@article{ref1,
title="A difference-education intervention equips first-generation college students to thrive in the face of stressful college situations",
journal="Psychological science",
year="2015",
author="Stephens, Nicole M. and Townsend, Sarah S. M. and Hamedani, MarYam G. and Destin, Mesmin and Manzo, Vida",
volume="26",
number="10",
pages="1556-1566",
abstract="A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students' responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants' behavioral and hormonal responses to stressful college situations. We found that difference-education participants discussed their backgrounds in a speech more frequently than control participants did, an indication that they retained the understanding of how their backgrounds mattered. Moreover, among first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents did not have 4-year degrees), those in the difference-education condition showed greater physiological thriving (i.e., anabolic-balance reactivity) than those in the control condition, which suggests that they experienced their working-class backgrounds as a strength.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0956-7976",
doi="10.1177/0956797615593501",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797615593501"
}