Kahn Arielle
Kahn Arielle
Kahn Arielle
Arielle R. Kahn
Duke University
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 2
Abstract
The achievement gap between White and Black students and White and Latino students remains
one of the largest issues in education today despite countless efforts to reduce it. Previous
expanding Pre-Kindergarten programs. While these attempts are laudable, they have not found
great success. However, recent trends in social-psychological research have pointed to student-
centered intervention strategies that are subtle but powerful and that have achieved long-lasting
effects like heightened GPA and standardized test scores. These strategies are appealing because
they are inexpensive, simple, and easy to execute. The present review focuses on a self-
affirmation intervention strategy that has been shown to mitigate the effect of stereotype threat
and thus diminish the achievement gap. In order to understand this intervention, the paper
merges the literature on stereotype threat and the literature on self-affirmation to shed light on
how the processes interact. More specifically, the review explores how self-affirmation, in the
form of values affirmation exercises, disrupts negative self-reinforcing recursive processes that
inhibit success in school for minority students. Self-affirmation reduces the stress students
the task at hand, thereby beginning an alternative recursive cycle that leads to greater success in
school. The paper reviews studies on self-affirmation interventions that have been both
successful and unsuccessful at lessening the achievement gap. Finally, future research directions
The achievement gap between White and Black students and White and Latino students
continues to plague our country, systemically undermine the success of thousands of students,
and hinder our global competitiveness. The “achievement gap” points to the persistent disparity
in educational outcomes between minority and/or low-income students and their White and
for Education Progress (NAEP) data, the difference in average math and reading scores between
European Americans and African Americans was virtually unchanged between the early 1990s
and 2007 (Vanneman, Hamilton, Baldwin Anderson, & Rahman, 2009). Data from the 2011
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) show that the Black-White achievement gap
persists by as many as 18 to 26 points on a 500-point scale score, even when controlling for
socioeconomic status (Bohrnstedt, Kitmitto, Ogut, Sherman, & Chan, 2015). More recent data
shows that the achievement gap in some school systems is as large as 1.2 standard deviations,
with the average across the United States at roughly 0.5 to 0.7 standard deviations (Reardon,
Kalogrides, & Shores, 2017). The gap in achievement is not only problematic for low-income
and minority students, but also for the United States as a whole because it is detrimental to our
global competitiveness. On the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA),
students in the United States fell behind at least 20 other countries including Finland, South
Korea, and Canada (NCES, 2015). The scores on these international exams will not significantly
improve until the achievement gap lessens. Therefore, even minor changes to the achievement
Given the magnitude of the problem and the variety of systemic factors that contribute to
its scope and persistence, there is no singular remedy that will eradicate the achievement gap.
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 4
Previous efforts have largely focused on school-centered initiatives such as improving teacher
training, instructional materials, and expanding Pre-K programs (Wilson & Buttrick, 2016).
While these efforts are important and have great potential to alter educational outcomes, past
attempts have largely failed to make a noteworthy impact as the achievement gap has not
significantly changed since the 1980s (Barton & Coley, 2010). Since students are not just passive
recipients of knowledge and successful learning depends on much more than quality of services
(Wilson & Buttrick, 2016), it is worth exploring how nuanced student-centered approaches may
student-centered and can lead to large gains in achievement (e.g., Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, &
Master, 2006). These interventions target students’ beliefs, construals, and interpretations of
events in order to make them more adaptive. Unlike traditional educational interventions that
focus on academic content, these psychological interventions are designed to change students’
thoughts and feelings in and about school (Yeager & Walton, 2011). Examples of such
interventions are those designed to teach students that poor academic performance is normal in
the transition to a new school and that grades typically improve after the transition (Wilson &
Linville, 1982) or interventions that encourage students to view intelligence as malleable instead
of fixed (Dweck, 2006). These subtle yet powerful interventions are appealing because they are
simple and inexpensive to execute, and they can have significant and lasting effects. Effects in
the short-term result from targeting students’ subjective perceptions of experiences in school.
Effects in the long-term come from changing the course of recursive processes, or self-
reinforcing processes that accumulate effects over time (Yeager & Walton, 2011). Yeager,
Walton, and Cohen (2013) proposed that psychological interventions raise student achievement
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 5
by: 1) influencing students’ construals of themselves and the classroom, 2) using delivery tactics
values affirmation intervention proven to mitigate the effect of stereotype threat and
subsequently diminish the achievement gap. The seminal intervention study of this nature was
researchers tested whether psychological threat could be lessened by having students reaffirm
racially diverse school were provided with a list of 12 values (e.g., relationships with
friends/family, being good at art, religion) and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions.
The students in the experimental condition were asked to choose the two or three values most
important to them and then write a paragraph about why they were important to their lives. The
students in the control condition chose their least important values and wrote about why someone
else might find those values to be important. The research team found that the brief in-class
writing assignment significantly improved the grades of the African American students in the
experimental condition and reduced the achievement gap by 40%. Participation in the
affirmation yielded no effect on the grades of White students, suggesting that self-affirmation
reduced stereotype threat among Black students or at least bolstered dimensions of their self-
worth that helped reduce their stress levels and thereby facilitated performance.
