A leadership-level culture cycle intervention changes teachers' culturally inclusive beliefs and practices.

Despite an abundance of support for culturally inclusive learning environments, there is little consensus regarding how to change educational contexts to effectively and sustainably foster cultural inclusion. To address this gap, we report findings from a research-practice partnership that leveraged the Culture Cycle Framework (CCF) to expand educators' praxis to include both independent and interdependent models of self. Most U.S. schools validate independent cultural models (i.e., those that prioritize individuality, uniqueness, and personal agency) and overlook interdependent models (i.e., those that prioritize connectedness, relationality, and collective well-being), which are more common among students from marginalized racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Using a quasi-experimental longitudinal design, we trained school leadership to integrate ideas about cultural inclusion (i.e., validating the importance of both independent and interdependent cultural models) into school-wide flagship practices. We assessed downstream indicators of culture change by surveying teachers and students across the district and found that a) leadership-level training enhanced school-wide beliefs about cultural inclusion, b) teachers' endorsement of culturally inclusive beliefs predicted their use of culturally inclusive practices, and c) teachers' use of culturally inclusive practices predicted enhanced psychosocial and academic outcomes among students. This research represents a comprehensive culture change effort using the CCF and illustrates a means of fostering inclusion-focused educational culture change and assessing downstream consequences of culture change initiatives.

We Are Still Here: Omission and Perceived Discrimination Galvanized Civic Engagement Among Native Americans.

Leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Native American organizations and tribes launched get-out-the-vote campaigns that motivated Native peoples to vote in record numbers and helped flip battleground states. We conducted four studies (total N = 11,661 Native American adults) to examine the social and cultural factors explaining this historic Native civic engagement (e.g., campaigning). Results revealed that the more participants identified as being Native, the more they reported (a) engaging in civic activities, including get-out-the-vote behaviors during the 2020 election (Study 1); (b) civic engagement more broadly across a 5-year period (pilot study, Study 2); and (c) intentions to engage in civic activities in the future (Study 3). Moreover, participants who more strongly identified as Native were more likely to recognize the omission of their group from society and perceive greater group discrimination, which both independently and serially predicted greater civic engagement. These results suggest that leveraging the link between Native identification and group injustices can motivate action.

Increasing diversity in developmental cognitive neuroscience: A roadmap for increasing representation in pediatric neuroimaging research.

Understanding of human brain development has advanced rapidly as the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience (DCN) has matured into an established scientific discipline. Despite substantial progress, DCN lags behind other related disciplines in terms of diverse representation, standardized reporting requirements for socio-demographic characteristics of participants in pediatric neuroimaging studies, and use of intentional sampling strategies to more accurately represent the socio-demographic, ethnic, and racial composition of the populations from which participants are sampled. Additional efforts are needed to shift DCN towards a more inclusive field that facilitates the study of individual differences across a variety of cultural and contextual experiences. In this commentary, we outline and discuss barriers within our current scientific practice (e.g., research methods) and beliefs (i.e., what constitutes good science, good scientists, and good research questions) that contribute to under-representation and limited diversity within pediatric neuroimaging studies and propose strategies to overcome those barriers. We discuss strategies to address barriers at intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, systemic, and structural levels. Highlighting strength-based models of inclusion and recognition of the value of diversity in DCN research, along with acknowledgement of the support needed to diversify the field is critical for advancing understanding of neurodevelopment and reducing health inequities.

#NotAllWhites: Liberal-Leaning White Americans Racially Disidentify and Increase Support for Racial Equity.

Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election largely due to support from White Americans. This win created a new sociopolitical reality in which White Americans as a group became associated with Trump and his anti-egalitarianism. Four studies (N = 3,245) explored how liberal-leaning White Americans negotiate their racial identity to contend with group-image threat arising from the association between their racial ingroup and Trump. Trump-related group-image threat (i.e., White Americans' support for Trump's anti-egalitarianism or his continuation in office) led liberal-leaning White Americans to disidentify from their racial ingroup. In turn, racial disidentification predicted greater signaling of egalitarian beliefs (i.e., expressing intentions to advocate for racial equity and supporting policies designed to benefit racially minoritized groups) and behaviors (i.e., donating money to racial equity-focused organizations). These results suggest that the process of negotiating Trump-related group-image threat has implications for both White Americans' racial identities and ongoing efforts to achieve racial equity.

