Reducing Stereotypical Beliefs and Implicit Associations About Hispanic Students' Academic Success: An Experimental Approach

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Division C Section 2a Poster Session 1: Motivational Processes

Abstract

College students have implicit attitudes that associate academic success more strongly with being White than with being Hispanic. To reduce or eliminate this ethnic bias in implicit associations, we randomly assigned college students to one of three groups: Control, Letter Writing, and Future Self. Participants in the Letter Writing group read about high academic achievement among Hispanic students, then wrote letters to Hispanic high school students. Participants in the Future Self group read about the importance of developing positive academic future selves, then designed programs to help high school students develop positive academic future selves. All participants completed surveys and IATs before and after the intervention. Results indicated an elimination of the ethnic bias among the Future Self group only.

Authors

• Caitlin Courshon, Santa Clara University

• Tim Urdan, Santa Clara University