College Students' Social Justice Intentions and Behaviors: An Expectancy-Value Perspective

• In Event: Grappling With Socioscientific Topics During Knowledge Revision and Belief Change in Varied Social Contexts

Abstract

The higher education experiences of underserved and minoritized students continue to be negatively affected by historic discriminatory and exclusionary policies and practices (Duke-Benfield, et al., 2018). While implementing more equitable policies depends on the approval of government and institutional leaders, pressure from student activist groups can initiate and expedite the process (e.g. Fitzgerald & Hodgman, 2021; Butler, 2021). Research on student activism suggests that underserved and minoritized students are often burdened with initiating and achieving equitable institutional change, which leads them to experience excess stress and fatigue (Linder, et al., 2019). Increasing advantaged students’ support for policy reform through belief change interventions could simultaneously strengthen underserved and minoritized students’ collective reform efforts and alleviate the pressures placed on them to successfully enact change. However, a comprehensive framework has yet to be robustly established to study young adults’ motivation for activism engagement, and motivational differences between student populations is understudied.

This theoretical paper aims to advance a conceptual foundation for students’ social justice motivation by discussing the predictive value of individuals’ expectancies and values for their activism intentions and behaviors. Although Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT; Wigfield, 1994) has most often been used to examine motivation in classroom settings (Rosenzweig et al., 2022), various researchers have begun to use this theory to investigate activism and civic engagement (Wegemer, 2021). However, measures for expectancies, values, and social justice efforts vary greatly between papers, leading to differences in proposed models.

First, through an analysis and critique of EVT and social justice work, this paper argues for redirecting our attention to the four proposed values in EVT to capture differences in beliefs between individuals. By not measuring all four values (e.g. Wegemer, 202; Levy & Akiva, 2019), we may not be fully capturing students’ beliefs and potential for belief change, which is a significant limitation for this work given the lack of an established framework and minimal knowledge of the utility of the model. Furthermore, by measuring values different than those proposed by EVT (e.g. Feather & Newton, 1982), the research is not truly advancing our understanding of the utility of this model despite its claim to do so.

Second, we argue that it is necessary to continue to examine the degree to which EVT explains activism intentions and behaviors. Understanding of differences in expectancies and values between student populations, and whether such differences explain activism choices, is crucial to create effective interventions that shift attitudes and beliefs and increase students’ support of their peers and communities.

Authors

• Anamely Salgado, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Stephen J. Aguilar, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author