Sanitizing history: National identification, negative stereotypes, and support for eliminating Columbus Day and adopting Indigenous Peoples Day.

OBJECTIVES: Despite the fact that Christopher Columbus did not discover America and was arguably one of the most brutal colonizers in recorded history, the United States continues to celebrate a holiday in his honor. A growing movement by Native American activists and allies aims to adopt Indigenous Peoples Day in lieu of Columbus Day to shed light on historical inaccuracies, acknowledge the legacy of colonialism, and celebrate Indigenous Peoples. Research suggests that national narratives, such as those undergirding Columbus Day, build on negative stereotypes about minoritized groups to help bolster national identities. We examined whether national identification and negative stereotyping of Native Americans shapes support for each holiday. METHOD: We conducted 2 large-scale national studies (Study 1: college students, N = 4,625; Study 2: adults, N = 2,805). RESULTS: Across both samples, people who endorsed the continued celebration of Columbus Day and people who were least supportive of adopting Indigenous Peoples Day were those high in national identification. In contrast, people who endorsed eliminating Columbus Day and people who supported adopting Indigenous Peoples Day were relatively low in national identification who also believed that negative stereotypes about Native Americans were highly unacceptable (Studies 1 and 2) and/or inaccurate (Study 2). CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that garnering support for eliminating Columbus Day and adopting Indigenous Peoples Day requires interrogating the roots of national identification and rejecting negative stereotypes about Native Americans. Implications for why people continue to hold onto national narratives that reify the continued subordination of minority groups are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Open science, communal culture, and women's participation in the movement to improve science.

Science is undergoing rapid change with the movement to improve science focused largely on reproducibility/replicability and open science practices. This moment of change-in which science turns inward to examine its methods and practices-provides an opportunity to address its historic lack of diversity and noninclusive culture. Through network modeling and semantic analysis, we provide an initial exploration of the structure, cultural frames, and women's participation in the open science and reproducibility literatures (n = 2,926 articles and conference proceedings). Network analyses suggest that the open science and reproducibility literatures are emerging relatively independently of each other, sharing few common papers or authors. We next examine whether the literatures differentially incorporate collaborative, prosocial ideals that are known to engage members of underrepresented groups more than independent, winner-takes-all approaches. We find that open science has a more connected, collaborative structure than does reproducibility. Semantic analyses of paper abstracts reveal that these literatures have adopted different cultural frames: open science includes more explicitly communal and prosocial language than does reproducibility. Finally, consistent with literature suggesting the diversity benefits of communal and prosocial purposes, we find that women publish more frequently in high-status author positions (first or last) within open science (vs. reproducibility). Furthermore, this finding is further patterned by team size and time. Women are more represented in larger teams within reproducibility, and women's participation is increasing in open science over time and decreasing in reproducibility. We conclude with actionable suggestions for cultivating a more prosocial and diverse culture of science.

Identification with ancestral culture is associated with fewer internalizing problems among older Naskapi adolescents.

The manifestations of externalizing and internalizing behaviors among minority adolescents might best be understood by examining their relation to culturally specific factors, such as cultural identity, as well as to factors that seem to be relevant across cultures, such as age and gender. In this study, we examined the roles of age and gender in moderating the relation between self-reported cultural identity and externalizing and internalizing problems and the interaction between Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity in relation to problematic behaviors. The participants included 61 students (32 female) with a mean age of 14.5 years (SD = 1.69) from a Naskapi reserve in Quebec, Canada. Age moderated the relation between identification with Indigenous culture and internalizing symptomatology. Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity did not interact in predicting internalizing or externalizing problems. Consistent with the available evidence regarding the centrality of identity in adolescent development, the magnitude of the inverse relation between identification with Indigenous culture and number of clinical internalizing symptoms appears to increase in significance later in adolescence. The lack of an interaction between Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity in relation to internalizing and externalizing problems suggests that it is the need to consider both cultures individually without the assumption that one negates the other.

Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Native Americans.

