Nilanjana Dasgupta

Creating inclusive cultures with equal opportunity and belonging is a goal of most communities and organizations, but achieving that goal has been uneven at best. Many attempts at inclusive culture change have not worked, while others have backfired. One reason is that these attempts have exclusively emphasized individual efforts and underestimated the power of situations in nudging individuals’ beliefs, behaviors, interactions, and relationships, which together create local culture. This article disaggregates the power of situations into four distinct types of situational forces, by integrating research from social psychology and adjacent disciplines, to illustrate how some situational forces shift beliefs, behaviors, social interactions, and relationships toward greater inclusion and equality while other situational forces move in the opposite direction. An important goal is to illuminate how individual beliefs and behaviors connect to higher-order changes in local cultures and to identify where research is lacking to chart a future research agenda.

Gender and race disparities persist among tenure-track faculty in the United States, especially in STEM, where women hold 26% of academic positions and Black and Hispanic faculty together comprise only 7%. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment with 796 tenured biology and chemistry professors employed at 183 U.S. doctoral-granting institutions to investigate their evaluation of pre-tenure faculty's research readiness for tenure and promotion in research-intensive universities. Faculty received an identical CV with only the candidate’s name varying to signal their gender and race, using a 2 Race (Black vs. White) by 2 Gender (male, female) between-subjects factorial design. Results revealed that STEM faculty evaluated female and Black candidates' research record significantly more favorably and recommended them for tenure and promotion at higher rates, compared to male and White candidates with identical CVs. Findings remained largely consistent even after controlling for faculty participants’ own gender, race, and rank. We speculate that social norms about diversity, equity, and inclusion prominent in 2020-21 when these data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic and shortly after George Floyd’s murder may have heightened faculty’s awareness of gender and race bias, increased motivation to be fair in decision-making, and led to compensatory judgments to increase diversity in STEM careers.

Introduction: Individuals employ two types of strategies to navigate conflicting identities and reduce dissonance, particularly in contexts where one identity is devalued. They may selectively distance themselves from a subset of traits associated with one group (e.g., gender) which are stereotypically devalued in a particular domain (e.g., science), or they may distance themselves from the devalued group altogether and align closely with the high-status group. Alternatively, individuals may choose to withdraw from the previously valued achievement domain in response to societal signals indicating that their identity is misaligned with success in that domain. Past research on managing dual identities has been on adults. Surprisingly little research has examined whether and how such strategies play out in adolescence. Adolescence represents a critical period for identity formation, during which youth actively construct their self-concept in response to salient societal expectations and emerging interests in academic and career domains. Are dissonance reduction strategies evident in early adolescence among girls seeking to balance their gender identity and science identity? Is this balance affected by situational threats that make the incompatibility of identities more salient? Methods: We report a longitudinal study of adolescent girls recruited from 10 schools across the United States ( N = 2,056) to investigate how adolescent girls balance two social identities that are culturally misaligned. Results: Results showed that among adolescent girls who report strong science identity, belonging, and self-efficacy in science (i.e., strong science self-conceptions)-greater perceptions of threat in classroom settings were associated with a tendency to distance themselves from their gender. Situational threat was also associated with stronger implicit stereotypes about science as a male domain. Discussion: These identity negotiations suggest that some girls cope with the misalignment between femininity and STEM by repositioning themselves as different from other girls, which reinforces, rather than disrupts, the stereotype that science is a male-dominated domain. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Racial disparities in ADHD diagnoses may be attributable to parent-teacher discrepancies in symptom ratings, as teachers rate Black children as more symptomatic than non-Black children. Implicit racial biases may be a contributor to these parent-teacher differences. This study examined specific forms of racial biases among White teachers and Black parents, and their association with ratings of Black and White children’s ADHD behaviors. Participants watched short videoclips and rated children’s ADHD symptoms, and completed measures of implicit and explicit racial attitudes and ADHD stereotypes. Results showed that White teachers demonstrated more implicit biases than did Black parents. Implicit racial attitudes toward Black boys were associated with biased ratings of Black boys’ ADHD symptoms, and explicit racial attitudes were associated with biased ratings of Black girls’ ADHD symptoms. These findings demonstrate a potential role of teachers’ implicit racial biases in ratings of Black children’s externalizing behaviors, including ADHD.

Two interconnecting challenges contribute to a substantial gap between the supply and demand of talented STEM professionals in the United States workforce. First, is a substantial gap between the rising demographic diversity of the U.S. population and the limited diversity of Americans in STEM education pathways and careers. Second, inadequate attention connecting STEM research and teaching to socially relevant real‐world issues makes STEM education and careers less appealing to young people. Many STEM learning environments do not satisfy young people's core psychosocial needs to belong, feel competent, and engage in work that is socially relevant and personally meaningful. In this article, we leverage social psychological research to highlight evidence‐based solutions to these challenges. We detail actionable steps that can be taken by schools, universities, government agencies, and STEM employers to attract, motivate, and retain new, diverse STEM talent in the United States. By increasing the presence of successful role models, providing career development opportunities for meaningful professional interactions and relationship building, and connecting STEM content to social good, institutions can support young scientists' motivation to pursue and persist in STEM careers while at the same time address social issues of concern to the American people. Many of these evidence‐based actionable steps have stalled or are at risk because of federal actions of the current administration that hurts Americans' well‐being, national progress, and U.S. competitiveness on the global stage.

