About

Joshua Aronson is an Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt. He directs the Mindful Education Lab, a group of psychologists and neuroscientists dedicated to using research to improve environments and psychological functioning, particularly for individuals confronted with stress. Aronson is internationally recognized for his pioneering research on stereotype threat and Growth Mindset, with his work featured in popular books such as Blink, Nurtureshock, Mindset, Drive, and Whistling Vivaldi, among others. His research has been referenced in four Supreme Court cases and is widely cited across law, education, psychology, and human development fields. His contributions include editing works like Improving Academic Achievement and Readings about the Social Animal, as well as co-authoring The Social Animal. Aronson's current work focuses on helping schools create environments that promote excellence in cognitive, socio-emotional, and moral development through social psychological interventions, including mindfulness and meditation in classrooms, and developing a '4-dimensional curriculum' to enhance learning, curiosity, critical thinking, self-control, and purpose. He serves as an executive advisor to the Casa Laxmi Foundation, which aims to develop leadership and academic success among impoverished children.

Research topics

• Developmental psychology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Mathematics education
• Linguistics
• Cognitive psychology
• Communication

Selected publications

• When stereotypes disadvantage boys: Strength of stereotypes in mathematics and language arts and their relations with grades

  Journal of Applied Social Psychology · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Developmental psychology

  Abstract There is growing concern about boys' lagging performance in school, not only in language arts, where the gap is particularly pronounced, but also in mathematics. Stereotypes associating one gender with language arts or with mathematics are likely to contribute to these gaps. Such stereotypes can translate into explicit beliefs such as the extent to which students are aware of societal stereotypes or the extent to which they personally believe stereotypes to be true, but also indirectly into performance following a stereotype threat manipulation. However, few studies have considered these multiple stereotype expressions in both mathematics and language arts to examine their importance in predicting boys' and girls' actual grades in school. To fill this gap, two complementary studies examined high school boys' and girls' awareness and endorsement of stereotypes about both language arts ( n = 299) and mathematics ( n = 243), as well as whether stereotype threat impaired boys' performance on a spelling test. Although the effect of stereotype threat was not significant overall, our results showed that students were aware of and endorsed strong stereotypes advantaging girls in language arts. In mathematics, students endorsed counter‐traditional stereotypes slightly advantaging girls. Our results also showed that these multiple expressions of stereotypes related to students' grades. In doing so, our work provides insights regarding possible targets for interventions to reduce gender gaps disadvantaging boys in school.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Effect of Gender Stereotype Threat and Conceptions of Ability on Motor Learning and Working Memory

  Journal of Motor Learning and Development · 2023 · 13 citations

  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Social psychology

  The present study explored the effects of gender stereotype threat and conceptions of ability on motor learning and working memory in novice female learners. Sixty participants ( M age = 21.92 years, SD age = 1.74) were randomly assigned into a gender stereotype threat and a control group (neutral; without stereotype threat). Each group was, in turn, randomly divided into two subgroups: inherent ability and acquired skill. The tasks assigned to the participants included soccer dribbling and the n-back test. In the pretest, the individuals only performed one dribbling trial, whereas in the practice phase, the individuals performed 12 blocks of five trials based on their respective test conditions. During retention and transfer under pressure (48 hr after practice for both tests), the participants carried out one block of five trials. The participants also completed the n-back test in the pretest, posttest, and retention phases. In both motor performance and learning, the findings suggested that both gender stereotype threat and inherent ability variables can negatively influence the soccer dribbling skill ( p < .05). However, regarding working memory, the results could not show any significant difference between the groups ( p > .05). How these variables affect or do not affect motor learning as well as working memory and how the results are applied in the motor domain are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of a Fabricated Stereotype Threat on Sex Differences in Object Location Memory

  Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research · 2019-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Psi Chi is the International Honor So ci ety in Psychology, found ed in 1929. Its mission: "recognizing and promoting excellence in the science and application of psy chol ogy." (Note. Our new mission statement is available at http://www.psichi.org/?page=purpose) Mem ber ship is open to undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and alumni mak ing the study of psy chol ogy one of their major interests and who meet Psi Chi's min i mum qual i fi ca tions. Psi Chi is a member of the As so cia tion of Col lege Honor So ci et ies (ACHS), and is an affiliate of the Ameri can Psy cho logi cal As so cia tion (APA) and the Association for Psy cho log i cal Science (APS). Psi Chi's sister honor society is Psi Beta, the na tion al honor society in psychology for com mu nity and junior colleges.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The interest gap: how gender stereotype endorsement about abilities predicts differences in academic interests

  Social Psychology of Education · 2018-11-21 · 47 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgment

