Gregory M. Walton’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

What is this page?


This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.

Publications (35)


The Strengths of People in Low-SES Positions: An Identity-Reframing Intervention Improves Low-SES Students’ Achievement Over One Semester
  • Article
  • Full-text available

October 2024

·

46 Reads

·

5 Citations

Social Psychological and Personality Science

·

Gregory Walton

·

·

Nicole Stephens

Students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds such as first-generation or low-income students are often portrayed as deficient, lacking in skills and potential to succeed at university. We hypothesized that such representations lead low-SES students to see their SES-identity as a barrier to success and impair achievement. If so, reframing low-SES students’ identity as a source of strength may help them succeed. Testing this hypothesis in a highly scalable form, we developed an online low-SES-identity-reframing exercise. In Experiment 1 ( N = 214), this exercise helped low-SES students to see their SES-identity more as a source of success and boosted their performance on an academic task by 13%. In Experiment 2, a large randomized-controlled intervention field experiment ( N = 786), we implemented the identity-reframing intervention in a university’s online learning program. This improved low-SES students’ grades over the semester. Recognizing the strengths low-SES students bring to university can help students access these strengths and apply them to schooling.

Download

Fig. S2. Flowchart of the Design of the Mechanism Experiment Within the policy experiment, the Full and Psychosocial arms included psychosocial interventions (specifically community sensitization and life skills training), regular cash transfers, savings groups formation, group coaching, and micro-entrepreneurship training. The Full arm added a lump-sum cash grant. Randomization strata included policy experiment treatment arm, timing of the program components by season, and participation in the policy experiment baseline survey.
How Culturally Wise Psychological Interventions Help Reduce Poverty

June 2024

·

63 Reads

·

2 Citations

·

Patrick Premand

·

·

[...]

·

Gregory Walton

Poverty is multidimensional, associated not only with a lack of financial resources, but also often social-psychological constraints, such as diminished agency and aspirations. Through a series of field experiments, this paper assesses the causal impacts of culturally wise interventions designed to build women’s agency on poverty reduction efforts in rural Niger. Moreover, the study identifies a model of agency that is “culturally wise” because it is the most motivational and functional in the study cultural context. Study 1 reports descriptive evidence that an interdependent model of agency—that is grounded in social harmony, respect, and collective advancement and that accounts for relational affordances for individual goals—is predominant in rural Niger. This stands in contrast to a more self-oriented, independent model grounded in personal aspirations, self-direction, and self-advancement that is more common in the West. Study 2 explores the psychosocial mechanisms of a highly effective, multifaceted poverty reduction program that included two psychosocial interventions—a community sensitization and a life skills training, which incorporated both models of agency. Although the results support the role of intrapersonal processes (including enhanced self-efficacy and optimistic future expectations) in driving economic impacts, there is equal, if not greater, support for relational processes (including increased subjective social standing, control over earnings, and social support). Study 3 conducts a mechanism experiment to disentangle the causal effects of interventions grounded in independent agency (“personal initiative”) or interdependent agency (“interpersonal initiative”). The results show that the interdependent agency intervention, which is considered to be most “culturally wise,” led to significant effects on economic outcomes as well as both intrapersonal and relational processes. By contrast, the independent agency intervention showed impacts on intrapersonal processes alone. These findings show the promise of an emerging area of research at the intersection of behavioral science, cultural psychology, and development economics for addressing complex global problems like poverty and inequality.


The Strengths of People in Low-SES Positions: An Identity-Reframing Intervention Improves Low-SES Students’ Achievement Over One Semester

June 2024

·

16 Reads

Students from low socioeconomic-status (SES) backgrounds such as first-generation and low-income students are often portrayed as deficient, lacking in skills and potential to succeed at university. We hypothesized that such representations lead low-SES students to see their SES-identity as a barrier to success and impair achievement. If so, reframing low-SES students’ identity as a source of strength may help them succeed. Testing this hypothesis, we developed a highly scalable online-exercise. In Experiment 1 (N=214), this SES-identity-reframing exercise helped low-SES students to see their SES-identity more as a source of success, and boosted their performance in an academic task by 13%. In Experiment 2, a large randomized-controlled intervention field-experiment with 786 students, we implemented the identity-reframing intervention in a university’s online-learning-program. This improved low-SES students’ grades over the semester. Acknowledging the strengths low-SES students bring to university settings can help these students access their strengths and apply them to schooling.