Two years later the authors conducted a follow-up study to see if the results persisted
(Cohen, Garcia, Purdie-Vaughns, Apfel, & Brzustoksi, 2009). While some psychological
interventions have only short-term impact, this particular intervention demonstrated a lasting
impact two years later, especially for low-achieving African American students. Over the two
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 6
years between studies, the GPA of African American students was, on average, 0.24 points
higher than that of control group African American students. The intervention also lessened the
likelihood of affirmed students being assigned to a remedial track. This seminal study
Following the Cohen et al. (2006) study, many other researchers have explored values
affirmation as a means to mitigate stereotype threat and have examined the success of the
intervention in different contexts (e.g., Cook, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia, & Cohen, 2012; Sherman
et al, 2013). The current paper will review the literature on stereotype threat and self-affirmation,
and then examine how these separate processes interact. The paper looks at both successful and
unsuccessful affirmation interventions in the classroom in order to further understand how and
why they work and to suggest further studies. Given the subtle yet powerful nature of the
intervention, there are clear implications for policymakers and educators to execute the
intervention.
Stereotype Threat
about one’s group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The term was coined more than two decades ago
when Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson sought to uncover an explanation for the long-standing
finding that African American students underperform on standardized tests. They hypothesized
that African Americans underperformed when they were aware that failure could reinforce a
negative stereotype, interfering with the intellectual functioning of these students, particularly
during standardized exams. In the first of several studies, African American college students
performed worse than White peers on standardized tests when the exams were presented to them
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 7
as diagnostic of their ability and when students were asked to report their race beforehand.
Students in the control condition were told they were completing an exercise in problem solving.
In the diagnostic condition, African American students performed significantly worse than White
students. However, African American students in the control condition performed as well as
control-condition Whites, and better than their African American counterparts in the diagnostic
condition. Steele and Aronson reasoned that when exams were presented as diagnostic of ability,
Americans triggered fear of confirming the stereotypes, and interfered with student performance.
In a series of follow-up studies, Steele and Aronson (1995) found that even when tests
were not presented as diagnostic of ability, the salience of negative stereotypes still impaired
performance. Simply by indicating race on an exam, African American students did worse than
their White counterparts. However, when students did not indicate their race, African Americans
performed as well as White students. Regardless of how the stereotype was primed, being
confronted with the threat of confirming negative stereotypes impeded the performance of
Following Steele and Aronson’s original study, hundreds of others have demonstrated
how negative stereotypes about intellectual ability impact the performance of those in
stereotyped groups including Black, Latino, female, and low-income students (for a review, see
Nguyen & Ryan, 2008). Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) found that when negative stereotypes
about women’s math abilities were made explicit beforehand, women underperformed relative to
their potential on quantitative tasks in relation to men. Women did not underperform, however,
when stereotypes were presented as irrelevant to the task. Even groups who typically benefit
from privileged social status can be made to experience stereotype threat. For example, White
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 8
men performed worse on a math test when they were told their performance would be compared
with that of Asian men (Aronson et al., 1999). Additionally, Whites performed worse than
Blacks on a motor task when it was described to them as measuring their natural athletic ability
(Stone, 2002).
psychological processes underlying its effects. Schmader, Forbes, and Johns (2008) developed an
integrated process model of stereotype threat in which motivational, affective, physiological, and
cognitive processes interact to hinder performance (see Figure 1). As shown in the model,
stereotype threat induces physiological stress responses, negative emotion regulation, and
monitoring processes. When a person experiences negative emotion regulation, the person uses
suppression processes to deal with it, further encouraging physiological stress responses and
monitoring processes, and thereby consuming mental resources. Altogether, these responses
diminish working memory efficiency and hinder performance on cognitive and social tasks that
require effortful processing. Working memory efficiency is essential to perform well in school.
As such, students cannot perform to their highest potential when they experience stereotype
threat. Performance on more automatic sensorimotor tasks is stunted as well, specifically by the
monitoring processes.
Another consequence of stereotype threat that is not explicitly demonstrated in the model
is the increased likelihood of exhibiting a prevention focus, i.e., a mindset in which one works
vigilantly to prevent negative outcomes instead of working toward achieving positive ones
(Higgins, 1998). A prevention focus is less adaptive in gains-focused evaluative settings where
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 9
students work to achieve their highest performance levels; cognitive processes associated with a
promotion focus are better-suited to performance on tasks in school (Seibt & Forster, 2004;
Grimm et al., 2009). Students who exhibit a promotion focus instead of a prevention focus are
more focused on learning instead of performance and are therefore less likely to experience the
anxiety associated with performance. Promotion-focused students are also more oriented toward
mastery of material. Although the Schmader et al. (2008) model does not mention prevention
focus and is not entirely comprehensive because it fails to account for processes that occur prior
to stereotype threat, it effectively summarizes how stereotype threat disrupts performance via
three mechanisms: 1) psychological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing; 2)
the tendency to actively monitor performance; and 3) efforts to suppress negative thoughts and
emotions in the service of self-regulation. These mechanisms consume all of the executive
situations involve activation of three core concepts: the concept of one’s ingroup, the concept of
the ability domain in question, and one’s self-concept. The way one sees the relation between
these three concepts influences one’s experience of stereotype threat. For example, a student may
think the following: My group has this ability; I am like my group; I have this ability. Another
might also think the opposite: My group does not have this ability; I am like my group; I do not
have this ability. Stereotype threat comes from a situationally-induced state of imbalance
between these three core concepts, so the second student is experiencing stereotype threat
because there is an imbalance in that thought. Stereotype threat is triggered by situations that
pose a threat to self-integrity, creating a cognitive imbalance when one’s concept of self and
expectation for success conflict with stereotypes that suggest one will perform badly. Wheeler,
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 10
Jarvis, and Petty (2001) found that individuals perform consistently with an outgroup stereotype
only when the outgroup is temporarily incorporated into their own working self-concept. In this
way, even if an individual does not always identify with a negatively stereotyped group, if they
are manipulated in such a way to temporarily do so, they are left in a state of cognitive imbalance
that underlies stereotype threat. It is also worth noting that positive self-identification is derived
in part from membership in social groups (Tajfel, 1982) so group membership and identification
could serve as an affirmation. However, when the group is negatively stereotyped it can also
Stereotype threat can have effects that people are either unable or unwilling to
consciously report (Johns et al., 2008). In fact, that is one factor that differentiates stereotype
threat from other social-evaluative threats that are detrimental to performance, such as test
anxiety. Firstly, stereotype threat is unique from test anxiety because it is triggered by activating
threatened individuals who are typically confident in their abilities, or who have a positive self-
concept, can find themselves in situations that are not explicitly evaluative and still perform
badly. Notably, people may not know they are suffering from stereotype threat whereas it is
fairly obvious when one is experiencing test anxiety. Stereotype threat is often cued subtly and
can impair performance while leaving individuals unaware of their resulting feelings of anxiety
There are also situations in which, although stereotypes are present and relevant, they are
not activated for individual students and therefore do not explain students’ underperformance.
