Self-affirmation interventions have been shown to mitigate the negative psychological effects of stereotype threat on Black students in secondary and undergraduate education. However, there is currently limited research testing whether Black students in medical schools may also experience the negative influences of stereotype threat. Until now, it has been unclear whether Black (vs. White) students experience a lower sense of belonging in medical school and whether they can benefit from self-affirmation interventions during medical training. With a longitudinal field experiment, we tested (a) whether Black (vs. White) medical students in the US experience decrements in psychological well-being (i.e., fatigue, depression, anxiety), sense of belonging, perceived residency competitiveness, and residency goal stability; and (b) the extent to which a self-affirmation intervention would ameliorate any observed disparities in these outcomes for Black students. With a sample of 234 Black and 182 White medical students across 50 schools in the United States, we found that Black students tended to report more fatigue and less belonging than White students; however, the self-affirmation intervention did not significantly influence students’ fatigue, depression, anxiety, or belonging. Unexpectedly, Black students in the self-affirmation (vs. control) condition reported lower perceived competitiveness for residency. White students’ perceived competitiveness for residency was unaffected by the intervention. Exploratory analyses revealed that Black (vs. White) students were less likely to indicate stable residency goals over time, which may be an indication of threat; however, this racial gap was eliminated with the intervention. We discuss the plausible reasons for these findings and provide recommendations for future work in this area.

中文翻译：

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测试自我肯定干预以改善美国黑人和白人医学生的社会心理健康

自我肯定干预已被证明可以减轻刻板印象威胁对中学和本科教育中黑人学生的负面心理影响。然而，目前有限的研究测试医学院的黑人学生是否也可能经历刻板印象威胁的负面影响。到目前为止，尚不清楚黑人（与白人）学生是否在医学院的归属感较低，以及他们是否可以从医学培训期间的自我肯定干预中受益。通过纵向实地实验，我们测试了 (a) 美国的黑人（与白人）医学生是否在心理健康（即疲劳、抑郁、焦虑）、归属感、感知的住院医师竞争力和住院医师方面有所下降目标稳定性；(b) 自我肯定干预会在多大程度上改善黑人学生在这些结果中观察到的任何差异。通过对美国 50 所学校的 234 名黑人和 182 名白人医科学生的抽样调查，我们发现黑人学生往往比白人学生报告更多的疲劳和更少的归属感；然而，自我肯定干预并未显着影响学生的疲劳、抑郁、焦虑或归属感。出乎意料的是，处于自我肯定（与控制）条件下的黑人学生报告的居住竞争力较低。白人学生对居住权的感知竞争力不受干预的影响。探索性分析显示，随着时间的推移，黑人（与白人）学生不太可能表现出稳定的居住目标，这可能是威胁的迹象；然而，这种种族差异被干预消除了。我们讨论了这些发现的合理原因，并为该领域的未来工作提供了建议。