What Feathers Flock Together? Examining College Students’ Perceptions of Social Model Similarity

Abstract

Educators often try to motivate students for learning science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics by exposing them to social models with similar characteristics. However, it is not clear what dimensions of similarities are most optimal for motivating students in STEM. The present study investigated different dimensions in which college students perceived similarity to their social models in chemistry (N = 265) and biology (N = 143) and how different dimensions of perceived similarity were related to students’ competence-related beliefs and task values for learning in those fields. Academic similarities—particularly similar abilities, efforts, and interests—were the most frequent dimensions of similarity college students reported perceiving with respect to their STEM social models. Additionally, perceiving similar academic abilities to a social model was associated with greater competence-related beliefs in both studies. The relative salience of different academic similarities and their relations to STEM motivation also differed by study, suggesting that the importance of academic similarity perceptions may differ across learning contexts. Educators should consider emphasizing academic similarities when using social models to recruit or retain college students in STEM, while also acknowledging contextual nuances that may attenuate how different perceptions of similarities motivate students.

Keywords:

• College students
• competence-related beliefs
• similarity
• social models
• STEM motivation
• task values

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by seed grants from the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research and Mary Frances Early College of Education, both at the University of Georgia, awarded to Emily Q. Rosenzweig. We thank Sydney Tanguilig and Adanna Onwuka for assistance with coding of responses.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given the conceptual and empirical similarity among different types of competence-related beliefs (e.g., ability beliefs, academic self-concept, self-efficacy), we discuss these related constructs under the umbrella term of “competence-related beliefs” throughout the paper (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003; Marsh et al., 2019).

2 We examined whether students’ own characteristics influenced their perceptions of similarity by using regression analyses to examine whether students’ gender, race/ethnicity, or chemistry background predicted their likelihood of reporting each similarity theme. There was only one significant association, such that students with chemistry course experience were more likely to report similarities in terms of academic abilities (see supplemental materials).

3 The broader study involved testing a motivational intervention focused around reducing perceptions of the negative consequences of learning (see Rosenzweig et al., 2022). In this study, we collapsed together data from students receiving the intervention and control conditions. The questions in this study were not conceptually related to the intervention, and we controlled for study condition and the interaction between condition and biology background in all analyses. As a robustness check, we ran regression models using only students in the control condition. All key findings were of the same magnitude and direction.

4 Like in Study 1, we explored whether students’ gender, race/ethnicity, or biology background predicted their likelihood of reporting any similarity dimension; However, there were no statistically significant associations found (see supplemental materials).