For example, if students have already de-identified with school and lost motivation to work hard
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 11
then a focus on eliminating stereotype threat may not make a difference (Steele, 1997). If a
student does not identify with a school-domain at all then the self will not be threatened in the
stereotype-relevant domain of school. There are also situations in which students simply do not
have awareness of negative stereotypes about their group (Wasserberg, 2014). Thus, not every
stereotype-relevant situation engenders stereotype threat in every student. In this way, stereotype
activation may be a critical step in the process beginning with a stereotype-relevant situation and
ending with underperformance that is left out of Schmader’s model. A model introduced later in
settings (e.g, Nguyen & Ryan, 2008; Steele et al., 2002). However, Taylor and Walton (2011)
explored how stereotype threat might impact learning itself. Measures of performance are not
always the same as measures of learning, especially given today’s emphasis on high-stakes
testing. Students who are subject to stereotype threat may not be able to convey all of their
knowledge on exams, the traditional performance indicators, in such a way that demonstrates
everything they have learned. Taylor and Walton reasoned that if stereotype threat impacts both
learning and performance environments, it could cause cumulative performance deficits that
could further explain the stark differences amongst different groups. They tested the effect of
learning environment and then assessing performance in both nonthreatening and then
threatening environments. Black and White students studied rare words in either an evaluative,
learning threat condition, the word-learning task was described as relevant to negative
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 12
intellectual stereotypes about African Americans. One to two weeks later, when students were
tested, Black students who had studied in the evaluative environment defined about half as many
words correctly as their peers who had studied in the nonthreatening performance setting.
Whether or not White students studied in an evaluative environment made no difference on their
performance since White students defined the same number of words in both settings. These
results provided direct evidence that stereotype threat can undermine academic learning, leading
the authors to claim that stereotype threat causes a form of “double jeopardy” (p.1057) because it
both interferes with how well stereotyped students learn new material and also prevents
stereotyped students from performing as well as they could on material they learned. One major
implication of this study is that grades and test scores are not necessarily representative of
stereotyped students’ ability. The study results are also a testament to the widespread and
immense impact of stereotype threat. More specifically, stereotype threat prevents students from
acquiring the intellectual building blocks they need to perform well in school.
The Taylor and Walton study (2011) demonstrates how stereotype threat can have a long-
term impact on academic success. When students fear confirming negative stereotypes about
their intelligence, they may not learn as well and underperform in class despite high intellectual
potential. After performing poorly in a class that provides foundational knowledge to be used in
future classes and not acquiring the building blocks of knowledge they need from that course,
students are less prepared for subsequent related courses. This could further undermine their
confidence and feelings of self-efficacy, putting them at an increased disadvantage, and leading
to successively worse performance. Thus, a maladaptive recursive process can be set in motion
by stereotype threat.
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 13
Research emphasizes how poor performance and negative social and psychological
processes may perpetuate over time in recursive cycles (e.g. Cohen et al., 2009). For example,
with repeated exposure, stereotype threat can cause disidentification, whereby students detach
their sense of self-worth from academic tasks and disengage from school (Steele, 1997).
Identification with school and its subdomains is crucial for academic success. Additionally,
students who expect rejection based on race may interpret any negative events in school as
evidence of their lack of belonging, and belongingness is known to affect both motivation and
illustrates how a negative recursive process stemming from stereotype threat can lead to
underperformance over time and repeated instances of threat. Stereotype threat impairs learning
which leads to decreased performance (Taylor & Walton, 2011). After performing badly,
students will likely have lower confidence and feelings of belongingness in school, a construct
that contributes to lower performance (Connell et al., 1995). When students continue to perform
badly they are more likely to de-identify from school, resulting in less motivation to work hard
(Steele, 1997), less engagement, and eventual long-term failure in school. Once students are
caught in this negative recursive cycle in school it is exceedingly difficult to change their
trajectories.