OBJECTIVE: To examine reported racial discrimination and harassment against Native Americans, which broadly contribute to poor health outcomes. DATA SOURCE AND STUDY DESIGN: Data come from a nationally representative, probability-based telephone survey including 342 Native American and 902 white US adults, conducted January-April 2017. METHODS: We calculated the percent of Native Americans reporting discrimination in several domains, including health care. We used logistic regression to compare the Native American-white difference in odds of discrimination and conducted exploratory analyses among Native Americans only to examine variation by socioeconomic and geographic/neighborhood characteristics. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: More than one in five Native Americans (23 percent) reported experiencing discrimination in clinical encounters, while 15 percent avoided seeking health care for themselves or family members due to anticipated discrimination. A notable share of Native Americans also reported they or family members have experienced violence (38 percent) or have been threatened or harassed (34 percent). In adjusted models, Native Americans had higher odds than whites of reporting discrimination across several domains, including health care and interactions with the police/courts. In exploratory analyses, the association between geographic/neighborhood characteristics and discrimination among Native Americans was mixed. CONCLUSIONS: Discrimination and harassment are widely reported by Native Americans across multiple domains of their lives, regardless of geographic or neighborhood context. Native Americans report major disparities compared to whites in fair treatment by institutions, particularly with health care and police/courts. Results suggest modern forms of discrimination and harassment against Native Americans are systemic and untreated problems.

Expanding the interpretive power of psychological science by attending to culture.

A lack of interpretive power (i.e., the ability to understand individuals' experiences and behaviors in relation to their cultural contexts) undermines psychology's understanding of diverse psychological phenomena. Building interpretive power requires attending to cultural influences in research. We describe three characteristics of research that lacks interpretive power: normalizing and overgeneralizing from behaviors and processes of people in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) contexts; making non-WEIRD people and processes invisible; and misapplying WEIRD findings in non-WEIRD contexts. We also describe research in which leveraging interpretive power prevented these negative consequences. Finally, using the culture-cycle framework, we outline a vision for creating culture change within psychology by implementing culture-conscious practices to guide the formation of research questions, empirical design, and data analysis and interpretation.

Self-Concepts, Self-Esteem, and Academic Achievement of Minority and Majority North American Elementary School Children.

Minority and majority elementary school students from a Native American reservation (N = 188; K-fifth grade; 5- to 10-year-olds) completed tests of academic self-concepts and self-esteem. School grades, attendance, and classroom behavior were collected. Both minority and majority students exhibited positive self-esteem. Minority students demonstrated lower academic self-concepts and lower achievement than majority students. Two age-related patterns emerged. First, minority students had lower academic achievement than majority students, and this effect was stronger in older (Grades 3-5) than in younger (Grades K-2) students. Second, children's actual achievement was related to their academic self-concepts for older students but more strongly linked to self-esteem in younger students. The authors offer a developmental account connecting students' developing self-representations to their school achievement.

Leveraging cultural differences to promote educational equality.

This paper theorizes that academic interventions will be maximally effective when they are culturally grounded. Culturally grounded interventions acknowledge cultural differences and validate multiple cultural models in a given context. This review highlights the importance of considering culture in academic interventions and draws upon the culture cycle framework to provide a blueprint for those interested in building more efficacious interventions. Specifically, the paper reviews literature in education and psychology to argue: first, when working-class and racial minority students' cultural models are not valued in mainstream academic domains, these students underperform; and second, many current academic interventions intended to improve working-class and racial minority students' academic outcomes could be further enhanced by cultural grounding.

Movin' on up (to college): First-generation college students' experiences with family achievement guilt.

As the first in their families to attend college, first-generation college students (FGCs) experience a discrepancy between the opportunities available to them and those available to their non-college-educated family members that elicits family achievement guilt. The present studies examined family achievement guilt among an ethnically diverse sample of FGCs and continuing-generation college students (CGCs), those whose parents attended college (Studies 1 and 2), and tested a strategy to alleviate such guilt (Study 2). In Study 1, on open-ended and closed-ended measures, FGCs (N = 53) reported more guilt than CGCs (N = 68), and Latinos (N = 60) reported more guilt than Whites (N = 61). Latino FGCs reported more family achievement guilt than the other 3 groups. In Study 2, we examined whether reflecting on a time when one helped family would alleviate family achievement guilt for FGCs. Specifically, FGCs (N = 58) and CGCs (N = 125) described a time they helped their family with a problem (help condition) or did not describe an example (control), then completed the guilt measure. Analyses revealed that (a) consistent with Study 1, FGCs reported higher guilt than CGCs and minorities reported more guilt than Whites, and (b) FGCs in the help condition reported significantly less guilt than FGCs in the control condition and reported no differences in guilt from CGCs across conditions. Finally, perceptions of family struggle mediated this relationship such that reflecting on helping one's family led to perceiving less family struggle, which led to less family achievement guilt for FGCs.