The strength in mental illness: A targeted identity-reframing exercise improves goal pursuit among people who have experienced depression

June 2024

·

9 Reads

Widespread narratives frame mental illness as a sign of personal weakness. We theorized that these narratives impair individuals’ ability to realize their strengths and pursue their goals. To test this hypothesis, and to attain a practical intervention-tool, we developed a brief (~20-minutes), highly-scalable exercise that inverts weakness-narratives by highlighting the strengths people show contending with depression. Three large randomized-controlled experiments (Ntotal=748) show that this identity-reframing-exercise enhanced the confidence of people who had experienced depression to pursue their goals (Experiments 1a-b); and, over two weeks, the progress they reported making towards a self-selected goal from 43% to 64% (Experiment 2). Lessened stigma mediated the gain in confidence (Experiment 1b): While 71% of control-condition participants thought the strengths needed to pursue their goals did not describe people with depression well, identity-reframing reduced this to 52%. Complementing treatments of depression, efforts to invert weakness-narratives can help people recognize and access their strengths.


Liberal paternalism: Weak-victim narratives are common, especially among liberals, and facilitate the disempowering treatment of groups that face disadvantage

June 2024

·

7 Reads

·

2 Citations

Groups that face systemic disadvantage, such as refugees or people facing poverty, are sometimes viewed as essentially weak, passive victims. We show that weak-victim narratives are common, especially among liberals: they are well-represented in media, especially liberal media (Study 1), and commonly endorsed, especially by liberals (Studies 2a, 2c, 4, & Supplementary Study 1). What leads people and especially liberals to endorse weak-victim narratives? Weak-victim narratives conflate weakness (“weak”) with a sympathetic recognition of disadvantage (“victim”; Study 2b). This ambiguity facilitates their endorsement among liberals and their contribution to paternalistic behavior (Study 2c). Relatedly, mediation analyses (Studies 2a, 2c, & Supplementary Study 1) and experimental data (Study 2d) show that the perception of disadvantage, which is more pronounced among liberals, contributes to narrative’s endorsement. Experimental data also suggest that people sometimes endorse the weak-victim narrative strategically when seeking approval from liberals (Study 3). What are consequences? Correlational and experimental evidence show that the weak-victim narrative, as compared to a strong-agent narrative, leads liberals to see members of disadvantaged groups as less strong and agentic (Studies 4, 5, & 7) and to treat people in ways that are functionally disempowering: donating more money to disempowering rather than empowering aid organizations known to undermine recipients’ confidence in their abilities through paternalistic representations of aid (Studies 5-6), and encouraging students to quit challenging but valuable learning opportunities (Studies 2c & 7). Eleven studies (Ntotal=1,948) point to a novel mechanism, common among liberals, that facilitates the disempowering treatment of disadvantaged groups.


Identity‐reframing interventions: How to effectively highlight individuals' background‐specific strengths

July 2023

·

69 Reads

·

9 Citations

Many low‐status groups are portrayed as deficient. Countering such stigmatizing narratives, identity‐reframing interventions reframe low‐status group members as strong and resourceful agents. This approach can help members of low‐status groups successfully pursue major life goals. In one test, an identity‐reframing intervention increased engagement in an online‐university among refugees by 23% over 1 year. In another, it increased the degree to which people with experiences of depression successfully completed a meaningful self‐chosen goal over 2 weeks. The present review describes how identity‐reframing interventions work on a practical and theoretical level, where they might not work, how they contribute to theory and practice, how they can be adapted to new populations and contexts, and what novel questions they direct us to.