successfully reduce the impact of stereotype threat. One strategy to combat stereotype threat is
quite simple – tell the participants about stereotype threat. Johns, Schmader, and Marten (2005)
conducted a study in which making participants aware of their susceptibility to stereotype threat
was enough to combat it. In the threat condition, women were told they were taking a math exam
that would examine gender differences in math ability. In the no-threat condition, women were
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 14
told they were taking an exam that tested individual differences on problem-solving exercises. In
the third condition, like the first one, women were told they were taking a math exam that would
examine gender differences in math ability; however, they were also told about stereotype threat
and how it may make women feel more anxious while taking a math test and lead them to
underperform as a result. Unsurprisingly, women underperformed men in the first condition and
performed equally in the second condition. Women also performed equally to men in the third
condition, though, showing that how individuals interpret their experience when under threat
plays a critical role in performance. Perhaps making people aware of the threat they are
experiencing allows them to overcome it or at least understand how the threat may impact them
so that they can look past it. The researchers explained that knowing about stereotype threat
external explanation for any arousal they felt. In the context of Schamder et al.’s model (2008),
when people are told about stereotype threat, it affects their reappraisal of the situation in the
negative emotional regulation cycle. Nevertheless, there is not yet enough research supporting
this intervention strategy. Also, according to a meta-analysis conducted by Nguyen and Ryan
(2008), stereotype threat led to a smaller decrease in performance for women than it did for
minorities on difficult tests, suggesting that this method of informing people of stereotype threat
may not have the same impact on minority populations other than women. The rest of the paper
will focus on another important effort to reduce the impact of stereotype threat - the
aforementioned intervention strategy that uses self-affirmation exercises to reduce the impact of
stereotype threat.
Self-Affirmation
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 15
Self-affirmation is an act that demonstrates one’s adequacy and directs one’s attention to
valued aspects of the self (Steele, 1988). Self-affirmation has also been defined as behavioral or
cognitive events that bolster the perceived integrity of the self as well as one’s overall self-image
as competent, effective, and able to control important outcomes (Cook, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia,
& Cohen, 2012). Self-affirmation was first introduced as a route to resolving cognitive
dissonance (Steele, 1988). Steele, who is also credited with coining the term “stereotype threat,”
found that people were able to resist the normal urge to rationalize bad decisions or failure if
they had the opportunity to reflect upon important sources of self-worth. At the center of self-
affirmation theory is the fact that people are motivated to maintain self-integrity, or a global
sense of personal adequacy and an image of oneself as able to control important adaptive and
moral outcomes in one’s life (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). But self-integrity can be challenged by
adequacy of the self (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). Psychological threats - including stereotype
threat, as mentioned above - can impede adaptive coping by consuming mental resources and
prompting rationalizations or other defensive processes to lessen the threat. However, when
people affirm their overall self-integrity they have less need to suppress or rationalize away
important skill, purchasing of status goods, and updating one’s Facebook page, but in
people write about core personal values. People completing values affirmation exercises are told
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 16
to look over a list of values and then choose a few that are most important to them. Then they
write about those values that they deemed most important. People often chose to write about
relationships with friends and family or religion. One child wrote “If I didn’t have my family, I
[wouldn’t] be raised right and if I didn’t have my friends I would be a boring person.” Notably, a
crucial aspect of the intervention is that it is self-generated and is designed to tap into an
individual’s particular identity (Sherman, 2013). It is in the process of writing about one’s
personal sentiments that the values affirmation exercise impacts one’s self-concept.
Studies using values affirmation interventions have found that the small yet significant
act of writing about values can reduce psychological stress and improve academic performance
(eg., Cohen et al., 2009). It is through two routes that affirmations lift psychological barriers: the
(Cohen & Sherman, 2014). Affirmation exercises remind people of their psychosocial resources
beyond the particular threat they are facing in that moment, thus enabling them to think more
globally and see beyond the particular threat. In typical threatening situations, such as an exam,
students’ attention is narrowed to the immediate threat of failure, thus eliciting a fight-or-flight
response, defensive coping strategies, and perhaps a prevention orientation to the task. However,
when students are affirmed, they are less likely to experience these physiological and
psychological factors and can see these stressors in a more global context (Schmeichel & Vohs,
2009). When affirmed, people can see the minor stressors of daily life in the context of a bigger
picture, thus ensuring that specific threats do not demand as much vigilance (Cohen & Sherman,
2014). Studies have shown how the physiological response to threat differ for affirmed and non-
affirmed students (e.g., Sherman et al., 2009). College students identified their most stressful
midterm exam and were asked to provide urine samples to assess catecholamine levels, an
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 17
indicator of sympathetic nervous system activation (Sherman et al., 2009). Students in the
control condition experienced an increase in epinephrine levels but there was no change among
students who completed values affirming exercises throughout the weeks of studying and
more expansive view of the self, the threat has less impact on psychological well-being (Cohen
et al., 2009). The results of two longitudinal field experiments in middle school suggested that
values affirmation insulates people’s sense of belonging in the face of environmental threat
(Cook et al., 2012). Affirmation led perceptions of felt belonging to be decoupled from academic
performance. In other words, the intervention decoupled the self and the threat so that African
Additionally, affirmations enable people to view a threat in a more constructive manner. Non-
affirmed minority students may interpret a bad grade as an indicator of lack of intelligence while
affirmed minority students may view the same bad grade from a broader perspective, allowing
them to see future negative feedback in a more constructive and less defensive light. The effects
presented smokers with graphic antismoking cigarette advertisements (Harris et al., 2007).
their ability to stop smoking and had stronger motivation to quit than those who did not self-
affirm.
