1996 |
Cohen, Geoffrey L |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Feeback, Motivation, and Performance
The research presented here examines two social psychological processes affecting the way people give and respond to feedback, and how these processes may, under certain circumstances, depress the performance and motivation of African Americans in an academic domain. First, White evaluators, when giving feedback to Blacks, may withhold criticism and instead give more praise. This overly positive feedback may convey the message to Blacks that they are being held to low standards, and consequently undermine their self-efficacy and performance motivation. Second, even when given the same feedback, Blacks and Whites may respond to it differently. When given critical feedback by a White evaluator, Blacks may be more prone than Whites to attribute it to the racial prejudice of a White evaluator, leading them to discount the validity of constructive criticism even when appropriately given. The studies proposed in this grant investigate these two processes along with strategies for conveying critical feedback across potential barriers of mistrust.
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0.958 |
2006 — 2008 |
Slovic, Paul (co-PI) [⬀] Kahan, Dan Gastil, John Cohen, Geoffrey |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Cultural Cognition of Risk: Psychological and Social Mechanisms
The "cultural cognition of risk" refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about the magnitude of risks to their culturally grounded moral appraisals of putatively dangerous activities. In a previous study the investigators surveyed a large national sample (N = 1,800) to assess this phenomenon. They found that beliefs about myriad risks--ones involving climate change, firearm possession, drug use, and various medical procedures, among others--are distributed across persons in patterns best explained by cultural cognition. But while this study furnished strong evidence that cultural commitments do indeed shape risk perceptions, the study did not identify precisely why or how culture exerts this influence.
That is the objective of the current study. Using innovative on-line testing methods, the investigators will carry out a series of experiments aimed at uncovering the social and psychological mechanisms through which cultural cognition operates. Among their principal hypotheses is that individuals experience emotional resistance to information that portends interference with activities central to their cultural identities. Another is that individuals impute greater credibility to risk communicators who appear to share their cultural orientations than to those who appear to harbor competing ones. It is expected that the results of the this experimental project will not only deepen scientific understanding of how risk perceptions are formed, but also generate practical insights into how persons of diverse cultural orientations can reach agreement on appropriate policies of risk mitigation.
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0.97 |
2007 — 2011 |
Cohen, Geoffrey Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: a Self-Affirmation Intervention Approach @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The goal of the proposed project is the application of a social-psychological approach to understanding and remedying the racial achievement gap in school and on standardized tests. The study will use field-experimental, laboratory, survey, and longitudinal methodologies to develop and refine an intervention strategy aimed at improving the science and math performance of academically at-risk minority students (African Americans and Latino). In the context of randomized, double-blind experiments, students will either complete an identity-affirming exercise designed to alleviate social identity threat, or complete a similar exercise that excludes the critical treatment.( In a 15 minute exercise students are provided a list from which they select the value of most importance to them. They then write a paragraph about why it is important. Students in the control group will be given the same list, asked to select the least important value and write why that value might be important to someone else.) Outcomes will be official school grades, state achievement test scores, and psychological outcomes related to stress and motivation. The proposed research follows from previous work of the PIs, which offered initial evidence that threats to individuals? social identity (i.e., group identity) can undermine their academic performance.
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0.954 |
2009 — 2013 |
Finkelstein, Noah (co-PI) [⬀] Cohen, Geoffrey Ito, Tiffany (co-PI) [⬀] Miyake, Akira (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Understanding and Reducing the Gender Gap in Math and Science: Cognitive, Social, and Neural Mechanisms in Identity Threat @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The proposed project is focused on the gender gap in the STEM disciplines through research on the impact of stereotype threat, which is viewed as an important factor in female underrepresentation in mathematics and science. Stereotype threat for women in math and science takes the form of a fear that they could be judged in light of negative stereotypes. The research rigorously tests the emerging view that identity threat impairs learning and performance by reducing mental capacity, specifically working memory capacity, cluttering individuals? minds with negative task-irrelevant thoughts (e.g., worry) and inducing them to excessively monitor task performance. Affirmation is hypothesized to reduce task-irrelevant thoughts and/or excessive performance monitoring, thereby protecting working memory capacity from the effects of identity threat.
Using multiple levels of analysis, the research is designed to: a) test whether stereotype threat diminishes the math and science performance of undergraduate women by reducing working memory capacity; b) determine the efficacy of a self-affirmation intervention for lessening the negative impact of stereotype threat on women's math performance and clarify the underlying cognitive mechanism (i.e., depleted working memory capacity ) that allegedly mediates its impact; and c) examine whether a self-affirmation intervention can improve the learning of new scientific concepts in addition to enhancing the solving of math and science problems. A significant strength of this proposal is the proposed testing of working memory capacity in a more rigorous and comprehensive manner than previously done, by examining multiple mediating mechanisms with a diverse array of converging measures (e.g., reaction times, event-related potentials, heart rates.
The proposed research will yield rich data on underlying mechanisms that should provide a foundation for conducting larger-scale longitudinal interventions in actual STEM classrooms. The research also has the potential to advance knowledge and understanding across several fields and create transformative concepts
This project has the potential to significantly reduce the gender gap in STEM fields at the undergraduate and graduate levels through significantly reducing underrepresentation in these disciplines and increasing performance on standardized tests of math and science. At the same time, the proposed activities offer a unique blend of training opportunities to undergraduate trainees, graduate and post-grad students. The interdisciplinary team includes leading researchers with expertise in cognitive psychology, social neuroscience, and science education. Thus the project also can serve as a proof of concept that an interdisciplinary approach can reveal the mechanisms underlying one of the most significant psychological barriers to women's success in the STEM, and that a psychological intervention targeting identity threat can improve women's STEM learning and performance.
