Context Matters: Stress for Minority Students Who Attend Minority-Majority Universities.

Research on college student stress has typically focused on institutions where the student population is predominately White and continuing-generation. This study explored student stress in a unique context-a public regional university where the majority of students are Latinx, first-generation (FGCS), and of low socioeconomic status (SES). Of the 355 participants in the study, 72.4% self-identified as Latinx and 59.7% were FGCS. Additionally, on a subjective scale of socioeconomic status (1 = lowest, 10 = highest), the mean response was 5.76 (SD = 1.56). Participants (18 years old or older) who were enrolled in a first-year seminar course were recruited for this study. Through an online survey during Fall 2018, first-year students reported levels of perceived and experienced stress related to academic, economic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal concerns. Results of regression analyses indicated that most types of stress were predicted by students' Latinx identity status and SES; FGCS status did not significantly predict stress. These findings highlight the need to explore solutions to address stress for Latinx and/or low SES students. Additionally, the study underscores the necessity of conducting research at educational institutions in which Latinx, FGC, and low SES students comprise the majority of the student body.

Keep Calm and Be Humble: Can Intellectual Humility Predict Test Anxiety?

Test anxiety is common and may lead to a range of negative outcomes, including poor exam performance. Therefore, it is important to explore psychological predictors of test anxiety. In this paper, we examined whether intellectual humility can predict test anxiety. In Study 1, college students (N = 181) completed an intellectual humility measure with four subscales and two different measures of test anxiety. In Study 2 (N = 196), a community sample recruited from an online workforce completed the same measures. In both studies, we found that intellectual humility was negatively related to test anxiety, such that higher intellectual humility predicted lower test anxiety. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrated a negative correlation between intellectual humility and the Sarason Test Anxiety Scale; Study 2 confirmed this negative relationship with both the Sarason and Westside test anxiety scales. We also found that this relationship was largely driven by the intellectual humility subscale of Independence of Intellect and Ego. Additionally, these results were present even when controlling for key demographic factors. These findings highlight intellectual humility's role in predicting exam anxiety and offer a potential avenue for intellectual humility to be leveraged into interventions to decrease exam anxiety in the future.