and rationalization, affirmed people can navigate threats in a more constructive way. In academic
settings, affirmation allows students to focus on the academic task at hand instead of the self-
affirmations are so beneficial because they help people maintain a reassuring narrative of
personal adequacy (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). The effects of self-affirmation can be summarized
affirmation broadens the perspective with which people view information and events in their
lives, and 3) self-affirmation leads to the uncoupling of the self and the threat, reducing the
Just as stereotype threat can initiate long-term effects that negatively impact students’
trajectories in school, a well-timed and well-situated affirmation intervention can set off instead,
what Cohen and Sherman (2014) refer to as a “cycle of adaptive potential” that can lead to long-
term success in school. The cycle of adaptive potential has reciprocally reinforcing interactions
between the self-system and the social system so that the actor’s potential to achieve adaptive
outcomes increases (see Figure 3). As an example of how the self-system interacts with the
one exam, a student’s performance may be further enhanced in the future because of higher
teacher expectations (as part of their social system) and the teacher may place the student in a
higher track where students have more resources and greater expectations. Alternatively, an
underperforming student may be viewed by the teacher as less able, encouraging teachers to
assign them to a lower academic track. This assignment may then lead students to affiliate with
lower-performing peers and then they may come to not care as much about school. The latter
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 19
example is common for students who are subjected to a threat that lowers their performance and
then further heightens their sense of threat, thereby lowering performance in a repeating cycle
(Cohen & Garcia, 2008). Affirmation disrupts this process so that an individual is more likely to
children who have been affirmed tend to exhibit approach rather than avoidance orientation and
thus become more confident in their abilities to overcome adversity. Students with an approach
orientation who do poorly on one examination are more likely to see it as isolated event rather
than a threat to the self (Cook et al., 2012). It is clear that students benefit from the cycle of
adaptive potential set off by self-affirmation. As such, the current paper focuses on how self-
affirmation disrupts the negative recursive processes coming from stereotype threat and instead
As the previous sections of this paper have conveyed, there is extensive research on both
stereotype threat and self-affirmation. We know that stereotype threat is triggered by situations
that threaten self-integrity and create a cognitive imbalance between one’s concept of self and
one’s expectation for success. Immediate responses to stereotype threat include physiological
stress responses, negative emotion regulation, and monitoring processes, and these responses
consume the executive resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. Self-
affirmation, on the other hand, allows the threat to be seen in the context of a more expansive
view of the self, thereby freeing up the cognitive resources students need to successfully
complete academic tasks. A self-affirmation intervention may even reduce the cognitive
availability of the stereotype itself (e.g., Cohen et al., 2006). When stereotypes are less
cognitively available and thus less salient to the student, the students’ perception of bias in their
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 20
school environment changes. This is crucial for Black and Latino students who face the extra
burden in school of knowing that their skills, and those of others in their group, could be viewed
through the lens of a negative stereotype about their groups’ intellectual abilities. Self-
affirmation also increases the likelihood that a student will take on a promotion focus in which
the student envisions success in school and works to achieve it. When people reflect on
important values that transcend a stressful situation, like their relationships or religion, they are
Garcia, Sumner, Cook, & Apfel, 2009). Altogether, self-affirmation interventions buffer stress so
that cognitive resources are not depleted and students can focus on the task at hand.
Figure 4 demonstrates the short-term impacts of both stereotype threat and self-
affirmation and more importantly shows how self-affirmation disrupts the process that stereotype
threat invokes. Without self-affirmation, stereotype threat leads to heightened arousal, restricted
such that people take on more expansive views of the self, thereby boosting self-resources, and
ultimately leading to heightened performance. Unlike the Schmader et al. (2008) model of
stereotype threat, shown earlier in the paper, this model also accounts for the processes that
trigger stereotype threat. Students must be exposed to a stereotype-relevant situation and then
students find themselves in stereotype-relevant situations, such as school, and do not experience
stereotype activation because they may be unaware of negative stereotypes (Wasserberg, 2014).
In a study with fourth and fifth grade African American students, only those who were aware of
the negative stereotypes performed worse in the threat/diagnostic condition. Also, as Steele
(1997) suggests, students who have already de-identified with academics may not be susceptible
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 21
to stereotype threat because not being identified with a domain means one’s experience of
stereotype threat in that domain is less-threatening. Given the relevance of this information, it is
necessary that the present model incorporates its first two steps to convey the importance of
processes prior to stereotype threat that determine if people are even effected by stereotype
threat.
successfully implemented to reduce the impact of stereotype threat (e.g., Cohen et al., 2006;
Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003). In fact, until recently, the values affirmation writing exercise
has appeared to be some form of magic in altering the course of the achievement gap in the
schools where it was implemented. The seminal studies conducted by Cohen and colleagues
(2006, 2009) as mentioned in the Introduction were especially exciting because they found a
40% reduction in the achievement gap. Since then, the benefits of the intervention remained
across other measures of achievement including standardized test scores (Good et al., 2003) and
statewide achievement scores (Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2009). Another study found that self-
affirmation increased feelings of school belongingness (Cook et al., 2012), a construct that
contributes to higher achievement (Connell et al., 1995). In the Cook et al. study, low classroom
grades had less influence on the long-term sense of belonging in schools for affirmed students
The results were also replicated among Latino American students, who after engaging in
the same values affirmation writing exercise, earned higher grades than their peers who were not
in the affirmation condition (Sherman et al., 2013). The effect persisted even three years later
when the students transitioned to high school. Students wrote in daily diaries to examine how the
affirmation affected their psychology under identity threat. The results showed that affirmed
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 22
Latino American students not only earned higher grades than non-affirmed students, but also
construed events at more abstract than concrete levels and were less likely to have their daily
showing that a values affirmation exercise, performed once in a laboratory, increased the
likelihood that Latino college students would spontaneously self-affirm when faced with new
stressors two years later. At Time 1, Latino and White first-year college students were randomly
assigned to complete a values affirmation exercise or to be in the control condition. Two years
later they returned to the lab to complete a task designed to increase stress levels about
academics. They were asked to write an open-ended essay about anything on their minds, and
researchers coded the writing to examine who engaged in self-affirmation by, for example,
writing about valued parts of their lives like family or religion. They found that the Latino
students who completed the values affirmation not only had higher grades two years later, but
also spontaneously generated more self-affirming thoughts. As in the original Cohen et al. (2006,
2009) studies, White students did not benefit because they do not face significant stereotype
threat. However, there was a study conducted earlier that demonstrated how White students can
benefit from self-affirmation interventions. Creswell, Dutcher, Klein, Harris, and Levine (2013)
found that self-affirmation helped the performance of a predominantly White sample of college
students who were chronically underperforming and stressed. In this case the affirmation
intervention worked, not because it buffered students from the effects of stereotype threat, but
because it decreased the stress levels of students. Thus, self-affirmation can conceivably benefit
any individuals who are psychologically threatened, not just those who experience stereotype
threat.
