A Difference-Education Intervention Equips First-Generation College Students to Thrive in the Face of Stressful College Situations.
A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students' responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants' behavioral and hormonal responses to stressful college situations. We found that difference-education participants discussed their backgrounds in a speech more frequently than control participants did, an indication that they retained the understanding of how their backgrounds mattered. Moreover, among first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents did not have 4-year degrees), those in the difference-education condition showed greater physiological thriving (i.e., anabolic-balance reactivity) than those in the control condition, which suggests that they experienced their working-class backgrounds as a strength.
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University n-stephens@kellogg.northwestern.edu.
Nicole M
NM
Stephens
Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.
Sarah S M
SS
Townsend
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University.
MarYam G
MG
Hamedani
School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Department of Psychology, Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.
Mesmin
M
Destin
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.
Vida
V
Manzo
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012923:Social Class; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
coping; higher education; intervention; social class; stress