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It sounds too good to be true–help kids feel good about themselves, and they’ll l do better in school. But it apparently worked for African-American middle school students who engaged in a simple self-affirmation writing exercise. And the benefits extended well after the regimen ended. The results of the study appeared in the April 17th issue of the journal Science.
More than 400 black and white students took part in the research. Half of the students wrote about any neutral topic over the course of a year. The other half were asked to write about why they cherished certain values. The grades of African-American affirmation kids improved about a quarter of a point on a four-point scale, compared with the control group. And the lowest initial African-American performers upped their scores more than four-tenths of a point. Two years later, the scores continued to track higher among the group that practiced affirmations. White students who engaged in the affirmation exercise showed no improvement. A study author said that ethnic minorities feel particularly anxious that doing poorly could confirm other people’s negative expectations about them. And the affirmations may help alleviate those fears.
—Cynthia Graber
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6 Comments
Add CommentI question the validity of this study. Persons of every ethnicity experience performance anxiety about "confirming other people's negative expectations".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with kylazz, it would be interesting to see a replication of the study with other students who initially identify themselves as a minority in some way, for example students with specific learning difficulties. The thing that is nice about this as an intervention is that it should be easy to implement, it is student led and does not take much time away from other activites which could positively impact on educational acheivement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat study! With regards to kylazz's statement of "every ethnicity experiences performance anxiety", yes and no.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, this study is not about performance anxiety. Performance anxiety has been studied in depth and is nicely recapitulated by Social Facilitation Theory (which has been shown to be culturally Universal -- even appearing in cockroaches).
This study is more focused on reducing what is psychologically termed, "Stereotype Threat". It has long been shown that those who are targeted in society as being poor at some task (e.g. "females are bad at math", "blacks are not as intelligent or capable as whites", "gay men aren't mechanical but artistic", etc.) will tend to live up to these societal expectations, especially if they are primed (reminded of their status).
There has been little research on how to reduce stereotype threat, however, this study provides an interesting solution: have these groups affirm who they are! In short, make them PROUD and happy to be who they are and what they value.
I, for one, think it's a great start. And as a gay man who studied Physics, I can tell you there were many times that I felt inadequate in my Physics labs surrounded by presumably straight men ("I shouldn't be fiddling with this oscilloscope, I don't belong with these fellas.") Luckily, my top grades said otherwise! :)
I'd like to see other studies replicate and strengthen these findings.
Every teacher is taught to bring out the affirmative aspects of their talents in order to make them see personal worth. It has been known for a long time that this affirmation increases the performance of the students! So why is the writer surprised and expressing the comment 'It sounds too good to be true'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis theory may work for any "poor" group of people who consider more about others ' evaluation, like the disabled, children, and etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut how do you know such improvement didn't caused by the topics of the writing, maybe neutral topics are always hard to write, while there are always certain ways to improve the skill of writing critical essays sysytematically? Also, affirmative essay may be a better way to trigger students' interest in writting as they could donmenstrate their ideas directly, so they may improve because of their interest.
You can let the students write to support the view they actually oppose, and then rate the experiment. Maybe they can improve too.
Here we go again! We just went through an extended period where the schools concentrated more on student's self-esteem than on academic skills and it resulted in the worst academic system in the developed world. Let's do it again!
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