Dario Cvencek

• Cognitive Psychology Ph.D
• Researcher at University of Washington

Based on data for N = 2,756 children (1,410 girls; Mage = 8.10 years) from 16 data sets spanning five nations, this study investigated relations between national gender disparities and children’s beliefs about gender and academic subjects. One national-level gender disparity involved inequalities in socioeconomic standing favoring adult males over...

Implicit and explicit self‐esteem are not commonly measured in the same children. Using a cross‐sectional design, data from 354 Croatian children (184 girls) in Grade 1 ( M age = 7.55 years) and Grade 5 ( M age = 11.58 years) were collected in Spring 2019. All children completed explicit and implicit self‐esteem measures; math and language grades w...

Strong in-group bonds, facilitated by implicit favoritism for in-group members (i.e., in-group bias), promote mental health across development. Yet, we know little about how the development of in-group bias is shaped by early-life experiences. Childhood violence exposure is known to alter social information processing biases. Violence exposure may...

This cross-sectional study investigates the implicit and explicit food attitudes of 1,412 Croatian children (5–9 years old) and extends our knowledge regarding how those attitudes relate to food behavior, while accounting for the potential influence of age and environmental variables such as watching television and poverty. While our findings corro...

Strong in-group bonds may promote mental health across development. Violence exposure influences social information processing biases and may also relate to social categorization processes. We examined associations of violence exposure with psychopathology and behavioral and neural indices of implicit and explicit in-group bias after minimal group...

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last...

Three hundred and ninety-one children (195 girls; Mage = 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 grade...

Identifying the potential pathways linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation is critical for developing effective interventions. This study investigated implicit self-esteem—unconscious valenced self-evaluation—as a potential pathway linking childhood abuse with depression and suicidal ideation. A sample of youth aged 8–16 years (...

This longitudinal study examined early social-cognitive markers that might be associated with the emergence of childhood depression and anxiety. At 5 years of age, 137 children completed an implicit self-esteem measure. At 9 years of age, the same children completed measures of implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Tw...

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 in...

Self‐esteem remains one of social psychology's central constructs, despite disagreements about its theoretical interpretation and methods of measurement. This entry provides an overview of alternative views of structure and empirical controversies about the function of self‐esteem in personality. Special emphasis is placed on recent advancement in...

Self‐esteem remains one of social psychology's central constructs, despite disagreements about its theoretical interpretation and methods of measurement. This entry provides an overview of alternative views of structure and empirical controversies about the function of self‐esteem in personality. Special emphasis is placed on recent advancement in...

Research Findings Two hundred and sixty-seven Chilean children from grades 1–3, their fathers and their mothers completed measures of implicit and explicit math-related beliefs (math–gender stereotypes, math self-concepts) and feelings (math anxiety), as well as tests of mathematical achievement. Children, fathers, and mothers exhibited stereotypes...

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 i...

This study examines the relations among parental beliefs and practices about mathematics, children’s beliefs about mathematics, participants’ gender, and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study was conducted in Chile, a country with significant gender gaps in standardized test results in mathematics, with boys receiving significantly higher sc...

Minority and majority elementary school students from a Native American reservation (N = 188; K–fifth grade; 5-to 10-year-olds) completed tests of academic self-concepts and self-esteem. School grades, attendance, and classroom behavior were collected. Both minority and majority students exhibited positive self-esteem. Minority students demonstrate...

In play, children often explore mathematical ideas that are vital for future learning. Children’s play also reveals gender differences in both colour and toy preferences. The authors examined how gender related colour preferences of 5-year-olds are related to preferences for math-specific games/toys and gendered beliefs about math. Spanish preschoo...

In play, children often explore mathematical ideas that are vital for future learning. Children's play also reveals gender differences in both colour and toy preferences. The authors examined how gender-related colour preferences of 5-year-olds are related to preferences for math-specific games/toys and gendered beliefs about math. Spanish preschoo...

Background: This paper provides an overview of the self-concept as it relates to substance use. Self-concept has a long history in psychological theory and research; however, substance self-concept (e.g., viewing one's self as a drinker or smoker) is an understudied area of research with the potential to expand existing conceptualizations of subst...

Self-esteem is one of social psychology's central constructs. Despite the wide endorsement of the importance of self-esteem, there remains substantial variation in theoretical conceptions of how self-esteem functions. To help address this point, 234 5-year-old children were tested across 3 studies using a new implicit measure. A new Preschool Impli...

Sixty elementary-school children (9–10 years old) and 82 adolescents (12–13 years old) completed explicit and implicit measures of racial stereotypes about math. 60 Asian, 42 Latino, 21 White, 15 Black, and four multiracial students participated (42% boys). On the explicit measure, children as early as fifth grade reported being aware of the stereo...

In social psychology, cognitive consistency is a powerful principle for organizing psychological concepts. There have been few tests of cognitive consistency in children and no research about cognitive consistency in children from Asian cultures, who pose an interesting developmental case. A sample of 172 Singaporean elementary school children comp...

The Preschool Implicit Association Test (PSIAT) is an adaptation of an established social cognition measure (IAT) for use with preschool children. Two studies with 4-year-olds found that the PSIAT was effective in evaluating (a) attitudes toward commonly liked objects (flowers=good) and (b) gender attitudes (girl=good or boy=good). The gender attit...

A total of 247 American children between 6 and 10 years of age (126 girls and 121 boys) completed Implicit Association Tests and explicit self-report measures assessing the association of (a) me with male (gender identity), (b) male with math (math-gender stereotype), and (c) me with math (math self-concept). Two findings emerged. First, as early a...

Male and female participants were instructed to produce an altered response pattern on an Implicit Association Test measure of gender identity by slowing performance in trials requiring the same response to stimuli designating own gender and self. Participants' faking success was found to be predictable by a measure of slowing relative to unfaked p...