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 23
interventions that could assess whether the intervention could make a difference at scale and
whether different school settings may moderate effects of the treatment. However, Borman and
colleagues (2015) conducted the values affirmation intervention in an entire district in Wisconsin
with a population including both African American and Latino students. Students completed four
writing exercises throughout the course of the school year; those in the experimental condition
completed self-affirming writing exercises while those in the control condition completed other
writing exercises that were not self-affirming. The researchers looked at GPA as well as
standardized achievement tests given at the beginning and the end of the school year. The results
suggested that, similar to other studies, self-affirmation positively affects the academic
GPA. They also found evidence of impact on African American and Latino students’
standardized mathematics scores. This study is important because it showed that there is, in fact,
After reading through studies and learning that a 15-minute writing exercise that has no
negative consequences has great potential to significantly lessen the achievement gap, it is hard
to not think that it sounds like magic. However, there is a problem with viewing social-
psychological interventions as forms of magic. The interventions are not silver bullets that
operate in isolation (Yeager & Walton, 2011). It would be incorrect to say that when a student is
taking a math test a year and a half after completing a values affirmation writing exercise that the
student is thinking about that particular exercise and as a result performing better. What does
interventions, rearrange forces in a complex system, and as such make long-term changes. If
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 24
interventions are well-timed and well-targeted, they can tap into recursive processes and change
the trajectory of student outcomes (Yeager & Walton, 2011). For example, after affirming
themselves and performing better on one examination, students study and learn better, making
them better prepared to learn and perform well in the future. Then students become more secure
in their belonging in school and form better relationships with their peers and teachers, who
become sources of support and promote greater feelings of belonging and academic success in
the future. Initial success encourages students to exhibit more optimistic beliefs about their
potential, thereby making them more invested in school. They continue to perform better and are
subsequently placed in higher level classes, are exposed to high-achieving peers, and have high
The lasting effect of self-affirmation interventions stems from the fact that the affirmation
intervention disrupts a negative recursive cycle and replaces it with a positive one. Figure 2b
demonstrates an example of a recursive process stemming from self-affirmation. Notice how this
recursive cycle differs from one stemming from stereotype threat, as shown in Figure 2a. In this,
more adaptive recursive process, students who self-affirm are better able to learn so they perform
better, instilling in them greater confidence and feelings of belongingness in school, thereby
motivating them to continue to work harder, and ultimately making them continually successful
in school.
Psychological threat and poor performance feed off each other, working in a feedback
loop that leads to worsening performance (Cohen et al., 2009). However, a small reduction in
psychological threat can trigger an alternative recursive cycle by resulting in a small change in
performance on the subsequent measure, thus improving a student’s confidence, decreasing their
improvements on the next measures. In this way, an early interruption of a negative recursive
cycle can change the cycle entirely to have more positive long-term effects (Cohen & Garcia,
2008). The alternative recursive cycle set off by self-affirmation was explained by Cohen and
Sherman (2014) as a “cycle of adaptive potential” (see Figure 3) with reciprocally reinforcing
interactions between the self-system and the social system that promotes adaptive outcomes.
Within the self-system, for example, better performance may affirm the self, leading to better
performance in the future, which would further affirm the self and so on. The paper previously
refers to an example of a student who performs better and as a result is held to higher
expectations by the teacher and is then placed in a higher track, further enhancing the student’s
performance. In this way, an early advantage leads to subsequent experiences that perpetuate and
enhance the advantage. Teacher influence is an important component of the social system in a
school setting. A study conducted by Bowen, Wegmann, and Webber (2013) found that having
teachers read students’ self-affirmation essays provided an additional boost to the intervention.
Students were divided into either an affirmation condition or a non-affirmation condition and a
teacher condition or a non-teacher condition. Students in the teacher condition had their essays
read by their teachers. The results of the study showed that students in the affirmation + teacher
condition had higher social studies grades than those in the non-teacher affirmation condition.
Stereotyped students benefited when teachers read their self-affirming essays but not when
teachers read neutral essays for students in the non-affirmation condition. All students in self-
affirmation conditions benefited from the intervention, but those who got the extra boost of
Cook and colleagues found that the earlier a values-affirmation intervention was delivered, the
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 26
more it improved students’ grades (Cook et al., 2012). Additionally, timing was more important
than frequency of interventions. Past studies typically conducted the intervention during 7th grade
(e.g, Cohen et al., 2006). Seventh grade is a natural ecological transition in which a student’s
sense of identity and belonging is highly uncertain, so interventions that target identity at that
point can be especially effective. It is crucial to conduct values affirmation interventions in the
early stages of adolescence in order to break recursive cycles and diminish the impact of early
setbacks that could incite downward spirals in both psychological and performance outcomes.
