Low-income students performed better in science classes when they participated in exercises to help regulate negative emotions, according to a study. Previous studies have found that low-income students tend to perform poorly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) courses. To explore links between anxiety and success in STEM courses, Christopher S. Rozek and colleagues administered to 1,175 ninth-grade students from both high-income and low-income households either complete control exercises or exercises that helped them regulate anxiety before taking tests for a biology class. Emotion-regulation exercises included expressive writing about feelings and reassessing stressful symptoms as ways to improve test performance. Although neither exercise affected high-income students, the exercises improved the exam performance of low-income students and increased low-income students' chances of passing the course. Whereas 39% of low-income students in the control group failed the course, only 18% of low-income students who completed the exercises failed. The results suggest that low-income students may feel anxious about being poorly evaluated in situations that assess rank and status, and that emotion regulation may play a role in their academic success, according to the authors.
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Article #18-08589: "Reducing socioeconomic disparities in the STEM pipeline through student emotion regulation," by Christopher S. Rozek, Gerardo Ramirez, Rachel D. Fine, and Sian L. Beilock.
MEDIA CONTACT: Christopher S. Rozek, Stanford University, CA; tel: 763-350-6029; email: crozek@stanford.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences