Scaling Social-Psychological Interventions: Three Approaches

• In Event: Scaling Up Social Psychological Interventions to Address Achievement Gaps in Education

Abstract

A number of brief social-psychological interventions have been shown to raise students’ achievement over months and years and help remedy pervasive inequalities in education (Yeager & Walton, 2011). Social-psychological interventions change how students think and feel in and about school, for instance bolstering students’ sense of social-belonging (Walton & Cohen, 2011), allaying stress associated with negative stereotypes (e.g., using “value-affirmation” writing exercises; Cohen et al., 2009), and forestalling the belief that intelligence is fixed (“growth-mindset"; Blackwell et al., 2007). The effectiveness of these interventions testifies to the importance of psychological processes in learning and achievement and to the potential to alter these processes over long periods of time. Together with high-quality pedagogy and curricula, students’ psychology may form a critical third leg upon which academic success rests.

An important question involves how social-psychological interventions can be scaled to more students while maintaining treatment fidelity and effectiveness. This talk discusses three approaches. First, students can be taught to implement sophisticated social-psychological strategies to improve their lives. A randomized field-experiment with three cohorts of first-year engineering students (N=228) tested a 45-60 minute affirmation-training intervention. This taught students to incorporate personal values in their daily lives to manage stress that arises from social marginalization. This approach encouraged students to become agents in their well-being rather than leaving them dependent on researchers or teachers for the receipt of interventions. Both this intervention and a social-belonging intervention designed to bolster students’ sense of belonging in engineering improved the experience and raised the first-year grade-point-average of women in engineering majors, eliminating gender differences.

Second, social-psychological interventions can be delivered online through well-designed interactive web modules (see www.perts.net). The Internet allows the delivery of interventions with high fidelity, access to populations remote from research centers, near-zero cost of additional student-participants, and rigorous evaluation. A randomized field-experiment with community college students (N=700), a group that often suffers poor academic outcomes, tested two 50-minute online interventions—a value-affirmation intervention and a growth mindset of intelligence intervention. Both interventions raised students’ end-of-semester grade-point-average, and the growth-mindset intervention increased students’ course attainment, especially in challenging classes.

Third, researchers and educators may exploit existing bureaucratic channels by which schools communicate with students. We delivered “preventative” (i.e., pre-enrollment) social-belonging and growth-mindset interventions to several thousand incoming college students through online orientation materials. Among at-risk students—African Americans, Latinos, and first-generation White students—both interventions increased the percentage of students earning more than 12 credits in their first college term, a key predictor of on-time graduation.

As social-psychological interventions are delivered to more students, it is essential to continue to evaluate them using rigorous experimental methods. When and how these interventions raise achievement are critical questions for both theory and practice. In addition, it is important to tailor both the intervention message and delivery to the local context. Social-psychological interventions are not magic bullets. Only when the intervention message is appropriate for the student population at hand and when the mechanism and timing of its delivery convey this message powerfully will these interventions be maximally effective.

Authors

• Gregory Mariotti Walton, Stanford University

• Christine Logel, University of Waterloo

• David Paunesku, Stanford University

• David Scott Yeager, Stanford University

• Carissa Romero, Stanford University

• Ezgi Akcinar, Stanford University

• Shannon Brady, Stanford University

• Peach Jennifer, Stanford University

• April House, Stanford University

• Steven Spencer, University of Waterloo

• Geoffrey L. Cohen, Stanford University

• Carol Dweck, Stanford University