Dismantling Stereotypes About Latinos in STEM
Abstract
The present study compared the effectiveness of a self-affirmation and a role model guest lecture intervention on reducing students’ perceptions of science-related social identity threat. Participants included 67 Latino high school students enrolled in a college preparation program. Students were randomly assigned either to a self-affirmation intervention or a self-affirmation control task, and the role model intervention was open to all students, with some choosing to participate. Results from an ANCOVA found the combination of both interventions had an identity threat reducing effect of moderate magnitude on perceptions of identity threat, and planned contrasts found statistically significant differences in perceptions of identity threat between students who received both interventions and no intervention, and between students who received both interventions and the self-affirmation task alone. Our research suggests that using multiple and combined interventions might provide an important advantage in order to reduce perceptions of identity threat in Latino students.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Latino school students who attended a talk by a successful Latino aerospace engineer were more likely to believe that someone from their background could become a scientist.
“In one study, Latino school students-for whom studying STEM subjects tends to be perceived as incompatible with their background-who attended a talk by a successful Latino aerospace engineer were more likely to believe that someone from their background could become a scientist (Hernandez, Rana, Rao, & Usselman, 2017).”
From Tackling Educational Inequalities with Social Psychology: Identities, Contexts, and Interventions (2021) · cites this paper as Hernandez, Rana, Rao, & Usselman, 2017
Cites
Social-Psychological Interventions in Education: They’re Not Magic
Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/0034654311405999 · Cited by 1,345 · see citing works
Stout, J. G., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. A. (2011) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0021385 · Cited by 1,050 · see citing works
Recursive Processes in Self-Affirmation: Intervening to Close the Minority Achievement Gap
Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1170769 · Cited by 800 · see citing works
Sherman, D. K., Hartson, K. A., Binning, K. R., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Taborsky-Barba, S., Tomassetti, S., Nussbaum, A. D., & Cohen, G. L. (2013) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0031495 · Cited by 371 · see citing works
Cook, J. E., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., & Cohen, G. L. (2012) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0026312 · Cited by 244 · see citing works
Shapiro, J. R., Williams, A. M., & Hambarchyan, M. (2013) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0030461 · Cited by 119 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Gladstone, J. R., & Cimpian, A. (2021) · International Journal of STEM Education · doi:10.1186/s40594-021-00315-x · Cited by 252 · see citing works
Tackling Educational Inequalities with Social Psychology: Identities, Contexts, and Interventions
Easterbrook, M. J., & Hadden, I. R. (2021) · Social Issues and Policy Review · doi:10.1111/sipr.12070 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
Establishing effective STEM mentoring relationships through mentor training
Stelter, R. L., Kupersmidt, J. B., & Stump, K. N. (2020) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.14470 · Cited by 104 · see citing works
Martin, A.-E., & Fisher-Ari, T. R. (2021) · Science Education · doi:10.1002/sce.21677 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Self‐affirmation theory in educational contexts
Easterbrook, M. J., Harris, P. R., & Sherman, D. K. (2021) · Journal of Social Issues · doi:10.1111/josi.12459 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
Self‐affirmation reduces the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools in England
Hadden, I. R., Easterbrook, M. J., Nieuwenhuis, M., Fox, K. J., & Dolan, P. (2020) · British Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjep.12291 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Smith, K. C., Poleacovschi, C., Feinstein, S. G., & Luster-Teasley, S. (2022) · Psychological Reports · doi:10.1177/00332941221075766 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Identities in Context: How Social Class Shapes Inequalities in Education
Easterbrook, M. J., Hadden, I. R., & Nieuwenhuis, M. (2019) · The Social Psychology of Inequality · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-28856-3_7 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
The socioecology of social class
Manstead, A. S., Easterbrook, M. J., & Kuppens, T. (2020) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.06.037 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
“local context – particularly those with whom underperforming group members can identify – leads to positive outcomes for Latino students studying STEM subjects in the US [48].”