Fig. 1. Feeling thermometer ratings towards select social groups in the US between 1964 and 2016 (secondary analysis of ANES data). The data presented in this figure are from a secondary analysis of data from the American National Election Study (ANES) -Cumulative (N = 59,944). Feeling thermometer questions ask respondents to rate their feelings toward certain groups, particularly how cold / unfavorable they feel to how warm / favorable they feel (0-100 degrees). The social group labels were altered from the original ANES survey in line with principles of inclusive language and are ordered according to their overall averages over time, given available data. Feeling thermometer ratings toward people on welfare were not collected in the 2016 wave. The data and original materials were retrieved from Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) archives (American National Election Studies, 2021).
Fig. 5. Statistical mediation of the effect of the financial freedom condition on support for UBI, stereotypical views of UBI recipients, and affiliation with UBI recipients through increased perceived moral fit among conservatives in Experiment 2. Note. Outcome variables are standardized. Paths stemming from the experimental condition box on the topmost line are interpreted as causal and all others as correlational. Asterisks indicate statistical significance (*p < .05, ***p < .001).
Fig. 6. Conservatives' prejudicial attitudes towards the typical UBI policy recipient in comparison to the typical welfare recipient, by UBI message condition (Experiment 3). Note: The 'Summary' variables are the averages across the items. Between-participant differences, that is, the effect of UBI message condition on attitudes towards UBI recipients and towards welfare recipients can be read vertically, within facet. Within-participant differences between attitudes towards welfare and UBI recipients can be read horizontally, as indicated by the dotted lines. Error bars are 95% CI for the between-participant comparisons.
Mitigating welfare-related prejudice and partisanship among U.S. conservatives with moral reframing of a universal basic income policy

March 2023

·

279 Reads

·

14 Citations

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Inequality and deep poverty have risen sharply in the US since the 1990s. Simultaneously, cash-based welfare policies have frayed, support for public assistance has fallen on the political right, and prejudice against recipients of welfare has remained high. Yet, in recent years Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained traction, a policy proposing to give all citizens cash sufficient to meet basic needs with no strings attached. We hypothesized that UBI can mitigate the partisanship and prejudice that define the existing welfare paradigm in the US but that this potential depends critically on the narratives attached to it. Indeed, across three online experiments with US adults (total N = 1888), we found that communicating the novel policy features of UBI alone were not sufficient to achieve bipartisan support for UBI or overcome negative stereotyping of its recipients. However, when UBI was described as advancing the more conservative value of financial freedom, conservatives perceived the policy to be more aligned with their values and were less opposed to the policy (meta-analytic effect on policy support: d = 0.36 [95% CI: 0.27 to 0.46]). Extending the literatures on moral reframing and cultural match, we further find that this values-aligned policy narrative mitigated prejudice among conservatives, reducing negative welfare-related stereotyping of policy recipients (meta-analytic effect d = −0.27 [95% CI: −0.38 to −0.16]), while increasing affiliation with them. Together, these findings point to moral reframing as a promising means by which institutional narratives can be used to bridge partisan divides and reduce prejudice.


Does “Jamal” Receive a Harsher Sentence Than “James”? First-Name Bias in the Criminal Sentencing of Black Men

February 2023

·

157 Reads

·

10 Citations

Objective: Using archival and experimental methods, we tested the role that racial associations of first names play in criminal sentencing. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that Black defendants with more stereotypically Black names (e.g., Jamal) would receive more punitive sentences than Black defendants with more stereotypically White names (e.g., James). Method: In an archival study, we obtained a random sample of 296 real-world records of Black male prison inmates in Florida and asked participants to rate the extent to which each inmate’s first name was stereotypically Black or stereotypically White. We then tested the extent to which racial stereotypicality was associated with sentence length, controlling for relevant legal features of each case (e.g., criminal record, severity of convicted offenses). In a follow-up experiment, participant judges assigned sentences in cases in which the Black male defendant was randomly assigned a more stereotypically Black or White name from our archival study. Results: Controlling for a wide array of factors—including criminal record—we found that inmates with more stereotypically Black versus White first names received longer sentences β = 0.09, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) [0.01, 0.16]: 409 days longer for names 1 standard deviation above versus below the mean on racial stereotypicality. In our experiment, participant judges recommended significantly longer sentences to Black inmates with more stereotypically Black names above and beyond the severity of the charges or their criminal history, β = 0.07, 95% CI [0.02, 0.13]. Conclusions: Our results identify how racial associations with first names can bias consequential sentencing decisions despite the impartial aims of the legal system. More broadly, our findings illustrate how racial biases manifest in distinctions made among members of historically marginalized groups, not just between members of different groups.


