How Self-Affirmation Activities Can Support Student Achievement: Q&A With Dr. Jason Snipes

January 3, 2023

By Kim Austin, Senior Program Associate in WestEd’s Research-Practice Partnerships team. Kim works with the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) to develop research-based toolkits that support educators to improve their practice. This post first appeared on the REL West blog and is posted here with permission.

Educators are looking for ways to improve educational experiences and outcomes for Black and Latinx students. Several simple, easy-to-implement interventions have been shown to be effective tools for supporting student success among Black and Latinx students.(1) One intervention called “Self-Affirmation” or the “values affirmation intervention” has been shown to buffer Black and Latinx students from some of the negative effects of “stereotype threat”—the fear Black and Latinx students face of confirming negative racial stereotypes about their racial/ethnic group’s academic performance or ability.

In this blog post, Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West) sits down with Jason Snipes, Senior Research Scientist and Leader of Applied Research and Research-Based Development for REL West, to learn more about the benefits of self-affirmation, and how it can interrupt negative stereotypes and improve academic outcomes. Dr. Snipes’ work focuses on applied research and development in education with a particular emphasis on district collaboration and developing and evaluating strategies for improving outcomes among Black and Latinx students.

First, could you give us an introduction to the concept of “stereotype threat”?

For Black and Latinx children in schools, stereotype threat is the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about the academic performance, or underlying academic ability or intelligence, of their racial groups. In short, the common stereotype is that Black and Latinx students are essentially academically inferior, and stereotype threat is the fear of confirming that belief. This fear has been shown to be profoundly harmful to students and their ability to succeed at multiple levels—from middle school to college. Rigorous studies have shown that stereotype threat accounts for approximately a quarter of the achievement gap between Black and Latinx students and their White and Asian counterparts.(2)

“Stereotype threat is pervasive and a reminder that we need to consider the fact that our students are human beings—actual and whole—and that their social experience and sense of identity affects their ability to function.”

Most of the original work around stereotype threat was done by Black psychologist Claude Steele who, along with his colleague Joshua Aronson, conducted research among Black freshmen at Stanford University. They found that when Black students were told that an assessment task was a test of intelligence, their performance dropped significantly.(3) The students had increased physiological and psychological stress; they answered test questions more slowly and they completed fewer questions. These effects did not occur among their White counterparts.

We also need to acknowledge the reality that Black and Latinx students face unique stressors and obstacles that are a function of the way racial stereotypes manifest themselves in this country. This includes witnessing police violence against Black children in schools, hearing about and seeing the live, recorded murders of Black men by police, aggressive debates over race and how schools are to teach about the history of racial violence and slavery in our country, and the disparate impact of the pandemic on access to instruction for Black and Latinx students.

What is Self-Affirmation and how does it interrupt this pattern?

Self-Affirmation is an intervention aimed at reducing stereotype threat and can significantly mitigate its effects on academic outcomes.(4) Self-Affirmation helps disrupt the cycle of stereotype threat by reinforcing a child’s value as a person. This is accomplished by simply giving students writing prompts focused on things that students care about, what that they like about themselves, or things that they like doing. Students are asked to write a short ungraded response just focusing on a few of these items, without concern for grammar or spelling.

This provides them with an opportunity to write something positive about themselves, reinforcing their self-image and value as a person. This in turn lowers (at least to an extent) the psychological and emotional stakes of academic events and assessments. In other words, it’s harder to function on any task when one feels that their value as a person is at stake, or if they might confirm negative preconceptions others have about them. The opportunity to reaffirm one’s value as a person outside of school lowers the stakes of these tasks, thereby reducing stress, freeing up working memory, and enabling students to perform closer to their potential.(5)

Just like in our professional lives, when we’re experiencing challenges or concerns over our performance, we often remind ourselves, “Well, it’s okay, I still have all these other things that are fine if this goes wrong. It will be all right.” We even sometimes hear athletes talk about how finding a way to not be focused on whether they were going to win or lose enabled them to turn in some of the best performances of their lives, under what seem to the rest of us like earth shatteringly high-stakes situations. Children—more than adults—need help in affirming their own value. It’s much harder for children to sort of step outside of themselves in the way that adults do and say, “Okay, let me keep this in perspective.”

What specific kinds of Self-Affirmation activities can schools and teachers do?

Though obviously not a panacea for the myriad challenges that undermine the academic success of Black and Latinx students, Self-Affirmation is one intervention that has shown to improve academic performance and increase graduation rates among Black and Latinx students.(6) The Self-Affirmation intervention is a specific set of four exercises administered over the course of the school year. Students are given a list of attributes and values and they’re asked to write about the ones that resonate the most with them.

They’re also told not to worry about spelling or grammar, but just to put their feelings down. The activity is summarized in a REL West infographic we recently developed on self-affirmation. So, for example, students might write about how they are a good friend, the time they spend in religious activities, the importance of their family, or perhaps how they are good at sports—just to name a few. The items are intentionally not focused on things that relate to academics, but just things that prompt them to write about a way in which they have value as a person. Interestingly, upwards of 90 percent of students who complete these exercises actually self-affirm, that is, they say something positive about themselves and/or their value.(7)

What do we know about the impact of Self-Affirmation activities on students’ behaviors and academic performance?

