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

该项目的研究重点是社会认同威胁的概念，即学业上处于危险境地的少数族裔学生担心，由于对他人对其种族群体智力的刻板印象，他们可能会受到负面评判。社会认同威胁已被证明会损害少数群体在STEM中的表现。这项研究假设，社会认同会触发生理威胁反应，这涉及到对威胁情境的荷尔蒙和免疫系统反应，这可能会削弱学生进行成功学习所需的更高水平认知加工的能力。PIS建议进行为期三年的研究：(1)考察社会心理和神经生物学过程在理解白人、黑人和拉丁裔大学生在STEM教育成就中的种族成就差距方面的作用；(2)实施社会心理干预方法以提高成绩；(3)测试干预的新理论版本，(4)测试可促进全国广泛传播的在线干预传递系统。本研究将利用心理学和神经生理学水平的分析，测试：(1)确认负面刻板印象的威胁如何“深入”损害STEM少数族裔学生的认知功能；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。项目的最终目标是提供一种强大、经济、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业功能的影响，从而缩小STEM领域的种族成就差距，增加STEM工作者的人数并使其多样化。

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.