CURRENT | ARCHIVES

Print Email to a Friend

Oct. 19, 2006

Looking like an in-group member plays factor in school performance: U-M study

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—For teenaged boys living in urban settings, physical markers of in-group belonging can play an important role in school performance, a University of Michigan study shows.

Skin tone was the marker for African Americans and a more global rating of “looking Latino” for Latinos, since preliminary work suggest these are generally accepted markers of in-group belonging. Boys with darker skin tone had better grades and felt more accepted by their peers than boys with lighter skin tone did, according to Daphna Oyserman, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the study’s lead author.

Oyserman, who is also affiliated with the U-M Department of Psychology and School of Social Work, found the same connection between “looking Latino” and the academic performance and engagement with academically focused peers among Latino male teens.  The study is to be published in Psychological Science.

“These findings link physical markers of group membership with important behavior and outcomes for minority boys who are at high risk of academic disengagement,” Oyserman said.  “Feeling sure that one fits in to the group can free boys up to focus on school rather than on fitting in. Indeed darker skin-tone boys felt that they were socially accepted and boys who believed they looked Latino were more likely to choose academically focused peers.”

For the study, part of a larger research program funded by the National Institutes of Health, Oyserman and colleagues analyzed the school records and self-reports of 102 Detroit-area teens who identified themselves as African American and 66 Detroit-area teens who identified themselves as Latino.

While physical markers of in-group belonging were strongly linked to grades and social acceptance for boys, these physical markers of group belonging had no systematic relationship with these outcomes for girls. That is not to say that feeling connected to one’s racial or ethnic group is not important to girls, but rather that this form of connection is particularly helpful for boys. 

In a related study, published in the current issue of Child Development, Oyserman and colleagues examined the impact of content of racial or ethnic identity on academic outcomes. They proposed that feeling connected to one’s racial or ethnic group provides motivation to engage in behaviors believed to characterize the in-group and that this should result in improved high school grade-point average to the extent that this feeling of connection is combined with school-focused content of racial or ethnic identity.

For this study, the researchers followed 98 African American and 41 Latino teens from low-income, urban schools through the 8th and 9th grade, asking about content of racial or ethnic identity in the fall and spring of each year and obtaining grades from school records.  At each point in time and over time youth high in racial or ethnic identity got better grades. Simply feeling connected to the in-group alone was not helpful.  Once feeling connected and believing that the in-group values school were combined, effects were just as positive for girls as for boys and for Latino youth as for African American youth.

The findings also support the use of intervention programs that help at-risk youth succeed academically by enhancing the connection to the in-group and the belief that the in-group is characterized by school-engagement. The positive effect of felt connection and belief that the in-group values school occurs even if outward appearance doesn’t proclaim in-group membership.

Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world's oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa.  ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest computerized social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more information.

Related Links:

Daphna Oyserman

Contact:  Diane Swanbrow
Phone: (734) 647-9069