The impact of self-relevant representations on school belonging for Native American students.

Native American students encounter limited exposure to positive representations (i.e., role models) in the academic domain. This underrepresentation threatens students' identities in the classroom, subsequently decreasing feelings of school belonging and negatively impacting academic performance (Walton & Cohen, 2007). Two studies examined how different methods for providing self-relevant representations affect belonging for underrepresented Native American middle school students. Study 1 (N = 90) revealed that exposure to self-relevant role models increased belonging compared to self-irrelevant, ethnically ambiguous, or no role models for Native American students. Study 2 (N = 117) revealed that Native American students who listed many (8) role models reported higher belonging than Native American students who listed a few (2) or no role models and reported similar belonging as European American students who listed a few or many role models. As predicted, European American students showed no differences in belonging across conditions (i.e., listing many, a few, or no role models). These findings suggest that positive, self-relevant representations can alleviate the effects of underrepresentation.

Cultural mismatch and the education of Aboriginal youths: the interplay of cultural identities and teacher ratings.

In response to the enduring "deficit" approach to the educational attainment of Aboriginal students in North America, we hypothesized that academic underperformance is related to a cultural mismatch between Aboriginal students' cultural background, which emphasizes connectedness and interdependence, and the mainstream White model of education, which focuses on independence and assertiveness. The participants included virtually all the secondary students (N = 115) in the Naskapi community of Kawawachikamach, Quebec, Canada. We obtained self-reports of identification with Aboriginal and White culture, teacher reports of assertiveness, and official grades. We found that high identification with either Aboriginal or White culture was related to higher grades, regardless of whether the students were perceived as assertive by their teacher. Conversely, at low levels of cultural identification toward Aboriginal or White culture, being perceived as low in assertiveness by one's teacher predicted lower grades. This suggests that both high cultural identification and assertiveness can contribute to enhancing the educational outcomes of Aboriginal students, but that Aboriginal students with low levels of both cultural identification and assertiveness are at particular risk as they are mismatched with the culture of mainstream schools and do not benefit from the protective effects of identity. The relationships among identity, cultural values, and academic performance point to the need to reject the notion of an inherent deficit in education among Aboriginal youths in favor of a different framework in which success can be attained when alternative ways of being are fostered and nurtured in schools.

Social class disparities in health and education: reducing inequality by applying a sociocultural self model of behavior.

The literature on social class disparities in health and education contains 2 underlying, yet often opposed, models of behavior: the individual model and the structural model. These models refer to largely unacknowledged assumptions about the sources of human behavior that are foundational to research and interventions. Our review and theoretical integration proposes that, in contrast to how the 2 models are typically represented, they are not opposed, but instead they are complementary sets of understandings that inform and extend each other. Further, we elaborate the theoretical rationale and predictions for a third model: the sociocultural self model of behavior. This model incorporates and extends key tenets of the individual and structural models. First, the sociocultural self model conceptualizes individual characteristics (e.g., skills) and structural conditions (e.g., access to resources) as interdependent forces that mutually constitute each other and that are best understood together. Second, the sociocultural self model recognizes that both individual characteristics and structural conditions indirectly influence behavior through the selves that emerge in the situation. These selves are malleable psychological states that are a product of the ongoing mutual constitution of individuals and structures and serve to guide people's behavior by systematically shaping how people construe situations. The theoretical foundation of the sociocultural self model lays the groundwork for a more complete understanding of behavior and provides new tools for developing interventions that will reduce social class disparities in health and education. The model predicts that intervention efforts will be more effective at producing sustained behavior change when (a) current selves are congruent, rather than incongruent, with the desired behavior and (b) individual characteristics and structural conditions provide ongoing support for the selves that are necessary to support the desired behavior.

