Services — Geoffrey L. Cohen

Research

“The best way to understand something is to try to change it.”

— Kurt Lewin

Our research takes a social-psychological approach to social problems. That means we look for causes in the situation “right here and right now.” To a degree more than we think, the immediate social situation shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Of course, situations are subjectively experienced, so each one is experienced differently by the different people in it, sometimes dramatically so. Over the past 30 years, my colleagues and I have leveraged the “power of the situation” to create timely, tailored, and targeted interventions that alleviate threats to people’s sense of self-worth and belonging in schools and workplaces, health care settings, political debates, and many other arenas. These “wise” interventions are often brief, but, under certain key conditions, they can yield large and lasting benefits, improving outcomes as varied as performance, health, learning, and well-being. The interventions turn fraught encounters across lines of difference into occasions for growth. We refer to the science and art of creating such transformative experiences as situation-crafting.

Below are some sample publications from our lab and collaborators.

Research on self-affirmation theory and self-affirmation interventions (note that some of our research on self-affirmation in a political context is listed under the political polarization section):

Fotuhi, O., Ehret, P.J., Kocsik, S., & Cohen, G.L. (2022). Boosting college prospects among low-income students: Using self-affirmation to trigger motivation and a behavioral ladder to channel it. Journal of personality and social psychology, 22, 187-201
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Powers, J.T., Cook, J.E., Purdie-Vaughns, V., García, J.A., Apfel, N.H., & Cohen, G.L. (2016). Changing Environments by Changing Individuals. Psychological Science, 27, 150 - 160
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Sherman, D.K., Hartson, K.A., Binning, K.R., Purdie-Vaughns, V., García, J.A., Taborsky-Barba, S., Tomassetti, S., Nussbaum, A.D., & Cohen, G.L. (2013). Deflecting the trajectory and changing the narrative: how self-affirmation affects academic performance and motivation under identity threat. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104 4, 591-618.
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Wu, Z., Spreckelsen, T.F., & Cohen, G.L. (2021). A meta‐analysis of the effect of values affirmation on academic achievement. Journal of Social Issues.
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Ferrer, R.A., & Cohen, G.L. (2018). Reconceptualizing Self-Affirmation With the Trigger and Channel Framework: Lessons From the Health Domain. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23, 285 - 304.
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Goyer, J.P., García, J.A., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Binning, K.R., Cook, J.E., Reeves, S.L., Apfel, N.H., Taborsky-Barba, S., Sherman, D.K., & Cohen, G.L. (2017). Self-affirmation facilitates minority middle schoolers' progress along college trajectories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 7594 - 7599.
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Havranek, E.P., Hanratty, R., Tate, C.E., Dickinson, L.M., Steiner, J.F., Cohen, G.L., & Blair, I. (2012). The effect of values affirmation on race-discordant patient-provider communication. Archives of internal medicine, 172 21, 1662-7.
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Cohen, G.L., Garcia, J.A., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N.H., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive Processes in Self-Affirmation: Intervening to Close the Minority Achievement Gap. Science, 324, 400 - 403.
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Cohen, G.L., García, J.A., Apfel, N.H., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention. Science, 313, 1307 - 1310.
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Logel, C., & Cohen, G.L. (2012). The Role of the Self in Physical Health. Psychological Science, 23, 53 - 55.
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Cohen, G.L., Aronson, J., & Steele, C.M. (2000). When Beliefs Yield to Evidence: Reducing Biased Evaluation by Affirming the Self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1151 - 1164.
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Binning, K. R., Cook, J. E., Greenaway, V. P., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L.* (2021). Securing self-integrity over time: Self-affirmation disrupts a negative cycle between psychological threat and academic performance. Journal of Social Issues, 77(3), 801-823.
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Salles, A., Mueller, C. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2016). A values affirmation intervention to improve female residents’ surgical performance. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 8, 378-383.
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Manke, K.J., Brady, S.T., Baker, M.D., Cohen, G.L.* (2021). Affirmation on the go: A proof of concept for text message delivery of values affirmation in education. Journal of Social Issues, 77(3), 888-910.
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Sherman, D. K., Lohande, M., Muller, T., & Cohen, G. L. (2020). Self-affirmation interventions. Handbook of Wise Interventions: How Social-Psychological Insights Can Help Solve Problems (Eds. G. Walton & A. Crum), pp. 63-99.
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Research on belonging uncertainty and the social-belonging intervention.