Ideally, the intervention is conducted before the downward cycle even begins. Since early
outcomes are most important in recursive processes, previous interventions were given early in
the year, typically around the fourth week of school (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). For African
American students, early failure may confirm that the stereotype is in play as a global stable
indicator of their ability to thrive in school (Cohen et al., 2006). But small changes in their
performance in the beginning can affect student’s confidence as well as teacher perceptions, thus
All successful studies have been grounded in research and nuanced psychological
understanding. Additionally, students must be actively involved in the intervention process. The
values affirmation intervention is successful because students are actively engaged in writing
personalized responses about values that are important to them. For this reason, it is pivotal that
the writing exercise includes a variety of values that will suit diverse populations of children.
Self-affirmation interventions are better than using rewards or praise because they give students
the opportunity to manifest their own integrity through their own actions and thoughts. Lastly, it
is important to note that systemic and structural inequalities contribute significantly to the
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 27
achievement gap and in no way does this intervention eliminate those. Social-psychological
Unsuccessful Studies
While the results of most related studies have been quite positive, not all of them have
been entirely so. A recent multi-site replication of Cohen et al.’s original 2006 study found
Rozek, Grigg, & Borman, 2014). Researchers examined differences in benefits of a self-
affirmation intervention in all 11 middle schools in Madison, Wisconsin. They found that
students benefited more from self-affirmation in schools with fewer and more academically
marginalized African American and Hispanic students, than in schools with more marginalized
students. The researchers argued that school contexts with a limited number of marginalized
students and racialized achievement patterns were likely more threatening environments that
could ultimately harm the performance of Black and Hispanic students, and thus labeled them as
high-threat conditions. Self-affirmation reduced the achievement gap and overall GPA by 12.5%
in high threat school conditions but had essentially no effect in low threat conditions. Therefore,
school context does moderate the benefits of self-affirmation interventions for Black and
Hispanic students’ grades. The researchers theorized that self-affirmation had a less significant
reduced the potential for social identity threat. They also noted that it was possible that the
fidelity of the intervention could have been compromised in some of the schools where the
intervention was conducted. Another possibility is that in low-threat schools, some Black and
Hispanic students may have been already disengaged from school and thus the affirmation
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 28
intervention would not be helpful (Steele, 1997). Students may have already de-identified with
school, had no motivation to work hard, and had given up so they would underperform on exams
Protzko and Aronson (2016) also examined how demographics might moderate the role
of affirmation effects. While in previous studies, teachers presented the values affirmation
writing exercise, due to limitations from the New York Department of Education, the research
had to be presented as coming from the research team and not teachers. Additionally, Protzko
and Aronson purposefully conducted their study in school populations they thought would be
more representative of schools across the United States. Most schools today are de facto
segregated so the half White/half minority populations studied in other schools are not actually
representative of typical school populations in the United States. Therefore, they intentionally
conducted the study in a suburban school comprised of more wealthy and White children as well
as an inner-city school comprised of more poor minority children. Aside from these two key
differences the researchers used the same materials as previous studies and found no effect of the
affirmation on academic performance. One possible explanation is that the psychological impact
of stereotypes may depend on whether the group has a “critical mass” in the environment.
Another possible explanation is that in other studies when teachers conducted the affirmation
exercise, students assumed that their teachers were interested in knowing the content of their
affirmations (Cohen et al., 2006), suggesting that such affirmation effects may be potent because
students think that teachers care about their values. It is also possible that students who have
already de-identified with school might not even experience stereotype threat and thereby may
not benefit from the intervention (Steele, 1997). This may explain why the intervention was not
effective in the school comprised of predominantly minority students where achievement levels
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 29
are more uniformly low and de-identification may be widespread. Finally, it is possible that the
the widespread success of the intervention in previous studies it is important to conduct further
research on the moderators of self-affirmation that might diminish or change its effectiveness.
Future studies should also examine school populations that are not equally divided between
the effect of stereotype threat and diminish the achievement gap in schools across the country, it
is important that researchers continue to study and improve the intervention so that it can
ultimately be accessible to all schools and policymakers. Most of the previous research has been
conducted on fairly small samples, testing the intervention in one particular setting. Future
research should try scaling up the interventions. Future studies should also further explore the
idea that different contexts moderate the effectiveness of the self-affirmation intervention. Given
the results of the Protzko and Aronson (2016) study, it is important to conduct more studies in de
facto segregated schools that are representative of schools in the United States. If the results
continue to be negligible, studies should look at why the intervention is not as successful in
schools that are not evenly split between White and minority students. Studies should also seek
better understanding of the various cultural and economic groups who might experience
stereotype threat. There are a variety of groups who are negatively affected by stereotype threat
in schools (e.g., females in quantitative fields and students for whom English is not their first
One of the greatest barriers to research in schools is that schools are protective of
instructional time. Even though the values affirmation exercise takes only 15 minutes, those
minutes are taken away from learning material deemed important for high-stakes tests. Future
studies could test the effectiveness of an online intervention as opposed to the written
intervention. Students could complete the exact same exercise, in which they chose from a list of
values that are most important to them and write about those values, but they would type it on an
online platform. It is possible that online interventions may not be successful because it is the act
of writing itself that makes the intervention effective. It is also possible that the intervention will
not be effective if it is not administered in an evaluative setting like a classroom that makes for a
same positive results as those who complete the written intervention, then schools could use
online mediums for the intervention during homeroom or study hours, for example, so they do
Future studies should further examine intervention timing. Would the intervention be
effective with younger students? Can it be altered in such a way that it would be better suited for
younger students? If the intervention is so effective it would make sense to try to execute it
earlier. Studies should also track how the effects of the intervention persist and change over time.