BackgroundEffectiveness of Self-Affirmation Interventions in Educational Settings: A Meta-Analysis
Escobar-Soler, C., Berríos, R., Peñaloza-Díaz, G., Melis-Rivera, C., Caqueo-Urízar, A., Ponce-Correa, F., & Flores, J. (2023) · Healthcare · doi:10.3390/healthcare12010003 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“,57,59,61,68,109,121,124,128,134] indicated that evaluators and/or In terms of controlling for confounding factors, the majority of studies addressed at least 80% of the relevant factors (strong). participants of the research objectives (weak).”
BackgroundStarr, C. R., & Leaper, C. (2022) · Group Processes & Intergroup Relations · doi:10.1177/13684302221128235 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“Experiencing ingroup role models (gender and/or race) predicted lower stereotyping or ste-reotype threat (Hernandez et al., 2017; Marx & Ko, 2011; Shin et al., 2016; Starr et al., 2019; van Camp et al., 2019).”
Easterbrook, M. J., Nieuwenhuis, M., Fox, K. J., Harris, P. R., & Banerjee, R. A. (2022) · British Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjep.12494 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
“Our results suggest that interventions that can reduce identity incompatibility – such as interventions that develop academic possible selves and/or raise the visibility of ingroup role models (Andriessen et al., 2006; Hernandez et al., 2017; Oyserman et al., 2006; Stout et al., 2011) – may reduce the socioeconomic at…”
BackgroundRole Models in Action Through YouTube Videos for Engineering Community College Students
Lee, H. R., Rutherford, T. A., Hanselman, P., Rodriguez, F., Ramirez, K., & Eccles, J. S. (2024) · Research in Higher Education · doi:10.1007/s11162-023-09772-5 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
“These interventions have had success in boosting participant confidence and values, and under-mining negative group stereotypes (Hernandez et al., 2017; Herrmann et al., 2016; Shin et al., 2016; van Camp et al., 2019).”
Roncoroni, J., Hernández-Julián, R., Hendrix, T., & Whitaker, S. (2021) · Journal of Science Education and Technology · doi:10.1007/s10956-021-09914-3 · Cited by 8
Interventions to Reduce Racial Bias and Discrimination in the United States: A Scoping Review
Guo, S., Yang, Y., & Fu, L. (2022) · Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research · doi:10.1086/723871 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Paving the road into college and STEM for Latino students
Hernandez, D., Usselman, M., Rana, S., Alemdar, M., & Rao, A. E. (2018) · doi:10.15695/jso.v1i2.4509 · Cited by 3
Self-citationChen, X.-Y., Zhang, Y.-C., DiNello, H., & Rosenzweig, E. Q. (2026) · Journal for STEM Education Research · doi:10.1007/s41979-026-00186-3 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“…to build mastery, engage with identity-congruent STEM role models, and receive feedback that affirms high expectations and belief in students’ abilities may be especially valuable for supporting Hispanic girls’ competence-related beliefs and STEM career participation (e.g., Hernandez et al., 2017).”
Dunbar, K. M., Burke, Q. K., Coenraad, M., Rangel, A., & Mills, K. (2025) · Computer Science Education · doi:10.1080/08993408.2025.2492499 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“…students it purported to “deliver” to the workplace, including women (Liu et al., 2019; Miller & Wai, 2015), children with disabilities (Israel et al., 2015), and persons of color such as African-American (Rice, 2016) and Latine/x students (Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Hernandez et al., 2017).”
Design-a-scientist avatar: A new tool for analyzing gender and racial scientist stereotypes
Joy, A., Mathews, C. J., Mulvey, K. L., & Hartstone‐Rose, A. (2026) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0341309
“Furthermore, research with Latino high school students found that students who participated in a program with both role model and self-affirmation interventions were more likely to believe that people from their ethnic background were likely to become scientists [37].”
- Authors
- Hernandez, D., Rana, S., Rao, A., & Usselman, M.
- Affiliations
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- ORCID
- Usselman, Marion
- Venue
- Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2017-09-14
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 436-451
- ISSN
- 0739-9863 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6364
- OpenAlex
- W2754980259
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 3.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Career Development and Diversity
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Education, Achievement, and Giftedness
- Keywords
- Hispanic students, STEM education, self-affirmation intervention, role models, social identity threat, stereotypes, college preparation programs, high school students, intervention effectiveness
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