Walton, G.M., & Cohen, G.L. (2011). A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students. Science, 331, 1447 - 1451.
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Cohen, G.L., & Garcia, J.A. (2008). Identity, Belonging, and Achievement. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 365 - 369.
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Walton, G.M., & Cohen, G.L. (2007). A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92 1, 82-96 .
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Brady, S. T., Cohen, G. L., Jarvis, S. N., & Walton, G. M. (2020). A brief social-belonging intervention in college improves adult outcomes for black Americans. ScienceAdvances, 6, April 29.
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Goyer, J. P., Cohen, G. L., Cook, J. E., Master, A., Apfel, N., Lee, W., Henderson, A. G., Reeves, G. L., Okonofua, J. A., Walton, G. M. (2019). Targeted identity-safety interventions cause lasting reductions in discipline citations among ethnic-minority boys. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(2), 229-259.
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Research on political polarization and strategies to ameliorate it:

Cohen, G.L., Sherman, D.K., Bastardi, A., Hsu, L., McGoey, M., & Ross, L.D. (2007). Bridging the partisan divide: Self-affirmation reduces ideological closed-mindedness and inflexibility in negotiation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 93 3, 415-30.
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Schwalbe, M.C., Cohen, G.L., & Ross, L.D. (2020). The objectivity illusion and voter polarization in the 2016 presidential election. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117, 21218 - 21229
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Cohen, G.L. (2003). Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. Journal of personality and social psychology, 85 5, 808-22.
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Binning, K.R., Brick, C., Cohen, G.L., & Sherman, D.K. (2015). Going along versus getting it right: The role of self-integrity in political conformity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 56, 73-88.
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Research on trust, wise criticism, and wise intervention in diverse settings:

Cohen, G.L., Steele, C.M., & Ross, L.D. (1999). The Mentor’s Dilemma: Providing Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1302 - 1318.
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Reeves, S. L., Henderson, M. D., Cohen, G. L., Steingut, R. R., Hirschi, Q., Yeager, D. S. (2021). Psychological affordances help explain where a self-transcendent purpose intervention improves performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120 (1), 1-15.
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Cohen, G. L., & Steele, C. M. (2002). A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race mentoring. In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 303-328). San Diego: Academic Press.
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Yeager, D.S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J.A., Apfel, N.H., Brzustoski, P., Master, A., Hessert, W., Williams, M.E., & Cohen, G.L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of mistrust: wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 143 2, 804-24 .
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Yeager, D.S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Hooper, S.Y., & Cohen, G.L. (2017). Loss of Institutional Trust Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Adolescents: A Consequence of Procedural Injustice and a Cause of Life-Span Outcomes. Child development, 88 2, 658-676.
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Review articles:

Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., & Goyer, J. P. (2017). Turning point: Targeted, tailored, and timely psychological intervention. In A. Elliot, C. Dweck, D. Yeager (eds), Handbook of Competence and Motivation (2nd Edition): Theory and Application (pp. 657-686). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

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Cohen, G.L., & Sherman, D.K. (2014). The psychology of change: self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual review of psychology, 65, 333-71.
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Garcia, J., & Cohen, G. L. (2013). A social psychological approach to educational intervention. In E. Shafir (Ed.), The behavioral foundations of policy (pp. 329-350). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Cohen, G.L., & García, J.A. (2014). Educational Theory, Practice, and Policy and the Wisdom of Social Psychology. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 13 - 20.
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Cohen, G. L., & Garcia, J. (2016). No researcher is an island. In R. Zweigenhaft and E. Borgida (Eds.), Collaboration in Psychological Science: Behind the Scenes (pp. 215-229). New York: Worth Publishers.
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Cohen, G. L. (2012). Identity, belief, and bias. J. Hanson (Ed.), Ideology, psychology, and law (pp. 385-403). Oxford University Press.
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Dweck, C.S., Walton, G.M., & Cohen, G.L. (2014). Academic Tenacity: Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. A white paper prepared for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Op-Eds

An op-ed about the harms of subtle and not-so-subtle forms of authoritarian leadership
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An op-ed about the need for both systemic and psychological approaches to school reform, co-written with Sara Goldrick-Rab
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An unpublished op-ed about the harms of cancel culture, and how we are all perpetrators of it in our day-to-day discourse
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