LAB NOTES

Sharon Begley

No O Effect?

A new study says that Obama's example doesn't influence blacks' test scores.

May 13, 2009 | Updated: 11:25 a.m. ET May 14, 2009

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As if President Obama did not have enough to do ending the recession, fighting two wars, reforming health care, putting the nation on a path toward a low-carbon energy mix and even urging Americans to buy cars, some researchers are hoping he can close the gap between black and white students in achievement. There was an early sighting of this "Obama Effect" earlier this year, as I blogged at the time, when scientists led by Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt University reported that Obama "had a profound beneficial effect on Black-Americans' exam performance," something they attributed to "the powerful impact of in-group role models."

Not so fast. In research supported by the National Science Foundation and scheduled to be published in the July issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, psychologist Joshua Aronson of New York University and colleagues come to the opposite conclusion. Studying college students from across the country, they find that when black students are prompted to think about Obama before they take a challenging standardized verbal test, their scores did not improve relative to white students' compared to when they did not receive the prompt. And they did no better than black students not prompted to think about Obama. "Their test scores weren't affected by prompts to think about Obama," Aronson tells me. "We didn't find any relationship between test performance and being prompted to think positive thoughts about Obama, although we absolutely expected to. I didn't think we'd see a complete closing of the gap [between blacks' and whites' scores], but I expected at least a dent."

The lack of an Obama Effect was surprising on a couple of fronts. First, anecdotal media reports suggested that Obama has increased black students' dedication to their schoolwork, with one teacher reporting that her black students got better at completing their homework after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. Second, years of research on stereotype threat had shown that being reminded that you belong to a group that is stereotyped as being inferior at some task tends to make you do worse on that task, as Aronson and Claude Steele first showed in 1995. (For instance, focusing on the fact that you're a girl hurts your performance on math tests, focusing on the fact that you're old hurts your performance on memory tests—"girls can't do math" and "old people can't remember" being the relevant stereotypes.) The reason, Aronson and his team explain, is that "awareness of the stereotype (in this case, the allegation that black people are less intelligent than whites) arouses psychological discomfort in the test taker about the prospect that his or her performance could confirm the negative implications of the stereotype. If strong enough, the discomfort can impair cognitive efficiency (e.g., working memory capacity and other executive functions), thereby interfering with performance on the test." So you'd think that focusing on Obama might have the opposite effect: "I belong to a group that includes the brainy president of the U.S.!" Indeed, female students do significantly better on math tests when the tests are given by a female rather than male mathematician, apparently because seeing a female mathematician undermines the "girls can't do math" stereotype.

For this study, Aronson and his colleagues had 119 undergrads take the 24-question verbal section of the Medical College Admissions Test, or MCAT (the students were in a summer program for med-school aspirants). They took the test early last summer, when Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination. All the students were told that the test measures ability and predicts whether they'll get into med school. Before the test, the students also got a survey designed to get them to think about the positive qualities of Obama or John McCain, or neither (the control condition). Results: white students got a median of 18.7 questions right, black students got 14, and there was no narrowing of the race gap due to an Obama Effect. "Black students solved no more problems when they were promoted with positive thoughts about Obama condition" than in they did in the McCain or control condition, Aronson said.

Why was there no effect? Role models can close the gap caused by stereotype threat as long as the role model is seen as similar to you (in this case, black), successful (check) and representative of your group. Maybe the scientists ran the study too soon: perhaps Obama's clinching the Dems' nod wasn't enough to make him an achievement-boosting role model, but his election might be. (Aronson plans to rerun the test later this year.)

More worrisome, it could be that Obama—law school prof, constitutional scholar, first black president—is seen as "too innately talented to serve as a role model for the typical African-American student," says Aronson. "The most potent role model is someone who is seen as having worked really hard to succeed," says Aronson. "Maybe Obama's abilities are so stellar that typical students can't identify with him. Either we have to change our theory of how role models work, or accept that not every black student is going to be inspired by Obama" to achieve greater academic success.

