This paper tests the hypotheses that guiding students towards recognizing their strengths originating from their specific background and experiences will have positive implications for their academic motivation and psychological well-being. Specifically, it presents evidence indicating that a brief experimental paradigm, guiding students to reflect on their background-specific strengths, leads lower-SES college students, as well as Black and Latinx middle school students from lower-SES backgrounds, to endorse the idea that they are assets to their schools and society because of their backgrounds and increases their inclinations to persist in the face of academic difficulty.
Hernandez, I. A., Silverman, D., Destin, M. (In press). From deficit to benefit: Highlighting lower SES students’ background-specific strengths increases their academic persistence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.