“Am I not human?”: Reasserting humanness in response to group-based dehumanization

December 2022

·

26 Reads

·

3 Citations

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Research on group dehumanization has focused largely on the perpetrators of dehumanization or on its negative emotional and cognitive effects on targets. We theorized that people would also reassert their humanness in response to dehumanizing portrayals of their group. Experiment 1 showed that Black individuals responded to a dehumanizing representation of their racial group by emphasizing their experience of more complex, uniquely human emotions versus emotions more associated with other animals. Experiment 2 and a supplemental experiment showed that Black, but not White, individuals responded to group-based dehumanization by depicting more complex self-portrayals. Taken together, these studies begin to illustrate that targets of group-based dehumanization are not simply passive victims but respond actively, resisting negative representations of their group by reasserting their humanness.



Citations (29)


... This theoretical perspective has been widely used for shedding light on the barriers and discrimination these students can face throughout their educational journeys (O'Shea et al. 2015;Heffernan 2023;Alheit 2009) and the conflicts of habitus they might experience (Hang and Zhang 2024;Nairz-Wirth et al. 2017;Friedman 2016;Lehmann 2013). However, it falls short when explaining the additional capitals that these students bring to the university environment (Bauer et al. 2024;O'Shea 2023;Stahl and McDonald 2022) and their successful engagement with and positive sense of belonging in this environment (O'Shea 2024a, b;Ajjawi et al. 2023;Gravett et al. 2023). Therefore, attention is frequently drawn not just to the inertia but also to the adaptability and transformation of habitus, field and configurations of capital, as well as the nuanced nature of experiences within the higher education environment (Lahire 2003;Atkinson 2021). ...

Reference:

Educational inequality and equitable transformation: Combining Bourdieu’s relational theory and the ‘conduct of everyday life’ concept to illuminate underrepresented students’ experiences and success in higher educationBildungsungleichheiten und Bildungsaufstiege: Ein theoretischer Beitrag zur Kombination der Relationalen Theorie Bourdieus und des Konzepts der Alltäglichen Lebensführung zur Untersuchung von Studienerfahrungen und -erfolg unterrepräsentierter Studierendengruppen
The Strengths of People in Low-SES Positions: An Identity-Reframing Intervention Improves Low-SES Students’ Achievement Over One Semester

Social Psychological and Personality Science

... Tidak berlebihan jika dikatakan pemerintah pada masa itu berpartisipasi menciptakan budaya kemiskinan di Tanah Papua. Lantaran keterbatasan peluang, marginalisasi sosial, dan ketidakpastian tentang masa depan membuat individu yang kurang sejahtera merasa kurang optimis dan tidak memiliki kendali atas nasib mereka (Thomas et al., 2024). Transformasi demografi dan diskriminasi besar-besaran terhadap OAP telah mempertajam rasa identitas bersama OAP yang berujung pada kebencian dan tuntutan kemerdekaan yang terus-menerus (McGibbon, 2004). ...

How Culturally Wise Psychological Interventions Help Reduce Poverty

... Research in this tradition has, for example, documented skills that people in disadvantaged positions have developed through their cultures (Azmitia et al. 2018;Engstrom and Laurin 2024) or through contending with adversity (Frankenhuis and Nettle 2020;Hatt 2007). Some research has also developed intervention strategies that represent the agency and strength that people with refugee or lower-socioeconomic-status (SES) backgrounds have shown to counter deficit-narratives (Bauer et al., 2021;Bauer & Walton, 2023;Hernandez, Silverman, and Destin 2021; see also Brannon, Markus, and Taylor 2015). ...

Identity‐reframing interventions: How to effectively highlight individuals' background‐specific strengths

... The influence of first names affecting sentencing in law courts confirms that black men with first names more readily associated with blackness receive longer prison sentences than comparable black men with whiter sounding names (Kenthirarajah et al., 2023). 3 This study was conducted in the USA, and it is not surprising that first names can be strong signifiers of stereotypical racial characteristics. ...

Does “Jamal” Receive a Harsher Sentence Than “James”? First-Name Bias in the Criminal Sentencing of Black Men

... Thus, engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury may allow them to reclaim a sense of self, allowing them to experience sensations and feel a sense of being "alive" (Klonsky and Muehlenkamp 2007). Therefore, ostracized individuals who perceive themselves as objectified may resort to nonsuicidal selfinjury as a means of "rehumanizing" themselves (i.e., automatic positive reinforcement), which reflects their response to perceived objectification (Howe, Schumann, and Walton 2022). Moreover, perceived objectification may motivate self-injury for the highly prevalent negative intrapersonal function of emotional regulation (Hamza and Willoughby 2015), specifically aiming to alleviate feelings of worthlessness and emotional distress (Hepp et al. 2020;Orehek and Weaverling 2017). ...