Cultural psychology as a bridge between anthropology and cognitive science.

The theory and methods of cultural psychology begin with the assumption that psychological processes are socioculturally and historically grounded. As such, they offer a new approach for understanding the diversity of human functioning because they (a) question the presumed neutrality of the majority group perspective; (b) take the target's point-of-view (i.e., what it means to be a person in a particular context); (c) assume that there is more than one viable way of being a competent or effective person; and (d) provide a road map for understanding and reducing social inequities. As illustrated in this essay, a cultural psychological approach provides a bridge between anthropology and the cognitive sciences, and in so doing it offers an alternative set of explanations and interventions for group differences.

Unseen disadvantage: how American universities' focus on independence undermines the academic performance of first-generation college students.

American universities increasingly admit first-generation college students whose parents do not have 4-year degrees. Once admitted, these students tend to struggle academically, compared with continuing-generation students--students who have at least 1 parent with a 4-year degree. We propose a cultural mismatch theory that identifies 1 important source of this social class achievement gap. Four studies test the hypothesis that first-generation students underperform because interdependent norms from their mostly working-class backgrounds constitute a mismatch with middle-class independent norms prevalent in universities. First, assessing university cultural norms, surveys of university administrators revealed that American universities focus primarily on norms of independence. Second, identifying the hypothesized cultural mismatch, a longitudinal survey revealed that universities' focus on independence does not match first-generation students' relatively interdependent motives for attending college and that this cultural mismatch is associated with lower grades. Finally, 2 experiments at both private and public universities created a match or mismatch for first-generation students and examined the performance consequences. Together these studies revealed that representing the university culture in terms of independence (i.e., paving one's own paths) rendered academic tasks difficult and, thereby, undermined first-generation students' performance. Conversely, representing the university culture in terms of interdependence (i.e., being part of a community) reduced this sense of difficulty and eliminated the performance gap without adverse consequences for continuing-generation students. These studies address the urgent need to recognize cultural obstacles that contribute to the social class achievement gap and to develop interventions to address them.

Being mixed: who claims a biracial identity?

What factors determine whether mixed-race individuals claim a biracial identity or a monoracial identity? Two studies examine how two status-related factors-race and social class-influence identity choice. While a majority of mixed-race participants identified as biracial in both studies, those who were members of groups with higher status in American society were more likely than those who were members of groups with lower status to claim a biracial identity. Specifically, (a) Asian/White individuals were more likely than Black/White or Latino/White individuals to identify as biracial and (b) mixed-race people from middle-class backgrounds were more likely than those from working-class backgrounds to identify as biracial. These results suggest that claiming a biracial identity is a choice that is more available to those with higher status.

Identity-based motivation and health.

People do not always take action to promote health, engaging instead in unhealthy habits and reporting fatalism about health. One important mechanism underlying these patterns involves identity-based motivation (D. Oyserman, 2007), the process by which content of social identities influences beliefs about in-group goals and strategies. Seven studies show the effect of identity-based motivation on health. Racial-ethnic minority participants view health promotion behaviors as White middle class and unhealthy behaviors as in-group defining (Studies 1 and 2). Priming race-ethnicity (and low socioeconomic status) increases health fatalism and reduces access to health knowledge (Studies 3 and 4). Perceived efficacy of health-promoting activities is undermined when racial-ethnic minority participants who identify unhealthy behavior as in-group defining are asked to consider their similarities to (middle-class) Whites (Studies 5-7).

The psychology of engagement with indigenous identities: a cultural perspective.

In a questionnaire study among 124 students at Haskell Indian Nations University, the authors investigated the hypothesis that engagement with Indigenous identity--assessed along three dimensions including degree (identification scale), content (panethnic or tribal nation), and context (reservation or nonreservation)--can serve as a psychological resource for well-being and liberation from oppression. Consistent with this hypothesis, degree of identification was positively correlated with community efficacy and perception of racism. Apparently inconsistent with this hypothesis, degree of identification among students who had resided on a reservation was negatively correlated with the Social Self-Esteem subscale of the Current Thoughts Scale. Rather than evidence against the identity-as-resource hypothesis, this pattern may reflect the cultural grounding of self-esteem and tools designed to measure it.