Declining Optimism in Ethnic Minority Students: The Role of Attributions and Self-Esteem

Abstract

(from the chapter) While much research has found that African American students evidence lower academic achievement than White students, African American students appear to maintain positive self-concepts and positive views of their abilities. These paradoxical findings can be reconciled through an examination of the causal explanations African American college students make for their performance. Two hypotheses are proposed. A 'self-esteem' hypothesis maintains that African American college students internalize the negative stigma placed on them by the social system, and blame themselves for their lower outcomes. The second hypothesis maintains that African American students become aware of the structural barriers to their performance, and begin to make external attribution for their relative failure, thereby maintaining their positive views of the self. A study of 395 White and 134 African American college students examined the relationship between expectancies for future economic outcomes, locus of causality, and self-esteem. Findings indicate that African American students have high expectancies for success in the early years of college, but they are significantly lower in the later years. Results showed strong support for the external attribution hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)