Reducing Neural and Immune Threat Reactivity During Intergroup Mentoring in STEM

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship trains a young scientist exploring the strategies for mitigating certain threats that arise due to intergroup mentoring, which is often the case for under-represented minorities in the STEM fields. This fellowship support is under the "Broadening Participation" track of the SBE postdoctoral fellowships program. Under-represented minorities (URMs) perform lower than their majority-group counterparts across STEM domains. One factor that may contribute to URMs? underperformance is that they are typically mentored by majority-group members, a result of the numerical underrepresentation of URM faculty and upper-level management in STEM. Critically, the intergroup nature of these mentoring relationships is likely to activate discrimination-related threats and negative affect for both mentors and mentees. Specifically, majority-group individuals often worry about being perceived as prejudiced, and URMs in historically stigmatized contexts often worry that they will face discrimination. Consequently, rather than creating an opportunity for professional growth, intergroup mentoring may present a threat for both mentors and mentees, and impede progress for URMs in STEM. The goal of the current research is to promote academic and professional success for URMs in STEM, and thus increase rates of URM participation to generate a larger and more diverse STEM workforce. The current research attempts to mitigate the threats experienced during intergroup mentoring through self-distancing. Self-distancing is a self-regulatory strategy wherein a person observes and analyzes the self from a 3rd person perspective, and has been shown to reduce negative affect, and improve communication skills. In the current studies, White and URM participants adopt the role of mentors and students, respectively, and interact with one another. Additionally, we manipulate the degree to which participants view their mentoring interaction from a self-distanced perspective. To understand the physiological mechanisms through which self-distancing influences mentoring outcomes, the current research examines neural and immune reactivity. Furthermore, to test the longer-term behavioral consequences of neural and immune reactivity during a mentoring interaction, participants return to the lab for a one-week follow-up session. These studies have the potential to reveal basic mechanisms that drive important outcomes in interracial mentoring relationships.