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Context Moderates Affirmation Effects on the Ethnic Achievement Gap

  Social Psychological and Personality Science · 2016-04-26 · 39 citations

  articleSenior author

  We attempted to replicate a self-affirmation intervention that produced a 40% reduction in the academic achievement gap among at-risk students. The intervention was designed as a protection against stereotype threat—, which creates stress and suppresses the performance, engagement, and learning of students stereotyped as intellectually inferior. In previous research, Black and Hispanic students who engaged in a values-affirmation exercise significantly improved their academic performance over the course of a school semester. We attempted to replicate these salutary effects in both an inner-city school and a more wealthy suburban school—contexts not tested in the original research. Despite employing the same materials, we found no effect of the affirmation on academic performance. We discuss these results in terms of the possibility that negatively stereotyped students benefit most from self-affirmations in environments where their numbers portray them neither as clearly “majority” nor minority.

  PublisherDOI

• Minding and mending the gap: Social psychological interventions to reduce educational disparities

  British Journal of Educational Psychology · 2015-02-16 · 150 citations

  reviewSenior author

  BACKGROUND: Achievement gaps continue to garner a great deal of attention both in academic and in popular circles. Many students continue to struggle despite broad educational reforms aimed at narrowing these gaps in learning and performance. AIMS: In this article, we review a number of social psychological interventions that show promise in reducing gaps in achievement, not by addressing structural barriers to achievement, but by helping students cope with threats to their identity that impair intellectual functioning and motivation. For example, interventions involving meditation, role models, emotional reappraisal, growth mindsets, imagining possible selves, self-affirmations, belongingness and cooperative learning have been shown to ameliorate threats to identity and raise achievement. We describe and evaluate these social psychological interventions. ARGUMENTS: Many achievement gaps involve a psychological predicament: a threat to one's social identity or to one's sense of belonging. Students' implicit theories - how they mind the gap - can act as barriers to their success. By helping students cope with these threats, these theory-based interventions represent a genuine advance in the way schools may reduce gaps in achievement. CONCLUSION: These interventions show how students' educational success depends partly on fluid aspects of context - how tasks are framed, who else is in the room, or what they believe about intelligence. Because of this fluidity, these interventions may not work in all settings. Achievement gaps are ultimately caused by a variety of factors, both objective and subjective that produce inequality. The research reviewed here suggests that even without changes in objective barriers to success, brief psychological interventions can narrow what many see as intractable gaps in academic achievement.

  PublisherDOI

• UnhealthyInteractions:TheRoleofStereotypeThreat inHealthDisparities

  2013-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Hundreds of published studies show how the experience of stereotype threat can impair intellectual functioning and interfere with testandschoolperformance. Numerous published interventions derived from this research have improved the performance and motivation of individuals targeted by low-ability stereotypes. Stereotype threat theory andresearchprovideauseful lens for understanding and reducing the negative health consequences of interracial interactions for African Americans and members of similarly stigmatized minority groups. Here we summarizetheeducational outcomes of stereotype threat and examine the implications of stereotype threat for health and healthrelatedbehaviors.(AmJPublic Health.2013;103:50–56.

  Publisher

• How to Make a Young Child Smarter

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2013-01-01 · 81 citations

  article

  Can interventions meaningfully increase intelligence? If so, how? The Database of Raising Intelligence is a continuously updated compendium of randomized controlled trials that were designed to increase intelligence. In this article, the authors examine nearly every available intervention involving children from birth to kindergarten, using meta-analytic procedures when more than 3 studies tested similar methods and reviewing interventions when too few were available for meta-analysis. This yielded 4 meta-analyses on the effects of dietary supplementation to pregnant mothers and neonates, early educational interventions, interactive reading, and sending a child to preschool. All 4 meta-analyses yielded significant results: Supplementing infants with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, enrolling children in early educational interventions, reading to children in an interactive manner, and sending children to preschool all raise the intelligence of young children.

  PublisherDOI

• Gender stereotype endorsement and achievement-related outcomes: The role of competence beliefs and task values

  Contemporary Educational Psychology · 2013-04-10 · 126 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Understanding and Overcoming Social Psychological Barriers to Academic Development in African American Students

  NSF · $278k · 2006–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Catherine Good

  17 shared

• Michael Inzlicht

  9 shared

• Diana J. Burgess

  University of Minnesota

  7 shared

• Matthew S. McGlone

  6 shared

• Claude M. Steele

  Stanford University

  6 shared

• Lindsay Juarez

  5 shared

• Sean M. Phelan

  Mayo Clinic in Florida

  5 shared

• Diane F. Halpern

  Claremont McKenna College

  4 shared