Nicole Stephens

What causes social class disparities in education? The role of the mismatches between academic contexts and working-class socialization contexts and how the effects of these mismatches are explained.

Psychological Review · 2024-07-18 · 43 citations

magnify social class disparities in education. This integrated model has the potential to reshape research and discourse on social class and education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

A Diversity Ideology Intervention: Multiculturalism Reduces the Racial Achievement Gap

Social Psychological and Personality Science · 2020 · 42 citations

In the United States, underrepresented racial minority (URM) students continue to face psychological barriers that undermine their achievement and fuel disparities in academic outcomes. In the current research, we tested whether a multicultural ideology intervention could improve URM students’ grade point averages (GPAs) during the first 2 years of college and thereby reduce the racial achievement gap. Specifically, first-year college students ( N = 407) read a diversity statement that represent…

The cycle of workplace bias and how to interrupt it

Research in Organizational Behavior · 2020 · 26 citations

Difference-Education Improves First-Generation Students’ Grades Throughout College and Increases Comfort With Social Group Difference

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2021-02-09 · 24 citations

: that social group difference comes from participating in and adapting to diverse sociocultural contexts. At two universities, we delivered difference-education interventions during the college transition and examined long-term academic and intergroup outcomes. Nearly 4 years later, first-generation students who received a difference-education intervention earned higher grades and were more likely to attain honors standing than those in the control condition. Based on an end-of-college survey w…

The Strengths of People in Low-SES Positions: An Identity-Reframing Intervention Improves Low-SES Students’ Achievement Over One Semester

Social Psychological and Personality Science · 2024-10-20 · 11 citations

Students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds such as first-generation or low-income students are often portrayed as deficient, lacking in skills and potential to succeed at university. We hypothesized that such representations lead low-SES students to see their SES-identity as a barrier to success and impair achievement. If so, reframing low-SES students’ identity as a source of strength may help them succeed. Testing this hypothesis in a highly scalable form, we developed an online…