achievement other than just reduced stereotype threat. To date, only a few mediators other than
stereotype activation have been assessed, including school belongingness (Cook et al., 2012) and
identity threat (Sherman et al., 2013). Self-affirmation likely impacts a variety of construals that
are known to predict school achievement, such as locus of control, implicit beliefs about
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 31
academic ability, self-efficacy, and future orientation (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007;
Brown & Jones, 2004; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Findley & Cooper, 1983; Good et al., 2003;
self-affirmation, and the interactive effect of those processes on achievement, will inform the
Finally, given the practical and enticing nature of subtle but powerful social-
psychological interventions, future research should explore other interventions that could help
address the achievement gap. Can multiple interventions work together to create a better
outcome? For example, many schools use interventions to encourage Dweck’s growth mindset
processes other than stereotype threat can interventions target? What are other potential
The current paper focuses on the achievement gap, but there is another important and
detrimental gap in this country that is relevant – the research to policy gap. Researchers,
policymakers, and professionals who actually work in schools or with children rarely work
together to promote the best outcomes for children (e.g., Greenwood & Abbott, 2001). Given the
plethora of research that has been conducted on the effectiveness of subtle yet powerful self-
affirmation interventions, there is little reason to believe that the intervention does anything other
than help students. Not only does it have the potential to protect students from the effects of
stereotype threat, but it also can decrease stress levels for students subject to other forms of
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 32
psychological threat, i.e. White students underperforming due to chronic stress (Creswell et al.,
2013). There is an opportunity here to bridge the research to policy gap by creating policies that
suggest the use of values affirmation interventions in schools that research has found to be
effective.
It is not likely that schools are choosing to avoid the use of the self-affirmation
intervention; more likely, they simply do not know about it. It would ultimately be best if all
middle schools, and perhaps even upper-elementary schools, throughout the country conducted
the intervention. In order to reach that goal, the intervention must first attract attention on local
levels. Universities could conduct outreach and teacher in-service programs to make current
educators aware of the intervention's potential. Non-profits and advocacy organizations could
also use their connections to inform schools of the intervention. Additionally, because class time
is so valuable and curriculum is so packed with content that students must learn to do well on
high stakes exams, curriculum developers could incorporate self-affirmation activities into
curricula. It would be best if self-affirmation were incorporated into content-area curriculum for
different subjects and tailored to be developmentally appropriate for different ages. Additionally,
training programs. If affirmation could be incorporated into students’ every day learning, it is
On a smaller scale, there are various things teachers can do that will benefit their students
in similar ways to the self-affirmation intervention. For example, it would be beneficial for
teachers to explicitly counter and debunk stereotypes in the classroom (Bowen et al., 2012).
Students value the opinions of their teachers and if they see that adult figures do not believe the
stereotypes that assert intellectual inferiority of groups of people, then the students will be more
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 33
inclined to think similarly. It is helpful for teachers to foster self-efficacy in their students, i.e.,
help them build their sense of competence in school domains. Teachers can do this by stressing
challenge over remediation because giving students challenging work conveys that teachers
respect their potential (Steele, 1997). Carol Dweck’s theory (1986) on the incremental nature of
human intelligence can be emphasized in all classrooms. Schools today commonly incorporate
Dweck’s theory in their classrooms and work to promote a growth mindset of students. When
students make statements such as “I am stupid” or “I’m bad at math,” teachers can explain to
them that their abilities are not fixed and if they work to understand the material then they will
get better at it. It is also imperative that teachers build supportive relationships with their students
(Bowen et al., 2012). That does not mean that teachers cannot provide critical feedback. Instead,
when teachers give critical feedback to students they can be simultaneously explicitly conveying
optimism about their potential (Steele, 1997). Additionally, the results of the Johns et al., (2008)
study suggest that it would be beneficial to tell students that it is perfectly normal to feel a little
worried about exams and that it is even possible that a bit of anxiety surrounding an exam can
help people do better on it. The researchers found that telling targets of stereotype threat that
anxiety would not affect their performance on the problems they would be doing, and that in fact
it might even facilitate their performance, resulted in less suppression for students and thereby
freed up executive resources that could improve test performance. Lastly, it is best for teachers to
(Bowen et al., 2012). When students express doubt about their abilities or belongingness in the
classroom, teachers can remind them of their value and remind them that they make important
contributions to the class. Teachers can remind students of certain activities that they are good at
and afford students opportunities to talk about their passions and their values in the classroom
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 34
daily. There are many strategies teachers can use in the classroom to support their students;
however, it is important that such strategies as well as information about self-affirmation and
teachers are not simply expected to come up with these strategies and understand the importance
themselves.
replace traditional educational reforms. This paper is in no way suggesting that social
psychological subtle yet powerful interventions are the panacea that will eradicate the
achievement gap and fix America’s broken education system. However, the academic gains
resulting from the values affirmation exercise are significant for students who are currently
systemically stymied from succeeding in school. In order to make up for the pervasive and
systemic educational inequities that Black and Latino students face, the least we can do is devote
15 minutes of class time to even marginally increase their opportunities for success.
WHY ARE SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS EFFECTIVE? 35
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