Interdependent behavior only benefits employees from working-class backgrounds when it is both enacted and valued.

Social class disparities are pervasive in American society. In higher education, one critical driver of these disparities is the cultural mismatch between the interdependent norms of people from working-class backgrounds and the independent norms that pervade higher education. However, after graduating from college and entering white-collar workplaces, people from working-class backgrounds have frequent opportunities to collaborate in teams-that is, to enact interdependent behavior.

The benefits of difference-education interventions in lower-resourced institutions.

Difference-education is an intervention that addresses psychological barriers that can undermine the academic performance of first-generation college students (i.e., those who have parents without 4-year degrees).

Is diversity enough? Cross-race and cross-class interactions in college occur less often than expected, but benefit members of lower status groups when they occur.

More than ever before, institutions of higher education are seeking to increase the racial and social class diversity of their student bodies. Given these efforts, the present research asks two broad questions. First, how frequently do intergroup interactions occur across the lines of race and social class, and to what extent do these interactions reflect the diversity of a setting? Second, when cross-race and cross-class interactions occur, how do individuals experience them and what consequences do they have for their outcomes in these settings? Leveraging a longitudinal design and daily diary methods, we conducted the first large study ( = 11,460) which tracks the frequency, experience, and consequences of meaningful cross-race and cross-class interactions.

What's in a Name? The Hidden Historical Ideologies Embedded in the Black and African American Racial Labels.

History can inconspicuously repeat itself through words and language. We explored the association between the "Black" and "African American" racial labels and the ideologies of the historical movements within which they gained prominence (Civil Rights and Black Power, respectively). Two content analyses and two preregistered experimental studies ( = 1,204 White American adults) show that the associations between "Black" and "bias and discrimination" and between "African American" and "civil rights and equality" are evident in images, op-eds, and perceptions of organizations.

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

Difference-education interventions teach people a : 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.

Achievement is not class-neutral: Working together benefits people from working-class contexts.

Previous research has documented that people from working-class contexts have fewer skills linked to academic success than their middle-class counterparts (e.g., worse problem-solving skills).

Access is not enough: Cultural mismatch persists to limit first-generation students' opportunities for achievement throughout college.

United States higher education prioritizes independence as the cultural ideal. As a result, first-generation students (neither parent has a four-year degree) often confront an initial cultural mismatch early on in college settings: they endorse relatively interdependent cultural norms that diverge from the independent cultural ideal. This initial cultural mismatch can lead first-generation students to perform less well academically compared with continuing-generation students (one or more parents have a four-year degree) early in college.

Difference Matters: Teaching Students a Contextual Theory of Difference Can Help Them Succeed.

Today's increasingly diverse and divided world requires the ability to understand and navigate across social-group differences. We propose that interventions that teach students about these differences can not only improve all students' intergroup skills but also help disadvantaged students succeed in school. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, this article theorizes that teaching students a contextual understanding of difference can accomplish both of these important goals.

Empowerment Through Difference: An Online Difference-Education Intervention Closes the Social Class Achievement Gap.

A growing body of work suggests that teaching college students a contextual understanding of difference-that students' different experiences in college are the result of participating in different contexts before college-can improve the academic performance of first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents do not have 4-year college degrees).

Suspicion of Motives Predicts Minorities' Responses to Positive Feedback in Interracial Interactions.

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat.

A Difference-Education Intervention Equips First-Generation College Students to Thrive in the Face of Stressful College Situations.

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.

Discrimination and the stress response: psychological and physiological consequences of anticipating prejudice in interethnic interactions.

Objectives: We sought to demonstrate that individuals who anticipate interacting with a prejudiced cross-race/ethnicity partner show an exacerbated stress response, as measured through both self-report and hemodynamic and vascular responses, compared with individuals anticipating interacting with a nonprejudiced cross-race/ethnicity partner.

Methods: Through a questionnaire exchange with a White interaction partner (a confederate) Latina participants learned that their partner had racial/ethnic biased or egalitarian attitudes. Latina participants reported their cognitive and emotional states, and cardiovascular responses were measured while participants prepared and delivered a speech to the White confederate.

Being mixed: who claims a biracial identity?

What factors determine whether mixed-race individuals claim a biracial identity or a monoracial identity? Two studies examine how two status-related factors-race and social class-influence identity choice. While a majority of mixed-race participants identified as biracial in both studies, those who were members of groups with higher status in American society were more likely than those who were members of groups with lower status to claim a biracial identity. Specifically, (a) Asian/White individuals were more likely than Black/White or Latino/White individuals to identify as biracial and (b) mixed-race people from middle-class backgrounds were more likely than those from working-class backgrounds to identify as biracial.

From "in the air" to "under the skin": cortisol responses to social identity threat.

The authors examined women's neuroendocrine stress responses associated with sexism. They predicted that, when being evaluated by a man, women who chronically perceive more sexism would experience more stress unless the situation contained overt cues that sexism would not occur. The authors measured stress as the end product of the primary stress system linked to social evaluative threat-the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical axis.

Can the absence of prejudice be more threatening than its presence? It depends on one's worldview.

The present research used validated cardiovascular measures to examine threat reactions among members of stigmatized groups when interacting with members of nonstigmatized groups who were, or were not, prejudiced against their group. The authors hypothesized that people's beliefs about the fairness of the status system would moderate their experience of threat during intergroup interactions. The authors predicted that for members of stigmatized groups who believe the status system is fair, interacting with a prejudiced partner, compared with interacting with an unprejudiced partner, would disconfirm their worldview and result in greater threat.

Emotions as within or between people? Cultural variation in lay theories of emotion expression and inference.

Four studies using open-ended and experimental methods test the hypothesis that in Japanese contexts, emotions are understood as between people, whereas in American contexts, emotions are understood as primarily within people. Study 1 analyzed television interviews of Olympic athletes. When asked about their relationships, Japanese athletes used significantly more emotion words than American athletes.

Choice as an act of meaning: the case of social class.

Social class is one important source of models of agency--normative guidelines for how to be a "good" person. Using choice as a prototypically agentic action, 5 studies test the hypotheses that models of agency prevalent in working-class (WK) contexts reflect a normative preference for similarity to others, whereas models prevalent in middle-class (MD) contexts reflect a preference for difference from others. Focusing on participants' choices, Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants from WK relative to MD contexts more often chose pens that appeared similar to, rather than different from, other pens in the choice set, and more often chose the same images as another participant.

Going for the gold. Models of agency in Japanese and American contexts.

Two studies examined how Olympic performance is explained in American and Japanese contexts. Study 1, an analysis of media coverage of the 2000 and 2002 Olympics, shows that in both Japanese and American contexts, performance is construed mainly in terms of the actions of persons. However, Japanese and American accounts differ in their explanations of the nature and source of intentional agency, that is, in their models of agency.