MRPG: Solo Status and Self-Construals

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Standardized test scores and grade point averages indicate that, on average, racial minority students do not perform as well as White students. Although factors such as socioeconomic status and quality of education are often suggested as explanations for this difference, laboratory research in social psychology suggests that individuals who are highly distinctive in their social environments tend to show weaker memory and problem solving skills. Thus, minority college students may be hindered in their performance because in most college environments they experience high social distinctiveness. This research planning grant will investigate the process by which racial distinctiveness negatively affects academic performance among minority, but not majority, group members. It is proposed that being the only member of one's race present in the environment (an experience termed "solo status") may change one's perception of the self (i.e., one's "self-construal"). This is expected to happen differently for African-Americans and Whites. It is predicted that when an African-American is the only Black person in a testing situation, being Black becomes a greater part of that person's self-construal, and the person feels more representative of and more accountable to members of their racial group. Whites, on the other hand, are not predicted to adopt this group-based self-construal. A White person may perceive the self in individualistic terms, and not feel representative of or accountable to other Whites as solos. Two experiments will be conducted in a laboratory setting, using appropriate comparison groups, to test 1) whether solo status induces a more group-based self-construal for African-Americans than for Whites; 2) whether African-Americans in solo status perform more poorly than a control group because of the added pressure of representing their race; and 3) whether African-Americans in solo status avoid highly challenging tasks compared to a control group, to avoid the potential of being a poor representative of their race. This research will help us understand why Whites and Blacks perform differently in school even though they may have comparable educational preparation. This research will be useful in designing programs to stop the negative effects of solo status for racial minorities in the classroom, and will have implications for job performance in business settings as well.