A meta-analysis of the effect of values affirmation on academic achievement

Wu (2021) · Journal of Social Issues · Read the paper

Zezhen Wu, Thees Spreckelsen and Geoffrey Cohen reviewed 58 studies of values affirmation and academic achievement in real classrooms. The benefit was small for students facing a social identity threat and negligible for other students, with considerable variation among threatened students. The variation was linked to a larger achievement gap in the control condition, greater school financial resources, more distant outcome measures and presenting the exercise as a normal classroom activity.

Zezhen Wu, Thees Spreckelsen and Geoffrey Cohen reviewed 58 studies of values affirmation and academic achievement in real classrooms. The benefit was small for students facing a social identity threat and negligible for other students, with considerable variation among threatened students. The variation was linked to a larger achievement gap in the control condition, greater school financial resources, more distant outcome measures and presenting the exercise as a normal classroom activity.

Written from the abstract read 2026-10-22 via the University of Glasgow repository record.

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doi:10.1111/josi.12415. Read at the level of the repository abstract.