interventions that will reduce social class disparities in health and education. The model predicts that intervention efforts will be more effective at producing sustained behavior change when (a) current selves are congruent, rather than incongruent, with the desired behavior and (b) individual characteristics and structural conditions provide ongoing support for the selves that are necessary to support the desired behavior.

Social Class Culture Cycles: How Three Gateway Contexts Shape Selves and Fuel Inequality

Americas unprecedented levels of inequality have far-reaching negative consequences for society as a whole. Although differential access to resources contributes to inequality, the current review illuminates how ongoing participation in different social class contexts also gives rise to culture-specific selves and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. We integrate a growing body of interdisciplinary research to reveal how social class culture cycles operate over the course of the lifespan and through critical gateway contexts, including homes, schools, and workplaces. We first document how each of these contexts socializes social class cultural differences. Then, we demonstrate how these gateway institutions, which could provide access to upward social mobility, are structured according to middle-class ways of being a self and thus can fuel and perpetuate inequality. We conclude with a discussion of intervention opportunities that can reduce inequality by taking into account the contextual responsiveness of the self.

The Unanticipated Interpersonal and Societal Consequences of Choice Victim Blaming and Reduced Support for the Public Good

Choice makes North Americans feel more in control, free, and independent, and thus has many positive consequences for individuals’ motivation and well-being. We report five studies that uncovered novel consequences of choice for public policy and interpersonal judgments. Studies 1 through 3 found that activating the concept of choice decreases support for policies promoting intergroup equality (e.g., affirmative action) and societal benefits (e.g., reducing environmental pollution), but increases support for policies promoting individual rights (e.g., legalizing drugs). Studies 4 and 5 found that activating the concept of choice increases victim blaming and decreases empathy for disadvantaged people. Study 5 found that choice does not decrease Indians’ empathy for disadvantaged individuals, indicating that the social and interpersonal consequences of choice are likely culture-specific. This research suggests that the well-known positive effects of choice for individuals can be accompanied by an array of previously unexamined and potentially negative outcomes for other people and for society.

Opting Out or Denying Discrimination? How the Framework of Free Choice in American Society Influences Perceptions of Gender Inequality

American women still confront workplace barriers (e.g., bias against mothers, inflexible policies) that hinder their advancement at the upper levels of organizations. However, most Americans fail to recognize that such gender barriers still exist. Focusing on mothers who have left the workforce, we propose that the prevalent American assumption that actions are a product of choice conceals workplace barriers by communicating that opportunities are equal and that behavior is free from contextual influence. Study 1 reveals that stay-at-home mothers who view their own workplace departure as an individual choice experience greater well-being but less often recognize workplace barriers and discrimination as a source of inequality than do mothers who do not view their workplace departure as an individual choice. Study 2 shows that merely exposing participants to a message that frames actions in terms of individual choice increases participants’ belief that society provides equal opportunities and that gender discrimination no longer exists. By concealing the barriers that women still face in the workplace, this choice framework may hinder women’s long-term advancement in society.

Eating Disorders and Dieting Behavior Among Australian and Swazi University Students

The eating behaviors of 192 Australian and 129 Swaziland university students were examined by using the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; D. M. Garner, M. P. Olmsted, Y. Bohr, & P. E. Garfinkel, 1982). The results did not support the hypothesis that more Australian students than Swazi students would display eating disorder symptoms. Australian women scored significantly higher than Australian men. Surprisingly, scores on the EAT-26 for men and women from Swaziland did not differ significantly. Furthermore, there was little difference between the scores of Swazi men and either Australian women or Swazi women. Results are discussed in relation to various cultural factors and assessment issues.

When the World Is Colorblind, American Indians Are Invisible: A Diversity Science Approach

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. (M. L. King, 1963, p. 46) Colorblind ideologies are dangerous because they can, as Dr. Martin Luther King ...

Who Explains Hurricane Katrina and the Chilean Earthquake as an Act of God? The Experience of Extreme Hardship Predicts Religious Meaning-Making

Two studies utilized firsthand accounts from survivors of two major natural disasters—Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Chilean earthquake in 2010—to investigate (1) how people make sense of their disaster experiences and (2) who understands these events in religious terms. We found that describing the disasters as an act of God was among the most common explanations. Moreover, the degree to which survivors encountered extreme hardship—unpredictable, disruptive, and uncontrollable experiences—predicted explanations of the events as an act of God. These findings held even after controlling for demographic factors (educational attainment and race/ethnicity) known to be associated with religiosity. Notably, objective experiences (e.g., seeing dead bodies) were better predictors of religious meaning-making than relatively subjective psychological reactions to those experiences (e.g., fear). These studies extend the literature by examining how experiences of hardship in real-world contexts underlie religious meaning-making and suggest that religiosity emerges, in part, from variation in individual experience.

A Difference-Education Intervention Equips First-Generation College Students to Thrive in the Face of Stressful College Situations

A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students’ responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants’ behavioral and hormonal responses to stressful college situations. We found that difference-education participants discussed their backgrounds in a speech more frequently than control participants did, an indication that they retained the understanding of how their backgrounds mattered. Moreover, among first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents did not have 4-year degrees), those in the difference-education condition showed greater physiological thriving (i.e., anabolic-balance reactivity) than those in the control condition, which suggests that they experienced their working-class backgrounds as a strength.

Rank Is Not Enough: Why We Need a Sociocultural Perspective to Understand Social Class

In the target article, Kraus, Tan, and Tannenbaum identify a key feature of the psychological experience of social class—perception of one’s rank vis-` others. This rank-based perspective, which reveals the systematic influence of rank on psychological functioning, makes an important contribution to current and future theories of social class. Drawing out the significance of rank brings social class research into the mainstream and puts it into ongoing conversation with social psychological literature on power, status, and intergroup relations (i.e., stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination). In addition, the rank-based perspective enables Kraus and colleagues to synthesize what would otherwise be a disparate set of findings and also suggests potential paradigms for future research. Although rank is a critical piece of the social class puzzle, the experience of social class extends far beyond rank and involves ongoing participation in a particular sociocultural context—a socially and historically constructed environment that contains a set of culture-specificideas,practices,andinstitutions.Thus, we argue that to develop a complete understanding of thecausesandconsequences ofsocialclass,itisnecessary to conceptualize social class contexts as sociocultural contexts—that is, to take a sociocultural perspective.Thistheoreticalperspectivemakestwokeyclaims. First, social class contexts (e.g., poverty, workingclass, middle-class, or upper-class) are sociocultural contexts that expose people to particular material and social conditions over time. In addition to differences in rank or perceptions of rank vis-` others, these