“Am I not human?”: Reasserting humanness in response to group-based dehumanization
  • Citing Article
  • December 2022

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

... Indirect evidence, however, suggests they might. For example, people are more persuaded by arguments framed in terms of their moral orientations (Feinberg and Willer, 2015;Thomas et al., 2023), which promote fluency and feelings of authenticity, and moral fit relates to people's decisions to live in a specific community (Chopik and Motyl, 2015). Missing from this literature, though, is evidence that people are aware of the extent of moral fit they will experience across environments, and that they anticipate better outcomes in the context of moral fit. ...

Mitigating welfare-related prejudice and partisanship among U.S. conservatives with moral reframing of a universal basic income policy

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

... We manually searched for publicly available text and video communications regarding climate change, energy use, and appliances from government agencies, quasi-governmental organizations, news outlets, think tanks, and climate activist boards to identify normative content from these sources for an initial list of norms. We expanded this list based on feedback from scholars with regional expertise in India as well as social psychologists to ensure that it captured the Indian landscape well and represented different types of norms (Boenke et al., 2022;Goldstein et al., 2008;Loschelder et al., 2019;Schultz et al., 2007;Schuster et al., 2023;Sparkman & Walton, 2017). The final list included descriptive norms (e.g., how many people own air conditioners), injunctive norms (e.g., people should buy energy-efficient air conditioners), static norms (e.g., how many people own air conditioners now), and dynamic norms (e.g., how the number of people who own air conditioners is changing). ...

Egalitarian Norm Messaging Increases Human Resources Professionals’ Salary Offers to Women

... Such patterns can functionally include or exclude students from minoritized backgrounds, including in student work groups (Binning et al., 2024;Dasgupta et al., 2015;Muragishi et al., 2023). Additionally, even as similarities are, in general, a basis of friendships (Pettigrew, 1998;Walton et al., 2012), it is also important for students from different groups to be able to recognize and value differences (Sanchez et al., 2022). Yet college environments may vary in the extent to which they support cross-group friends in recognizing and valuing both similarities and differences, which may contribute to instability in these friendships (Carey et al., 2022;Plummer et al., 2016;Rude & Herda, 2010;Shelton et al., 2023;Shook & Fazio, 2008;Trail et al., 2009). ...

A Threatening Opportunity: The Prospect of Conversations About Race-Related Experiences Between Black and White Friends

... When knowing that the majority of their peers are vaccinated, compared to when most peers are not, participants are more willing to get vaccinated too (Belle & Cantarelli, 2021;Hershey et al., 1994;Lyu et al., 2024;Romley et al., 2016;Ryoo & Kim, 2021); however, this was not replicated in some experiments (Clayton et al., 2021;Sinclair & Agerström, 2021;Xiao & Borah, 2020). There is some indication that descriptive norms work better when they invite people to work together toward a common goal (e.g., "Do it together", "Join in!") by helping mitigate reactance that can be provoked by social influence; this was, however, so far only studied on charitable giving and pro-environmental behavior (Howe et al., 2021). ...

Normative Appeals Motivate People to Contribute to Collective Action Problems More When They Invite People to Work Together Toward a Common Goal

... Studies like those by Venturo-Conerly et al. [78] suggest that gratitude may be just as effective as growth mindset interventions, and when tested head-to-head, the results are not always consistent or superior. Based on this, we propose that cultivating gratitude for strengths within stigmatised identities, rather than focusing on negative narratives surrounding these identities, can help alleviate mental health problems and build resilience, as shown in studies with refugee students and individuals with depression [4,5]. We recommend that intervention developers further explore this promising strategy to enhance mental health among young people with stigmatised identities, particularly in educational settings such as those for international students [46]. ...

Resourceful Actors, Not Weak Victims: Reframing Refugees’ Stigmatized Identity Enhances Long-Term Academic Engagement

Psychological Science