Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap in STEM: A Social-Neurobiological Investigation and Values-Affirmation Intervention

本项目的研究重点是社会认同威胁的概念，即，学业有问题的少数民族学生担心，他们可能会根据其他人对他们种族群体智力能力的成见而受到负面评价。社会身份威胁已被证明会损害少数群体在STEM中的表现。该研究假设，社会身份引发了生理威胁反应，这涉及到荷尔蒙和免疫系统对威胁情况的反应，这可能会破坏学生参与成功学习所需的更高层次认知处理的能力。PI建议在三年内进行研究：（1）检查社会心理和神经生物学过程在理解白色人之间的种族成就差距中的作用，黑人和拉丁裔大学生在STEM教育程度，（2）实施社会心理干预方法，以提高性能，（3）测试一个新的理论知情版本的干预，（四）测试一个在线干预提供系统，该系统可以促进广泛的全国传播。分析，这项研究将测试：（1）确认负面刻板印象的威胁如何“深入皮肤”，损害STEM中少数民族学生的认知功能，以及（2）经过充分验证的价值观肯定干预是否有效，因为它减少了身份威胁的生理压力。以及易于实施的干预措施，以减少身份威胁对少数族裔大学生学术功能的影响，从而缩小STEM领域的种族成就差距，并增加STEM工作者的数量并使其多样化。

The research focus of this project is the concept of social identity threat, i.e., academically at-risk minority students are concerned that they could be negatively judged in light of stereotypes of others about their racial group's intellectual ability. Social identity threat has been shown to impair performance of minorities in STEM. The research hypothesizes that social identity triggers a physiological threat response, which involves hormonal and immune-system reactions to threatening situations which can undermine a student's ability to engage in higher level cognitive processing required for success in learning.The PIs propose studies over three years to: (1) examine the role of social psychological and neurobiological processes in understanding the racial achievement gap between White, Black and Latino college students in STEM educational attainment, (2) implement a social-psychological intervention approach to improve performance, (3) test a new theory-informed version of the intervention, (4) test an online intervention delivery system that could facilitate widespread national dissemination.Using psychological and neurophysiological levels of analysis, this research will test: (1) how the threat of confirming negative stereotypes "gets under the skin" to impair cognitive functioning for minority students in STEM, and (2) whether a well-validated values-affirmation intervention works because it reduces the physiological stress of identity threat The ultimate project goal is to provide a powerful, cost-effective, and easily-implemented intervention to reduce the effect of identity threat on minority college student academic functioning, thereby reducing the racial achievement gap in STEM fields and increasing and diversifying the pool of STEM workers.