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Three hundred and ninety‐one children (195 girls;M_age = 9.56 years) attending Grades 1 and 5 completed implicit and explicit measures of math attitudes and math self‐concepts. Math grades were obtained. Multilevel analyses showed that first‐grade girls held a strong negative implicit attitude about math, despite no gender differences in math grades or self‐reported (explicit) positivity about math. The explicit measures significantly predicted math grades, and implicit attitudes accounted for additional variance in boys. The contrast between the implicit (negativity for girls) and explicit (positivity for girls and boys) effects suggest implicit–explicit dissociations in children, which have also been observed in adults. Early‐emerging implicit attitudes may be a foundation for the later development of explicit attitudes and beliefs about math.

 

Children’s math self-concepts—their beliefs about themselves and math—are important for teachers, parents, and students, because they are linked to academic motivation, choices, and outcomes. There have been several attempts at improving math achievement based on the training of math skills. Here we took a complementary approach and conducted an intervention study to boost children’s math self-concepts. Our primary objective was to assess the feasibility of whether a novel multicomponent intervention—one that combines explicit and implicit approaches to help children form more positive beliefs linking themselves and math—can be administered in an authentic school setting. The intervention was conducted in Spain, a country in which math achievement is below the average of other OECD countries. We tested third grade students ( N = 180; M age = 8.79 years; 96 girls), using treatment and comparison groups and pre- and posttest assessments. A novelty of this study is that we used both implicit and explicit measures of children’s math self-concepts. For a subsample of students, we also obtained an assessment of year-end math achievement. Math self-concepts in the treatment and comparison groups did not significantly differ at pretest. Students in the treatment group demonstrated a significant increase in math self-concepts from pretest to posttest; students in the comparison group did not. In the treatment group, implicit math self-concepts at posttest were associated with higher year-end math achievement, assessed approximately 3 months after the completion of the intervention. Taken together, the results suggest that math self-concepts are malleable and that social–cognitive interventions can boost children’s beliefs about themselves and math. Based on the favorable results of this feasibility study, it is appropriate to formally test this novel multicomponent approach for improving math self-concepts using randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. 

There is a need to help more students succeed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, with particular interest in reducing current gender gaps in motivation and participation. We propose a new theoretical model, the STEreotypes, Motivation, and Outcomes (STEMO) developmental model, to account for and integrate recent data emerging in social and developmental psychology. Based on this model, we synthesize research suggesting that social factors, such as stereotypes and self-representations about “belonging,” are powerful contributors to observed gender differences in STEM interest and academic outcomes. The review has four parts. First, we examine how cultural stereotypes specific to STEM contribute to gender gaps by negatively impacting interest and academic outcomes. Second, we review the central role of the self-representations affected by those stereotypes, including the particular importance of a sense of belonging. Third, we discuss various interventions that buffer against stereotypes and enhance a sense of belonging to reduce gender gaps in STEM interest and academic outcomes. Finally, we suggest theory-driven directions for future research. By organizing the research in this way, our review and theoretical analysis clarify key factors contributing to current gender gaps in STEM and mechanisms by which psychological interventions can help address STEM gender gaps. 

This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social–cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT’s balance–congruity principle and simultaneously validated interpretation of the IAT’s zero point as indicating absence of preference between two attitude objects. Statistical power afforded by the sample size enabled the first confirmations of balance–congruity predictions with self-report measures. Beyond these empirical results, the meta-analysis introduced a within-study statistical test of the balance–congruity principle, finding that it had greater efficiency than the previous best method. The meta-analysis’s full data set has been publicly archived to enable further studies of interrelations among attitudes, stereotypes, and identities.