Health vs Success: Examining Whether Exposure to Negative Stereotypes Motivates Engagement in Unhealthy Behaviors among Low-SES College Students

Abstract

Individuals from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds experience worse health outcomes than high-SES individuals. Those disparities may be explained, at least in part, by low-SES individuals' routine exposure to stigma that can activate concerns about belonging in several settings, including academics. The current study tested whether activation of negative stereotypes (e.g., low academic ability) among low-SES students affects their motivation to engage in unhealthy behaviors (e.g., pulling an "all-nighter") in an effort to maximize academic success and disconfirm negative stereotypes about their group. Moreover, we assessed the role of key moderators (e.g., contingencies of self-worth in academic settings and stereotype threat concerns about one’s ingroup) and mediators (e.g., motivation to disconfirm negative ingroup stereotypes and stereotype threat concerns) on these outcomes. In an online experiment, college students recruited on Prolific Academic read a hypothetical news article indicating that low-SES students underperform academically relative to high-SES students (stereotype activation condition) or that low-SES students perform just as well as high-SES students (control condition). Although the findings indicated that our manipulation was effective, our results did not reach significance across the hypothesized outcomes. Implications for coping behaviors and academic outcomes for students from low-SES backgrounds are discussed.