We used over 1.4 million Project Implicit responses between 2008 and 2019 to examine whether living in communities where White Americans hold more negative attitudes toward Black individuals predicts internalization versus polarization among Black Americans (i.e., higher versus lower preference for White relative to Black individuals). We constructed two-year estimates of White and Black county-level implicit (automatic) and explicit (conscious, self-reported) preference for White relative to Black individuals. Results from multilevel autoregressive models were consistent with polarization. In a given county, when White residents’ implicit or explicit preference for Whites increased at one wave, Black residents’ implicit and explicit preference for Whites generally decreased at the subsequent wave. Indicators of structural racism inconsistently predicted outcomes, but negative associations between White and Black residents’ relative preference for Whites were robust to inclusion of indicators of structural racism. These results have important implications for Black Americans’ health and intergroup relations.

Working-class first-generation (FG) college students are underrepresented in higher education and STEM. Using a longitudinal quasi-experiment, we tested the impacts of a living learning community (LLC) in the biological sciences on FG students in their first year of college (Semester 1: N = 243; Semester 2: N = 199), across three cohorts (2018–2019, 2019–2020 and 2020–2021). Participation in the LLC enhanced FG students’ belonging, confidence, motivation, grades, knowledge of the social relevance of biology, and reduced STEM anxiety compared to a control group of FG students not in an LLC. LLC participation also increased retention in biological science majors one-year post-intervention compared to the control FG group. Moreover, LLC participation closed the academic gap between FG students in the LLC and honors students from college-educated families in a separate honors LLC. Benefits of the LLC intervention remained stable despite the COVID-19 pandemic, when living together became impossible, producing positive effects across cohorts from pre-pandemic to in-pandemic. Our results suggest that affinity-based learning communities—with or without shared housing—in the transition to college enhance academic thriving, persistence, and reduce social class driven achievement gaps in STEM.

Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001) demonstrated that exposure to positive Black exemplars (e.g., Colin Powell) and negative White exemplars (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer) can reduce implicit pro-White/anti-Black evaluations, as measured by an Implicit Association Test (IAT). Here we report seven preregistered online experiments conducted with volunteer U.S. participants (N = 6,953) that sought to replicate and probe the boundary conditions of this finding. Contrary to expectations, we found no shift in implicit racial evaluations in two close replication attempts (Exp. 1–2). Exp. 3–4 ruled out the possibility of insufficiently strong exemplar valence and subtyping as explanations for the failures to replicate. In Exp. 5, implicit racial evaluations did exhibit malleability in response to two different procedures relying on repeated evaluative pairings and evaluative statements, suggesting that they are capable of change. With insight from these studies, Exp. 6–7 were mounted with modifications to the Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001) procedure. Significant reductions in implicit pro-White/anti-Black evaluations were now observed when race, valence, and the contingency between the two were highlighted. In addition, across all experiments, the magnitude of shift in implicit racial evaluations was significantly predicted by participants’ ability to recall the Black–positive and White–negative contingencies experienced during the exemplar exposure task. Together, these data suggest that exposure to counterattitudinal exemplars can shift implicit racial evaluations toward neutrality, but such malleability strongly depends on contingency awareness. We discuss implications for social cognitive theory, theoretically informed debiasing interventions, and different paths toward resolving initial replication failures.

The present research examined whether the use of gendered language acts as a cue to reduce identity threat by enhancing women’s motivation, self-efficacy, and cognitive processing in academic contexts culturally stereotyped as masculine. Pooled data from two studies conducted in Spanish, a language in which masculine generics are the cultural default, was analyzed using an Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) process. We manipulated the use of masculine gender exclusive vs. gender inclusive language in describing a mathematics task. Moreover, we orthogonally manipulated the activation of gender stereotypes by varying task framing. Women’s cognitive performance, motivation, self-efficacy, and feelings of inclusion were measured. Results revealed three important findings. First, minimally signaling identity threat through a combination of gender inclusive language and the absence of stereotype activation elicited the highest motivation and self-efficacy compared to all other conditions. Second, regardless of stereotype activation, using gender exclusive language in a math testing context elicited significantly more anxiety-related cognitive interference compared to gender inclusive language. Third, using gender inclusive (as compared to gender exclusive) language elicited lower feelings of ostracism. No stereotype threat effect emerged on performance. In conclusion, we demonstrate that the use of gender inclusive language can be a simple and effective strategy to reduce identity threat for women in achievement contexts culturally stereotyped as masculine.

Expanding the talent pipeline of students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM has been a priority in the United States for decades. However, potential solutions to increase the number of such students in STEM academic pathways, measured using longitudinal randomized controlled trials in real-world contexts, have been limited. Here, we expand on an earlier investigation that reported results from a longitudinal field experiment in which undergraduate female students (N = 150) interested in engineering at college entry were randomly assigned a female peer mentor in engineering, a male peer mentor in engineering, or not assigned a mentor for their first year of college. While an earlier article presented findings from participants’ first two years of college, the current article reports the same participants’ academic experiences for each year in college through college graduation and one year post-graduation. Compared to the male peer mentor and no mentor condition, having a female peer mentor was associated with a significant improvement in participants’ psychological experiences in engineering, aspirations to pursue postgraduate engineering degrees, and emotional well-being. It was also associated with participants’ success in securing engineering internships and retention in STEM majors through college graduation. In sum, a low-cost, short peer mentoring intervention demonstrates benefits in promoting female students’ success in engineering from college entry, through one-year post-graduation.