Improving academic achievement by reducing self-evaluative threats: The moderating role of institutional support in the effectiveness of brief social-psychological interventions – IMPROVE

Brief social-psychological interventions aimed at reframing the way students interpret academic situations can reduce the achievement gaps between high and low achievers but it does not always work. IMPROVE investigates the processes and the conditions under which brief social psychological interventions (reframing of task difficulty, self-affirmation) can boost academic achievement. The project focuses on the intersection between the psychological interpretations of academic difficulty conveyed by psychological interventions and the institutional context in which they are implemented. to (a) specify the cognitive and emotional processes underlying how a brief intervention restores achievement among students and (b) examine how its effectiveness is moderated by the institutional context in which it is implemented. To address these goals, IMPROVE relies on an interdisciplinary collaboration between experts in social psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology, academic actors and authorities. It is based on a series of randomized experiments over a 4-year period IMPROVE aims to further our understanding of the interaction between social contexts and cognition and the socio-psychological processes underlying the performance gap observed between high and low achievers. IMPROVE has the potential not only to revitalize the scientific debate concerning the very reasons why some students face difficulty in the classroom, why some brief psychological interventions work or not, but importantly to renew standard approaches of difficulty remediation and contribute to informing more effective policies aimed at reducing performance gap usually observed between high and low achievers.