One reason the earlier study might have found an Obama Effect is that it did not randomly assign its volunteers to take or not take the test and focus on Obama. Participants decided themselves whether to pay attention to his speeches, for instance, raising the possibility that those who were attracted to Obama were more likely to show the effect. If so, then the Obama Effect might apply to some black students but not others. Although the current study does not rule out an Obama Effect, it suggests that if the effect exists it is less pervasive than some people hoped, applying only to a subset of black students. Alas, not even Obama can eliminate "a psychological predicament predicated on generations of negative stereotyping," as the scientists call it.

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Posted By: shaggydog1776 @ 06/09/2009 8:14:30 PM

This is junk science at its worse. If this is true, than there is no need for teachers. Just wave a picture of Barrack Obama in front of Black students before they take a test. No more studying, no aspiring for higher standards or hard work. This is worse than the people who claim you can lose all your excess weight and eat all you want with no work or exercise. Blacks can improve their lives when they are ready to work for what they want.
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Posted By: fifty50 @ 05/16/2009 3:50:13 PM

The Obama effect is about realizing that African-Americans are not hopeless and can succeed. The path to success is not about thinking of Obama right before a test, but of realizing that working hard like Obama will produce better results.

My personal hypothesis is that people who come to the United States of their own volition, like Obama's father, tend to be a better match to American culture whereas, the African-American slaves had no interest in leaving their culture. Placing random people in a culture is a recipe for failure. Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris have not adapted to their predominate mainstream white man cultures.

Obama is a type II African-American. His mom was American and his father was African, whereas the vast majority of African -American students descend from a long line of relatives who were both African and American. These relatives are a true mix, they're not a perfect fit for an African culture or a white American culture. They fit in an African-American culture, which is a culture that would not be a fit for either of Obama's parents. Obama, himself, is international in nature, having both a rare ethnicity and a rare cultural upbringing. He doesn't fit snuggly in any one culture. It appears that he creates a culture around himself containing intellectual and insightful people.
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Posted By: Mwalimu @ 05/16/2009 11:57:06 AM

Which "tests"are you talking about?????
If you are talking about the standardized tests given out each spring at inner city high schools, I challenge Sharon Begley or anyone else to try teaching in a low income inner city high school. Try giving the group of street-wise, know-it-all adolescents three compelling reasons that they should excel in a bunch of tests that have as much relevance to their day-to-day existence as a war between cockroaches on one of the moons of the Planet Uranus. For those who don't know. Students don't get the results of their test scores until the following year. By that time, they've forgotten what the test was about. (Given the transient population of many inner city schools, it is possible that students may NEVER get the results of their standardized tests.) Even if they get their scores, the results have no effect on their day-to-day lives. Standardized test scores count for zilch in terms of college admissions. (Even the SAT is not the be-all-and-end-all.) I've yet to hear of an employer who looks at standardized test scores to determine whether a student will or will not get a job. Do you get my gist????
As a retired teacher from an inner city school, I've had plenty of experience with "test" scores. Some assessment tests that i administered were "in-house"affairs. I could readily get the scores and pass them on to the students. I simply told my students that if they didn't pass the "test", they didn't pass my class. Needless to say, I got a very high pass rate. I can't say the same thing about "standardized tests" which incidentally do NOT even have a clearly defined passing score.
I might add that I did teach in a magnet school and I did teach honors and AP classes, so I could easily tell my students that they chose to be in my class. Other teachers did not have that luxury. That's the big reason charter schools succeed.
In terms of higher "test" scores in high school and middle schools, I've got a suggestions. If we are dealing with a "failing"school, why not put the tests on computers? Why not pattern the tests after popular video games? In other words turn the tests into a video game, where the student gets to keep score. You could then set up competitions and award prizes. The problem with school "testing" is really with the brain dead people who administer the tests.