A simple exercise on belonging helps black college students years later
A simple, one-hour exercise that helps black students feel like they belong in college can pay off. Even a decade later, students who took the training reported higher levels of personal and professional satisfaction than their peers. The findings, reported April 29 in Science Advances, indicate that benefits from a “social-belonging” intervention endure, says Christopher Rozek, an education researcher at Stanford University who was not involved with this study. Though the study is small, involving a few dozen graduate students from a single university, Rozek says the findings are exciting. “It is the first really long-term follow-up with this sort of intervention.” Black students entering college, who are aware of negative racial stereotypes and are underrepresented in higher education, can experience uncertainty about belonging, says study coauthor Shannon Brady, a social psychologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. That uncertainty can cause some black students to see commonplace challenges — a bad grade or a spat with a friend — as a confirmation of those negative...