By Diane Swanbrow
News Service

For teenage boys living in urban settings, physical markers of in-group belonging can play an important role in school performance, a University study shows.

Skin tone was the marker for African Americans and a more global rating of “looking Latino” for Latinos, since preliminary work suggests these generally are accepted markers of in-group belonging. Boys with darker skin tone had better grades and felt more accepted by their peers than boys with lighter skin tone did, says Daphna Oyserman, a psychologist at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the study’s lead author.

Oyserman, who also is affiliated with the Department of Psychology and School of Social Work, found the same connection between “looking Latino” and the academic performance and engagement with academically focused peers among Latino male teens. The study is to be published in Psychological Science.

“These findings link physical markers of group membership with important behavior and outcomes for minority boys who are at high risk of academic disengagement,” Oyserman says. “Feeling sure that one fits into the group can free boys to focus on school rather than on fitting in. Indeed darker skin-tone boys felt that they were socially accepted, and boys who believed they looked Latino were more likely to choose academically focused peers.”

For the study, part of a larger research program funded by the National Institutes of Health, Oyserman and colleagues analyzed school records and self-reports of Detroit-area teens—102 who identified themselves as African American and 66 who identified as Latino.

While physical markers of in-group belonging strongly were linked to grades and social acceptance for boys, these physical markers of group belonging had no systematic relationship with these outcomes for girls. That is not to say that feeling connected to one’s racial or ethnic group is not important to girls, but rather that this form of connection is particularly helpful for boys.

In a related study, published in the current issue of Child Development, Oyserman and colleagues examined the impact of content of racial or ethnic identity on academic outcomes. They proposed that feeling connected to one’s racial or ethnic group provides motivation to engage in behaviors believed to characterize the in-group, and that this should result in improved high school grade point average to the extent that this feeling of connection is combined with school-focused content of racial or ethnic identity.

For this study, researchers followed 98 African American and 41 Latino teens from low-income, urban schools through the eighth and ninth grade, asking about content of racial or ethnic identity in the fall and spring of each year and obtaining grades from school records. At each point in time, and over time, youth high in racial or ethnic identity got better grades. Simply feeling connected to the in-group alone was not helpful. When subjects felt connected and they believed the in-group valued the school experience, the effects were just as positive for girls as for boys and for Latino youth as for African American youth.

The findings also support the use of intervention programs that help at-risk youth succeed academically by enhancing the connection to the in-group and the belief that the in-group is characterized by school engagement. The positive effect of felt connection and belief that the in-group values school occurs even if outward appearance doesn’t proclaim in-group membership.

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