Growth messages increase help

Women leave STEM majors at higher rates than men. This may be due to problematic messaging in gateway courses such as (a) mismatches between students’ cultural norms and those of the learning context and (b) fixed ideas about ability as unchangeable. The current study investigated how culturally relevant growth messages impacted help-seeking behavior and grades in a gateway STEM course. Undergraduate students (168 men, 285 women) were randomly assigned to receive an email invitation to a peer-led tutoring program that included factual information (control), growth messages, or culture-matching growth messages emphasizing effort and interdependence. Tutoring sign-ups, number of sessions attended, and grades were collected. Path analyses showed no impact of messaging on men’s sign-ups. Yet, growth messages increased women’s sign-ups relative to the control, which led to more sessions attended and, subsequently, higher course grades. Unexpectedly, the culture-matching growth condition decreased sign-ups for women. Follow-up exploratory survey data on students from the course (161 men, 268 women) revealed that more women perceived peer interactions as competitive than men, which may shed light on the unexpected findings. Programs should implement growth messages to recruit more women and to improve collaboration in peer-learning settings