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0.954 |
2009 — 2013 |
Cohen, Geoffrey Prinstein, Mitchell J [⬀] |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Understanding Peer Influence of Adolescent Health Risk Behaviors @ Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prior work suggests that peer influence of adolescent health risk behavior is a remarkably pervasive phenomenon, but little is known about theory-based motivations underlying peer influence, or moderators that may affect adolescents' susceptibility or resistance to peer influence (DHHS, 1994). This application offers a theoretical model of peer influence and a series of two experimental studies that will examine this model and its implications for potential prevention efforts. Notably, these studies offer an opportunity for translational research, integrating theories and methods from developmental psychopathology and social psychology to elucidate directions for future preventive interventions. The proposed model suggests that adolescents' conformity to peers is motivated largely by a desire to achieve high levels of peer status, and consequently a favorable self-concept. Proposed studies each include an experimental and a longitudinal component to examine mechanisms and moderators of peer influence, as well as a potential preventive intervention to reduce peer conformity. Experimental studies use a simulated chat room context in which electronic confederates ostensibly communicate social norms endorsing risk or prosocial attitudes. Experimental studies allow for an examination of adolescents' public conformity and private acceptance of health risk behaviors (as well one measure of actual aggressive behavior measured in vivo). These studies also allow for the study of mechanisms (e.g., changes in self- esteem or perceived peer status) in real time, as conformity occurs. Longitudinal components to these studies allow for a long-term examination of peer influence susceptibility (Study 1) and the effects of a theoretically-based preventive intervention that may mitigate peer influence effects (Study 2) during the critical developmental interval associated with sharp increases in adolescents' health risk behavior engagement.
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0.901 |
2011 — 2015 |
Cohen, Geoffrey Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie [⬀] Cook, Jonathan |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap in Stem: a Social-Neurobiological Investigation and Values-Affirmation Intervention
The research focus of this project is the concept of social identity threat, i.e., academically at-risk minority students are concerned that they could be negatively judged in light of stereotypes of others about their racial group's intellectual ability. Social identity threat has been shown to impair performance of minorities in STEM. The research hypothesizes that social identity triggers a physiological threat response, which involves hormonal and immune-system reactions to threatening situations which can undermine a student's ability to engage in higher level cognitive processing required for success in learning.
The PIs propose studies over three years to: (1) examine the role of social psychological and neurobiological processes in understanding the racial achievement gap between White, Black and Latino college students in STEM educational attainment, (2) implement a social-psychological intervention approach to improve performance, (3) test a new theory-informed version of the intervention, (4) test an online intervention delivery system that could facilitate widespread national dissemination.
Using psychological and neurophysiological levels of analysis, this research will test: (1) how the threat of confirming negative stereotypes "gets under the skin" to impair cognitive functioning for minority students in STEM, and (2) whether a well-validated values-affirmation intervention works because it reduces the physiological stress of identity threat
The ultimate project goal is to provide a powerful, cost-effective, and easily-implemented intervention to reduce the effect of identity threat on minority college student academic functioning, thereby reducing the racial achievement gap in STEM fields and increasing and diversifying the pool of STEM workers.
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0.954 |
2014 — 2017 |
Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie [⬀] Muresan, Smaranda (co-PI) [⬀] Cohen, Geoffrey Cook, Jonathan |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Reducing Racial and Gender Achievement Gaps in Stem: Use of Natural Language Processing to Understand Why Affirmation Interventions Improve Performance
Addressing issues related to reducing the size of the achievement gaps in STEM disciplines among subpopulations of students is important to helping the Nation meet its 21st Century science and technology needs. Research shows that causes of achievement gaps in STEM arise from reciprocal interactions between societal, social, and environmental factors that might suppress students' true academic potential in challenging academic STEM domains. This project focuses on environmental factors (identified as social identity threats) that devalue, marginalize, or discriminate against students based on a social identity like race, gender, disability status, or socioeconomic status; such factors can eventually lead students to withdraw and disengage in STEM learning and careers. The objectives of this research are to: (1) synthesize and systematically analyze data from interventions (affirmation writing essays) shown to help reduce the impact of social identity threats on student participation in STEM; and (2) apply results of the synthesis and analyses to enhance existing interventions (e.g., maximize impact on subpopulations of students whose achiement in STEM fields is below their potential).
The research project will proceed in two phases. First, the investigators will create an encrypted online repository of data from more than 2,500 affirmation writing essays, previously collected through randomized double-blind experiments involving approximately 1,400 students who vary by race, ethnicity, age, gender, and social class. The researchers will link this online repository of information to academic and psychological outcomes for middle school and college students. Using natural language processing (NLP), topic modeling, and other methods the investigators will identify sematic content and essay structure processes that mediate affirmation effects and highlight meaning of the effectiveness of the essay writing interventions.
Results of these analyses will be used to develop and test a more robust intervention for reducing social identity threats involving African Americans, White, and female students. One hundred eighty (180) students (90 females and 90 males) will participate in two separate laboratory studies. One, conducted at Columbia University, will focus on race as a social factor; the second, conducted at Penn State University, will focus on gender. The ultimate goal of this work is to uncover and address psychological factors that might otherwise hinder students' participation in STEM careers.
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0.954 |