Feeling Respected or Disrespected Relates to Achievement Intervention Effects in Adolescents

• In Event: The critical role of teacher-student relationships during adolescence

Abstract

One important often overlooked aspect of motivating adolescents is their desire to feel respected and gain status. Respect is as a gestalt judgment about whether one is seen as competent and capable in their abilities. This often overlooked factor has led to many behavior change interventions that could succeed but often fail (Yeager, Dahl, & Dweck, 2018); moreover, creating a sense of respect and identifying a source of status seems to be important for adolescent motivation and engagement (Crone & Dahl, 2012). Together this seems to suggest that creating environments that convey a belief in adolescents’ competence and abilities is essential to creating behavior change. In order to test this theory in an empirical setting, we examined whether an intervention aimed at increased educational achievement in high school students had effects moderated by students’ feelings of respect. We utilized data from a large nationally representative RCT of about 7,500 students across the US. The intervention was aimed at promoting a growth mindset of intelligence (a belief that intelligence can be changed through effort and strategies). This setting was ideal for two main reasons: first, the material itself was designed to be respectful in both the control and treatment conditions, meaning we could directly test how varying levels of respect in the environment affected the outcomes. Second, the intervention was already shown to contain heterogeneity between teachers allowing us to detect differences in treatment effects. Our main question was whether a student’s feelings of respect from their math teacher moderated treatment effects such that those more respected by their teacher showed greater shifts. Our outcomes of interest were math GPA, challenge-seeking behavior, and growth mindset beliefs. Utilizing advanced machine learning analyses in the form of Bayesian Causal Forest (BCF: which allows for a non-parametric test not biased by outliers). Analyses were conducted using multilevel models with students nested under teachers while controlling for demographic traits, prior achievement, and learning status (e.g. special education). Results show that greater treatment effects of the intervention materials were found at greater levels of respect as predicted. For math GPA in particular, there seemed to be no impact of the intervention at the lowest levels of respect. Traditional multilevel linear regression confirmed a significant moderation of the treatment effect by respect for math GPA (b = .07, p = .007), challenge seeking (b = .25, p = .014), and growth mindset beliefs (b = -.13, p < .001). Figure 1 shows the posterior distribution of treatment effects by feelings of respect for the math GPA outcome in panel A, while panel B shows the distribution of treatment effects divided by respect levels (equal tertiles; Low, Mid, and High) for math GPA outcomes. Table 1 displays summaries of the posterior distribution by respect levels, including the percent of the distribution different than 0. Results were similar for challenge-seeking and growth mindset beliefs, with treatment effects bigger overall. These results indicate that feeling respect by adults in their environment has meaningful consequences for how impactful behavior change attempts are for adolescents.

Authors

• Fortunato Nicholas Medrano, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• David Scott Yeager, University of Texas at Austin