We know that multiple randomized trials (the “gold standard” for research) among middle school students have shown that Self-Affirmation has positive effects on Black and Latinx students’ academic performance and engagement, including grades and attendance.(8) We also know that, even if Self-Affirmation is implemented solely in the 7th grade, its effects grow larger over time and in fact have been shown to translate into improved graduation rates. In terms of how Self-Affirmation works, it’s always hard to get inside the “black box” of a student’s mind.

However, the research indicates that by lowering the “stakes” of academic engagement, Black and Latinx students are more engaged and more successful in academic tasks. This creates a positive, recursive cycle that can sustain and improve academic performance over time. We’re also learning from some recent studies done by Geoffrey Borman is that Self-Affirmation can also reduce negative disciplinary outcomes for Black students.(9) There’s a great deal of disproportionality in discipline rates between Black students and their White counterparts. Middle school Black boys are about four times more likely to be suspended than their White counterparts.(10)

The recent study by Borman and his colleagues examined the impact of Self-Affirmation on suspension rates among 7th graders and found that Self-Affirmation cut the suspension rate among Black students in half, reducing racial disproportionality in suspension.

How will you and your REL West colleagues use these findings in your upcoming work?

In this REL cycle, we’re planning to work with several California districts to explore different strategies to address discipline disparities for Black students. The key question that we’re exploring in the planned study with this district is the extent to which Self-Affirmation works at the elementary level to reduce negative disciplinary outcomes for Black students and decrease racial disproportionality in discipline. We are also examining the extent to which Self-Affirmation interventions can simultaneously work with adults to help disrupt the processes that result in biases with respect to discipline. Through this work, REL West will investigate the connection between Self-Affirmation interventions and racial disproportionality in discipline.

And all of this goes back to the idea that all students are people—actual and whole. I think a lot of what Black and Latinx students experience in their daily lives erodes the feeling of their whole personhood and they’re carrying around the knowledge that a lot of people think that they’re not as smart as their White peers or maybe even that they have less value in general. I would argue that in order to successfully engage and educate children, you have to use tools such as the Self-Affirmation intervention (as well as other approaches) that reinforce their personhood, and that this is especially important in the face of the constant identity threats faced by Black and Brown children in this country. REL West is addressing this by evaluating the effectiveness of evidence-based approaches including Self-Affirmation and others that are hypothesized to operate in this way, conducting evidence-based technical assistance around the implementation and refinement of these evidence-based approaches with district and school partners, and disseminating information about this topic to practitioners and policymakers.

Related Resources

The following REL resources provide additional information on topics discussed here and may be helpful in implementing a self-affirmation intervention with students.

• REL West Infographic: Self-Affirmation: A Powerful Tool for Addressing Stereotype Threat
• REL West Study, Webinar Archive, and Infographic: Academic Mindsets and Behaviors, Prior Achievement, and the Transition to Middle School
• REL Northeast and Islands Infographic: Educator Diversity Matters: Black Teachers Improve Outcomes for Black Students
• REL Midwest Infographic: How can we increase quality educational opportunities for Black students? Consider conducting a gap analysis

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1 Wu, Z., Spreckelsen, T. F., & Cohen, G. L. (2021). A meta analysis of the effect of values affirmation on academic achievement. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12415.

2 Walton, G. M., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Latent ability: Grades and test scores systematically underestimate the intellectual ability of negatively stereotyped students. Psychological Science, 20(9), 1132–1139. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19656335/

3 Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. https://dx.doi.org.udel.idm. oclc.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797.

4 Wu, Z., Spreckelsen, T. F., & Cohen, G. L. (2021). A meta analysis of the effect of values affirmation on academic achievement. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12415.

5 Borman, G. D. (2017). Advancing values affirmation as a scalable strategy for mitigating identity threats and narrowing national achievement gaps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(29), 7486–7488. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708813114.

6 Ibid.;

Borman, G. D., Choi, Y., & Hall, G. J. (2021). The impacts of a brief middle-school self-affirmation intervention help propel African American and Latino students through high school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(3);

Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324(5925), 400–403. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1170769. Link to What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) review: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/QuickReview/selfaffirm_020910.pdf;

Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24405362/

7 Hanselman, P., Bruch, S. K., Gamoran, A., & Borman, G. D. (2014). Threat in context: School moderation of the impact of social identity threat on racial/ethnic achievement gaps. Sociology of Education, 87(2), 106–124. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1021010

8 Borman, G. D. (2017). Advancing values affirmation as a scalable strategy for mitigating identity threats and narrowing national achievement gaps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(29), 7486–7488. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708813114;

Borman, G. D., Choi, Y., & Hall, G. J. (2021). The impacts of a brief middle-school self-affirmation intervention help propel African American and Latino students through high school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(3);

Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324(5925), 400–403. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1170769. Link to What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) review: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/QuickReview/selfaffirm_020910.pdf;

Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24405362/

9 Borman, G. D., Pyne, J., Rozek, C. S., & Schmidt, A. (2021, September). A replicable identity-based intervention reduces the Black-White suspension gap at scale. American Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312211042251

10 U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2018). 2015-16 Civil Rights data collection: School climate and safety. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights.